The Mailbox warns that the shameful attack that has shut down Turkish football could happen here too. Also: Man Utd and Chelsea should swap managers; commentary standards; and, of course, Stewie…
Get your views in to theeditor@football365.com…
Manager swap
Manchester United and Chelsea are a shambles.
Should we see the first Manager swap deal? Wouldn’t that bizarrely make a lot of sense?
Chelsea get Ten Hag who is known for managing promising youth with an attack minded squad. Has had some success with United in his first season to fall back on. At Chelsea his disciplinarian attitude might work better with the impressionable youngsters rather than bigger egos at United.
Man Utd get Poch, a Premier League experienced manager, whom Man Utd were seriously interested in once upon a time. Poch has experience managing a big club in PSG (albeit briefly) and is probably better suited to dealing with stars and egos. Plus his style of play is likely better suited to the players at United. He can reset Rashford, Sancho, Varane, Casemiro.
Both clubs can waive or cancel out the compensation fees. Both managers will still move to big clubs in EPL so not a step down.
It will never happen.But it does make sense.
Hats (Arsenal fan that is v.happy for Unai Emery)
READ: The leading contenders to be next Manchester United manager if they sack Erik ten Hag
Watch out, refs
Just seen the news about the poor ref in Turkey.
What odds do you reckon I could get for something similar happening over here? Worth a tenner I’d say.
World’s gone to sh*t and is only getting worse.
Ta,
Dave PVFC
State of the game
For all those United, Spurs, Arsenal etc fans writing in like emotionally incontinent children to moan that their season is over and their club is literally dying because they lost a few games should spare a thought for Lyon fans. Their club was in a Champions League semi-final a few seasons ago and were the top club in France from the start of the 2000’s until PSG got bought out by a Middle Eastern despot and ruined it. Now they are bottom of Ligue 1, broke and seemingly without a clue of how to fix any of their dire problems.
Be careful what you complain about I guess. Not that I think this could ever happen to any of the big 6 in England. Chelsea last season were so badly ran it seemed they lost almost every week but still finished 12th. The same this season and they are still 12th. Similar story with United, the poster boy for Premier League crisis clubs who’s fans and the media act like they are in a relegation dogfight are currently 6th, just 6 points off 4th place. The richest clubs can still qualify for Europe never mind get relegated or go broke even if they are run like a clown show.
The league has become a joke if the worst thing that can happen to a big 6 club is not qualifying for the Champions League regardless of how incompetent their leadership is. They’ll still be handed a big fat wad of cash to do it all again the next season. No wonder they want the European Super League so incompetence can be rewarded with yet more money. Barcelona, Chelsea, Juventus, City and United would be in that competition while all still being fine examples of “How Not To Run A Football Club 101”.
Is it just me or was football as a whole just better 25 years ago? Extra financial rules seem to have done zero to make sure competent non-corrupt people are running clubs.
Morris
Spurs365
I’m wondering whether any team ever received 4 separate ‘Winners’ entries in a W&L column before. The answer is probably “yes, but for doing something which was truly impressive or remarkable, rather than beating Newcastle while also having Richarlison as one of your 11 players”.
Oliver (Spurs365 indeed) Dziggel, Geneva Switzerland
Poor commentary
I see Joey Barton doing what Joey does best and causing havoc wherever he goes, to be fair to Joey he comes from an extremely troubled area and if we are to be inclusive then we must include those that have views different to our own based on their influences and believes and try and educate them in seeing the error of their ways when they are being extremely biased and closed minded. That said I both agree and vehemently disagree with his latest rant.
The whole women can’t commentate on men’s football is utter rubbish and Emma Hayes gave a calculated, logical and measured response to this which I’d urge others to seek out.
However, where I do agree with Barton is the fact that football journalism and specifically football commentary and co-commentary seems to have gone downhill. For me this is not a male vs female thing though, I think all commentary and co-commentary is severely lacking compared to the past. I watched one of the games Joey referred to and agree with him that the commentary was poor, equally last weeks Amazon Prime week seemed to prove difficult for them to staff up I guess, Alan Shearer was awful in the Spurs vs West Ham game.
