Do we want Jose Mourinho back at Manchester United or Chelsea? The fall-out from the weekend still goes on.
Send your views to theeditor@football365.com
Bring Jose back
Would late-era Mourinho improve Chelsea and Man Utd currently?
Do we – as Premiership fans – want the pantomime bad guy back again, causing more chaos?
I think he’s a cheating, no good, eye-poking narcissist who drags the sport into disrepute.
But he brings flavour. He brings mischief. He’s fun. Are we not entertained?
I’d love to see one of football’s big basket cases bring him back for yet more nonsense. So much potential #bantz.
All we need is some clueless, feckless, noob of a chairman to make it happen. Luckily there seem to be a few of those around these days.
Bring him back !
Tom (and maybe Frankie as assistant manager….snigger) E13
READ: Ranking elite club summer vacancies by desirability as jobs: Manchester United ahead of Liverpool
David v Goliath
Congratulations to Newcastle, with 5 first team players out injured/unavailable (Wilson, Pope, Joelinton, Tonali and erm Targett) you managed to beat Premier league champions Blackburn on penalties (admittedly our Premier League Champions’ players were unfortunately all unavailable due to being lawyers/pundits/Man Utd management targets)
Not a pop at Newcastle, just sat here thinking about how small the margins are between actual David v Goliath match outcomes and how that can dictate the narrative.
The team did us proud tonight, onwards and downwards to League 1!
Brian (BRFC – who have the same number of Premer League titles as Liverpool but theirs does mean more apparently)
It’s the Klopp final, not the kids final
Moving on from the main narrative of the final, because we’re all bored of hearing Neville’s soundbite and arguing who was more/least likely to win, it feels like this game should have been viewed in retrospect as the perfect encapsulation of Klopp as a manager in his final season at Liverpool. It was the ‘Klopp final’ and here’s why:
Emotion/Mentality
One thing that sets Klopp apart from all managers, not just the successful ones, is his ability to leverage emotion the right way for his players. Passion, Calmness, Anger and Elation are allowed in his teams but are less symptoms of an action and more encouraged as tools to benefit an action.
This final was a perfect demonstration of emotional balance carefully constructed in the build up and during the game. Everything he and his team said before the game was carefully worded to both project this idea that Liverpool were the underdogs (to remove the anxiety and nerves of his youngsters) whilst also emphasising his complete faith in the squad he had available (to provide them with confidence and a trust).
During the game the players remained composed (despite some unpunished assaults by Caicedo and goading from the Chelsea captain) as the momentum swung several times whilst the crowd also remained optimistic and knew when to sing rather than go silent. The mentality to get over the line was the deciding factor in extra time and is such a Klopp trait but it’s taken years to ‘manipulate’ so many individuals.
Subs to the max
Klopp was the biggest supporter of the 5 subs rule and has since used it to his advantage better than any other manager. As others have noted, the fact he still used all the subs available with a vastly inexperienced bench shows just how much value he feels this tactic brings and there’s only been one or two occasions this season where I think he’s got it wrong.
I’d also add here that Liverpool seemed to come out firing and improved immediately after every break. Certainly, before extra time, whatever he said clearly gave the Liverpool players more energy in their legs compared to Poch’s speech for his group. I think Fergie was a master of this and Klopp is similarly impactful. He can often change the momentum during a match which I feel is one of the best indicators of a top tier manager.
Less is more
This is always a contentious point because “less” is relative but Klopp will justifiably be viewed as a manager who achieved incredible heights with significantly less investment than other top teams in his league. You can point to one off fees for VVD, Allison etc but viewed as a whole this man has achieved 97 and 99 points and three CL finals whilst others have spent hundreds of millions more (Net and Total) achieving far less.
Before this season he was the last Manager to topple Bayern (assuming Alonso does the deed). No player has left Liverpool and improved elsewhere, whereas countless ‘good’ players have joined and appeared world class. There’s so many reasons behind this but this Final helped display it in the most extreme way by winning a cup using so many academy players vs players bought at a premium.
Sustainability
And this is where his legacy will be felt most. His bottom-up approach to club management has been magnificently proven right in this Final. Every single academy player knows what they need to do to get a call up and then how to play in a Liverpool first XI should they get the chance. Sunday’s result is impossible without this behind-the-scenes work.
FSG have played their part here but Klopp has driven this initiative home. City have clearly done something similar but that seems to have been a collective project (backed by bigger down payments and salaries) before Pep arrived, leaving him the freedom to focus on the pitch performance. There’s no guarantee, but if Liverpool continue to have success once Klopp’s gone, his fingerprints will be all over it for a long time after.
