North London title race? An Arsenal fan is impressed by Spurs, Sugar Daddy solutions and more…

An Arsenal fan thinks only Man City are stopping a north London title race this season. Plus, Sugar Daddy solutions, VAR, Lampard vs Gerrard and more…

Get your views in to theeditor@football365.com…

An Arsenal fan’s thoughts on Tottenham
Hi F365 Team,

Just woke up after taking a brief tactical nap while watching the Spurs – Everton game.

Putting aside their style of play, you have to hand it to Tottenham and Conte. At the current rate, they’re on course to hit 87 points this season. Yes, we’re only 25% through the season. Yes, some might look at the standard of their opponents to dates. And yes, there’s this little known international tournament sometime this November.

But something is brewing.

They have a front 3 that can change the game at any moment, and are perfectly capable of both playing on the break against top teams while also breaking down the stubborn teams that sit deep. Their defence is solid, even with their ability to do a Spurs. Their manager is first class. Their stadium is being touted to Google.

They’re… decent? Probably the strongest team they’ve for a generation.

If it wasn’t for Man City being, well, Man City, we’d be talking about a North London title race.

I still think Arsenal are on track to bring back Sir Totteringham’s day this year, but people (especially pundits) shouldn’t underplay Tottenham’s form this year.

Warm regards,
Pany Koizi (An Arsenal who thinks the future is bright for North London)

Richarl-and-son
Tottenham are better without Richarlison? I think this is a half-truth. Tottenham are better in a 532. Or in a 523 with Kulusevski.

The Son-Kane-Richarlison triad just isn’t working as a cohesive unit. The constant temptation for the team (and Harry Kane) is to play ball after ball behind the opposition defence for Richy or Son to run onto, which is a sure-fire way for lots of turnovers and for attacks to fizzle out.  The result is that Spurs have to hold possession in our defensive/middle thirds which results in the less than exciting conservative Conte-ball with patient patterns of play.

Kulusevski gives width and a glue-like ability to hold onto the ball in tight spaces. A three-man midfield allows for more control further up the pitch and weirdly a more effective press (there’s less fear of the opposition being able to beat the press and then quickly exploit a light midfield).

Richy and Son are too similar when playing either side of Kane and opposition defences often know what’s coming – there’s no chaos – just copy and paste attacks.

Spurs aren’t better without Richarlison, they’re better when Richarlison and Son aren’t on the same pitch.
David, Battersea

Tony Conte
I fucking love the enthusiasm from Conte whenever we score. The way he flung an arm around Ryan Mason and pulled him was just lovely.

Wait a minute…he’s bringing Sanchez on to see the game out! No, Antonio!! Have you learned nothing?!
Jon (still love him), Lincoln

VAR
Where is VAR on Kane throwing himself to the ground to “win” a penalty?  Oh, wait…we all know the answer to that one.
TX Bill, EFC

Enough with the VAR already!
I thought I’d get my 2 cents in before the VAR-bashing kicks up again over the weekend.

The problem is not VAR itself. The technoclogy is relatively straightforward and uncomplicated (the goalline techncology is actually far more sophisticated). The problem is the same human beings who were making the wrong or inconsistent decisions before VAR are now running VAR. Is there any surprise we find ourselves no better off?

What needs to change is the implementation. Each match is still being viewed in isolation so a decision is given in one match and not given in another match or the next week. What needs to happen is that all matches are fed into a central hub and a range of experts (not just referees, perhaps ex-players, trainers, etc.) review each VAR against a database of prior decisions. Callling up such information could be achieved must faster than any P.C. Plod wandering over to the sidelines and watching replay after replay. If you think about it, it’s pretty much already being done now, with TV studios playing the incident over and over agan with opinions from the commentators and/or pundits.

What it will mean however is that referees would have to give up some control on decision making so such an idea will be fought tooth and nails.

Does someone have a better idea to fix it?
Adidasmufc (next week – a better way to decide results than extra-time and penalties!)

Solution to the Sugar Daddy Problem
A lot has been said about whether clubs technically breaks rules with their financial structure.

Some people argue it’s unfair. Is it really? When United ran around buying the best players in the 90s with their unfair levels of wealth was that fair?

*But but but we earned that money, city didn’t earn it…blah blah blah*

Rather than focus on how fair or unfair it is I’d rather talk about a somewhat radical solution.