However, maybe I’m not being fair, I’m sure it’s not an easy job when you consider the pressure they are under to not make a mistake. I’m certainly up for giving any newcomers (male or female) ample opportunity to prove their credentials and it’s not like back in the day there was wall to wall quality. In the mid 1990’s I remember particularly poor co-commentators in the shape of Kevin Keegan who at the World Cup in 1994 refused to condemn the most obvious and deliberate elbow from Leonardo. Equally Big Ron Atkinson was so bad that it became common parlance to use the term “he’s done a Big Ron” to describe when someone said something stupid or un-true (and that was before he decided to become an on-air casual racist!).
So, has the world of commentators and co-commentators got worse regardless of their sex?
Cheers,
Paul K, London
Strength in unity
It is clear that the PGMOL strategy is to simply ignore the shocking inconsistency of officiating in the Premier League, no matter which manager says what. So how do we change that?
I think someone hinted at that this morning. Managers should point out the dreadful mistakes that happen to other teams, rather than their own. It will be much trickier (surely) to ignore the outcry if Pep is bemoaning the fact that in a player should have been sent off in a match which did not feature Man City. Or if Arteta discusses the dreadful decision that led to a perfectly good goal for Palace being disallowed.
Or perhaps even better, they agree on which calamitous mistake is the most egregious of the weekend and ALL talk about that one. And if they all do it, every single week, for the entire season. It will make the “sour grapes” argument totally spurious, make it much harder for the PGMOL to punish individual managers and their teams, and perhaps encourage change.
Carolyn, (wondering if anyone has investigated the PGMOL’s finances) South London Gooner
Hated, adored, no longer ignored
To quote Oscar Wilde, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”
We have been a joke for close to a decade. We haven’t been relevant for close to 2 decades. So that rival fans crowing about us whining etc, tells me we’re back baby! A lot of fans seem to love that VAR inconsistency will cost us points. Let me tell you, they’ll make YOU and YOUR teams lose points. All Arsenal fans want is consistency! We are never going to be favourites for rivals. Arteta is inherently unlikeable. He’s Anti-Ange. And I wouldn’t swap him for anyone. If I were a United or Chelsea fan, I’d be thankful for Arteta keeping the focus away from your basket case clubs.
So enjoy celebrating our 2nd loss of the season rivals, Arteta will use this to improve us.
And for the final time, to those fans (Liverpool) – YOU DIDN’T go invincible. Who cares IF you almost got an amazing, more points invincible season, because you didn’t, you couldn’t! That is why the Invincibles are unarguably greatest Premier league team. And before you come with your treble side…City did that, but they’ve never gone invincible. That’s why it is special. As the old Greek saying goes: If if if – If my grandma had balls she’d be my grandpa.
John Matrix
…Goodness me, quite the (expected) backlash to Arsenal fans in the mailbox. Let’s just pick apart some of it and get some things off my chest.
Firstly the spurs fan who is ‘happy in ourselves thank you’ but also proceeds to mention and dig out Arsenal at every opportunity in the mail! Good job of trying to convince yourself there.
We had a Liverpool fan with a ‘we didn’t bottle it you did’ argument but also saying Liverpool should have won the league 5 times when they didn’t win it….should have won it but didn’t…is that bottling it then? By the way, Liverpool should have won it in ‘91? Eh? Arsenal won it 7 points clear of Liverpool, beating Liverpool home and away without conceding (only conceded 18 all season) and lost 1 game to Liverpool’s 8….maybe pick another year! In 13/14 Liverpool needed 7 points from the final 3 games, they lost 2-0 at home to a very rotated Chelsea side (look at the team sheet), and then drew 3-3 at Palace when they were 3-0 up with 10 minutes to go. Arsenal may have bottled it last year but we bottled it by being overtaken on the home straight, Liverpool tripped over their shoelaces on the finishing line, the fact you won 12 odd straight to that point is irrelevant, win 2 and draw 1 of your last 3 games and it was yours, nothing City could have done.
