Mails: Jose’s problem is ‘Man United way’

Sarah Winterburn

You know what to do now…mail us at theeditor@football365.com

 

Player of the season so far…
It’s not even Xmas yet but N’Golo Kante clearly deserves to be player of the year. Leicester cannot function who out him, clearly. Meanwhile, he is running Chelsea’s midfield like a boss…and Chelsea are rolling right along with him.

You’re welcome
John (Vancouver Celt)

 

We can’t hate Chelsea anymore
There is another thing that Conte has brought to Chelsea that, at least for myself, is quite surprising. I don’t have a deep-ingrained hatred for Chelsea anymore.

The Chelsea of Mourhino and John Terry was about as unlikable a pairing as could be assembled.Whether it was Jose Mourhino preening, egotistical bleating or John Terry crowding the referee on every single call while encouraging the rest of the team to do so, Chelsea held a certain level of hatred. Sure I don’t like Tottneham, but it is based on rivalry and not so much on how they act or who they are as people. Same goes with Manchester United, Liverpool. They are the rivals and opponents that are necessary in any sport, you don’t like them but only in so far as they are between your team and the trophies and accomplishments they desire. Not so much for Chelsea. Yes, they had that, but they had an additional layer of filth attached to them. Now I will admit that a certain amount of that was the way Mourhino’s Chelsea tended to handle Arsenal, but I think fans of other teams would agree, Chelsea were true scum.

But now, I feel that is all gone. I actually like Conte, he is positive, professional without being stiff. This Chelsea team plays a very nice brand of football. Even Costa seems much less villainous than in previous years. I still want them to lose, and lose badly and often, but that’s just because I am an Arsenal fan, but I don’t get disgusted when I watch them play.
David O, California

 

Jose struggling because he can’t be himself
A good manager will always have the finger prints of his identity on the team. We could see instantly, in the first game against Sunderland, the identity of Pep on City. We can see the pragmatic efficiency of Conte on the current Chelsea team. We have become familiar with the high energy, intense press of Poch at Sp*rs. Klopp is similar, with the addition of the extra rotational fluency he allows his forward players, that Poch doesn’t. As much as it is aesthetically displeasing, you know when you’re watching a Pulis team; the finger prints of his identity are clear to see.

So…why is Mourinho struggling so badly? Well, the answer is simple. The only game this season where Man Utd have performed to the identity of their manager was away at Anfield where they were a Zlatan header short of a classic Mourinho 0 – 1 big game away win.

The problem is the culture of Man Utd as a club won’t allow him to set his team up like this, apart from occasionally, and in exceptional circumstances. He is fully aware of this. Therefore, he is trying to re-invent himself as a possession based, offensive manager, and it is a struggle for him, because it doesn’t come naturally to his footballing ideologies.

The two most technically creative players he has at his disposal are Mata and Mkhitaryan. Without checking, I believe he has yet to start them both in any fixture this season. I’ll take a punt and suggest he won’t start them together more than five times this season, and probably on the rare occasions that he does, it will be a home game against lower-half opposition.

Unless he can successfully adapt, and re-invent himself, and the initial evidence suggests he is struggling, he will fail at Man Utd.
Naz, Gooner

 

Fourth place no substitute for trophy
Thanks Matt for reaffirming my belief in football.

Personally I would rather have Nottingham Forest’s record in the Champions League – two trophies, no appearances in the over 30 years – to Arsenal’s consistent obsession with certificates of participation  and going out before March.

I also wonder how much more stick the ‘Arsene knows’ brigade would have to put up with and if Arsene would still be in a job had he not won those those two FA Cups.

The financial implications of relegation are steep but I think the smiles I see on the faces of Portsmouth fans and Coventry fans  when they are wheeled out every year when the Fa cup starts to Sunderland and previously Aston Villa’s constant circling the drain and mediocrity gaining nothing except a 10 year stint in the lower reaches of the Premier League.

As a Utd fan I was happier last year to win the FA Cup than I was the previous year when we won nought and came fourth. This year if we get past Zorya I’ll be looking forward to my team being serious contenders a lot more than if we were in the draw for the Champions League and without a prayer of getting past the quarters.

Why is there so much interest in the  money from Champions League which fans won’t get a dime from. It’s not like playing in  the league only nowadays restricts the quality of player you can acquire.

Do you want to know the only time I will consider fourth place acceptable…when we go and win the Champions League the next year.

This shouldn’t even be a discussion and the contrary view should not hold sway
Timi MUFC (it’s arguments like this that led to Trump)

 

The contrary view
How do you attract top talent by winning the League Cup and finishing fifth to then go and play on Thursday nights in the Europa League?

