A Mailbox in which a Liverpool fan defends Martial

Matt Stead

Excited for 16 Conclusions? Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com.

 

The big preview
Can we (United) please lose this game and get rid of our cursed unbeaten run. and then maybe, just maybe, we can go on a decent winning run that ensures we finish in the top 4. Otherwise what’s the point of being labeled the new invincibles when it’s not helping our cause. Come on Chelsea, put us out of our misery…
Keg Baridi

 

Blip
Spurs are also the only team in England’s top four leagues not to have conceded more than twice in a league match this season

Unbelievable stat. Even more unbelievable that we did the same for 37 games last season. Right up until the last day of the season…..
Josh

 

A Liverpool fan defends Martial
… me, defending a Un*ted player…

But I for one feel we need to lay off Martial as a collective.

Since he has joined, he has had a change of manager and tactics to contend with, coupled with a huge upheaval in his personal life (admittedly of his own doing)…

This has all come with moving to a new country, new language, culture and having that ridiculous transfer tag hanging over him.

All of this and he is only 21… I mean I’m 31 and I’d struggle to cope with all of that mentally.

And the whole argument of “he gets paid enough…” or “he is a bloody footballer” holds little weight in my opinion

But then, he is a disgusting Manc so…
Jon (Kelvin MacKenzie really is a sh!t isn’t he?!) Andrews, LFC

 

Top 20 managers by expenditure
I plugged your data into an Excel spreadsheet because I felt some pertinent details were missing

Top 3 Average Expenditure Per Player
1. Pep Guardiola – 16.12m
2. Jose Mourinho – 12m
3. Carlo Ancelotti – 11.84m

Bottom 3 Average Expenditure Per Player
1. Rudi Garcia – 4.34m
2. Luciano Spaletti – 4.83m
3. Brendan Rogers – 6.67m

Top 3 Average Expenditure Per Title
1. Mark Hughes – INFINITY
2. Brendan Rodgers – 366.73m
3. Manuel Pellegrini – 198.53m

Bottom 3 Average Expenditure Per Title
1.Sven-Goran Eriksson – 22.22m
2. Marcelo Lippi – 24.75m
3. Louis van Gaal – 27.10m

Since some will be interested, Jose spends 33.75m per title. Pep spends 30.70m per title.

As a Man Utd fan, I feel compelled to include SAF’s stats;
Clubs: 4
Titles: 49 (!)
Players purchased: 97
Total expenditure: 671.053m
Average expenditure per player: 6.92m
Average expenditure per title: 13.69m

Figures could be improved for accuracy, based on inflation, on the fact that there is generally more money in football nowadays, and based on the different difficulty of various leagues. These figures are interesting nonetheless. If someone else wants to plug in those figures they are more than welcome.
Sameer

 

hung out to dry
It’s been said many times before, but I still think it’s worth reiterating, Wenger is being absolutely hung out to dry by the Senior Executives at Arsenal Football Club. For years, he has been the single person to face the media and the fans about what most consider to be underperformance (aka not winning the title/champions league). While it is his job to that, there also needs to be some recognition that he has kept the team pretty competitive throughout the years with some pretty dreadful squads. Even now, in this brave new world of free spending, who do we have other than Ozil or Sanchez? Two summers ago, all we bought was 33 year old Petr Cech.

Gazidis has often said that we will not buy players who the manager wants… but I do wonder, can they actually buy the players that the managers DOES want? Benzema for example? Suarez? Kante even? It seems to me that they can’t, and hence the manager is being forced into end of window ‘trolley-dashes’. Is this all down to the Manager? Or is it down to the people responsible for making these transfers happen? The Suarez saga was pretty embarrassing… I also remember Dick Law getting lost in Costa Rica looking for Joel Campbell. Arsenal don’t feel like a club that can make important deals happen.

I bring this up is because there has been two occassions in recent weeks where the question of a Director of Football has been put to Wenger in a press conference, and the main take away from his responses – by fans and media – has been that he’s an unshiftable old man, stuck in his ways, who doesn’t like being told what to do. Something that hasn’t been picked up though, is that both times he has mentioned that ‘the essential thing in football is having good players on the football pitch’.

This from a man who will defend his, often average, players to the death. He appears to be tired of taking the brunt of it and is saying to the powers-that-be, ‘get me the right players and I will deliver’. It’s often mentioned that Stan Kroenke likes employing ‘moneyball’ tactics; getting best value out of players through economic models. Wenger has always delivered on that front (getting top 4 with young, unproven talent and 7/10 players like Djourou, Walcott, Giroud, Podolski, Arshavin).

