Mails: Guardiola and Aguero must be banned for behaviour

Daniel Storey

Got things to say? Want to see some variation in the Mailbox? Send in to theditor@football365.com…

 

We’ll start with a Wigan fan
Just wanna say that we were brilliant. Every single one of our players and that’s what football is all about. We succeeded were so many teams have failed. Plus I backed us to win and backed us to win 1-0.

It was never a sending off but who cares and we rode our luck but we needed to be mega lucky to win. Sure City will have many big days to come but this was our big day (again).

Up the bloody tics.
Calum

 

Pep lost the plot, didn’t he?
So it seems that Saint Pep is human after all. The way he reacted during the game and at half time to Delph’s red card was just too much.

Don’t get me wrong, Paul Cook was equally culpable in the fracas at half time, I’m not absolving him of all blame. But for the apparent champion of player safety to react like that, anyone would think that Delph was sent off for giving the Wigan player a funny look or something.

For my money that is about as clear a red as you’ll see – it ticks plenty of boxes. He went in with excessive force (having jumped into the challenge, even if he was on the floor at the moment of contact), was out of control (I.e. he couldn’t have pulled out of the challenge), hit the Wigan player mid-shin and clearly had no regard for the opponent’s safety. There really are no complaints to be had about it.

Alan Shearer’s “I can see why he has given it but for me it’s a yellow” is laughable as well. So, you can see the evidence for it being a red card but you’re going to ignore all that and say it should have been a yellow anyway? Of course you are.

Way too much is being made of the referee pulling out the yellow card first as well. It’s not like he awarded the yellow card and then upgraded it to a red; he either changed his mind independently (which, like it or not, he’s entitled to do) or he was given further evidence by his assistant. There’s no controversy there, so people really ought to stop trying to manufacture one.

But when all is said and done, Guardiola is just as big a hypocrite as the rest of us when it comes to tackles; an advocate of strong punishments when it’s against his players and an advocate of leniency when it’s by his players. When he came out asking for referees to protect the players, I guess what he was really asking for is that referees protect his players.

The Wigan fans who decided to run into the pitch and confront the City players, and the fans (from both sides, as I understand it) who were causing trouble after the game were well out of order though. I get that emotions were running high but there’s no need for that sort of behaviour at all. Someone could have been seriously hurt, and it’s hugely disappointing to see fans ruining a good game of football.
Ted, Manchester

 

Actually feel a little bit sad about City
Do you know what? I’m actually disappointed. Enormous credit to Wigan of course, pure romance of the cup stuff. I believe it was a deserved red for Delph and Kyle Walker will be seeing that goal in his nightmares.

But I really thought the quadruple was on. Sure City are ultra rich and trying to get Mahrez to replace a guy out injured for a whole month left a sour taste.

However I just can’t resent City though, just appreciate what they’ve done. And it really felt like we were watching history. Might have shut United up about bloody 1999 too. Money aside , City really don’t do a lot to dislike and the football has been amazing.

All that said, let’s really mess it up by beating them in the Champions League final.
James, Liverpool

 

We have to ban Pep or the game is a farce (from a United fan)
Saint Pep lays his hands on the opposition manager and pushes staff out of the way at the Wigan v City game. He also goes after officials in the tunnel. Aguero takes a swing at a fan. When tried to be calmed down, he insists on pursuing the fan. Unbelievable!

I am writing this the evening of, waiting with baited breath for the reaction to this tomorrow morning, predicting it will come and go, with minimal lip service. The collective circle jerk over Pep and Abu Dhabi F.C has been hard for Man Utd fans like myself. Even after two decades of near total domestic domination, building one of the biggest clubs in football totally organically, and maybe being the first big club to “survive” a takeover instead of benefit from it, SAF could not attain the global rim job Saint Pep receives – it is frankly ridiculous.

If Mourinho did what Pep has done, the sh*t storm it would brew would be unimaginable. If Pogba had done what Aguero has done, the papers would be on fire. Pep’s curt, childish and frankly rude interviews after poor performances or defeats have been irritating beyond belief for everyone watching. We just haven’t witnessed too many defeats of this awesome City side, or his Barca side, or even his Bayern side. These interviews now seem a distant memory and everyone is back aboard the Pep wagon.

This man is an impossibly bad loser. Club bias aside, if that is even possible, he is one of the worst behaved managers in top flight football, as bad if not worse than Jose. You can use Jose’s “eye poke” when he was at Madrid as a retort. While never excusable, it was between two benches, he has never gone after and physically assaulted officials.

Both player and manager need to be banned for quite a few games, otherwise discipline in this game will become a farce. Accosting fans and officials in the same game? What the actual f*ck?
Rowan

 

Sissoko shows the bad side of football fandom
Wanted to write in after the top mail a couple of boxes back on Sissoko. I just thought it was a big example of one of the most annoying parts of our fan-base this year. In the Rochdale game we had Wanyama give the ball away multiple times in his own half, and fail to drop back into the box when they scored their winner, and ultimately have a frankly rubbish game.

We had Winks, who I love, make a very poor decision in trying to beat his man in midfield when the full backs were pushed up and out of a position, and ultimately we give them an easy opener. We have Son, who is capable of brilliance, have one of his maddeningly inconsistent games. And we have Toby Alderweireld, an absolute master when fully fit but proving why Poch wanted to keep him out of those important games that he missed…

So why…the everloving christ, does Moussa Sissoko deserve any mail at all laughing at him? Moussa Sissoko, who never gave the ball away in dangerous areas, never made obvious errors in losing his man leading to clear goalscoring opportunities for the opposition, and even providing the freaking assist for Moura, fully participating in a flowing team move.

