Will Arsenal fans stop ‘whinging’ about Newcastle goal now? Liverpool fan’s Klopp theory rejected

The Mailbox hopes Arsenal fans might stop “whinging” about a Newcastle goal from earlier in the season after their win over Crystal Palace on Saturday. And everyone responds to Dave, LFCs mail…

Get your views in to theeditor@football365.com…

Will Arsenal fans stop whinging now?
Considering var allowed both arsenal’s first half goals to stand, despite clear fouls, maybe they’ll stop whinging about the Newcastle goal, doubt it though.
Anthony, Dublin

Hilarious
Hello Mailbox,

Just want to thank the editor for printing Dave, LFCs mail this morning. I was already in a good mood because it’s Friday, but this mail had me rolling around the office in tears laughing.

From Trent running games from wherever he wants to Liverpool to Liverpool winning the PL and CL this year and next and then the “bomb squad”  hahahaha. Absolutely hilarious.

Get Dave up on a stage quick. John Bishop eat your heart out.
Weldoninhio, BAC

Dave LFC explicitly asked what I have to say now about his views on Trent’s hybrid role, so here we go:

1. What the f**k is up with the unwarranted snark about me signing off with a location? (Should I have called him “Dave (yes we know you support LFC so do lots of people)”?)

2. Dave seems to be confused and conflating the 2021/22 + 2022/23 seasons into a single season. LFC did not spend any time in 21/22 “limping along outside the top 4”, but did win the FA Cup + League Cup + reached the CL final + finish on 92 points. Dave still claimed in April 2023 that the 2-2 draw against Arsenal was the first time he had been excited about LFC in 2 years. I’m not sure what’s going on with the logic here, but it is very hard to follow.

3. If Dave thinks LFC can win the Champions League this year, he may be in for a disappointment. A lack of “insight, awareness or value” indeed.

4. RE: Trent’s hybrid role, I am not one of the people who ever suggested that Trent belonged as a traditional midfield player. I didn’t express any skepticism or doubt about the hybrid role. I just pointed out that a single game against Arsenal (ending 2-2) was not a reason to describe Trent as “near unmarkable as a creative force” and highlighted that novel tactics often take a while before opposition managers suss them out, at which point they become blunt. This hasn’t happened yet. But we are only 20 games in to a 38 game season. I’m not sure the time has come for Dave to be saying “I told you so”.

5. I didn’t mention this in my previous reply, but I don’t know why Dave (+ many others) are acting like “defender playing in midfield when in-possession, returning to defense when out-of-possession” is a revolutionary concept from Klopp created bespoke for Trent. Isn’t this the kind of thing Guardiola has been doing for 15+ years at this point? It has been done to various extents and degrees before with various teams and players, both Guardiola’s + others. There are also notable examples of using players supposedly out of position like Kimmich, Lahm, Mascherano, Zinchenko, Mascherano and others. These cases are each different and are not perfect like-for-like parallels to Trent, but the general concept of using players in different positions + having different roles when in/out of possession is not new.

6. I can’t help but feel that it’s relevant that since Dave’s previous mail, LFC have literally replaced the entire midfield. I’m not saying Trent’s hybrid role would have failed if LFC went into this season with Henderson Fabinho and Keita, but…
Oliver Dziggel, Location Undisclosed

There is so much to bite at with regards to Dave LFC’s (ok Dave, we get it, you support Liverpool. Relax, so do lots of other people) I honestly don’t know where to begin.

The central thesis of your letter, essentially claiming you’re so much smarter that anyone else in football because you can see things others can’t regarding Klopp, was actually shared on the (rather excellent) Football Weekly podcast, I think by Johnathan Fudugba – in how Klopp is using his substitutes, and building himself a squad of 16 or so core players, where he is rotating more, using the five substitutes to greater effect in order to keep players fresher and his tempo higher. Furthermore, the same podcast and pretty much the entire Anglo-centric footballing world spoke ad-nauseum about TAA and his hybrid role, and how it will (or won’t) benefit him personally, Liverpool and England. To egocentrically claim you are the first one to see this, and the only one to still see it despite all of these (unsourced) “experienced” football people asking when Klopp will turn TAA into a proper midfielder. Does that even happen anymore?

Furthermore, since that Arsenal game, this “radical tactical shift” that you spotted above all else, was actually spoken about in comparison to the previous “radical tactical shift” which was carried out with John Stones. Guardiola popularised the “inverted fullback” and essentially, quite famously last season, created a hybrid midfield role for John Stones, which Klopp (amongst others) have tried to mimic to varying degrees of success. Sure, different clubs, systems, players and outcomes, they’re all different, until they’re all not. To really claim you have your head above the idiotic footballing clouds and can see what is really happening where others are too stupid to is ironically a walking example of the “general lack of intelligence of the average football man and the intense tribalism which surrounds our game”

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And sure, maybe you were happy with your (not original) opinion, and it hurt to have someone disagree (pretty sure everyone in football disagrees about everything, who cares am I right?), but to share Oliver’s letter, and not your own, from over 6 months ago in an effort to zing him and everyone else just reads as spiteful nonsense. You don’t share your original opinion, so we have to take your word on what you said originally, and Oliver’s reply letter is just taken out of context which never gives a full picture. Plus, you don’t share any other evidence of the claims you make of all the footballing idiots clambering round saying everything you’ve claimed in your mail today, about TAA being a proper midfielder and Klopp not getting enough credit? Like, sure make claims, but what’s the point of only picking and choosing what you yourself source, it really just undermines your entire point. Besides, everything you have claimed has already been said (on Football Weekly to name one source) that you’re just parroting it here as your own ideas.

