Mails: It’s time to call out Tim Sherwood

Matt Stead

If you have anything to say on any subject, mail us at theeditor@football365.com.

 

Arsenal aren’t tired, Wenger is
With all the talk about how Wenger should have been more careful with Sanchez, it is pretty clear about why he has mishandled yet another situation.

Wenger is tired. In fact, the guy is knackered.

There is a reason why he doesn’t spend sufficient money on stars and it is not that he ‘trusts’ this crop of players. It is that they are so easy to manage.

Arteta, Flamini, Rosicky, Chambers, Campbell, Welbeck.These are all players who are either happy to be sitting on the bench with one final bumper contract or they weren’t playing much before anyway so it hardly represents a change for them.

Even the genuine world-class players in the team are not the most difficult to manage.

Cech is simply happy to still be playing in London.

Ozil and Sanchez are both phenomenal players, but can you really imagine either of them knocking on Wenger’s door to kick up a fuss about his transfer policy?

He doesn’t want the slightest bit of fuss with the players, hence why he sticks with the players he knows well and he won’t rest his big players unless they decide they want a rest.

Wenger is finished and he has been for over 5 years. It is easy therefore to wonder why he still puts himself through it year after year, but I can think of 7 million reasons why…
David Mendez, AFC

 

Wenger has it easy
A lot of Arsenal fans are panicking about our injury crisis but as I see it, it makes Arsene Wenger’s job easier because the team picks itself. The usual defence with Gabriel in for Kos. Flamini and Ramsay in the middle with Ozil in front of them. Campbell and the Ox on the wings and Giroud up front. Sure, if anyone of those gets injured then we are into unknown territory, but I trust in Jeff.

If anything it means Arsene has more time to decide which defensive midfielder and striker to buy on January 1st… Oh.
Adonis (Tongue firmly in cheek) Stevenson, AFC

 

A (brilliant) hopeful pass
I cannot believe that since Leicester scored that goal against United on Saturday, that no one is mentioning something that seems fairly obvious to me.

The goal that Vardy scores, he does not latch onto that pass if Darmian just sticks a leg out or slides and gets the ball wide. If he did not know he had an attacker on his shoulder, could Young or De Gea not have given him a shout to clear the ball? Seriously though, am I alone in thinking this? During half time there were 2 or 3 counter attacks that were reviewed, and it showed that Van Gaal had a plan for these counter attacks which was working up to that point. There were always 3 defenders covering for any counter attack that Leicester had and it was snuffed out up until Darmian decided to watch the ball roll by him.

I know it’s all the latest rage to bash United and Louis for slow, ponderous possession football but, let us not pretend that the goal scored was a genius plan that had undone the defence. It was a hopeful pass that a player was just too lazy to try and cut out.
TheChetty(I still love your Darmian, I just needed to point this out)

 

Title? Spurs won’t finish in the top four
In my opinion, Tottenham’s inability to overcome Chelsea yesterday is a telling sign that they are not yet ready for a top four challenge let alone a title push.

Yes Spurs may have extended their unbeaten run, but the draws are adding up. It doesn’t matter how many games a team goes unbeaten if most of the games are not wins. Tottenham were two players short of full strength and to be honest Chelsea controlled that game, with out a striker.

Tottenham not taking full advantage of a Liverpool team in transition, an under strength Arsenal, and a Chelsea team in extremely poor form will come back to hunt them.

Liverpool, United, Chelsea, and Arsenal will most likely strengthen in January with ready made talent while Spurs may have to accept another gamble in the form of a youngster given the near future financial responsibilities. They had better hope whoever comes in has an Alli like impact
Brian (I feel Sturridge’s Liverpool tenure is coming to an end) LFC

 

You’re wrong, Tim
Hello F365,

Now, I’m not often compelled to write in to the site. I absolutely love all the articles on here and it’s generally my ‘go to’ place for news and such.

