Mails: Analysing Ozil moving to Manchester United

Daniel Storey

Keep those emails coming to theeditor@football365.com

Juan fine day
After the ‘Common Goal’ initiative, what a lovely man Juan Mata is. Huge credit to Mawson and Daniels, too.
Stu, Southampton

 

Analysing Ozil to Manchester United
Since Ozil has been the subject of an interest from united, let’s analyse that:

Firstly Ozil was amazing under Jose at Madrid. Had 81(!) assists in 3 years and Ronaldo reported to be upset over his sale speaks volumes about his impact there. Jose wasn’t always a fan of his work rate. One of his tirades may have even got Ramos and others to turn against him and eventually get him fired (of course there were other reasons too in fairness)

His time at arsenal while not as good, has been overall satisfactory. He has the highest number of chances created since he joined(407) and most assists(42). He had a season where he was on course to break the most assists in a season record (15/16). On top of that, he seems to actually put in a lot of miles per game even though he can look slack. How much more could he have done though? The options up front, while not bad, aren’t great. Going from Ronaldo and Benzema to giroud welbeck and Walcott can take a big hit in your productivity. Also having a coherent mourinho side at RM with a Wenger side that’s not really coherent at the back (to put it mildly) means he needs to defend more, something that isn’t his strength. It would be like asking messi to do the Rondon role at WBA and judging him for it.

Now the question is has he declined or is he underperforming. After rooney, united fans are hardly going to be happy with big wage signings close to 30. But ozil has scored 12 and assisted 14 in the last season for arsenal. Mata hasn’t put up similar numbers at united so far and mkhitariyan while talented makes the Liverpool defence look consistent. Ozil is an upgrade to both. He also will have a manager to keep him on his toes and has a functioning team for him to thrive. Plus for the fee involved it would maybe be a no brainer. He has created a high number of chances so far (highest at arsenal) but has no assists showing that he is doing what he does, arguably at a lower level. He has also been a mainstay for Germany and has been good most of the time.

So all in all, it’s likely to be a good signing for united. Ozil and pogba with their thru balls for lukaku Zlatan Martial and rashford is a joy to think of. Go for it Jose.
DP, Dubai

 

Why Henderson *should* start at Wembley
There has been a lot of criticism of Jordan Henderson lately, especially with the “look how much better Milner was when he played against Maribor”, which completely ignores the fact that Milner was playing the role that Emre Can had mainly been playing this season, and not from the base of midfield that Henderson has played since the start of last season. So the performance of Milner should have been in comparison to how Can has done so far this season (and as ever with Emre Can it’s been a bit of a mixed bag, some excellent performances, some anonymous).

So naturally the next point is that Can should instead play at the base of midfield instead of Henderson, as Can performed admirably there against Maribor and perhaps has the more natural skillset to play as a defensive midfielder. It’s fine that Can did well against Maribor, but has occasionally laboured a bit when played in the deeper role on occasions when Henderson has been absent previously. Where Henderson is underrated in this comparison is that his range of passing is much more suited to controlling Liverpool’s pace of play than Can’s is.

Emre has the tendency to want to take far more touches of the ball than necessary and can slow the game down, whereas Henderson can both play quick short passes (which people get frustrated with, despite it both keeping possession and keeping the game/shape moving), but also has the ability to switch things up and fire direct passes forward into space or switching it quickly in order to dictate how quickly Liverpool should be playing given the phase of the match.

Whilst admittedly he hasn’t been at his best this season, he appears to be getting more into a stride over the last few games and so I am happy with him to (expectedly) retain his place against Spurs – although am probably jinxing him now, so expect a load of post-match “see, he’s crap” comments to be made. But I still think he’s a very good player, and can appreciate totally why he’s the first choice midfielder for Klopp in the role he plays.
Don L. Renegade

 

Don’t get carried away about English clubs
15 games, 11 wins, 4 draws, no defeats, 44 goals, 11 conceded and all English teams top of their respective groups. This is a huge improvement considering their past few seasons. Remember when three English teams made it to the semis both in 2008 and 2009? Right it has not happened again since then.

Spanish teams have dominated the past 3 or so years. However this season Sevilla and Atleti have been a shadow of their former selves, Real Madrid are yet to pick last season’s form while my Barcelona is not quite there. (Still can’t understand why Denis Suarez is being benched)

Bayern have their Godfather Heynckes back so it may take time before they are back to their best if they already aren’t while BvB are just awaiting that welcome tweet from @EuropaLeague (Awesome, they have to pay for sacking Tuchel and as a matter of fact Dembouz saw this coming, what a lad!).

Juventus this season clearly aren’t the team that makes it to the finals and bottle it as usual, Napoli are really really good this season but I foresee Sarri preferring to concentrate on winning the Scudetto.

Despite all this, I expect most of these teams to have improved by then (when it really matters) and we all know what the December fixtures do to English teams while the rest will be enjoying their holidays.
Ian ( Quincy Promes deserves to play at least in the semis this season but First of all, he plays for Spartak Moscow) Nairobi

 

Lukaku was a sportsman. Good on him
Gareth – I understand why you didn’t recognise it, supporting Manchester United and worshipping Roy Keane and all, but I think what Romelu Lukaku did was “sportsmanship”. One definition of a “sportsman” offered by Wordreference.com is “one who shows that he or she has qualities of fairness, courtesy, and grace in winning and in losing.”