Right now, some people attest that certain clubs have an unfair advantage thanks to their bottomless pit of money. I have two thoughts on this –

1. It’s not an automatic win. Ask juve, Barca, psg, city, Liverpool, and many others if spending more means winning. It doesn’t. You need to spend it correctly and you need to have the right backroom team. One thing I think we have to admit now (those of us that didn’t before anyway) is pep is a very decisive manager who knows how to pick a team. Having an unlimited chequebook is a help but he is more focused on getting the right player rather than the biggest star, and he cuts players ruthlessly if they don’t fit his purpose, even allowing them to join rivals.

Money helps, but money alone does nothing.

2. The solution is pretty simple – uefa and all regional fa introduce a new rules which states it is a requirement that all clubs be owned and funded by multi billionaire sugar daddies because if everyone has one then nobody has one. If we can’t keep them out then the only way to level the playing field is to ensure everyone has one. Sportswashing for all! Huzzah!

I’m making a joke of it but I’ve thought long and hard about how you deal with problem of a couple of teams with the cheat code activated and the only solution I’ve found is – activate it for all of them.

I imagine it would also remove all excitement for transfers as well as all clubs race to the bottom bidding ever more ridiculous sums of money.
Lee

Lampard vs Gerrard
So… with the universe generally biased(51:49) towards rating Gerrard being a better player than Lampard despite being worse in every key stat measured!

Lamps does better in every single stat based on which we laud players today …Number of goals (+25%)  , Number of assists (+10%) , Number of trophies , Number of international goals all of which makes him out rite superior to Gerrard. Somehow folks come back with excuses rather than merely accepting their tribalism by saying Gerard controls the game more or is pleasing on eye… as if that makes Berbatov better than Ronaldo (Frankly have not watched Gerard enough other than seeing him slip against Chelsea and dropping his only chance to win a PL trophy).

However, moving to my real question… Given now both Lampard and Gerard have had some managerial experience, almost identical.  What do ppl feel ?? Will some G fans switch over to L in the debate of simply who is better??

Gerard was heavily backed in the transfer market, Lamps had his best player flogged out. Gerard plays utter dross, Lampard seems to inspire his team into performing as a single unit. Getting better results than Steve G with little to no resources (Yes i know Everton is only 1 point better but against much tougher opponents).

Is there anyone who still thinks that Gerard with a relatively poor record (Playing and/or managerial) compares better to Lampsy?
B CFC (Courtesy Instagram reels Thiery Henry choosing Gerrard… final straw)

Wages and that…
I might be doing John Matrix a disservice here but I’m in a mood so here goes.  It annoys me when the conversation about money in football comes up and people immediately turn to the players and bring up their “astronomical” wages.  In a world where CEOs earn a disproportionate wage on the backs of their underpaid workers, football should be the thing we’re pointing to as a shining example of people getting paid a fair wage for the amount of money they generate.  Like it or not, football is swimming in money and that’s not going to change any time soon so who would you rather see that money going to?  Should we pay footballers £30k per year and all the money goes to the owners?

“Can we, as a non-petro-national team truly afford to pay him that? Do we want to?”.  In order, yes and why not?  If we get back into the Champions League then who better to give an equitable share of the new revenue to than the people who got that revenue in the first place?  This is what the working classes have been battling for since forever!  A wage that rewards you for the success you bring to your company.  You can definitely make an argument that the non playing or non football staff should be paid more but why should that money come out of the pockets of the people who are bringing the money in?  Arsenal have enough money to pay all their staff a very healthy wage but they don’t because nobody honestly cares.

“Do we want to?” is particularly egregious in a mail bemoaning the loss of working class values in football.  It’s catching the master with his hand in your pocket and worrying about how he’s going to spend your stolen cash.  Squabbling amongst ourselves and trying to drag down any of us that make it good.

If you truly want to affect change in football you need to take matters into your own hands.  Stop subscribing to Sky Sports.  Stop buying a new jersey every year.  Stop paying exorbitant ticket prices for Premier League football and go watch Charlton in League One.
SC, Belfast

UEFA’s investigation of City
Dear Editor,

In regards to Dara O’Reilly, London. Did you accidentally send your mail to 365 instead of the Socialist Worker? Your paper thin excuse linking your mail to City and Newcastle fan mails even though you didn’t know why was just a pathetic excuse to attack people who don’t share your political opinions.

I’m not a Tory, I have never voted for them. I’m certainly not going to defend a continuation of Blairism plus sickeningly spineless wokeness neither of which are even remotely conservative that we have been subjected to the past 12 years, but can people at least stick to football related matters when writing in here. The mailbox will be pointless if it gets filled with nonsense like “I was just thinking about football and this is why I hate *insert something completely unrelated to football* mails.