Unfortunately, I think it’s too late to save Arsene. But, as a master of extracting value out of his squads, I do wonder what may have happened if the Board had been able to punch above their weight and get Wenger a grade A level squad back when they talked about being able to compete with the financial elite.

Arsenal haven’t had a team capable of winning the league, and, naturally, they haven’t.
Global Gooner

 

£300k a week
Maybe I read this different to many people. Those two signing new deals may make fans feel better for a while, but is it really the right answer (e.g. Theo – Sign the ting!).

Thought 1 : Right now, do Arsenal need a £300k week player & superstar in that side ? If Ozil demands parity, do they need two of them and the £30m a year in salaries out the door ? Or should they be rebuilding across the whole squad, signing 4 or 5 players at the £120k bracket (I’m thinking Adam Lallana level – still pretty damned useful)

Thought 2 : Are Arsenal sending a clear message to suitors ? Are they basically saying, this is what this guy wants, so unless you have got that in your pocket you are wasting your time (if you can reduce the demand even fractionally for a good then your position should strengthen)

Thought 3 : If he really is close to leaving in the summer then the financial terms of the club over next three years will have a big bearing on funding future changes to the club, as well as the requirements the Board has of it. This is closely aligned to Thought 1, but Arsene always talks about the total cost not the signing fee – so in terms of Capital Expenditure vs Operating Cost, if both players want 3 year deals, that is £90m in operating cost over 3 years. That is the Champions League participation revenue basically, so if those two players don’t guarantee you top 4 (which looks likely this year) then you are carrying paying their wages without comparative income (NB: I’ve ignored the smaller, but still worthy, league placement bonuses)

Thought 4 : Both players sign their lovely new 3 year deals. Neither performs. They are both late 20s now and will cash in in China or somewhere else in their early 30s for a final pay day on a free. What do you do with them then ? Look at Rooney at Utd  and think about the compensation payments he is due (tax free btw!) if he is sold without asking for a transfer. If they have 2 years left on each deal then the cost to exit those deals is a lot of money – and clubs will know that, as will agents too in this modern age. In business terms they will be looking to get an underperforming but high cost asset of their books – and we all know what sort of deal the vendor gets in those situation.

Thought 5 : Arsenal have pretty much confessed they can’t compete in financial bidding wars with the Chelsea / City / Utd / Barca / Real / PSG / Bayern level clubs – and probably with Atletico and Juve too. Why is it a surprise that they can’t carry the wages offered at those clubs either ?

Of course you could argue, and I would certainly agree, that the bigger issue is the tolerance and wages handed to much lesser lights in that side. However, how do you deal with the challenge from other first team players that they can’t have £100-150k a week next time their deal comes up when there is someone playing poorly picking up £300k ? I’m not sure there is an answer that keeps team cohesion in place for very long at all.

I remember all the adoration given to SAF for not being sentimental about a player when it was time for them to move on. Wenger gets the reverse of this, that Arsenal should have kept older players longer. In some cases absolutely, in this case, maybe not.
Matt “Its becoming a reality that some clubs are run as businesses, some as long term investment models and some as vanity projects” Hanchett

 

Never change, Gerard
Watching the Milan derby, couldn’t help you but notice a familiar face with familiar problems- Gerrard Deulofeu. Still going strong, taking on and beating D’Ambrosio repeatedly and making it into the box and then his indecisiveness leads him down.

Some things never change.
Sood CFC ( is it just me or is Donnarumma kinda overrated?)

 

Tackling
Joe
, tackling is not taught because at a professional level it is deemed a prerequisite, in much the same way passing and shooting isn’t taught at a professional level. Elite managers these days focus on tactics / researching the opposition / formations. Pep should not have to spend his time teaching 50m John Stones how to tackle, it should be spent thinking of new and inventive ways of using midfielders and having spectators drool over his football.

But I would agree at a grass roots level correct technique should be taught, when i played football as a kid I taught myself how to tackle through trail and error. Coaches couldn’t really care about correct tackling
Liam, LTFC 

 

Now Good Friday is a tedious,dull day but fair play to the afternoon mailbox,and more importantly Joe,for brightening up my day and giving me a good laugh.Many things are said in life that lead to a sarcastic reply of “no s##t Sherlock” but Joe saying on 5live that Charlie Adam admits he was never taught to tackle surely led to thousands of people uttering that phrase.