And finally, this wonderful paragraph;

“And yes I was and always will be more excited about the possibility of Liverpool winning the premier league and champions league (which we now look like we can do this year and next) more than the FA cup and league cup while limping along outside the top 4 like we did most of that year, that is until the “radical change in tactics I had seen” had their effect”

The above was taken from your mail, in response to Oliver taking umbridge with an original point in your mail from April that this moment (the TAA hybrid role) was the most excited you’d been about this team under Klopp in two years. You are aware right, that less than a year before, Liverpool had won the League Cup, and were still in the race for a quadruple, including the possibility of winning the Champions League and Premier League – and you weren’t excited? To quote my Swiss-living brethren, “What. A. Ridiculous. Thing. To. Say”.
Neill, Bray, Wicklow, Ireland, Europe, Earth, the Solar System, etc.

Dave LFC’s mailbox missive is why I love Liverpool and its fans.

We understand football like no other fanbase does. We are not known as the ‘most knowledgeable fanbase’ in football for no reason. As a fanbase, it is clear to me that we appreciate tactical nuance much better than most of the football world, including fans and managers of other clubs like Arsenal.

One day they will get it, but that day is not today, and by then the football world will have passed them by.

It’s only the Liverpool fanbase that could have appreciated Jurgen’s (or Jurgie) masterful playing of the violin. Any other fanbase would have been ignorant of his brilliance, they can’t see past how he looks like a tramp with too-white teeth.

YNWA fellow reds, to glory we march …
J Peter, LFC Red, Macedonia

Hand shake across London 
Hey Dave. It’s par for the course that a typically narcissistic and lack of self-awareness Spurs fan would think that a genuine WH ‘fan’s view’ letter about David Moyes, our terrible style of play, what brilliant players we have, the danger of being pulled into a “be careful what you wish for” situation and commenting that fans who don’t watch us much should take our league position with a huge pinch of salt, must be a letter which is actually mainly about Spurs.

It wasn’t. The reason I mentioned Spurs is threefold. 1. Sure, Spurs are probably our biggest rival over the past 20 years and we absolutely love the fact that, for all the bluster and prancing about from you guys, you are still a couple of decades away from your last trophy, whereas we won a bona fide major trophy this year (acknowledged by this site and every other publication, there is no argument even from my Spurs friends). And indeed from you Sir I think when you said “only the bitterest of Spurs fans could begrudge West Ham fans their celebrations tonight,”

2. Given the lack of WHU writers or contributors on this site (not F365’s fault, as they’ve told me before, they can only print what they receive. On that note, please everyone, i for one would LOVE to hear about your team wherever they are (unless they are United or Liverpool…… enough already ffs,  please). The more hard core, impassioned, football loving, devoted letter the better. They would all be gold compared to the usual Utd/Pool crisis/not crisis drivel’.

3. Dave, I don’t know your background, and I think you are a good writer. I wish you all the best, particularly if you will be writing regularly for this site which has been by Home Screen for over 20 years. But by way of genuine constructive criticism, the rabid Spurs bias is obvious within the first couple of sentences of all of your writing. In criticizing and questioning my own team off the back of your article on WH mood rankings, it was therefore something I wanted to specifically call you out on.

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Your response was to say that the whole purpose of me writing in about Moyes-Out was because of Spurs. Err, get over yourself Spuds fans, not everything is about you.

The comment that “West Ham cringe-crew who now proudly shout ‘Champions of Europe, you’ll never sing that’ at every game, including at City 🥴”

should be too lazy and below you mate. For “cringe crew” read “massive numbers of loyal fans who travel in extremely big numbers everywhere, who have been starved of a trophy for 40 years, celebrating that trophy as much as possible for the next year” (and longer I’m sure). As for “even doing it at city” comment, you are aware of irony and sense of humor right? Almost every club‘s fans (honestly, apart from Spurs fans it seems) has at its surface a very large dose of self deprecation. Not Spurs. It’s bizarre. Anyhow, yes, years since last trophy = zero. Pretend you’re not gutted, you just look silly. Particularly if you are supposed to be a football writer.

I only have the best of wishes for your future career, and if you can make this site even better than it already is I will follow your writing religiously Sir. But tone down the ‘one note‘ articles. “ Ange Postecoglou has achieved some ludicrous things at Spurs already….” “There is a very real sense of something quite special and serendipitous coming together here”. Calm down. Even my Spurs season ticket holder mates said they cringed when they read that very long piece on Spuds.

Anyhow, all the best, no hard feelings whatsoever, good luck to you Sir. And more importantly, and as I originally trying to say, “MOYES OUT”!
Mike WHU