Of course Liverpool have been the better team than Arsenal over the last 5-6 years but part of why Arsenal fans are excited about the direction we’re going in is we can see similarities with how Klopp and Liverpool built. A sleeping giant trying to topple the un-toppleable, some very smart recruitment, some home grown players, a clear bond between board, manager, players and fans, and a charismatic (to some) manager. Surely Liverpool and Arsenal have far more in common and a number of common enemies- maybe if we’re both battling it out at the end of the season having both seen off Man City we can start getting our claws in to each other.
I feel it’s worth putting some context on the oft written slur of how the invincibles drew 12 games. Must be easy to go unbeaten then? The thing is there were no last gap equalisers. That season the latest in any game that Arsenal were losing was v Spurs when we were behind 1-0 at the 69th minute, so still 21 minutes from actually losing. When you see what can make you lose a match, a brain fart from any player, a ref howler, a bad injury, a random red card, just outright bad luck – any of these things can easily lose you a game you didn’t deserve to, but yet Arsenal didn’t lose a single game despite all those factors in play.
Finally on referees. A standard pattern in the mailbox is fans of team X moan they had awful decisions, fans of all other teams tell them to shut up and the decisions were fine. You could repeat this for any team, particularly big teams. So if big 6 fans make up a big proportion of fans and 95% of those big 6 fans actually agree with refereeing decisions when it’s not their team on the receiving end we must assume a huge proportion of fans in general agree refs are doing a great job?….or is tribalism completely clouding any objective view on decisions? So whilst fans argue amongst each other trying to get one up on their rivals the PGMOL swan by with more and more obscure justifications for each decision, ignoring any previous precedent laughing while fans focus on digging out their rivals for their turn at getting shafted.
The mailbox is dominated by Arsenal, Man U and Liverpool fans, with a fair bit of Spurs and Chelsea – I bet if you look back over any mailbox when any of these teams feel hard done by on decisions the fans of all the rest will tell them they have nothing to moan about the decisions were fine. Far better would be to agree that ref standards are in the gutter and start asking some proper questions of the PGMOL. Like why is such a high proportion of refs white men from the north west? Why do so many refs declare the team they support as some obscure local team rather than the behemoth prem giant on their doorstep? Why are the PGMOL more interested in punishing the minutiae and technical ‘school rules’ than improving standards and taking serious foul play with more scrutiny. Celebrate too much, shirt over your head, 2 coaches in the technical area, take too long restarting play (gk still exempt from the 6 second rule btw) all yellows…..elbows and forearms to the head in a sport that is just dragging itself in to proper conversations on concussion – absolutely fine.
If fans genuinely think Arteta is doing things on the sidelines that no other manager is doing – as the punishments and scrutiny would suggest – then I’d suggest tribalism is at play again, and you have more in common with Richard Keys than you would like. Both Wilder and Pep did the same celebrating outside the technical area this weekend with no yellow cards. Arsenal fans have predicted Arteta will get a 1 game ban for his comments after the Newcastle game – 5 weeks ago – and it will be handed out just before our trip to Anfield in a mere coincidence of timing. Let’s see.
Rich,AFC
Ref justice for Arsenal
I’d just like to remind everyone that I mentioned in my previous email that you need to consider these decisions going against your team to understand the indignance of Arsenal fans. What we want is more consistent refereeing, if all these decisions were consistently applied across the league we wouldn’t be complaining.
Ben in the previous mailbox says that Arteta was suspended because of all the yellows he’s accumulated. This is a classic straw man because the focus isn’t on the previous yellows, it’s on the one he received post-game against Luton for merely celebrating a last minute winner. Here’s a perfect example of where the PGMOL’s consistency falls apart. How many times have other managers run amok with excitement due to a last minute winner and then been booked? Name one. Just one. What reason is there to book Arteta for this specific time? There’s no viable explanation for why the rules are suddenly being anally applied other than the refereeing body being irritated about Arteta’s previous comments. And if you think that a manager not being on the pitch doesn’t affect the team, you’re flat out oversimplifying things. On the pitch a manager can direct his players and make key tactical changes a lot easier. Now if Arteta had abused a ref or gotten into a Luton player’s face, by all means slap him with a card. But this? Wake up and smell the coffee.