Fat,thugish,balding Adam who looks like he should be a regular on the Jeremy Kyle show does nothing on a pitch but hack more talented and quicker players(in other words,everyone he faces).Just check out his tackles on Gareth Bale while at Blackpool and Liverpool.His favourite is to stand on the heels of players as they jog past him at a canter while he chugs behind red faced like he’s pulling an SUV while jogging in sand.He then pleads innocence to the ref with a face that even a mother couldnt love.

To you Joe,I reply to news Adam was never taught to tackle with the immortal words Jonathan Ross used when news broke that Ricki Martin came out of the closet..”in other news,bear takes a dump in the woods”.Joe,if you hear Adam or 99% of footballers spouting dross on the radio just turn it off.You will learn more listening to the birds chirping then you will listening to these Kelvin McKenzie sized tw*ts spouting cliched rubbish.
Ferg,Cork…

 

Poor Southampton
Interesting story in The Guardian today reporting that Southampton’s newly-promoted head of elite performance and sports science, James Bunce, has been hired by US Soccer as their first Director of Elite Performance. He’s only 31 too.

I feel sorry for the Saints; they’ve got a fantastic setup down there at St. Mary’s but all that seems to happen is they lose their best people. Players, coaches and now sports scientists. It’s got to rankle just a little. Bunce started there ten years ago as a bottle washer, believe it or not.

Adding my two cents to the “women watching” debate, my girlfriend is a huge sports fan (figuratively, that is – she’s 5’1 and weighs 7 stone soaking wet) and since watching every game of the 2014 World Cup she started taking a serious interest in the Premier League. Due to the fact that one of the regulars in our local bar was a condescending pain in the ass and a Spurs fan, she adopted Arsenal as her team which p*ssed him off so much we’ve not seen him since. She’s now appalled that St. Totteringham’s Day is unlikely to happen this year, depressed at the Wenger In/Out debate and as angered by the recent poor performances as any other supporter. Personally, as a Chelsea fan, I find this all quite amusing but she did have some short-lived bragging rights after the 3-0 tonking we took at the Emirates earlier in the season. Anyway, the point is, she watches men’s basketball, men’s soccer, men’s football (college and pro) and men’s golf.  Aside from football, there are plenty of opportunities to watch the women’s version but she doesn’t. The standard simply is not as good, so why settle for second-best?

Steve (no Easter holidays for us), Los Angeles

 

Barca out already?
I’m a few mailboxes behind so I apologize in advance if this topic has already been covered. But I am amazed at the general reaction at capitulation of Barça at the hands of Juventus.

I followed the game and I wonder why are people convinced that Barça are out already? Being a Real Madrid fan, there is no greater sadistic pleasure deriveed than from watching Barça getting kicked in the balls.

But it would be remiss of me (and you) to.ignore that Barça didn’t play awful. Things just didn’t go their way.
Juve are no doubt resolute and threatening from set pieces. But they do have chinks in the armor,

There were some lovely moments, like when Messi carved open their defense and put Iniesta through who was denied brilliantly by the sheer class of Buffon. Later on, Messi dragging a shot just wide surrounded by 5 Juve players.Then Suarez missed one just wide as well.

What I’m trying to say is that they did have some great chances even away from home which they’d put in at home 9 times out of 10.

An amazing Dybala (surely destined for Madrid to replace Cristiano? Here’s hoping) with his instinctive finishing caught them by surprise on a night when the fattest forward from Argentina was easily tamed.

As someone has pointed out, Juve have a bit of bastard about them but that can quickly go against you against Barça at Camp Nou where they attack in full flow and getting a red or conceding a penalty seems inevitable (corruption or style of play, take your pick).

As a Real Madrid fan, I know better than underestimating the beloved (loathed) rivals Barça. I’d love to see them knocked out and might even do a Pardew dance when they finally go out but let’s wait till then, shall we?

Regards
The Nameless One (Fool me once and all that)

 

Shameless plug

Interesting debate in the mailbox over the last few days on women’s football.

It’s probably worth noting that the Premier League overshadows all other sport in this country, not just women’s football.

Anyway, there a huge number of issues, all of which are interconnected, as to why women’s football (and women’s sport more generally) remains mostly in the shadow of its male counterpart. Far too many issues to explore in a mailbox post but if you’re interested I can highly recommend a book called “Kicking Off – How Women in Sport are Changing the Game“, which offers a comprehensive discussion of the issues impacting women in sport and tells some amazing stories along the way
Simon (in the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that I’m married to the author), London