Mails: Why aren’t Man City being criticised?

Matt Stead

Manchester City aren’t being criticised enough for their spending. Also, the David De Gea situation is explained in full, Spurs receive a bit more flak, and we have a running Winners and Losers table.

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

 

Dat Buy
Look on the bright side, the good news is that despite the window being closed, Arsene will be able to make a ‘new signing’ when Welbeck comes back!
Brian Belfast Gooner

 

Come On Then, My Son
“save dramatically overpaying for Heung-min Son”

Care to explain this throwaway comment?
Daryll Hockings

 

Spurs Deadwood
In response to Alexis Wolfe’s statement that Spurs have trimmed their dead wood, last time I checked they were still paying £100k a week to Adebayor who isn’t in your first team squad, or European squad. Something tells me the club may need new shears for their squad pruning as they missed a bit
John ‘If Joel Campbell is the answer, what is the question?’ Matrix AFC

 

Why No City Criticism?
I’d never go so far as to suggest the media or this site were in anyway biased (apart from towards Liverpool of course), but I do feel it appropriate to point something out that seems to have flown under the radar.

Last year, United were ridiculed, mocked and harangued on every media outlet and across most fan bases for spending the most of any English club ever in a single transfer window, with a hefty £145m of investment that covered every single area of the team, with a Liverpool-friendly net spent of around £104m. This being spending to return to the top 4.

This year, last year’s second placed team – City – have broken that record with a very tidy £152m of investment (including a transfer for a previous league failure that only just comes under last year’s record) that covers many areas but misses out on forwards (where they are now arguably quite weak – to a point that an Arsenal critic would consider “grossly negligent” – thanks Ahsan, AFC). For Liverpool fans, that means £110m net spend.

Did I miss the hand wringing and wailing, or is that due to start only when Aguero gets injured? £150 million on moving from second to first, and people wonder why they’re having a good start to the season…

Guy S (money money money, it must be funny, in the rich man’s world)

 

Players In Limbo
Dear Football365,

Nothing quite says “strong dislike of the international break” quite like an in-depth look at my club’s squad, based on the “Players in Limbo” article.

Taking the squad listed on their Wikipedia page, Crystal Palace have 35 players listed as part of the first-team picture. This includes the five who are out on loan. Six of the 35 are graduates of the club’s Academy, and the other 29 were signed by 6 different managers.

Iain Dowie – 1 (Julian Speroni)
Dougie Freedman – 5
Ian Holloway – 5
Tony Pulis – 7
Neil Warnock – 3
Alan Pardew – 8

It’s remarkable how hit and miss some of these managers were in the transfer market, with numerous failures for Ian Holloway who have subsequently departed offset by moderate successes Dwight Gayle and Marouane Chamakh, and Jason Puncheon, one of the best attacking midfielders outside the top six. Adrian Mariappa is still at the club and Jack Hunt is out on loan again.

Tony Pulis signed 7 of the club’s players – including Scott Dann, our best defender, and likeable backup full-back Martin Kelly. However, two of his signings are now frozen out under Pardew (Joe Ledley and Brede Hangeland), and the others are a bit uninspiring (Fraizer Campbell, Wayne Hennessey and Chris Kettings, the fourth-choice keeper out on loan).

Neil Warnock’s signings legacy offers the starkest contrast – on the one hand, Paddy McCarthy (in the Championship) and Zeki Fryers (inexplicably in the Premier League); on the other James McArthur, a key part of the side.

Surprisingly, the predecessor to all of these, Dougie Freedman, has arguably contributed more through his signings to the current squad. Five of his signings are still at Selhurst Park: Joel Ward, Yannick Bolasie, Mile Jedinak, Damien Delaney and Kwesi Appiah – three of the starting XI, one who has just lost his place to the club’s record signing, and a prospect for the future. Even more incredibly, given the who’s who of mediocrity listed among the above, all five of these joined while the Glaziers were in the Championship.

Can any other team match the Glaziers for having signings by 6 different managers still in their first-team squad (according to Wikipedia)? I would guess that Arsenal cannot, but that Watford may be able to.

Regards,
The literary Ed Quoththeraven, CPFC the Glaziers, Notts

 

Striking Problem
‎How does a Top four club go from having a great strikeforce consisting of RVP, Chicharito, Rooney and Welbeck to having just Wayne ‘on the wane’ Rooney who can’t even hit the corner flag as the main striker (the less said the better) with the Big but not great and elbowing Belgian plus a young James Wilson when he returns from injury and an Unknown Quantity in 19 year old Tony Martial.