And as for the accusations that we’re all paranoid and insecure, why do you think we’re taking issue with the refs so much in this specific season? We’ve bottled plenty of title runs in previous seasons and our fans were always hard on our players, not the refs. Remember how much we criticised Giroud, Adebayor, Ozil, Mustafi and Bendtner to name a few? Right now there’s countless Arsenal fans criticising Odegaard’s finishing, Ben White’s challenge on McGinn for the goal and the lack of adaptation to Villa’s cleverly applied high line. We weren’t good enough but the decisions being made by refs need to be consistent. I myself mentioned in the previous email that I think the Havertz handball decision and the pen call on Jesus were correct but are these decisions being consistently applied across the league?Take yourselves out of the “hAhA aRseNaL loSt AgAiN lMao loL RoFl” mindset and put yourselves in our shoes.
I hope there’s still room for nuance in modern football.
Vish (AFC), Melbourne, Aus
Here’s Stewie
The Monday morning mailbox was beautiful. Certain Arsenal fans continue to exhibit the famous “identity” that Wenger gave them, which is why they were begging for his return. That “identity” as I’ve said countless times, runs deep in the club. And until it’s rooted out, Arsenal will continue to be bridesmaids. A few points.
1. The Wenger identity can be summed up by never taking responsibility for failure and diverting all blame to everyone else but yourself. So lose a match 8-2 and it’s “special circumstances”. Lose 10-2 in the CL and it’s down to “injuries”. Fail season in, season out in the PL and blame “oil money”. Which looks silly when Leicester end up exposing you. And then Klopp 🙄
The Arsenal fans crying witch hunt are an embarrassment and about as credible as Boris Johnson. If I was eg a Wolves or Brighton fan hearing this victim act by a club who spent £200m in summer, I would be laughing.
2. Arsenal could have played 500 minutes at Newcastle and at Villa and they still wouldn’t have scored. Because their attackers are rubbish. Simple. Talk about nonsensical bollocks excuses to cover up your mediocre performance – right out the Wenger book of Bullshit lol. That “identity” again.
3. I won’t highlight the irony of a Gooner writing in about Godwin’s Law and being the first to bring up…Nazis! LOL. They write themselves at times.
4. Mikel Arteta spent £200m over summer. Yet Arsenal have less goals, a lower win percentage, less points, less big chances created, than at the same stage last season. Arsenal fans should be asking why this is. Pretty sure Emery, who dismantled Arteta over the weekend, had nowhere near that budget? I suspect the answer is: VAR Deep State Plot. 🥱.
5. Arsenal fans seem perplexed that most sane people can see that Liverpool are far more equipped to win a title than Arsenal. I’ll help here: Klopp talks a lot of crap about refs of course – but crucially, Klopp has instilled a mentality in his players that doesn’t focus on perceived victimhood. He has competed fiercely with Pep on a lower budget for years. You’ve never once heard him claim having less money was ann impediment – he’s actually said the opposite! Klopp has implemented standards. Never saw him celebrate 4th. He got 99 points in a season and was gutted to be a runner-up. Compare to many Arsenal fans last season celebrating their collapse, talking up “unique seasons”, and denying bottling. 🙄 Klopp has proved he can win against Pep over a season, and step up in the business end of the season. Arteta defs has that Wenger energy since the greater the pressure gets, the more absurd Arsenal’s performances become. Plenty of evidence. That Wenger identity” again! 😂 (If we are counting FA Cups btw then perhaps Bobby Martinez is the new Arrigo Sacchi lol)
6. Perhaps highlight the fact your £50m beloved Brazilian Steve Bull has less PL goals than Doucoure of Everton, Dom Solanke, Hee-Chan of Wolves, Odsonne Édouard of Palace, Bowen of West Ham, and Leon Bailey. The likes of Doucoure, Hee-Chan, Édouard and Bowen are hardly playing in slick, tiki-taka teams that create dozens of chances are they? One plays for Roy Hodgson FFS. Another for Moyes! But they’re outperforming every single Arsenal striker. In fact, Arsenal ain’t got a single player in the Top 20 PL scorers. That’s an embarrassment. But yes, I blame the PGMOL DEEP STATE! TOTAL
HOAX AND A WITCH-HUNT! FAKE NEWS MEDIA! 🙄
As predicted the Emery revisionism damage control exercise is in full swing!