What sort of ambition does that show?

At least by entering the top four, you are in the Champions League, attracting top players and building a club that is sustainable financially and can a team that will eventually be able to fight for the title (with that talent!).

If you truly love your club, you want them to be in a sustainable position always. Not win the League Cup one season and get relegated the next. Or more like Wigan when you they won the FA Cup and got relegated in the same season.
Gooner(obviously)

 

Happy despite Liverpool collapse
Always best to leave a day gathering your thoughts I find before ranting in the mailbox.

So after a day thinking about the crazy Bournemouth game and what it means I have come to the following conclusions;

The biggest change over the last two seasons is the surprise I felt at Liverpool throwing that away. I thought that game was done at 2-0 slight concern at 2-1 and then done again at 3-1. It never crossed my mind it would be thrown away. A couple of seasons ago I would never have felt like that until 4-0 up with 30 seconds to go. There would have been no shock just the usual anger and misery at failing to beat a team we should have beaten.

Sakho must have really upset Klopp. I don’t want to get all Arsenal-ey but we have to trust Klopp has his reasons for this and assume he is correct. If Lucas is third choice centre back we need to do something. Preferably in Jan but who would we be likely to get better then current options?

Karius – Just don’t see it. Would love to have a really class goalkeeper we can rely on. Pepe Reina is the closest I have ever seen in my time supporting Liverpool and even he dropped the odd bo****k. Arsenal buying Cech was a great move! Again not sure if there are any better keepers available anywhere (Joe Hart??) and that’s a bit depressing.

This Premier League season is brilliant (ok Partly because Liverpool are not out of it by December). Last season’s Premier League was brilliant (For very different reasons). Long may it continue!

I am happy despite the loss

Have a good one all
Dan T

 

Why isn’t Pep getting stick?
I know I’m late to the party about the Liverpool game, but one thing has really been bugging me after reading all that has been said and written in the last few days. Where did all the bias come from? Countless of fans and pundits have all had their bit to say about how Liverpool concede to many goals and that Saturday’s game is the perfect example of why Liverpool won’t win the league. However none have jumped on Man City and Pep for their defensive frailties.

(Erm, you might want to read our 16 Conclusions from Saturday’s game – Ed).

Liverpool after all have kept one more clean sheet than City this season and have only conceded three more goals. I understand that you need to have a good defence in order to win the title and am by no means saying that Liverpool doesn’t have problems.

However why doesn’t Pep get asked week in week out about his defence? Why aren’t their articles written about how terrible Bravo is? Why don’t the pundits throw about random defenders names and insist that City must go after them in the transfer window? Man City concede three goals and it’s just one of those things, nothing to worry about. Liverpool concede three and all kinds of questions are asked, and all of a sudden the title is now out of reach.
Dino, Cape Town (Looking for a little more consistency)

 

Pep needs to adapt
Josep Guardiola is undoubtedly a supremely talented coach. His Barcelona and Bayern Munich teams of recent years have played some truly breathtaking football and his trophy cabinet is overflowing with confirmation of their excellence.

Guardiola has very clear ideas as to how the game should be played and this is admirable. Upon arriving in England Pep declared that under no circumstances would he change his style of play in anyway, which is hindsight may not have been the smartest move.

City’s defensive fragility was horribly exposed by Chelsea this weekend, however this is nothing knew his side have only kept two Premier League clean sheets so far this season, and unless the talented Catalonian finds a solution to this fragility then Man City will not win the Premier League title.

Against Chelsea the weakness of Claudio Bravo of actually being a goalkeeper and stopping the opposition score was exposed, he should have done better with both Willian and Hazards goals. It’s fully understandable that Pep wanted to swap a goalkeeper with a 60% pass accuracy record in Joe Hart for a keeper like Bravo with a pass accuracy of 84% in order to fit with his play it out from the back style. Problem is that Pep may not have properly factored in the difference between a goalkeeper in Spain and England when he made the comparison. Bravo’s pass accuracy has dropped to almost 70% after 11 Premier League games showing that its actually a lot more difficult for a keeper to play out from the back in England due to the heightened intensity levels. When you factor in the need for a keeper in England to be strong aerially, the benefits of either Hart or Bravo may actually cancel each other out. What Pep really needed was a hybrid goalkeeper who is good at everything, but that fella is still in Munich and will probably stay there for the rest of his career.