The “kids” deserve huge credit and the final was certainly notable for the part youth played but I’d argue this final was unique mostly for the same things that make Klopp unique. You may not think he’s as good as X, Y or Z manager but we should credit him the aspects he excels at before he’s gone.
JMG (LFC)
16 Carabao Cup conclusions
Seeing as it’s still topical, I thought time to give my 16 pence –
1) Chelsea should have put us to bed early. They should have been 2-0 up in the first 30 minutes (Gallagher and the point blank save from Kelleher).
2) Chelsea couldn’t get their final pass right, so many of their moves broke down in the final third.
3) Malo Gusto miscontrolled about three passes during the game. It goes back to the point that Chelsea were having an off day.
4) Kelleher was making incredible stops and that we won was down mainly to him and the last-ditch defending by Iba and (less so) VVD. Chelsea’s Petrovic was making all the easy stops but missing the difficult ones, see VVD x2.
5) It’s unsurprising that fans of other clubs don’t think our achievement was so great.
6) We all know how good this was, probably better than the time we put out a team of kids and knocked Everton out of the FA Cup.
7) It looked obvious to me, Poch told his players take a breather in the first half of extra time and then go for the victory in the second half.
8) What annoys me about the first VVD goal is there was no appeal by Colwill. This is VAR re-refereeing the game which shouldn’t be happening. There should at least be an appeal if wanting to intervene.
9) Chris Kavanagh, born in Greater Manchester. Explains it all really.
10) It’s funny that Poch says after a billion spent, Chelsea still need to spend more. Almost as if the board should only buy players which fit the manager’s vision rather than buying players for potential re-sale value.
11) Chelsea started the game with 7 of the players who held us to a 1-1 draw on the first day of the season. We started with 6 of those players.
12) On paper the starting line-ups were about equal in terms of skill. Carragher thus correctly asserts Chelsea were favourites the longer the match went on.
13) Chelsea seem to have another cult-like defender in Disasi. How do they keep signing them? See Ivanovic, Rudiger.
14) Chelsea looked like a team who have been playing under a manager for less than a season. We looked like a team who played under the same manager for 8 years already.
15) None of those players would run through a wall for Pochettino.
16) Paul McDevitt, really? Shirt numbers?
Wik, Pretoria (brackets for brackets’ sake), LFC
This means more nonsense
Lindsay in Dublin has very helpfully pointed out that “This Means More” is just a marketing slogan. Yes, Lindsay, it is.
It’s a marketing slogan carefully crafted by a no doubt very expensive marketing department or outsourced marketing firm designed solely and squarely at the Liverpool fan base. It’s almost like these marketing professionals know exactly how self congratulatory, mad with exceptionalism and drunk on the smell of their own own farts Liverpool supports can be.
So yes, it’s a marketing slogan, but one that holds a mirror up to you and that just makes it oh so much worse.
Lewis, Busby Way
Let’s talk about Pochettino…
After all of the noise around academy players, ages, shirt numbers and whatever other points are being made about the kids beating the billion pound bottle jobs – why is nobody talking about Poch and his approach to the game? Surely that is a huge part of the whole story?
Beforehand there was the weird comment about hoping the game wasn’t reffed like part of Klopp’s farewell tour (only one team had a player stretchered off after a late studs-up challenge without even receiving a free kick, and a goal disallowed for a legitimate but incredibly hard to find infraction). After the game, there was the comments about the players being tired and thinking that penalties would be their preferred option.
I can’t believe this is not the major talking point. Even as a Liverpool fan, I think Chelsea were on top at the end of 90, and we were hanging on a bit. Then in extra time with the academy players on – “let’s settle for penalties and hope the kids choke under pressure”. Unbelievable. Did he and the Chelsea players think the Liverpool players weren’t tired too? Diaz and Endo in particular looked exhausted at the end. Liverpool had played a game in mid-week while Chelsea had the week free.
Just awful awareness and management.
Dixon “Jose would have won that managing over Zoom” Hunt
READ: Chelsea were Spursy before Pochettino, whose mistake is being Spursy about the Spursiness
Stop calling people ‘frauds’
Please mailbox, I beg of you, stop using the word ‘fraud’. This is very much a word of modern football parlance. Without being too much of an old man, back in my day (or for that matter even 5 or 10 years ago) managers were never ‘frauds’. They were rubbish, useless, idiots etc. But not frauds.
