Six reasons the Alexander Isak leg break injury is actually ‘hilarious’

Alexander Isak’s injury has prompted mirth from one Mailboxer, while we have some Aston Villa gloating. And they deserve it.

Look back on a mad old 2025 and send your views to theeditor@football365.com

Why Alexander Isak’s injury is actually pretty funny

Saw some mope down in the comments trying to get people to say they found Isak’s injury funny, in his head I think he believed he sounded like Harry Hamlin scoring a slam dunk case closer in front of the District Attorney (ask your Dad), but he just sounded like a busy t**t, to me at least.

Anywho, it got me thinking, the whole “nobody wants to see a player injured” trope. Come on people, let’s be real, non-fatal/non-career threatening injuries are often funny, none more so this season than Alexander Isak (yes, I know it’s a break, but it ain’t Djibril Cisse, which absolutely was NOT funny before you start bellyaching – I’m not a monster).

I think it’s absolutely hilarious, and here’s why:

1) Isak’s summer of acting like a spoilt child being noted and corrected by good old karma (maybe he was just trying to fit in ahead of time, currying favour with the star player, who is also a pathetic, self-centred, and latterly ineffective whiner).

2) The fact that it means toddler 2 now probably won’t be allowed to leave, which means a full on, multifaceted arse ache for Slot until the summer.

3) Toddler 2 is not available for selection currently.

4) This Means More FC are £125m lighter for zero advantage (this was also true when he was fit mind you, which just adds to the mirth).

5) The pearl clutching from the usual kopite blowhards BTL (top tip: to save time, just dust off and re-use those VVD howls of outrage comments from the Pickford incident).

6) Most importantly of all, he’s filthy rich, and he will heal.

In other news, anyone else thinks Fernandes getting an injury just after his own whining incident is a coincidence? Me either. January could be interesting. If it’s true Bayern want him, I don’t blame him tbf.

Merry Christmas everyone!*
RHT/TS x
(* Apart from Klopp Legend, or whatever he’s calling himself these days, hope Rudolph takes a dump in his cornflakes)

Isak a luxury buy?

Can someone at F365 please explain, in a non-typically snarky way, why Isak is a luxury buy for Liverpool because they had Ekitike but for Semenyo “there is more than enough football to justify joining the Cityzens”, despite having Foden, Doku, Cherki, Savinho, Marmoush and even Oscar Bobb. Do you think Ekitike can and should play 60 games a season? Or do you think Liverpool play in fewer competitions than Man City?
AK

More Aston Villa gloating

I watched the Villa-Utd game on TV – or home team vs MANCHESTER UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB, as the commentary team on 6ky would have it, obviously – and a couple of things stood out.

Firstly: give It a rest about the Utd bare bones FC narrative. 5 of their players who started cost more than Villa’s record signing, and a 6th came off the bench. 3 more are fully fit and on loan elsewhere, plus another 2 if you go by market value rather than sale prices.

Rogers and McGinn – the AVFC folk band – were the best players on the pitch, and cost 10m between them. Or 20% of a Wan-Bissaka, in Utd language. If Utd don’t have a big enough or good enough squad to cope with*anything* the sport can throw at them, after all the rule changes they’ve forced on English football in 40 years, and all the money they’ve spent in that time, well: that’s on them. And given that F365 were not slow to tell Villa fans to shut up moaning about PSR/SCR, I don’t expect any shrift (xShrift) at all to be given to this woe is us Man Yoo bollocks, thanks very much. Never mind you coming up with it in the first place.

And secondly: I see Paul Merson is on the unsustainable Villa bandwagon now. Always a good sign that a perspective is… well. Worth revisiting, shall we say? Or do we need to wait until some more grand scions of wrongness have declared as well? Owen Jones? Rory Smith? Kirstie Allsopp?

Oh, and if Dave Tickner could tell us again about those Morgan Rogers levels, that would be smashing, thanks very much.
Neil Raines

READ: 16 Conclusions from Aston Villa 2-1 Man United: Rogers, Amorim, title deeds and rocking-horse sh*t

…Been away for 5 weeks now following The Ashes (quiet in the back!). Villa have won all 8 games since I left England. I have to stay out here until late May, don’t I?
Gary AVFC, (somewhere between Adelaide and Melbourne).

Rio loved the ‘lazy as f***’ defender

Remember that video when Ferdinand gatecrashed the Yoro unveiling and made it about him but at the same time said he’ll be the best defender in the world.

Rio…
Rio…
Come out, come out wherever you are Mr man of the people and say it now.

Morgan Rogers though, he’s gone up a level lately and it’s great to see.

UTFV.
Iain, Worcestershire

Shielding the ball or shielding the referee

We were once again subjected to PGMOL Newspeak. The PGMOL seem to find ways to excuse a referee or VAR decision, and over time, these decisions are often contrary. There is no consistency. Much like the way someone can find a quote in the Bible to support any decision (and ‘eye for an eye’, ‘turn the other cheek’).

“The referee’s call…was checked and…deemed to be side-to-side in a shielding action…” What the actual eff? I would imagine you actually have to have the ball to shield it. Knocking over the player who is trying to ’shield’ it would seem to be the contrary. They’re just making up shit now. (And I am not a Newcastle supporter.)

Part of the problem, I believe, is that referees are deliberately not making calls on the basis that VAR is available to check it. While PGMOL has instructed VAR not to overturn a decision unless it is absolutely and categorically wrong. So now we have the perfect circular situation that permits the ‘boy’s club’, that is the PGMOL, to back itself up.

In the Newcastle game, why wasn’t the referee at least asked to check the monitor so he could make the call? You can imagine that in a game where it is hard to see everything in real time, a referee might very well want a second look. But no, they came up with some post-game gobbledygook to explain it away.

Funny how in European competitions (Club or National) non-English referees seem to be far more adult about the role and are quite often asked to view the monitor and, on several occasions, after viewing, have kept to their original decision.

The idea of PGMOL’s VAR rotation is intended to promote fairness and reduce bias; however, the biggest bias is VAR referees protecting on-field referees, a situation they themselves might be in at some point. An analogy might be having a production line where the Quality Assurance team rotates with those working the line. It’s why Quality Assurance is a separate team reporting to an individual manager. Because they know there would be a chance of bias. Just having separate teams removes any question others may have.

Yet here we have a single organization making up the rules as they go along, protecting one another to the detriment of the game.

The big question is, who can make the call that this needs to be addressed? It’s not VAR per se, that is the issue; it’s the manner in which the PGMOL is attempting to manage it. Knowing the rules (and even then, one wonders) doesn’t mean being a ref makes you good at other things. Any time we hear the PGMOL talk, it’s clear they are not gifted. So why is there an assumption that they would be good at developing processes or understanding why others may see what they do as biased or poorly implemented?
Paul McDevitt

Fanmail for Stewie

So now Emery is the Messiah whereas when he was at Arsenal, he was getting sooo many things wrong, oh and we have pathetic nicknames for players. I know that by writing in I am feeding the beast, but please 365, enough really is enough, he has nothing new apart from different nicknames.
Andrew Goonerabroad Brown

…I’ve got a proposition. It’s pretty bold but I don’t think I’m alone, so hear me out – a moratorium on publishing mails by Stewie Griffin. I think, by now, we get the schtick, and there’s only so many times I can read a grown man throw around “hilarious” nicknames like ‘the Viking clogger’ and ‘the Basque Brendan Rogers’ without wanting to tear my eyes out. His mails are the written equivalent of one of those Youtube gonks who scream into their camera every time their team doesn’t win.

Let’s move into 2026 without his nonsense. Who’s with me?
Ben, not an Arsenal fan so not being precious