Stewie Griffin (“Identity” means loving a striker who cannot actually finish his dinner)
Fact-checking the Mailbox
Long time reader, second time emailer (maybe third time) I love the show…
In your most recent mailbox, Gussy accused Maw, LA Gooner of “mental gymnastics”, in making some claims for the Arsenal Invincibles being a game away from winning the treble and to be fair, he has a point.
A point which he then immediately undermines without a hint of irony in claiming Liverpool should have won 5 league titles across 1991-2009.
Interestingly, three of those years saw the league title go to Arsenal. The first one, 1991, saw Arsenal wrap up the league title with 2 games to spare, despite a 2 point deduction when Liverpool lost at, if memory serves, Nottingham Forest. By Gussy’s logic, that’s Liverpool bottling a title.
What happened in 1998? Liverpool weren’t even in the title race. Arsenal chased down a 12 gap to win the title with 2 games to spare by thrashing Everton 4-0. We could even afford to lose to Liverpool by the same scoreline in the very next game.
2002? Arsenal bossed the league, going unbeaten away all season, unbeaten anywhere between 28 November and the end of the season, culminating in the glorious “Wiltoooord!” moment at Old Trafford to seal the title with a game to spare. If Liverpool should have won that title, please explain to how – even if they’d managed to beat ten men Arsenal at Anfield that season, the gap between us would have still been a point. So we don’t have to talk about Liverpool bottling that one.
I don’t know, maybe there’s some Irish humour there that has just sailed over my head, but I do believe he who lives in glasshouses….
On the Villa game, no real complaints from me. Villa took their chance, we didn’t take ours and football is really simple like that sometimes. I don’t think we’re any less of a title challenger than we were before the game, but we weren’t as sharp as I’d have liked – Odegaard in particular could have won us the game on his own. Hey ho, not his – or our day.
All the best!
Paul, Sarf London Gooner.
Game’s gone soft
I agree with Ed Quoththeraven that it was remarkable that it took three minutes to decide on Will Hughes vs Wataru Endo.
The agreement ended there though, because I was absolutely bewildered by his description of the foul as “very soft”, and adds to this by describing it as “Endo is trying to shield the ball from Hughes, who attempts to break through”. Yes Ed, he attempted to break through without making any kind of contact with the ball, and as a result, Endo clearly succeeded in shielding the ball and Hughes clearly failed to break through without committing a foul. The remarkable thing about the decision was that despite the VAR officials intervening reasonably quickly, the referee on the pitch was very reluctant to see this as a foul, and insisted on watching replays over and over again despite the fact that it was a very clear and very obvious foul. The referee made it very clear throughout the rest of the match that he had no overriding anti-Liverpool agenda (I think Ayew’s second yellow card was absurd), but this incident was very poorly handled by him, end of story.
Oliver Dziggel, Geneva Switzerland
Welcome back, PG
It was heart-warming to see the return of Peter G and his nuanced, un-biased takes on Our League.
To newer mailboxers, Peter G Pennsylvania has been a pillar of F365 for what seems like centuries, to the extent that he was invited to write a feature once which was beyond excellent, I invite you to search for it and appreciate the love this man’s wife must have for him.
Welcome back Peter G
Dave avfc