The experiment of playing Kolarov as a third central defender has been a disaster, Kolarov is not even of the desired quality to play as a left-back against this Chelsea side let alone a third central defender. In all honestly Pep would have been better off taking a proper defender from his U23 side than persist with the woeful Serb. Kolarov was left for dead for Hazard and Willian’s goals.

To win the Premier League may well have to do something he has previously stated he would not do and that’s change his style of play slightly as this League is a completely different beast to what he encountered in Germany and Spain. At the moment City look excellent going forward but their susceptibilty at the back means teams always feel like they are in with a chance, quite similar to how his Bayern team looked in the Champions League in recent years. Therefore the next few months will be really interesting to see how Guardiola reacts, for refusal to bend your playing style can result in a long period without silverware, just ask Mr.Wenger.
Peter Henry

 

Will Claudio get sacked?
I wrote in last Spring to explain the slightly strange feelings as a Leicester fan, not knowing if we’d win the League and indeed what happens next if we did. It’s fair to say we’re now getting a slightly clearer picture of what happens next and it’s fair to say the strange feelings have persisted.

On the one hand, let me say, I have very little concern about how Leicester’s season goes this year, next year, or indeed the year after that. Last year was incomparable to anything I’ve ever felt in sport and I can comfortably handle 20 years of miserable failure from here and it’d still be worth it. And as for Claudio, well the fact he took us to the title, but also the manner in which he did it, means that for me, absolutely unequivocally, he can manage our football club for as long as he wants to and the day he stops is the day he decides it’s time. Nobody else makes that call.

But now for the slight paradox. It’s pretty apparent to me, and perhaps most level headed football fans, that Claudio is not the man for a relegation battle. He’s not a man who is well equipped to turn the tide (indeed his ability to ride the momentum last year was massive). I’ve little doubt that the appointment of a big Sam/similar would increase our chances of survival this year, but you just can’t wish for that as a fan. I suspect the reality is, our owners will act more quickly. Last year is worth an absolute fortune to us, and relegation would kill a lot of that. If we’re still looking dicey in February I’d expect swift action.

I guess all I can hope for as a Leicester fan is if does continue to head that way it’s handled in the right fashion. Football fans are a petty bunch, there’s already been a few boos at the KP, and some wally range 5Live proposing we replace Claudio with Iain Dowie (where do they find these people?)… our owners were fantastic last year, I hope that continues.
Dan, Greenwich

 

Thoughts on Middlesbrough-Hull
* According to Wikipedia, Mike Phelan has been in coaching for 21 years. This is impossible. No one in the business that long could employ the tactics Hull City use week after week: sit back and wait for your opponent to score, then start playing. City have now given up the first goal in TWELVE straight league games. Against Middlesbrough, of all teams, they parked the bus. This is quite obviously insane. What makes it worse is that after Boro’s goal, Hull showed themselves capable of genuine attacking moves, and nearly scored on two corner kicks. Unless Phelan changes tactics radically, they are going most emphatically down.

* Meanwhile, Curtis Davies has seriously regressed since a strong start. Poor positioning, no anticipation, weak challenging the target man. Michael Dawson is doing it all himself – and what a good honest pro he’s been all these years. How many thousands of shots has he blocked?

* Ryan Mason is the very worst player at defending I have ever seen. That is all.

* Aitor Karanka is a clever guy. For an absolute must-win game, he kept his most dynamic attacker, Adama Traoré, on the bench. He rightly figured Hull would sit back, so there wouldn’t be room for the Tornado to whirl and destroy. He chose a more technical player, Viktor Fischer.

* Fischer wound up doing a magnificent Wayne Rooney impression – unfortunately, it was Rooney circa 2016. Slowed up attacks, went sideways and backwards, pinged diagonal balls to the fullback, all in the manner of the master. But he delivered an excellent far post corner for the only goal, which sort of sounds like something Rooney would do as well.

* The goal was scored by Gastón Ramirez, who was different class all evening. You name it, he did it. He’s so good on the ball that you forget he’s one of the best headers in the league. The goal was a textbook job: down into the ground, bouncing up and over the man on the post. He’s a joy to watch when in form.
Peter G, Pennsylvania, USA

 

Praise for Forshaw
Vital win for Boro ce soir, bit more nervous than it should have been.

While Gaston took the headlines I was again fascinated by Adam Forshaw, I’m admittedly a Boro fan, and increasingly thinking (I know I’m going to get shot down for this) is Wilshere doing anything better than him at the moment in a similar team?