Twice this week, about two different managers, we’ve had people writing in calling them frauds. Please stop. They’re not frauds.
To go to our old friend the dictionary, a fraud is: “person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities.”
Ten Hag and Pochettino are not doing this. They are not pretending to be something they are not. It was not actually Ten Hag’s brother managing Ajax, or Pochettino’s cousin. They did it. Those were their achievements. They are not walking around proclaiming to be the greatest managers of all time. They have had successful careers, they applied for a job and now they are doing that job. They are not doing it very well, but they’re not out to deceive anyone.
So please, can we stop. Rant over.
Mike, LFC, Dubai
Pep out
City fan here. I’d just like to add my tuppence worth to the debate around the League Cup Final. I thought it was utterly disgraceful that……..
Only kidding.
I genuinely thought it was a crap game that either side could’ve won one-nil. Kids or not, both sides were rubbish for 90 minutes IMHO. That said, Poch has an awful lot to answer for with his admitted decision to ‘play for pens’ in extra time. I don’t care which club you support, any manager that has that mindset should have you worried. At least Clop had the cojones to go for it, so fair play to him for that.
On last nights game, I was disgusted to see Man City barely scrape by relegation-threatened Luton Town. To quote the late, great Terry Thomas, City were “an absolute shower.” As was Haaland. He’s rubbish he is.
Mark (Pep out!) MCFC
Offence taken actually
When we wonder how sexism or any form of discrimination becomes part of the landscape, tacitly allowed and brushed away, one only has to see the reasons to Brendan Rodgers ‘throw away’ comment to his female interviewer. “Good girl.”
Absolutely condescending. Unquestionably misogynistic.
“No offence meant. We had a laugh about it.”
Really. It was clearly intended to put her in her place. She has to ‘pretend’ not to be offended and to laugh about it, given her job depends on access to people like Rodgers.
Would he have said “Good boy” if it were a male interviewer? We know he wouldn’t.
He should not be allowed to sweep this under the carpet.
Paul McDevitt
We want orgasms
Nah, the chap moaning about Jon Champion is wrong. Not about Jon Champion, but about the point of commentators generally. Think about it; in the purest sense, why is a commentator required?
The situation we have, where a TV commentator and Co-commentator are nominally telling us what’s happening, is clearly redundant. Unlike listening on the radio, I can see what’s happening, so need to tell me. TV commentary should elevate the entertainment of the game and inject excitement and passion. The “goooooooool” from Spanish-speaking commentators is brilliant. Only a boring tw*t would turn that down. I’m lucky to speak two languages fluently, and when I have the choice I never choose English commentary. It just sucks. Like the default and correct state is to be joyless and repressed. There are times when the commentator and his co- seem to ignore each other! What the f**k is that?! Such desperation to be cool and aloof.
Give me Neville’s orgasm noises any day.
Hesham (LFC)
Mailbox bingo
Well JHC, wasn’t that an outpouring of vitriol and pent-up bitterness?
No arguments with Rami (as an outsider I think he is bang on to highlight the fact that Rangnick seemed to read that room pretty well), or with Adidas, as like every non-Manu fan I find Bruno very annoying indeed, even though part of the reason for that is that he is very good. Still a wanker, though.
As a Liverpool fan I also have to agree with Mark, Suffolk – that was a game that, if we are honest, Chelsea had the better of it for long periods. The fact that two minutes from the end they forgot to mark a massive 6’4” (and actually quite famous and well-known) centre half, is one you will have to discuss with them. Also the youth/money argument is just funny. I know it’s easy for me to gloat because LFC are on the winning end of it this time, but it really is.
Shout out to Oliver Dziggel – I always find his contributions interesting and often though-provoking and his two here were exactly that – strong analysis of the above and the calling to account of John Nicholson. Like many, I subscribe to the maxim of “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it” (ascribed to Voltaire, apparently, among several others) and felt his calling out of JN was pretty fair. This is a man who can single out targets and analyse them closely, but who, has time has gone on (I’ve been on here 20+ years) has developed a tendency towards unfocused ranting and raging. That said four months in a hospital bed would send me that way too, so I guess some understanding is in order, but I still think Oliver’s point is valid.
Not sure why that bloke Steve was going so mad about Jon Champion – a bit like getting wildly irritated by a spatula or a rake, surely?
As for Matthew (and the ongoing reputation of Liverpool fans online…) gawd help us. If reading F365 is that painful, go for a walk, mow the lawn, get a dog and teach it tricks. Whatever. Don’t torture yourself on account of the rest of us.
Andy Cawley
