And Ross Barkley can’t get in that England team…?

Sarah Winterburn

We can get through this week together. Mail us at theeditor@football365.com

 

Hoddrivel
Tell us, oh wise one, in your Glenn Hoddrivel world, whichever planet that is, what the f**k is ‘half a touch’? I don’t understand. It’s like English, but different. And not good different. Shit. It sounds Savile-esque almost.
Greg, Amsterdam (let’s send Hoddle to talk to Trump. He can bore the tits off HIM instead and keep him the f*** out of our world for a while. Sorry, politics. Bad Greg.)

 

Applauding the simplicity of Southgate
I loved the quote where Gareth said ‘he’d have put his house on Defoe scoring’. I think most England fans had similar confidence when they saw him start. It’s refreshing that Gareth is going for the obvious where it matters. Pick a goalscorer that will score. How many times have us England fans pulled our hair out in frustration at our national manager over-looking the bleedin’ obvious? Well played.
Banjo, Prague

 

Writing’s on the wall
England cruise through easy group, qualify, press bigs them up.

Given decent group in WC/EC. Get out of group despite some hairy moments.

Lose to first half decent team they meet in last 16 or QF.

Anyone honestly think it will ever change?

As an Irishman the easy group thing is annoying, the failure at the finals is hilarious.

Oh and what has Barkley done to deserve being totally blanked?
Steve, Limerick, Ireland

 

Bring our boys home…
First up, thoughts to Seamus Coleman and hopefully he plays again. We’ve seen Bryan Oviedo return and not be the same player.

Second. What was the point of Ross Barkley being called up? I’m glad he never made it onto the pitch after what happened, but the paranoid club fan me finds this whole saga unsettling.

People will start whispering in his ear how if he wants to get into the XI he has to leave, look at John Stones, his play hasn’t improved but his club crest has.

Considering he has played every game since December and has created the most chances by any Englishman (thanks Opta Joe) the ‘Koeman dropped him/He’s not good enough’ excuses won’t run.

So why take him?
EFCraig (not that type of fat scouse man)

 

Come on Gareth…
I don’t write in much anymore because it’s only when something annoys me that I feel compelled to share. Sixth or not, United have been much better and I’m quite happy.

So, what am I here to moan about? Bale.

I’ll forever worship the ground he walks on for the heroics of the Euros qualifying and subsequent tournament. But starting with the Portugal game (which I put down then to Ramsey’s absence) he’s developed Rooney-itus of wanting to sit on the halfway line pinging passes. So often Bale’s playing the ball from deep to someone further advanced down the wing, which would be great if it wasn’t Neil Taylor. How about Neil Taylor be playing that ball to Bale?

I only saw him run with the ball and do something exciting once (which was when he almost found the top corner), the rest was the dropping deep “getting on the ball” sh*t.

I hated when Ronaldinho did it in the World Cup 2006 (he never recovered his top form after that), I hated when Rooney did it and I hate when Bale does it now. If you’re an explosive winger who takes people on and scores goals, do that. Don’t drop back and do someone else’s job. It’s not like Scholes/Pirlo actually changing position as they aged – their position was actually to sit.

Come on Gareth, get us up off our seats again.
Silvio Dante
PS. I watched the game in the pub, there’s a chance I may have been at the bar every time he did something good

 

Neil Taylor and accountability
I don’t think Neil Taylor is a particularly dirty or ‘THAT’ kind of player. I don’t know much about him at all to be honest, which would suggest a lack of notoriety. I do know that he put in a fairly reckless challenge on Seamus Coleman that resulted in a serious injury. At the time and on review, I certainly doesn’t look like Taylor went after anything other than the ball, I don’t see any malice in it. Be he got it wrong and did some serious damage to Coleman.

When something like this happens, there is a rush to defend the tackling player. Every teammate, manager and talking head will crop up with ‘not that type of player’, ‘going for the ball’, ‘no harm intended’, ‘these things happen’ etc etc to the point that the Taylors of the world become innocent bystanders of the incident. Surely Taylor, as a professional, can hold up his hands and say something like ‘I went for the ball but I got it wrong/mistimed etc’. with the support of his team-mates and manager. I could be wrong but I would hope he would get support from the wider football community. Admitting fault should not be the same as admitting intent. Being in one of those incidents doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person. These incidents will happen every now and then, I can’t see a way of completely eradicating them from the game without fundamentally changing it. But they will be a lot easier to stomach if we can all be grown-ups about it.
Kev (No, not Seamus)

 

Not that kind of e-mail…
In response to Adonis Stevenson’s question as to whether he can use the ‘not that kind of player’ defence in court if he shoots someone: yes, you can. And lawyers regularly do: they bring in character witnesses and ask the judge/jury to consider that this behavior is out of character for people with no previous convictions or similar arguments. Doesn’t mean you will win… but yes, you can argue it.

And so to your attempt to bring in a perceived Arsenal bias by complaining that Taylor getting the same 3-game ban as Xhaka did for his red card in the Swansea/Arsenal fixture… let me refer you to Arsene Wenger’s defence of Xhaka after the game: “He is not a dirty player at all, but is sometimes clumsy” – that’s basically the ‘not that kind of player’ defence, right? This for a player who has received 9 red cards for club and country in 3 years, and 5 since the beginning of last season – the most in the major European leagues.
James, Singapore

 

Financial Fair Play and a wager…
Transfer rumours for next season are hotting up with Utd linked constantly with Griezmann, Chelsea with Neymar (won’t happen) and this morning Liverpool with James again.

The caveat to this is that every time a player is linked with Liverpool there is always an * of, if they can afford it compared to the other clubs around them in the Premier League. Now Champions League next year is far from guaranteed but even allowing for that Liverpool are roughly the 9th richest club in Europe, following on from a quiet summer last year in terms of net spend (yes I know, sorry) and the bonanza new Sky TV deal why can they not compete say with Chelsea and Arsenal, accepting that City and United have significantly more revenue.

The fact is that transfer fees seem to have more or less doubled in the last two years, see once again Liverpool signing a promising but not complete international defender from Southampton for 25m two years ago, and are now linked with a promising but not complete international defender from Southampton for 50m this year. (Give Gomez a go please Jurgen)

So how does this FFP actually work? I know Liverpool were close to the mark three years ago and City got fined 40m or something but if revenues are roughly the same apart from City and Utd then surely everyone else in the top six can spend approximately the same.

Wager time. If the top four remains the same with United and Arsenal missing out, three of the top five will break their own transfer records in the summer (Arsenal won’t). The sums are astronomical and wrong in my book and I don’t understand where FFP comes into all this.
DL, LFC, Geneva