Mails: Why it makes sense to sell Sanchez…

Ian Watson

Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com. Don’t pretend you have anything better to do on a sunny Bank Holiday…

Sell Sanchez
I want to make a case for why Arsenal should sell Sanchez. The whole rationale behind this theory is based on the following premise which I hope readers of the mailbox can accept: “Even if Arsenal keep Sanchez this summer, he will leave if they fail to qualify for the champions league next season”. I think that’s a fair statement to make given his desire to compete at the highest level. Now, if we can agree on that premise, let me layout why it makes sense to offload him as soon as possible.

A couple of weeks after the FA cup final, Sanchez will be heading to Russia to play for Chile at the Confederations Cup. Knowing Sanchez, we can be sure that he’ll run around like a mad man, put his body on the line and do everything humanly possible to get Chile deep into the tournament. This would be the 4th summer in a row that he’s had no break whatsoever, having played in the 2014 World Cup, 2015 Copa America and 2016 Copa Centario. When we add the grueling demands of long Premier League seasons and the burden of being your club’s main man, I think by the end of the tournament in Russia, Sanchez might be broken physically and mentally. All this points to a long injury layoff at some point or a sluggish start to next season at the very least. Despite his boyish looks and Scottish Terrier like enthusiasm, we must remember that he turns 29 this year and the constant football will take a toll on his body eventually (my suspicion is that it will happen sooner rather than later). Whether its a sharp drop in form or an injury, this will have a huge impact on Arsenal’s season given his importance to Arsenal as well as their uphill task of attracting top talent this summer. Arsenal will then struggle to compete with the other big boys who will surely have far superior squads next season, making Champions League qualification highly improbable. Then Sanchez will surely leave next summer as I stated in my premise.

Even if I’m wrong about the sequence of events this season, there’s still the chance that it might happen next season after he plays a pivotal role in the World Cup (5 years without a break!!) So basically I think that it would be in Arsenal’s interest to sell him this summer and make 50-65 million quid off the sale. I really hope my predictions will not come to fruition since I love watching him play, but I do feel like a precipice is just around the corner. I hope I don’t sound like Mr. Weird Fitness Egg.
Gautham (Indianapolis)

 

Mourinho out
I’ve read a lot of the mails regarding Spurs’ season vs United’s season and honestly, I just don’t get it. How on earth any United fan is happy with the current state of affairs is beyond me.

I have not been able to watch a complete United game since our October run of four consecutive 1-1 draws (excluding the last weekend of the Premier League). In my opinion, that was the last time the team made any attempt to play an attacking brand of football.

People talk about how football is about winning things- and they’re right- it isn’t about winning at all costs. Wenger and Guardiola are the other end of the spectrum where people believe in winning things the right way at all costs. As a fan, I see nothing wrong with shutting up shop in the final when you’re a goal up- regardless of the opposition. The problem is that I feel the journey should be a lot more enjoyable than he makes it.

But Mourinho’s approach of shutting up shop against teams of Sunderland’s and Rostov’s calibre is why he cant last longer than three seasons at any club. He shut up shop against Hull in the second leg with a two goal lead for crying out loud. He kills the joy of a game that is supposed to be an escape from the boring and the mundane, and his players soon realise that there’s more to life than winning trophies by wasting time and clutching your face at the slightest provocation.

The only time I’ve genuinely felt joy while watching United recently is when Harrop scored, and even that was tempered by the realisation that Mourinho will use this match to make sure that each of those kids becomes part of a loan army that will rival Chelsea’s. United will not, in all probability, be where any of those kids play regularly. And those moves will be sealed before we ever find out if they have what it takes to cut it at the club.

As a fan, he’s already lost me. I will celebrate if they win a trophy next season, but it’ll be nothing compared to the party I have when he finally leaves.
Aditya, MUFC

 

Love for Levy
Simple input: since ENIC, Lewis and Levy took charge, we’ve grown into a powerhouse of English football.

Look around the English leagues. See any familiar names? Portsmouth, Leeds, Blackburn, West Ham, Aston Villa, Newcastle. All of these teams either collapsed in the search to rise above and breach the traditional top 4, or have new ambitions of simple survival in the Premier League. They all bit off more than they could chew. They wanted success and wanted it immediately.

