Mails: Pep doesn’t improve players like Klopp or Poch…

Ian Watson

De Gea or Ederson?
I see following Ian Watson’s article on the Top 10 Goalkeepers of the Season, the debate on Twitter and what will inevitably follow in the comments section, continues to rage regarding the debate of Ederson or De Gea (which is gradually reaching Messi vs Ronaldo levels of tedium).

I had a similar debate with a few friends of mine and we were in the interesting paradox where the City fan was heavily advocating De Gea as the Goalkeeper of the Season and myself, a United fan, was in favour of Ederson.

Chris was pointing to the figures, and it is difficult to argue against the statistics – the fact that de Gea has outperformed xG by about 14 goals (the figure might need double checking!), and that no other team in the major European leagues has not conceded more than two a game this season, despite playing in front of a defence including Smalling, Jones and Lindelof still adapting to a new league.

However, David de Gea has been consistently brilliant for years. He has been United’s Player of the Season for three out of the last four seasons (or thereabouts), and I would not doubt that, if the xG figures were fully compiled for those seasons, de Gea would have outperformed this in most or all of them.

Meanwhile, I have argued for some time that Ederson has been City’s most important player this season. It’s not even because of his fabled distribution, because Claudio Bravo is a very good passer of the ball. It is the confidence he brings to the rest of the City defence, knowing that they can play their expansive style of football, safe in the knowledge that, put simply, they will not concede every time they give a shot away. It got to a point last season that City fans were cheering the few shots Bravo was actually able to save! I know City fans are known for their gallows humour, but that really says it all.

On occasion, he has not just been competent (I hear the naysayers cry), but brilliant – a shot saved against Burnley leaps to mind and I’m sure there are other examples that I can’t think of because it’s too early on a Tuesday morning! Also, throughout the season, City have surely not given away as many shots as United.

In conclusion, as Ian said, David de Gea is the best goalkeeper/shot stopper in the world right now, but purely based on this season alone, for his influence on the team, it is my opinion that Ederson has been the man.
Richard (a United fan)

 

…I must admit to agreeing with Ted, Manchester in this morning’s mailbox… If De Gea is the best goalkeeper in the planet, why only number two on the list of top ten Premier League Goalkeepers? Ok – If as the Mailbox compiler suggests it may be because Ederson is the difference between Man City 2016/17 and Man City 2017/18, then why is Karius not in the list? Liverpool have conceded far less than they did in the first half of the season with Mignolet in goal and has more clean sheets? Please note that I don’t believe for a second that he should be there… there are at least 10 better goalkeepers in the league.

The article was named “Football365’s top ten goalkeepers of the season” not “Football365’s top ten goalkeepers who have made a difference in their team’s performance compared to last season (of the season)”.

Thoroughly confused.
Gareth Cad, LFC, North Wales

 

Pep out
Great email this morning from James regarding F365’s reverse xenophobia – its been blindingly obvious for a long time and rarely gets picked up (surely they wont publish 2 critical mailboxers in the same day?)

I for one, am all for foreign managers and have been on the receiving end of some stick from my mates regarding my love for Marco Silva. I also cant get on board with Merson, Thommo and the other usual suspects arguing that English is best. However, F365 go too far the other way, especially when their beloved Pep is involved. I just don’t get the hype.

Lets summarise his career to date:

– Phenomenal success at Barcelona, although in my eyes this should be somewhat caveat-ed by the fact he had a number of the best players to ever play the game all peaking together. Xavi, Messi, Iniesta, Pique, Puyol, Dani Alves. Throw in a couple of others such as David Villa, Samuel Eto’o and success really was inevitable. I think that Pep’s influence is diluted by the coaches that have followed him continuing the success. League titles for almost every manager since, doubles for most of them, treble for Enrique. Potential unbeaten season for Valverde.

