Mails: Why are refs and the FA so harsh on Mourinho?

Joe Williams

Send your thoughts to theeditor@football356.com

 

It’s one rule for Mourinho and one for other managers
Well that was a hard fought 3 points, seems that United are still the scalp everyone wants in the Premier League, just waiting for Palace to turn into Prime AC Milan (90s) for a game before bending over for all and sundry the rest of the season. The game was crying out for Martial but on trundles Chris Smalling, Jose seemed to retract into his defensive shell. On to Jose, why does the FA have one rule for the United Manager and one for the rest of the Premier League? Jose set one foot over the white line and was sent off, Conte charges onto the field of play to confront the ref; nothing, Klopp jumps around screaming like a demented baboon again nothing. Last season Jose kicks a bottle of water, 3 match ban, Arsene throws a bottle of water, warned about his future conduct. This is not by the way a conspiracy theory it is as Rafa so elegantly put it once “a FACT”. So summing up great 3 points, bad substitutions and an FA agenda, roll on the weekend (after a long trip to Moscow).
Paul Murphy (tin hatted) Manchester

 

How good can he really be?
If Youri Tielemans doesn’t think he is better than Eleney, Coqulein, Ramsay or Xhaka how good can he be?
Brian Belfast Gooner

 

I have three short words
Pot, Kettle, Black.
Form a sentence with those Alex. I’m not English just for the record, but for an American to admonish the English about knowing little outside their own country…oh dear! The best stats I can find suggest that fewer than half of the population of the US have a valid passport (somewhere between 36% and 46%). At least the little Englander has Benidorm, the Costa Blanca, and other warm weather locations to drink ale and eat egg and chips. All of which require the visitor to hold a valid passport. Maybe they don’t understand the world beyond England/Britain that well, but at least they actually go and see the world regardless. Anyway, it’s a little rich for a Yank to say that the Brits know nothing outside of their own country.

Moving on from the political stupidity of your original statement – Harry Kane has outperformed Sergio Aguero over the last 2-3 seasons in terms of goals. Last I checked that was his primary function in his team. Adding to that point, Harry Kane has never been surrounded by the quality of player that surrounds Aguero, Lewandowski, Suarez, or Benzema. I’m also not a Spurs fan.

Next who said Morata wouldn’t succeed? Or that Guardiola wouldn’t succeed? In reality Guardiola has yet to win anything in England and has spent over half a billion to bring zero silverware, and more to the point it’s not as if his side are blowing top teams away by 5 and 6 goals. They will find far stiffer tests ahead and we’ll see then if you can succeed with dubious centre halves and no protection from midfield. City against Chelsea will reveal far more about Guardiola’s ability to succeed than blowing away average teams does.
Donough (Ireland, #Taketheknee USA)

 

Kane offside call
In response to “Jay, LFC”, it’s most definitely “my housemate and I” as it wouldn’t make sense to say “Me likened it to Kane…”

Also I definitely agree that that change to the offside law was absurd as it often renders the offside trap useless. Theoretically, a team could have all of their forwards but one simply rush behind the opposition’s defence and play it through to the one forward who didn’t begin the move offside who could then promptly cut it back to several teammates with nothing but the keeper between them and the goal.

Clever sides like Barça have been exploiting this for a while and it may result in teams defending deeper than ever before. It could potentially result in the death of the offside trap.
Vish, AFC, Melbourne

 

Jay LFC.  I agree completely.  Kane gained an advantage by starting in an offside position.

Got me thinking about other annoying decisions in football.  My one massive pet hate is the challenge made on an attacking player in the box, just as he shoots.  Specifically when he shoots wide or over.  The defender slides in, in an attempt to block the shoot, or make a tackle and more often than not, he’s a split second late, resulting in him upending the attacking player.   I’ve never seen a foul (penalty) given for this blatant foul.  Its madness. Its clearly a foul and anywhere else on the pitch it would be given as such. (defender clears down the line and attacker tries to block it, with defender kicking attackers foot – always given as a foul and usually a yellow card too!)

I cannot understand why this type of foul is not given  (with resultant pen. awarded) ?   Really bugs the sh*t out if me does that.
Neil, somewhere over here.

 

Jay, you are not alone. Kane’s goal should clearly have been given offside. He definitely gained an advantage by coming from an offside position. The second goal was not too dissimilar, Kane strolled back onside as the whole defensive line tracked the attackers towards goal. As he was offside when the move began there was no defender tracking him and he found himself in acres of space ready to receive the rebound. Again he definitely gained an advantage from being offside.

The change in the offside rule was essentially done to stop top corner screamers being disallowed because a player who was not involved in the action was stood in an offside position. While I agree with this the rule has been warped to the point where defenders cannot consider any attacker offside, even if they are eating a chip butty in the penalty box.

Its no wonder some defenders look like lost sheep when they are considering when a player becomes active whilst tracking a run and trying to time a tackle all at the same time. Yet asking linesman to consider all this may also be too much. What’s the solution… Go back to the old system.
Dave, Manchester

 

Feel like Jay, LFC raises another really excellent example of how awful the current interpretation of offside is. I’d like to raise a few other examples from recent-ish memory (just United):

·         Can’t recall the match, but someone scored a goal that went through Defoe’s legs when he was offside right in front of the keeper

·         Against Newcastle Evans scored an own goal after falling while grappling with an offside player (comic gold, admittedly)

·         Ruud basically revolutionized the new reading by perpetually being offside during the ‘out-wide’ phase of play, thus gaining an advantage in the next phase of play like the aforementioned Kane incident, but it was somehow kosher

·         And finally Anderson for United standing in an offside position on free kicks, making faces at the keeper (though this should stand for being awesome)

And that’s before the ridiculous number of simply incorrect decisions made each week. It’s an incredibly difficult job, but having complicated rules and exceptions makes it impossible imo. Simple, if a player is offside, he’s offside. Shouldn’t matter what he’s doing at the time.
Ryan, Bermuda

 

What does world class actually mean? 
This may seem like a strange question but it seems more often than not to be used as a straw man argument for any player rated more highly than supporters of his club than that of others, rather than a meaningful term.