Oh and I’m sure that Snodgrass is moonlighting in Frightened Rabbit.
Tone (one of the liberal elite) D

 

An update from Japan
In addition to the J2 promotion playoff and the J2/J3 relegation playoff, last week saw the much-maligned J1 Championship Series. The two-legged final featured Urawa Reds, who finished top of the league, and Kashima Antlers, who were 11th at the end of the season and 15 points behind Urawa. Urawa won the first leg in Kashima 1-0, but despite going 1-0 up in the second leg, they conceded two away goals and lost. The second was a penalty for a clumsy tackle by the last defender (no, not Steven Chicken, I mean Tomoaki Makino, the Reds’ captain) who was lucky to only receive a yellow, and who then decided to stand directly in front of the penalty taker, Mu Kanazaki, as he was preparing to take the kick.

Hang on a second: Kashima finished 11th? What? Well, they were 11th in the second stage, but 3rd overall, which meant they qualified for the one-match semi final against Kawasaki Frontale, who finished second overall. Yes, J1 has two stages in its regular season, each lasting 17 games: Kashima won the first stage, while Urawa won the second and finished top of the overall table. Kawasaki finished second overall. As overall winners, Urawa automatically qualified for the final, which meant they had a 17-day gap between competitive games, and a 23-day gap between their last league game and the first leg of the final.

This system was introduced last year in a surprising decision by football authorities to put profit before supporters’ and clubs’ wishes. As with British Rugby League’s mid-season split into 3 groups of 8, the contrived nature of the format was partially the cause of its unpopularity, with the bulk of the criticism focusing on the fact that if you need a spreadsheet to explain it then it’s too complicated. Add this to the fact that a team can potentially give up for the second half of the season having won the first stage but still win the overall championship and it’s no surprise to learn that everyone is happy the system is being ditched for 2017, which will be a return to a traditional league structure.

Kashima’s prize is entry to the Club World Cup, which starts on Thursday with their match against Auckland City in Yokohama. As for Urawa, well, they’ve been grumbling that it’s hard to believe they aren’t champions after finishing top of the table, and they have a point. It’s hard to sympathise with them, though, after Makino’s antics and the racist behaviour some of their fans have displayed on several occasions in recent years.
James T, Kanazawa, Japan

 

Toddler talk
THIS is why Winners & Losers is the first site page I’m on every Monday morning:

‘If I put a full glass within reaching distance of my two-year-old, do I blame his ‘poor individual moment’ when he sends it crashing to the ground? Well, of course I do; I am a brilliant mother and that child is a f***ing liability.’

On a side note, how was Oliver not in the losers section for allowing Rojo to stay on the pitch after that tackle?
TX Bill (Koeman can put whatever color he wants on his Christmas tree as long as he starts winning matches) EFC

 

Well done Daniel
I feel like I know the man at this stage, I’ve read so much of his stuff. Genuinely delighted for him (and the site).

Congrats Mr Storey. Onwards and upwards.

Cheers,
Cormac, Galway

 

…I thought the FSF awards was a ‘1 person 1 vote’ sort of gig but obviously Romelu and Steve Cook found a way to circumnavigate this!

On a serious note, a massive congratulations to Daniel. I don’t always agree with his articles (although generally I do) but I always read them, such is the quality of his writing and choice of subject matter.

Now don’t be like my father and leave us.
Osric the Brave (hope my guilt trip works), Cape Town

 

…Huge congratulations to Daniel Storey on winning the FSF Writer of The Year Award. At first, was a little taken aback at how delighted I was at the news. But then, it struck me that this is also a win for everyone at F365 and all of its readers.

In an age where uneducated and thoughtless opinion is touted as fact, not just within media circles but now at a political level, it’s just wonderful to see someone who is passionate yet so meticulous in their work succeed when compared with their peers.

The Portrait of an Icon pieces have been universally adored but all I can think of is the endless hours devoted to opinion pieces, Winners and Losers and 16 Conclusions, many of them deviating from popular opinion. I’ve always envied those who write about football for a living, but seriously admire F365 for not being afraid to displease the masses and sticking to what they see or believe to be true.

That is not to discount that on many occasions I have disagreed with Daniel, but respect his opinion as a true fan of football. That’s why I feel this website is like chatting to your mates about football in the pub. Sometimes you agree, or disagree, or question each others sanity, but at the end of the day you have a laugh about it because it’s just football, even though we all inexplicably obsess over it relentlessly.

So we’ll done Daniel, as one of many who also feel like a small part of this site having contributed to the mailbox over the years I just want to say that I’m so very proud of your achievement and look forward to agreeing, disagreeing and question your sanity over the game we all love for many years to come.
Conor, Drogheda