Also, arguably he spent the most out of any manager in their history, weakening the side in doing so. Ibrahimovic was not an upgrade on Eto’o and I still cant get my head around that transfer amongst others. Chygrynsky (cannot spell that to save my life) also stands out, and he definitely did not improve a lot of his signings. Also, the footprint for success had been laid well before Pep, and was not solely his doing as it is being remembered. Rijkaard produced one of the most exciting Barcelona teams of the modern era before him, leaving an already established team for him to take over. So yes, in conclusion a good run, but not one that can be solely attributed to Pep’s management

– Average success at Bayern Munich. Took over a strong treble winning team, spent a lot of money and again arguably weakened them. Won the league every year, but that is to be expected in Germany especially as Klopp was on his way out of Dortmund. Again, possibly spent more than any other Bayern manager in history and brought in players that were not necessarily upgrades. The players that were a success were ready made footballers, and certainly no visible signs of Pep taking good players and making them great. In fact arguably the opposite, he took great players and made them good.

Also, about this point F365 bang on about with Pep improving players. Yes, it may be down to Pep somewhat but also surely players play better when surrounded by better players than at their previous club. That is a no brainer.

Back to Bayern, from being one of the strongest teams in Europe, under Pep they failed to compete despite the number of players he brought in. Guess that’s what happens when you don’t have a one man match-winner in Lionel Messi to fall back on.

– Finally onto City, where F365 have continually praised him despite his first season failure and this season falling away from being a great season to just a good one. Winty continually says this is one of the greatest sides we have ever seen. This may have been the case in January when they were unbeaten and on for the quadruple. but this opinion surely must go now they have lost twice, fallen out of the FA Cup (to Wigan!!!) and been embarrassed in the CL. There will likely be no record points total, no unbeaten home record, no unbeaten season. They have been good yes, but not great.

Pep has done well yes, by spending record amounts of money to paper over his cracks. £100m on full backs solved that problem, not Pep. £57m on another CB (ready made success) looks like the solution again. £40m on a goalkeeper. Whilst having the foundations upfront already laid for him – Aguero one of the greatest PL strikers was already at his disposal and has arguably regressed (although still superb this year). As was De Bruyne. As was David Silva.

Does he improve players? Yes, Kyle Walker has improved but is this just down to playing with better players? Possibly. Has John Stones improved? The jury is still out. Sterling? Yes he’s had a good goalscoring season but is still very wasteful when under pressure, and final ball is still woeful. In fact lets go back a season. Did he improve Clichy, Kolarov, Sagna and Bravo? Nope, all regressed under him so got sold. Did he improve Mangala, Nasri, Navas and Bony? Nope, but he had free reign to sell them all and replace them. He’s not the great coach hes made out to be and cannot be compared to Klopp or Poch for improving players – they have been tasked with improving the deadwood and they have done this to an excellent degree – see the examples of Lamela, Lallana, Origi to some extent and many more. Signed by previous managers, derided by fans / pundits, and have all become varying degrees of good / excellent under good management. These managers have also brought through youth team players – Alexander Arnold, Winks, Kane, Alli (yes he was a signing but he has been improved and given game time from a young age), Robertson (read Alli). Pep is yet to give much of a chance to youth, and no, 5 minutes here and therefore Foden doesn’t count.

So in conclusion – Do I rate Guardiola? No. Is this because hes Spanish? Again no, in fact I tend to love the Spaniards.

He has been successful yes, but not to the extent you would expect given the teams and money he has worked with and he certainly isn’t the managerial genius F365 make him out to be. Lengthy email but I’d love to see what the feedback is
Tom (Pep Out)

 

Why Big Sam must go
As a long-suffering yet proud season ticket holder, living in London, who travels the country to watch Everton both home and away (8 away matches this season), I think I can be considered a tad more expert on our fan base than Sam Allardyce.

Let me make this completely clear to everyone.

Every man, woman and child that supports Everton from the terraces wants Sam Allardyce to leave in the summer. This is not just some minority on Twitter and Facebook.

But why?! Do I hear the likes of Rio Ferdinand, the famous Everton expert, cry. Why aren’t you satisfied with survival? With being in the Premier League? You want more?! ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!

Well let me run a little bit of history past you first, Rio. We are Everton. We have the most top flight seasons of any football club in England, by a country mile, with 9 league titles to boot. We embody top flight football. Survival is not an achievement, no matter how much Sam Allardyce wants it to be to burnish his reputation.