Levy mostly, and Lewis, were and are smarter than this. As the saying goes for the Philadelphia 76ers, “Trust the Process.” Tottenham could very well have been one of the aforementioned teams had Daniel Levy not had the patience to build this club up with a meticulous process. Along the way, he has had many learning curves regarding management, players, the transfer market, and the game of football itself. Today, this has culminated in the current Tottenham team.

This is all the work of Daniel Levy. The man deserves the utmost credit. A world class training facility. A world class stadium on the way. Champions League football has become a necessity rather than a pipe dream. Title challenges are no longer farfetched. The world class names associated to the club. The current family playing week in week out at the club. The father figure guiding his sons. What Tottenham has accomplished to now has not needed a break in wage structure. The current influx of money from the UCL, EPL, sponsorship, the NFL, and the like will help raise the wage structure. But the idea it should be broken to accomodate someone who has no love for the club? No. Trust the Process. It’s worked to now.

Thank you Daniel Levy
Matt

 

Tottenham won’t come cheap
Where to start with Robert Brain’s cunning plan to sell the club to a benevolent multi billionaire?

Spurs are valued north of £1 billion according to the most recent Forbes list. And that’s with the debt they’re taking on to build the stadium (exact amounts haven’t been released, but Levy mentioned a £350 million credit arrangement last year, and the numbers floating around on the stadium price indicate it will end up being a good deal more than that).

So that’s a (rough) estimate of £1.5 billion to get in the door, clear the debt and start “bankrolling” success. For comparison, Abramovic paid next to nothing for Chelsea, and last I checked he’s “loaned” the club around £1 billion over the last 15 years.

Let’s face it, City and Chelsea hit the jackpot and were available for cheap at the right time. Any sale of spurs would be far more likely to go down the United route than a fairy godmother giving the club hundreds of millions on an whim.

Plus, organic growth is better to watch. If you have hundreds of millions to spend every window, you tend not to take punts on league two players, or give young academy strikers time to develop.

Yeah, doubling everyone’s salary would be nice, but Levy does seem to know what he’s doing these days.
Tom, THFC

 

…I’m sure I won’t be the only one to point out to Robert Braine that Spurs already have a cash rich owner. I mean, if Joe Lewis, the 6th richest man in Britain and 248th IN THE WORLD, is not “cash rich” the god help us all. Spurs have got to the point where they are because they are an extremely well run club. They have a management structure that is consistent and does not bend to player/agent power for obscene wages. It was reported last summer that Eriksen was demanding to go from £32k a week(!) To £150k a week. He eventually signed a new deal worth £80k a week, and both he and his agent stated that the original reports were wrong and that money was not a massive issue to Eriksen. Most other clubs with “cash rich” owners would be looking to bring a player like Eriksen, one integral to the team, into line with the highest earner at the club. Spurs didn’t, and they got the man they signed for only £11.5m in the first place to sign a new contract for £80k a week. To put that in to context, that’s the same as Bafetimbi Gomes is rumoured to be on at my club Swansea.

They almost always get excellent deals when selling players – why? Because they have a bloody cash rich owner which means they are under no pressure to sell and can demand top whack for their (desirable) players. They sometimes get it wrong with their signings and, generally, they don’t tend to overpay for a player (though there are some noticeable exceptions).

So what you really want is an owner like Man City’s, a club run like someone playing Football Manager with a cheat for unlimited budget. A rich man’s play thing. Except, you already are a rich man’s play thing. The difference is that he looks after his toys, is careful with them and makes sure they last. He’s probably one of those guys who bought a shed load of Star Wars toys back in the 70’s/80’s and kept them all in the packaging.

Finally, as someone who’s club has been sold of under the guise of investment and ‘taking the club to the next level’ I’ll just add – be careful what you wish for.

The grass is not always greener on the other side.
James D, South Wales

 

Mark of respect
My last mail wasn’t included in your Mailbox and it may well have been because I chose to mention three particular items, any of which you may not have liked. Fair enough!

But I’m going to persist with one of my three central thoughts until you realise exactly what I’m saying and why it’s so important. And it’s simply this; in the Europa League final, just days after the murder of all those children in central Manchester, why didn’t all, and I truly mean all, the United players wear black armbands? The city of Manchester (my home town) was in mourning and the club and the players surely knew how important this game was for the city. So why didn’t the players wear black bands on their arms? Why didn’t Jose? For that matter, why didn’t Sir Alex/

From what I could see, there was only the likes of Smalling and Carrick that were visibly seen to be wearing the usual sign of respect.