Why does he get it? It is absolutely embarrassing, cringey, and one of the absolute worst parts of our fan-base this year. A search of his name on Twitter after the game brought up literally 500 tweets laughing at him despite him being one of our better players. It is absolutely bizarre. Yes, we get it. He had a terrible first few games for Spurs, where he missed Poch’s entire pre-season, looked like a fish out of water, and oh he once said he’d like to play for Arsenal so we must continue hating on him fully 18 months later.

And before anyone says he gets stick where as the others don’t, because the other players have performed, I say to you: Sissoko has performed. He is a squad player that this season has played a lot of games, including some of our biggest wins, and does his job. He’s never really more than a 7/10, but aside from Leicester away he’s never been less than a 5/10 either. He’s a solid squad player that does his job. And he’s a Spurs player. Get behind the guy.

Anyway, this got me on to a broader point that I actually really do not like about football fandom in general. If there’s something that a manager does, and fans broadly don’t understand it (and this happens relatively often), fans often like to joke that the manager is mad, stubborn, making a point, putting a player they don’t like in the shop window by playing him all the time, or absolutely making a fundamental mistake over and over again, because fans can see that this player is rubbish and the manager can’t.

I mean…what is for one second that they accepted the game that they love is overseen by coaches that have a little bit more tactical knowledge than they do, and why don’t they try and learn from it rather than burying their head in the sand and just assuming they know all that there is to know? Spurs players like Jenas used to get it constantly before Sissoko, and when Carrick first got into our side, many fans were asking what he did.

Does this not bother other people? I get that football is often about the banter, but when it comes to bizarre scapegoating of your own players despite your club’s best modern day manager picking him repeatedly, doesn’t it just feel a bit wrong?

I’m wondering if any other club that has such an obviously divisive player as Sissoko, where most of the team is liked but one is treated as a laughing stock by a significant proportion of fans. I guess Fellaini gets it for United, but with him it’s more a grudging acceptance that he is purely a battering ram rather than a refined footballer, so at least he has value.

To me, Sissoko plays a role that coaches love (as Poch tried to explain a few weeks ago) because it is selfless and all about some of the more boring top-level things like shape and transition, but some fans just don’t understand it or don’t want to. Open your eyes people, and open your minds!!
Chris Warner

 

What do West Brommers think?
I have a question that i want to pass off to the West Brom fans of the mailbox, seeing as its a topic that doesn’t seem to have been covered recently. If reports are correct and Alan Pardew is about to be sacked as your manager, how exactly do you feel about this?

I know one West Brom fan and he would rather Pardew keep his job, even if they go down, simply to create some stability within the club (odd seeing as you had about 30 years of Pulis).

So I open this up to those in the Mailbox, which would you prefer; a new manager and premier league survival or keep faith with Chunky and hopefully springboard back into the Premier League next season?
Alex (Honestly intrigued to see what the result is)

 

An immediate answer
Interesting thoughts from Ben the Baggie and rebuttal from Chris the Wanderer about sacking WBA’s taxi rankers. Chris is of course correct, but Ben’s frustration is fully justified. We haven’t turned up this season. We deserve to go down.

The biggest culprit is Tony Pulis here for such negative tactics to begin the season. Five defenders, three defensive midfielders, and two wingers essentially played as wing backs, and one lone striker.

We can play like that against the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool, etc. however, it was inexcusable for that same mentality to prevail (especially at home) when playing teams below the top six. We barely crossed the halfway line, we never had any shots, and we never had any of the ball.

The lack of ambition was shocking and that same mentality continued into games against newly promoted sides, sides who had winless runs prior to playing us, and teams who had found it recently hard to score. I cannot fathom why Pulis dropped Brunt and Yacob, both of whom are dependable players, seasoned Premier League performers and fan favourites.

Also, a midfield three of Barry, Livermore and Krychowiak has been slow, ponderous and negative as a combination. Yacob and Krychowiak should have been our first choice two-man midfield. Pardew has not addressed this sufficiently and has not instilled any ruthlessness in our play that other managers at other clubs have done at various time since their arrival.

The players also must take huge responsibility. On paper, our squad is competitive but too many times this season they just haven’t performed. Towards the end of Pulis’s reign, we had even forgotten how to defend as a team, but also individual mistakes have cost us this season.

Apart from Chris Brunt, Ahmed Hegazi and Craig Dawson (who has missed a lot of the season through injury) who can hold their heads high, the rest have been either below par or just awful. No assists all season for Chadli, Robson-Kanu, McClean and Morrison, whilst only Brunt (5), Phillips (2) and Krychowiak (2) have more than one.

Our top goalscorers are Rondon and Rodriguez on four each. My main wrath is saved for McClean and Livermore who have played regularly this season and who have done the square root of sod all for us all season long. I honestly don’t know what these two sorry excuses for footballers bring. The only taxi Livermore should be driving is one for him and McClean to anywhere but the Hawthorns.

If these two make future international squads, serious questions must be asked of their respective international managers. I’m confident that we can retain the majority of our squad, but we will lose Evans. Barry can just leave.

As we’ve just sacked everyone behind the scenes, I’m not sure if we have the infrastructure in place to bring stability despite a relegation and the faces in to replace Evans, and probably sadly our great hero Gareth McAuley. I genuinely don’t mind if Wolves replace us. As least they are playing some actual football…
Richard (well done Wigan. I thought Guardiola wanted more reds for dangerous tackles?), Cambridge

 

Courting ControVARsy
Roda JC are actually taking the Dutch FA to court after one of their goals against Willem II in the Dutch Cup was disallowed after an intervention by the VAR. They ended up losing on penalties so they want justice because they claim the VAR wasn’t used correctly.

This is the future. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the law of unintended consequences will apply and it will be ugly when VAR is up and running.

There will always be controversy, especially if you are going to disallow a goal because somebody’s knee was offside.
G Thomas, Breda