Secondly, some recent context. We spent a huge amount of money last summer and have a large squad, full of talented players. An expectation existed that at a minimum we would challenge for a European spot, do decent in the cups and threaten the currently existing top 6. That expectation died with the abysmal first half of the season under Koeman (going to Italy to watch us get smashed 0-3 by Atalanta was a particular low point, followed up by a 1-5 thrashing at Goodison).

Under Unsworth we pulled out the biggest highlight of the season in November, the 4-0 win at home against West Ham (a win Allardyce keeps claiming as his own), after which there was some optimism that we could pull ourselves together and focus on the League, especially with being out of Europe.

With the continued, high spending in January with the additions of Tosun (£24m) and Walcott (£20m) and the return to the squad of long term injuries like Bolasie (£30m) and club icons in Baines and Coleman, any half-decent replacement manager could have pulled out some big results and memorable performances.

Under Allardyce this has not happened. He has delivered routine victories at Goodison Park against bottom half teams. Meanwhile, we have suffered heavy defeats at the likes of Spurs away (0-4) and Arsenal away (1-5), some of the worst matches I have ever been to, been knocked out of the FA cup by our biggest rivals, and fluffed all of our lines against the top 6 in the league, or even top 7 including Burnley, failing to pick up any wins.

This is summarised perfectly by the Merseyside Derby performance we witnessed over the weekend. A huge chance to get at Liverpool, playing a weakened side and with one eye on the European commitments, and we spend 70 minutes with our wingers acting like auxiliary fullbacks, barely pressing them and not sticking a foot in.

Get at them, get them running back towards their goal. Show some fight, spirit and battle for every ball. Make this the most physically demanding game they will have all season. This is Goodison Park and it’s the Merseyside Derby and you have the likes of Bolasie just walking around.

Yet I was not surprised as there is such limited ambition in how he sets us up to play, which my perch up in the Top Balcony gives me a good perspective on.

Against the best we sit very deep yet still manage to offer up space near our box. We don’t threaten. We don’t even try to threaten. We are there simply so the match can be legally played. Against Manchester City we simply rolled over. A team from Manchester and we roll over!

Against the worst the exciting side of football is purposefully limited, with the hope that having better quality players such as Sigurdsson on the pitch will have an impact over one or two moments and sneak us the win (think Sigurdsson’s great goal against Swansea in December at Goodison).

Meanwhile, Allardyce has continually come out with complete guff such as comparing Everton to the likes of West Ham as a club (Sorry Hammers fans but you have the worst stadium in football, you have never won the league and you have some pathetic number of seasons in the top flight), asking where West Brom currently are (not relevant at all!), slating the players whenever it goes badly and being full of loathsome self-praise whenever we pick up one of those routine Goodison wins.

The football is boring to watch, we don’t win any big matches, we are horrendous away against most opposition, he is spreading apathy in trying to limit our expectations, he is dismissing the fan base, slagging off his own players and sucking the life out of the club.

Come the summer, we will part ways with Allardyce and hopefully it will all seem like some bizarre fever dream and we can pretend it all didn’t happen. Hopefully this happens in May and we can get a new managerial team in place as soon as possible.

Looking forwards to the sunny uplands of our post-Allardyce future, the links to Marcel Brands of PSV as our new Director of Football is encouraging.

The behind the scenes structure isn’t correct (what exactly does Steve Walsh do?!) and putting something clear and sensible in place is the biggest priority.

Along with a new head coach, lots more money, and taking forward the lessons learned about recruitment (we need to make just 3 to 4, high quality, first team signings and reduce the churn), we will go in to next season with the same expectation that we entered this one. To challenge the top 6 and gain European qualification.

On a final optimistic note – With our new stadium on the banks of the Royal Blue Mersey looking like it will be a fantastic place to play football going off the leaked plans, we remain optimistic in the long term about our chances of consistently rubbish shoulders with the best once again.

Nil Satis Nisi Optimum. Up the Toffees!
Tom Doherty

 

Kane’s example
Not sure if Andy, Swedish Monkey Hanger, has heard of Ronaldo or Messi, but they’ve both spent over a decade on a remorseless quest for individual excellence, and have both been selfish in doing so.