Sometimes ‘divisive’ figures like John Terry, or genuinely wonderful players like Le Tissier who were treated as heroes but won little, or earlier today about Harry Kane, who scored a goal a game last season in the Hardest League in the World.

I think I’ve heard the term ‘supposed world class’ more than I care to remember, so what does world class mean?

Does it mean ‘the best in the world at that position’? Or more loosely, if we took the 10 or 20 highest goal scoring strikers, this player would be on that list? Can it only apply to players that win the CL several times over, or can you be world class and not play for Barca or Real? It doesn’t count if you score loads in a poor league of course; players who get bucketloads in Holland can be as good as Suarez or Alfonso Alves or Vincent Janssen.

As a term it seems to be used more towards players who’s abilities are easily quantifiable (number of goals; assists) rather than those that are not (holding midfielders, central defenders).

Or is it, quite simply, Not As Good as Messi and Ronaldo? I suppose that’s a bit clunky.
Andy Mc, Spurs, London. 

 

Sweeping generalisation
Most English don’t know anything about life outside England?

Thanks for that sweeping generalisation.

I’m glad you’re on hand to tell us all about the likes of Benzema, Lewandowski, Aguero and Suarez because without you none of us here would likely ever have heard of them.

I’m off to play Emlyn Hughes International Soccer on my brand new Commodore 64, which has just been launched round our way.
Graham Simons, Gooner, Norf London

 

Klopp will get it right
This has gone on long enough and people really need to get a grip.We have gone from someone likening us to Newcastle and another calling us a playground team.

The fact is we are fifth in the league,  level on points with fourth placed Tottenham.Yes we have problems in defence but every team has their own problems including Real Madrid!!!

I believe in Klopp.I believe he will get it right.We are in the champions league right now and we got there with this defence!!The back end of last season showed us that this team can defend.
I saw a good team against Leicester.we were in control of that game up to the point that idiot Vardy cheated the ref for a sof freekick.Wait until the end of the season and you will see.It’s  just vindictive for someone to claim that Liverpool are the same as Newcastle.Last time i checked one of these so called premier league top three finished sixth and we beat the other two.Hold your horses you idiots!!
Dominic  (please get us a better Jurgen)

 

Mythbuster
So, Alex (New York) thinks a myth is being destroyed currently about the English top flight being the hardest to score in.

I have been a fan of football for nearly 40 years. I have seen good and bad times supporting & watching my team (Liverpool) and other local teams to me Preston North End, Morecambe & Lancaster City. I watch MOTD, used to have Sky and read what I consider to be good quality football journalism from F365,The Guardian, etc.

However, I cannot recall one instance of a Manager, player, pundit, journalist, mailboxes, or anyone else ever saying that the English top flight is the hardest to score in. Italian football perhaps, but not English.

I think Alex is creating his own myth here.
Ada, Lancaster.

 

Leave Garth alone!
Hey guys, love your work and have always been a big fan of Mediawatch. The skewering of well-paid journalists who have nothing to say is often brilliant. Reading their tripe is tedious so thanks for doing it for us. They deserve a critical grilling every now and then.

However, don’t you think you’ve taken it a bit too far with poor old Garth Crooks? So what if he sets out his team of the week in 3-4-3 with no centre backs and eight attacking midfielders, so what if he picks Jimmy so he can lay into Paul and so what if he missuses the word ‘convince’ as he did this weekend? Do you really need to dedicate 300 words to it? You’re skilled huntsmen that don’t need to go shooting fish in a barrel.

I’m not a huge fan of the man but he’s not a career journalist and is clearly there to provide a bit of light entertainment (which he does in kind).

Anyway, please keep producing your brilliant content but just lay off Garth once in a while!

Cheers
Jack

 

An additional observation…
Just enjoying Mediawatch’s traditional shredding of Mr Crooks team of the week.. I think you missed another fairly obvious stick to beat him with..

“I love to watch the Brazilian play every week so thank you, Liverpool.” comes with the implicit observation that if Coutinho went to play for Barca, Garth would no longer (be able to / choose to) watch him every week.

The irony being that us low-lifes would actually find it easier to watch him every week, should we choose, as he will cease to play in games that legally can’t be broadcast in this county at 3pm on a Saturday. Oh for a nice job in the media where I could watch all the games in my national league..

On an unrelated matter- how would people feel about the statement “It has taken 6 weeks to establish this season’s top 4”?

Normally at this stage there’s at least one ‘when will they fall off’ club (eg. Leicester. *cough*) muddying up the waters. This season I don’t see any particular reason to expect the two Manchester clubs and the two London clubs to fall away, so who’s going to overhaul them? I wouldn’t be shocked if the current top 4 just exchanged positions between themselves for the rest of the season.
Dan

 

Stumbled across some forgotten players…
Some superb blasts from the past in the “top three premier league scorers for each nation” piece. Christopher Wreh, Diego Gavilan and so many more! Class.

Most surprising one for me is that Polish players have only scored one goal! Was sure Rasiak scored. But then remembered he was crap.

Cheers,
Cormac, Galway