So what on Earth were local lads Rashford and Lingard thinking? I noted that neither had the traditional armbands yet both were ‘yahooing’ it up after the game

Please, fellas, a bit of respect if you don’t mind.

Jonesey Melbourne

MC: Every player who started began the game with a black armband. Some may have been removed when jerseys were changed at half-time.

 

A positive view
After seeing the back and forth on whose had a good season. I’ve come up with a controversial view. More than 1 team can have a good season.

Chelsea – won the league, good season
Tottenham- highest premier league place and points, good season
Man City – higher place than last year with a new manager, good season
Liverpool- qualified for champions league, good season
Man Utd – won a European cup, good season
Leicester- stayed up, run in Europe, good season
Burnley – stayed up, good season
Sunderland- no more David moyes, good seasons.

You can even argue if arsenal win the fa cup they had a good season.

As a spurs fan, if you asked me if I wished they won something, I would obviously say yes. But after the last 25 years I wouldn’t have swapped this season for the world.

As always beauty is within the eye of the beholder.
Paulo

 

Spurs perspective
I’m sure Kirit of NW London didn’t mean for it to sound this way, but despite having not seen the Dutch masters, I can still say with confidence that the current Spurs XI are not on the same level as the Netherlands team of 1974-78.

There’s a difference between being legendary despite not winning (see also; Brazil ’82 and Hungary ’54) and being second best by a margin in a pretty average title race.
Jonny, MUFC.

 

…Kevin from Dublin is glad United didn’t go for Pochettino and wonders whether he ,or Spurs, have “the mentality”.

We do, Kevin, we do. What we don’t have is hundreds of millions of pounds to spend on transfers and wages season after season.

Funny you chose to ignore that but I reckon Poch would do alright with a regular blank cheque and a squad the size of a small town.

On a related note, those Mailboxers who think the only thing in football to get excited about is silverware have no business watching the game.
Rob Davies, THFC

 

European Super League
Mark, Oxford offers a very convoluted way a 40(!) club European Super League would work through a 47(!) game season. The slight error Mike has made here is to assume the operation of the ESL would be based on sporting achievement. I have seen other proposed models with ten teams in four divisions with promotion between them. There is no way on earth the powers that be would allow the make up of the ESL to be decided by anything as arbitrary or egalitarian as promotion and relegation.

The new Champions League settlement (from 2018/19) will see the top four clubs from the four top-ranked leagues qualify automatically for the group stage. This is the marker of how the ESL will/ would work. It would be something like 32 clubs by invite only based on revenue generation. Clubs would then play either every team once, or be split by region into ‘conferences’ as in the NFL (you would then play your conference rivals home and away (to maintain traditional rivalries (el Classico etc) and other clubs just once). The conference system make sense because that gives you your playoffs.

However, the fundamental point is there would be no promotion and relegation. ESL clubs would be ESL clubs until they fall below a certain revenue generation point or a new market arrives. Licenses for the ESL would be on a franchise system. There would be something like 6 English Clubs, 6 Spanish, 5 Italian, 5 German, 2 French, 2 Portuguese, 2 Russian, 1 Dutch, 1 Turkish, 1 Ukrainian and 1 Belgian. They would leave their domestic leagues and hoover up the talent as ‘superclubs’. What remains would continue (I quite like the idea of the ESL clubs still playing in domestic cups) and fans would still watch.

While the cash on offer would be hard to turn down I would wonder if clubs would actually want to go for it in the end. The fact is if you are big fish in a local pond you get to win lots of things. If you get 32 massive fish involved, some of them have to be mid-table. Some of them have to be near the bottom. Some of them will spend week in, week out getting hammered. The Americans counter this through the draft system but European football would be a lot less controllable. I could see fans drifting away pretty quickly.
Micki Attridge (if you want to see truly convoluted check out the UEFA Nations League)

 

…I hear talk fairly frequently about the inevitability of a Euro Super League and I have 2 (somewhat contradictory) thoughts on the matter.