Kane’s a striker, and if he wants as many goals as he can, good on him. Ronaldo has been self-centred to the point of narcissism, and is still scoring over a goal a game in his mid-30s, with multiple Ballon D’Or, league and CL wins. Wayne Rooney sacrificed himself for his team, and has run himself into early retirement in a Sam Allardyce Everton team.

If you were Harry Kane, who would you prefer to be?
Chris MUFC

 

…The whole Harry Kane goal claim debacle is obviously pretty funny, but I think people are making a bigger deal over it than necessary.

There’s plenty of speculation about how who scored affects goal/golden boot/assist bonuses for both Kane and Eriksen, but to me it simply comes down to the fact that Harry wants to score as many goals and break as many records as possible. If it’s ever broken, Alan Shearer’s all time PL record isn’t going to be beaten by 50 goals, so until then every one counts.

It still feels silly to compare Kane to the likes of Messi and Ronaldo, but let’s not forget he’s the only player to out-score those guys in a calendar year, in 2017 scoring 2 more goals than Messi in TWELVE less games. He is constantly seeking to improve – 2018 will be no different – and the history books won’t have caveats about how that one against Stoke only-just-maybe-barely-brushed-his-shoulder-possibly-just.

Is Harry selfish? On the field for sure, but the right type of shoot-on-sight kind of selfish. But he can also be extremely selfless; he works tirelessly, tracks back, and has a range and quality of passing as good as I’ve ever seen for a goalscoring striker. Off the field he comes across as modest, humble and grounded as you can be for a bloke in his boots – not the kind of guy to steal a goal from a team mate.

Lastly, he celebrated as if he scored when it went in. Unless you have the self-awareness of beshinpadded John Terry, you must know you’d look like a twat claiming you had a hand in something when video evidence demonstrates you definitely didn’t. By saying he touched the ball, Harry could of course just be saving face for having celebrated scoring at the time – but he strikes me more as someone who wouldn’t want to be seen claiming goals that weren’t his.

Appreciate this reads like a love-letter as much as a case for the defence, but for the record I’d also like to state that I love Christian Eriksen just as much.
Dan G, THFC

 

Rooney’s done
Just wanted to say that this week’s Premier League winners and losers was bang on about Rooney.

If memory serves, one of your writers predicted this situation at the time of his move from Man U and I was inclined to agree. There was a small minority of other fans who felt the same way too but then almost everyone got swept up with the nostalgia of the situation and the early comeback goals papered over the cracks. Sadly, it is now all-too evident that he just can’t cut it at the top level anymore. He might have worked hard on his fitness – and credit to him for that – but he’s lost so much pace, both physically and mentally, that he needs more time on the ball than he is going to get against half-decent Premier League sides (and that’s to say nothing of his lack of positional discipline).

Even if that weren’t the case, his reaction to being subbed off was completely out of order. As a friend of mine pointed out at the time, he could have had a lifetime of heroic derby performances to cherish but chose to pursue trophies instead. That’s fair enough but he can’t now act as though the club owes him one. Regardless of name or reputation, if he isn’t performing, he shouldn’t be on the pitch.

Best
PhilT

 

Little Pea’s big move
Absolute drivel about Liverpool signing Dybala for £90m in the gossip column, what I see as a more likely outcome is that Chicarito is to leave West Ham, could he be the back up striker Pool want & need? Swap for Studge?
Adam P

 

Feeling Blue
Can you please, please put your heads together (similar to how the Power Rangers combine their powers to do cool stuff) to come up with a few reasons why Chelsea fans should have hope for the future?

I know Chelsea are easy to hate but the fans (apart from those on trains in Paris) are good people and we are having our hopes crushed consistently for months.

Another manager expected to get sacked. Another dismal title defence. Another senior management clusterf**k.

Please, please dig deep and find anything at all that could give the CFC fans something to be hopeful about.