This strikeforce hardly screams decent. Do you seriously think for a second that that quartet are good enough to rival the top teams of Europe say Bayern Munich??

LVG was brought in to steady the sinking ship that is United. Did he get rid of the deadwood? I’d say YEAH. Has he left United short on the attacking front? Hell Yes.
Shayo Smith ( He’d equal Sir Bobby Charlton’s goalscoring record) ,Lagos

 

De Gea Explained In Full
I’m in the airport and I’m bored so I’ve spent the last fifteen minutes reading both club statements about David De Gea and using my flawless logic to figure out what happened.

1. Real Madrid spent the whole summer thinking all those Cadena Ser interviews were somehow going to form De Gea by osmosis on their training ground, before finally cracking on the price on the last day.

2. Everyone agreed everything. Keylor Navas was there as well but nobody was paying attention to him.

3. United spent eight hours doing..? Nothing I suppose. Being d*cks deliberately would be my guess. For some reason none of Real, Florentino, Jorge Mendes or De Gea thought to Skype them and get them to hurry up.

4. United returned the contracts at about half eight. Real took two hours to send it back. There’s never a lawyer around when you need one. Everyone ha

5. By ten to eleven United had student panic. They submitted everything knowing it would be too late for Real to respond. Everyone had forgotten Keylor Navas existed.

6. Real, hilariously, despite knowing they were out of time, still took half an hour to upload the documents. This is the opposite of student panic.

7. People remembered Keylor Navas was there and called him a taxi.

Anyway, in conclusion, it’s just a bunch of funny stuff that happened and nobody’s life has been ruined by it. I think reporters should keep asking about it so we get more entertainment.
Stephen O’S, MUFC

Berahino Thoughts
Sir,

Just a few random (and possibly useless) observations on the Berahino transfer.

1. Seeing the previous few weeks on a newspaper-headline search engine like Newsnow full to the brim with Spurs bloggers virtually expecting Saido Berahino to turn up for the price of a fiver and a packet of Starburst, the fire directed against West Brom by these selfsame bloggers possibly stems from their expectation that Albion would give up Berahino at the first time of asking, and the shooting down in flames of such expectations. Nothing stings more when smug assumptions are given a good, firm smack in the chops.

2. These bloggers trumpeted that Berahino would come to a ‘bigger club’. Fine, if you’re a bigger club and a club half your size says ‘£25m please’ pay it then. Don’t start at £15m and think that’ll be it.

3. Jeremy Peace has been slated for making financial negotations public. This may backfire on him if other clubs willing to deal with him are cagey about such details. That said, if Tottenham had just paid what Albion wanted in the first place, all this would’ve been avoided. Don’t muck about: pay.

4. Harry Redknapp. Ian Wright. Danny Murphy. Stop promoting other club’s players potential deals to Spurs while any transactions take place. Shut the f*ck up.

5. Top 4 clubs. If you’re thinking of buying Harry Kane in the future, start the bidding that Spurs bloggers had about Berahino, somewhere about £13m-£15m. Then watch the squealing start.

Thank you.
Ian James.

 

Ooo, Burn
Perez “it took them 8 hours to send the contracts back”. It took Perez more than 3 months to submit a bid. Who exactly doesn’t understand how the window works?
Matt (waited too long to make the morning mailbox) MUFC

Winners And Losers Table
A week or two ago Ali, Kensington suggested some sort of Winners and Losers running table, where we could compare the different winners and losers in your articles and set up a comparative league table

Based on my very unscientific approach, here are the results as at the first international break

1) Manchester City (1)
2) West Ham United (8)
3) Crystal Palace (2)
4) Liverpool (7)
5) Southampton (10)
6) Swansea City (4)
7) Bournemouth (11)
8) Manchester United (5)
9) Newcastle United (19)
10) Aston Villa (12)
11) Leicester City (3)
12) West Bromwich Albion (15)
13) Watford (17)
14) Stoke City (18)
15) Sunderland (20)
16) Everton (9)
17) Norwich City (14)
18) Arsenal (6)
19) Tottenham Hotspur (16)
20) Chelsea (13)
(Real-life positions in brackets)
*Bonus transfer window Winners and Losers also taken into account
There are many issues with the way I did it e.g. Monday games not included, players’/managers’ mentions in the column not taken into account here which would obviously affect the standings. However I thought I would start with a rough one and really get into it only if people showed any interest, otherwise the details would just bore everyone on a Friday.
Louie (Guess everyone thinks I’m mad now), East London