Dara, I’m guessing you are a Labour voter and think things would be far better in this country if Jeremy Corbyn had won the last election. Anybody sane however knows this isn’t true and anybody who disagrees or a neutral who doesn’t know why just check the highlights of the Labour Party conferences of the past two years. You’ll both laugh and be appalled in equal measure by a bunch of delusional lunatics calling each other comrade every 3 seconds, complaining there are too many white speakers and having to be told to stop being anti-Semites. The Conservatives have screwed this country but replacing them with Labour will just make things even worse. They would do what Conservatives are doing but more extreme and incompetent.

Anyway so not to be a hypocrite, it’s back to football. Can City fans please stop writing in saying CAS agreed with City and acting like nothing happened after that. CAS did agree but with incomplete information because City withheld it. Emails from Director Simon Pearce released by Der Spiegel after the CAS ruling proved ADUG therefore Sheikh Mansour used the Etihad Sponsorship deal to funnel money into the club secretly. This was the rules violation they were charged with by UEFA.

A big point to note in this whole story is that if Der Spiegel’s claims that led to UEFA’s investigation of City were defamation and/or the emails were attained through criminal means then why have City not sued the German Magazine? Well in a real court case there is something called discovery and City cannot just refuse to cooperate like they did with UEFA, they can be compelled by the court to provide evidence. This would mean Der Spiegel and City would have to hand over all information including emails related to the case. The emails Der Spiegel attained would be confirmed to be real and this would prove City were guilty. Can’t think of any other reason why City wouldn’t want to recover the millions they spend on lawyers fighting UEFA from the publication who caused them the trouble in the first place. I feel this matter is closed.

Lastly, Barca, a club that used to have no sponsors on its shirts at all has finally completed the selling out of the club and what shred of self respect it had left by unveiling special Drake shirts for the El Classico because the talentless rapper got 50 billion streams on Spotify. Barca have literally become the footballing version of the cheeseburger guy from the movie Menace II Society. I imagine we are not too far away from clubs having a different shirt sponsor for every game auctioned off to the highest bidder and players getting paid to tattoo “Visit Qatar” on their foreheads.
William, Leicester

Hi James

Thanks for the reply.

Of course clubs can spend their income on playing staff. This is what City do. Although when City do it we all know somehow that we are doing it by making payments off the books, cheating orphans and murdering kittens. City operates under the same conditions and regulatory requirements as everyone else.

I write this knowing the reaction that it will prompt because I read these responses all the time in the mailbox and media. It was these comments that initially made me write in. City are obviously cheats, they have no fans and no history so why can they dine at the top? We bullied UEFA and don’t care about FFP and we are irrelevant anyway. We are seemingly the only club in the world who don’t receive any money from UEFA, the Premier League, TV rights, player sales, ticket sales, sponsorships etc. Nope it is all cooked up in the books obviously.

For the record if you add up the purchase price and all the money our owner has invested into City it’s roughly half what the business is worth. If we were sold what particular income streams would fall off? Would we lose out on ticket sales or tv and prize winning money? Is this what you’re suggesting? That somehow our owner is funnelling money through the Premier League and UEFA for them to give it back to us in prize money? That is an even more paranoid assertion that a cartel is out to stop us. Perhaps the 9 clubs that wrote to UEFA asking for us to be excluded from European Competition before our case was even judged by CAS only had pure motivations.

Coincidentally Martin Samuels wrote this morning “just about every regulatory move made by the elite clubs of England and Europe in the last decade has been designed to curb City.” I guess he’s in the pay of big oil as well.

Out of the three clubs you mentioned as having incremental success only one of them have managed to win the league once. If every time City had won the league you awarded it to the team finishing second then still only that one team is winning the league. Incrementalism may result in single trophies here and there

A simple comparison of figures spent also doesn’t taken into account the quality of the squad already there and other factors that result in well run clubs. City had a negative net spend this year but that was allied with an already stacked squad, fantastic management and great coaching.

What I would prefer and what I think the rest of the mailbox wants is for me to write shorter emails. Incidentally City aren’t state owned either 🙂

Regards
Richard (plastic since 2008)

Am I alone in feeling sorry for the City fans contributing to the mailbox these days when they insistently deny any wrongdoing whatsoever of their club?

It really always reads like they’re trying to convince themselves that Everything Is Fine, more than trying to convince anyone else.

I dont even dislike Manchester City at all. Honestly have enjoyed all iterations of their team since Sven in 2008 onwards and feel no animosity towards them despite standing in the way of Liverpool success. But it’s really cringe and hard to read these diatribes filled with whatabouterry, false equivalencies and willful misinterpretations of “not proven guilty = proven innocent”.

Looking forward to Sunday, regardless of what happens.
Oliver Dziggel, Geneva Switzerland