See also: empathy; sense of perspective.
Ed Quoththeraven

 

And this skewers him
If you really think “your” Roy would definitely agree with you, Gareth? Sorry to burst your angry little bubble but read this and weep:

“That was really nice to see, after the game. Listen, really sad. Lovely touches. He’s a young lad learning his trade. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to learn the hard way and that’s by making big mistakes in big moments. Lovely touches by the United lads there, really nice to see.”
Daniel, (no real Irish person refers to Ireland as Eire), Dublin

 

 

A response to the equal pay email
I appreciate Klaus’ argument has some very salient points. Particularly in reference to the Finland’s equal pay for national teams glossing over the lack of overall investment in the women’s game. Investing in academies is also vital to the growth of women’s sport alongside encouragement at grassroots, including parents encouraging daughters to play football if they show an interest at a young age. But for somebody who urges context he seems unwilling to extrapolate “reason”, “logic” and “meritocracy” from its own context.

Such a view is a hangover from the enlightenment era. Notions of pure reason or logic are misguided because they fail to recognise that we don’t exist in a purely rational world or society. Anyone who has tried to understand quantum physics will quickly realise that, sadly, the world cannot be squeezed into a simple equation like E=MC2. These concepts of pure reason, logic, common sense, or eugenics have always been the darlings of the fascist right because they allow the wielder to override or dismiss the facts that look them blindly in the face.

Let’s confine our argument to sport. Klaus’ argument is one of meritocracy. That men are the best at football genetically so it’s a matter of common sense that they get paid more. After all, they are the ones who sell shirts and the ones who drive the frontiers of the multi-million dollar marketing industry behind the sport.

Here’s the thing. Football is a two-sided game. On the one hand it is athletics, on the other it is entertainment. The millions of dollars pumped into the sport come from the entertainment side of the game. This is where I think Klaus’ argument breaks down. He uses a metric from the athletic side of the sport to justify the finances generated from the entertainment factor.

Tennis provides a good example for how women’s football could be improved as Klaus rightly points out. In its historical context, tennis was always considered a worthwhile sport for women to pursue. This has never been the case with football where it was simply not on the agenda for women during most of the 20th century. We have to recognise as well that even today it is frowned upon for young girls to get involved in football.

I grew up during the Sampras era of tennis. He was undoubtedly the finest athlete tennis produced but my god were his matches boring. Power serve and volley, rinse and repeat. During this era women’s tennis was far more entertaining and this is my point. There’s no reason, genetics or otherwise, that women’s football can’t be as entertaining as men’s’ football. Men’s may always have stronger athletes but a better athlete is not the measure of better entertainment.

Hopefully, as women’s football becomes a norm we will see more entertainment, which is ultimately the reason money is pumped into sport. This will close the wage gap as media moguls take notice of an emerging market to be invested in. Of course, for this to happen stigmas about the women’s game, such as they will never be physical enough to provide entertainment, need to be broken down. To overcome last century’s inequality we, as a society, need to adopt a holistic approach to investing time, money and enthusiasm, into the womenś game to take it to where it needs to be both in terms of wages and entertainment.
Liam Gabriel Hoskins (Not the time for a brackets joke) AFC

 

This ended pleasantly. Shouldn’t we be screaming abuse at each other?
F365 publishing my mail despite disagreeing with it is exactly what is right about this site.

I’m always surprised when people mail in to complain that F365 covered politics despite them being able to just not read it. I see no issue with it even if disagree with Nicholson on mostly everything and I don’t there are many places to have an intelligent conversation on football.

Thanks.
Klaus, Munich

 

Yay, a thanks
I have read the mailbox diligently for the last 3 years ever since finding it on NewsNow and I am still as in love as I was at the beginning. Today’s mailbox is the perfect explanation of why I love it.

We could have had just a bunch of Arsenal fans saying identical things and Everton fans calling for Koeman’s head but we had just the right amount of analysis on yesterday’s games, a regular preview for the weekend games from the best thing since sliced bread, a constructive and intelligent mail on an important subject and other unique mails. This is the sort of diversity and quality we find nowhere else and I wanted to send thanks to the people that allow this to happen.

Ever since Stewie Griffin disappeared off the face of the Earth, my 2nd favorite mailer slot has been left barren. And now after reading his dismantling of Bellerin and Holding a while back and reading his bit on equal pay today, I would like to formally congratulate Klaus, Munich on this incredible honor.

Anyways, jokes aside, Sarah, Daniel, the whole team, thank you for the work you do.
Matty GR

 

At least they won something
Before a ball had been kicked at the start of the season everyone had agreed that Everton had one of the best transfer windows in the league.

How’s that working out for them?
Dino (Cape Town )

 

Zing a ling
To James, EFC who’s worried that his season will be over by Christmas.

Don’t worry it won’t: you’ll be in a relegation fight. Worst Everton team in ages.
Neil, LFC, USA