I had to change this though, when my little town of Fleetwood has been getting so much press lately. Throw in the scouting and grassroots business and I was already typing your email address into my Gmail account before I knew what was happening.

Anyway, I live in Fleetwood. I have completed the level two PFSA Scouting course in Manchester, and I’m a grassroots coach with Fleetwood Town Juniors and the club secretary. Guess who we see every time we hold a tournament or play a match? Scouts. Scouts everywhere. We’ve had United down, Everton and Liverpool. In fact, the Liverpool scouts and coaches regularly come and put sessions on for our U7’s. Now, I’m not a Liverpool fan (United, actually) but they’re more than aware of what’s going on in the region and it’s brilliant to see. Everton even invited those same U7’s down to their Finch Farm training complex, and you’ve honestly never seen a happier bunch of kids. Premier League clubs aren’t blind, their just sensible. At times…

Anyway, we’ve got a cracking relationship with the official club, but that’s beside the point. My point is this out and out nonsense from Tim Sherwood about Scouts not tramping all around the country to view young talent. About how they’d hate going to somewhere like Fleetwood on a cold, wet night in November (it’s been horribly cold, wet and windy here lately. It always is, but that doesn’t stop people coming. Usually it’s the smell.) Words spill out of his mouth like a drunk man that’s eaten one too many nasty looking kebabs. It’s utter rubbish.

When Jamie Vardy used to play for Fleetwood, there were dozens of Scouts at the ground watching as he banged in goal after goal in a truly amazing season. He’s always been a goalscorer and he’s still remembered very fondly by everyone in the town and at the club. Every time he’s scored recently, the announcers at Highbury…well…announce it. He’s still an awful person for his remarks in pre-season, but like the national media, most people tend to gloss over that part. Which they shouldn’t do. The only reason he went to Leicester, is because they were the only one’s willing to pay a million quid for him. The club rejected loads of offers, but none of them had the incentives that Leicester’s did.

Now, Timmy ‘lad lad, banter banter arf arf’ Sherwood properly annoys the life out of me. I was delighted when he got sacked from Villa, because I firmly believe he is a truly awful football manager, as well as a genuinely bitter person. I can just imagine him and old ‘arry Redknapp, sitting around a roaring fire, lamenting about how their hard done by, and all the foreigners are ruining the game. It honestly makes me warm inside to know that both of them are out of jobs. It’s great. His knowledge on scouting is about as equal as his knowledge on the game. Even regarding using technology. I spent one long, weary (but quite enlightening day) in the company of scouts from all around the Fylde and Lancashire, and they all said that technology was welcome and that it made their lives and jobs easier. Gone are the days of turning up to a match and just praying that it’s not been called off due to bad weather. Now, they can easily check online. They can send an e-mail or a text. Technology will never replace those ‘foot soldiers’ but it will sure as hell make their lives easier.

So, regardless of what Tim says, they’re not afraid to come here to Fleetwood. In fact, we’d not only give them a cup of tea, we’d probably treat them to a cracking Chippy Tea from one of the 40,000 chippies around the town.

Not Sherwood though, he can get tae f***.

Kind Regards
Chris Morton, Fleetwood Town Juniors Secretary

 

Data is fine, insufficient data is not
I have to disagree with Ali Tabari who tried to defend Sherwood’s view that data isn’t everything as requires context. Data without cobtect just means that there is insufficient data. If pass completion and accuracy doesn’t take into account how forward thinking the pass is then the data should have covered it and is insufficient. It’s not that data doesn’t give the whole story, just incomplete data.
David (numbers never lie apart from my age when out on the town) Morris

 

Newcastle are doomed
Newcastle are even more doomed than JH Arubamay thinks.

These are our next 8 fixtures in the premier league

-Liverpool (home)
-Spurs (away)
-Aston Villa (home)
-Everton (home)
-West Brom (away)
-Arsenal (away)
-Manchester United (home)
-West Ham (home)

Now looking at that fixture list I see only one nailed on certain 3 points – versus Villa. Its likely we’d pick up another 1 to 3 points in there somewhere. So I’ll be optimistic and say Newcastle will walk away with 6 whole shiny points from those fixtures.