Thanks,
Tim (consistently refreshing the Football365 website for 10 years). CFC fan

 

The Irish Kante
The title race in Northern Ireland is at boiling point. Crusaders and Coleraine are level on 84 points, with three games left (shades of the great 1998/99 Premier League race between Man Utd and Arsenal). Crusaders (+65) have a vastly superior goal difference to Coleraine (+44). Unfortunately from my Crusaders perspective, Coleraine (4 wins from the last 5) are in better form than the Crues (2 wins from the last 5). However all the Crues have to do is beat Linfield (the reigning champs), Cliftonville (our North Belfast rivals) and Ballymena (who put the nail in our title coffin last season). Sounds easy, right?
Matthew, Belfast
PS: Sean Ward (Crusaders) and Aaron Burns (Coleraine) won the league last season at Linfield, so one of them will be the N’Golo Kante of the Irish Premiership.

 

Lascelles love-in
Now that we’ve had the top 10 goalkeepers of the season, I’d imagine that defenders will be next..

And (although I’m biased) I said to a mate in the pub on Saturday night that Jamaal Lascelles hasn’t just been the best English centre back this season, but the best in the league.

We looked through the other contenders and with 5 of the top 6 not really famed for their defence, Van Dijk was dirt at Southampton, City’s is rarely called upon, United’s is good due to nobody attacking etc… Maybe Jan Vertonghen or Davidson Sanchez could get considered.

But Jamaal is not just a young guy who’s good at defending, he’s a club captain in every sense of the word. Calling out players like Mo Diame, being a credit off the field and putting his body on the line.

It makes Southgate’s decision to ignore him even more laughable.
James (NUFC – Shelvey should also go to Russia for the 10 minutes of panic if it’s 0-0 Vs Panama after 80 mins.. it’s what players 20-23 are for!)

 

Killie kudos
Before the CL strides in and dominates the conversation, can we take a moment to appreciate the remarkable job Steve Clarke has been doing with Kilmarnock this season?

After the first 8 games, Killie were bottom of the table with 3 points. They’d promoted Lee McCulloch from player/coach to assistant manager to interim manager to permanent manager and it had all gone horribly wrong. The football was garbage, the team was entirely without confidence, the (already low) crowds were despairing and it looked to all intents and purposes like this would be the year when luck ran dry and Killie finally went down; their previous 10 league finishes (in a table of 12) read: 8, 11, 10, 9, 7, 7, 5, 11, 8, 11.

When McCulloch left the club in early October there were some typically underwhelming names being touted which is understandable given that it isn’t a rich club and the record signing is still the £340k paid for Paul Wright in 1995. But then the club announced that Steve Clarke would be taking over. It was unexpected and seemed a bit of a coup as he spoke of joining a historic club, local to his roots, to which he wanted to bring stability. All nice stuff and sure he has decades of elite-level experience, but how much could he really do with this squad at this club in this situation?

Answer: take 49 points from the next 24 games.

Extrapolate that for a season and Killie hit 73 points which would be enough to finish 2nd or 3rd in the previous 10 seasons. How’s he done it? In a word, coaching.

This is pretty much exactly the same squad he inherited. Instead of changing the personnel, he’s coached who he has, and you now see a team playing with distinct roles and a clear plan, with the confidence to make it work consistently. Kris Boyd – comfortably one of the least fit players in the league – is top scorer and the team, understanding his strengths, works to give him chances. Jordan Jones on the wing is encouraged to go direct and, if he loses the ball as he often does, accept it, press and harry together, get back in shape, and go again. Mulumbu, one of the players Clarke has brought in, has been a revelation as a driving force in midfield.

They’re outplaying every team in the league, winning against Celtic, Rangers and Hearts, and they’re regularly gaining points in the final stages of games. They’re currently on a 10-game unbeaten streak and sit top of the form table.

It really is mad how competitive he’s made them.

A colleague of mine is a massive Celtic fan and argues that if Brendan Rodgers takes them to the treble two years in a row for the first time in history then he MUST be Manager of the Year. But if Steve Clarke gets it, as I expect he might, there surely can’t be many who disagree with the choice.

His name was mentioned for the Scotland job and it’ll no doubt get mentioned for others. One can only hope he fancies a crack at a full season to see how far he can take them.
Doug, Glasgow

 

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