1. If such a thing exists there can be no promotion/relegation, as you could over time end up with loads of English or Spanish (or whoever) teams in there as the balance of who goes up and down will never likely be 1:1 for each league. Add to this if one English team goes up and 2 go down the domestic league will then be wonky numbers-wise which will have to ripple down through all the leagues, so the Champo can only promote two this year because the Euro league kicked out more than it let in from the Prem – unworkable. It would have to have a fixed invited guestlist which would then mean that the end of season excitement would be only about who wins. No relegation, no qualifying for Europe, sounds a bit dull. I suppose you could contrive a rugby style top 4 playoff thing but that’s a load of rubbish really, as we all know.

2. There will never be a European Super League. The big clubs of Europe float it from time to time as a bargaining chip to ensure a better deal in TV negotiations or whatever (just look at how unbalanced the Spanish TV pot is distributed) but would never really want to break away from the dual cash cows they current milk. Why would Man U, or PSG (for example) want to run the risk of being the 11th best European team when they will almost always be there or thereabouts in a domestic league with some midweek fun in Europe. Arsenal can cope with being whipped in Europe on a regular basis because they win more often than not in the Prem, but they’d haemorrhage fans and sponsors if they are propping up a big Euro league every year, the West Brom of Europe if you will.

For me I think point 2 outranks point 1 but the whole logistics thing was being discussed today so I thought I’d weigh in with a little practicality.
Derek from Dundalk

 

Reading reading
Have to say, I completely agree with Paul (We’ll always have the Simod Cup) Frankfurt, from Friday’s earlier Mailbox.

I totally understand that Winty’s love of Hudderfield, and therefore the likelihood that they will receive more attention on F365, but Reading have barely been mentioned at all in any article regarding the Play Offs. I think Jaap Stam’s lot managed one paragraph in a whole article covering the Championship Play-Off final.

Yes, Reading aren’t a fashionable club, and no, we don’t play the most expansive football and we are deeply flawed at times (defensive horror shows are never far away), but surely the unpredictability of this side is a loveable facet for the neutral? That we can be both parts brilliant and terrible in equal measure? F365 have long preached the beauty in such idiosycnracies.

Whatever happens on Monday, the journey has been a pleasant and entertaining surprise – I genuinely had beating relegation as our goal for the season – and the progress deserves the column inches as well.
Alex, Reading.

 

Spurs/United truce
Can you please stop printing emails about whether United or Spurs have had a better season (possibly starting with this one?) What started out as a vaguely interesting question degenerated into slanging match of farcical arguments and fanciful statements.

I would particularly like to see the end of statements that:

-Compare Spurs to one of the iconic teams/styles of all time. Only the Barcelona/Spain team at the beginning of this decade deserves that honour.

-Make things up (so this is Mourinho’s worst season ever? What about when he tried to get Chelsea relegated?!)

Can all United and Spurs fan please stop dick swinging and just admit that United fans wish United played like Spurs and that Spurs fans wished they could win more trophies like United?

Anyway, shouldn’t we all be trolling Arsenal?
Ashley (6th in the league to pot 2 in the Champions League in 90 minutes) Metcalfe

 

Spurs should’ve won the Europa League
Remember a few seasons ago every pundit whining that no English clubs were taking the europa league seriously? Wasn’t it nice that Mou recognised it’s opportunity (yes not completely unforced) and went out to win it. Put all of his hystrionics to one side, but surely the momentum spurs had they should of won it. Lesson to everyone – if you have the opportunity to win something, win it. Just felt I’d share that before the wenger outs after the cup final.
Louis (mufc are back! Not yet but soon)

 

Horror Storey
Really getting tired of Daniel Storey and his high horse regarding Arsenal and HIS expectations for them. Sometimes the fans just love tuning in to watch our beloved gunners play and then quickly get into f365 to hear what the lads are saying about the week’s action. However, Storey’s insufferable anti-Wenger and anti-Arsenal 1-dimensional punditry is starting to get on my nerves. Like neither of Liverpool, United, City, Tottenham and Chelsea didn’t miss champions league in the last 20 years (Hint: of course they did Storey). Why don’t you find somebody else to take cheap shots on? Or are the easy targets the bread and butter for ‘acclaimed’ football writers nowadays?

Best,
Not a Storey fan, Exeter

 

Jose’s worst season. Since last season
Hold on Vernon. “Jose has just had probably his worst season maybe ever and still won things”. Have you somehow forgotten 2015/16? (I wish I could.)
Keith