That means – and bearing in mind I think I’m being optimistic about the side here – as of 16 January Newcastle United will be sitting on 16 points. Doomed.

Villa are also doomed and will be below us but I expect the likes of Norwich, Bournemouth, Sunderland and Swansea to be over 20 points by then. Doomed.

When could we have picked up enough points? Errr, that would have been in the last few weeks when the fixture list was kind to us (Norwich, Sunderland, Stoke, Bournemouth, Leicster, Palace) and yielded just 7 points. That was our train to get out of the scrap. We missed it.

I’d love to be proven wrong. It’s certainly possible we will get enough points to survive – but it isn’t plausible.

Best case scenario is that Ashley realises already we are doomed and decides to speculate to avoid missing out on the TV billions in which case he may buy a defensive midfielder who does what it says on the tin and a few defenders who aren’t afraid of fast moving footballs. Even if they all arrive on the first day of January (they won’t – its Ashley’s club), and settle in straight away (they won’t, they will be “better value” players from other leagues who will need time to settle) there are a lot of points lost between now and then. January will be too late.

I don’t actually blame McClaren. I have an acquaintance who used to be a personal trainer but burnt out of that job after just 2 years and changed career. He said it was because he couldn’t be bothered trying to motivate people who don’t want to be motivated. He had to inspire other people who should have been able to inspire themselves. It was exhausting being someone else’s energy. I bet McClaren could sympathise.  This Newcastle side is talented, but severely lacking in cojones and effort.

Having said that its becoming difficult to justify his continual selection of badly performing players which is rewarding said cojones deficit. I’m not going to name individual players but when they’ve downed tools and left them down for more than a season then it seems kinda illogical to expect they will pick them back up again anytime soon.

This is what is infuriating about this side and makes me so pessimistic. This is by far the most talented squad we’ve had since the likes of Shearer, Speed, Solano and Robert were in toon. But they just can’t be bothered.

John Carver got one thing right when he was a Newcastle manager. When we needed that last day of the season win he brought in the club staff to the training room so the players had to meet the people who were going to lose their jobs if the club got relegated. It seemed to do some good and got one performance out of them before they went back to not trying. Maybe they need reminding.
Hugo (NUFC) Adelaide

 

Politics365
Daniel Storey and James Vardy have similarities. Similar ages. Fair hair. Caucasian. Enjoy football. They also have differences. One’s more erudite. One went to a nicer school. One’s better at kicking a ball. One perhaps has come from a less privileged background. Vardy’s actions inebriated in a casino were wrong. Of this there is no doubt. It should be noted that he was arguably provoked. His constant shout of ‘walk on’ seems to suggest he wanted his possible aggressor to leave him alone. We have no idea. This, of course, doesn’t excuse his disgraceful words but it could at least explain why he got so desperately low.

For Football365 to champion Jonathan Liew’s article was a bit disappointing. I recently got in a Twitter debate/snarkfest with Eliot Rothwell about this (he’s craftily deleted the tweets that made him look stupid, including the instigator and the bad spelling, but left the ones he thinks make him look clever). It’s scary how much bloodlust exists on the left wing.

We have a legal system for crying out loud. Jonathan Liew wants Vardy to be out of a job. Seriously. Your family should apparently suffer from your shameful drunken ignorance in a situation we admittedly are ignorant to. Absolutely mental. Guess what? Some of us humans were raised in sh*tty homes with stupid influence. And some aren’t as sharp nor naturally progressive without real assistance.

Get off your judgmental high horse and greet ignorance with education. Or otherwise be ignorant yourselves. You should really take a leaf out Malala Yousafzai’s book.
Adam Corbett

(MC – Plenty of people are raised in ‘sh*tty homes’, and they managed not to be racist.)

 

Peak Pards
This video. There are no words.

Liam