Carragher praised for Salah takedown and ‘slip of the tongue’ – but Liverpool ‘too blinded by rejection’

Jamie Carragher is hailed for his Mo Salah response, but ‘this is the sort of batsh*t, amped up paranoia that leads others to ridicule the Liverpool fanbase.

There are also some musings on Oliver Glasner, Bukayo Saka and FIFA.

Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com.

Carra on

Jamie Carragher just went up massively in my estimation. Can’t disagree with anything he said, and he went in waaay harder than I thought he would. Some real venom when he got on a roll (and sorted out his earpiece lol) – the never won AFCON biz, and not playing in Wirtz because he’s selfish.

Loved the “who cares” slip of the tongue that morphed into “who knows” at the end as well (as deliberate as Salah’s diatribe IMO).

I want the spoilt brat to stay since a) he’s gash, and b) he’s making Liverpool’s predicament even more delicious, but I suspect I’ll be disappointed.
RHT/TS x

James Maddison > James Carragher

James Maddison is a nice bloke isn’t he?

On a night where James Carragher was busy chasing the clicks over criticising a PL legend, James Maddison praised everyone in sight. How’s that for the Christmas spirit? I hope someone in the Spurs secret Santa buys him a decent set of Eric Bristow darts.
Parm, Gravesend

Sheep will bleat

Howard Jones’ contribution to this afternoon’s mailbox was exactly the riposte I’d been expecting from the Liverpool fan base after they’d been ransacked in the previous edition following Salah’s arson attack on his own club. When they open up chinks in their own armour with embarrassing behaviour, there’s always a shop steward ready for misdirection duty.

The logic Howard employs in his defence of the “YNWA” cult might be hard to contradict in isolation. Not allowing them to stick beside Suarez for reasons which on the surface resemble the very reasons they now can’t turn on Salah. Neat. Possibly too neat.

Too neat because there’s a world of context missing in that take. Their reliance on Suarez at the time spawned a desperation to appease him. Foregoing your dignity to back your star player when he was in racially sensitive hot water wasn’t some puritan show of support – it was driven by myopic self-interest at an institutional level. Parroting shite like “he didn’t walk alone” just shows that your sense of perspective has been warped by that nebulous catchphrase.

Fast forward to 2025 matters, and the section of fans who’ve turned on Trent and Salah in the blink of an eye. The 2 players’ actions have been very different (Salah infinitely the bigger twat in real terms), but their intent was the same –  to drive their careers in the direction they choose, independent of Liverpool’s plans. One took the decision entirely away from the club, while the other has done his best to force their hand.

In Salah’s case, he may actually be doing them a favour, but they’re too blinded by rejection to see that, and that’s the driver of the difference in their reaction to the Suarez guff. By the groupthink logic, banishing Trent and Salah to the “tarnished” pile is just fine because they turned away from The Cause. “They’ve ruined their legacy”, come the cries from the mob. “Stevie would never have done this”, shouts some goon in the back who doesn’t grasp irony. Neither have smeared the club’s reputation the way Suarez did, but the key point is that they stuck together and ALL looked like racist sympathisers when he was charged for abusing Evra. Hooray for unity!

This is the sort of batshit, amped up paranoia that always leads other fans to ridicule the Liverpool fan base, and to take unbelievable pleasure in doing so. Their desperate clamour to justify the “this means more” puke has them in a never-ending search for justification, no matter what the circumstances. In a shocking twist that they seemingly can’t process, fans of other clubs hold their own teams in exactly the same regard because aligning yourself to a sports team is just an expression of tribalism. Assuming your tribe is the bestest just because you like being part of it is incredibly insular.

Howard, Darren et al – maybe stop trying to convince yourself that you’re part of something that everyone else needs to accept is special. Your shit stinks the same as everyone else’s. You might just enjoy the soap opera of modern football more if you can get on board with that.
Keith Reilly

Mo problems

I guess it’s true what the late Notorious B.I.G (RIP) rapped, MO’ SALARY, MO PROBLEMS…right guys? Guys? Guys…I’ll get my coat.
Muthama Gitonga, Nyeri (Mount Kenya)

Those in Glas houses

Dear Football365,

I don’t know about anyone else but I had a good Sunday: Crystal Palace, my NFL and NHL teams all won on the same day for the first time since 12 December 2021.

*The emerging theme of the season appears to be “two things can be true at the same time”. In the past week, or just over, there have been a few strong examples:

*Lucas Paqueta, who deserves sympathy for the anxiety he suffered as a result of the allegations against him. However, this should not excuse the way he behaved towards the referee last weekend, which justifiably resulted in his red card.

*Mo Salah, who is entitled to feel hard done by that he’s been scapegoated for Liverpool’s poor form, but whose response also deserves criticism. It won’t help his situation that his first response to being dropped for playing below his (high) standards was to complain instead of dig in and win his place back.

*The football media in general, reporting that “a 29 year old international footballer from a Premier League club, who cannot be named for legal reasons” had been arrested. They can’t ignore such a story, but they knew that if they described the person in that way it would encourage all of the worst people to ignore the anonymity mandate and speculate wildly on the player’s identity.

*Oliver Glasner, whose opinion that his squad lacks depth is one most people agree with. However, it is also fair comment that he is over-reliant on his preferred starting XI and could have used the rest of his squad more than he has.

This last one is the clearly the most interesting to me. The obvious reply to anything Glasner says about how thin his squad is should be “if we sign you some players, will you use them?”

11 players have started 11 or more of Palace’s 15 games this season, five of whom are ever-presents. Glasner had his hand forced for the game against Fulham, as injuries to Daniel Munoz and Ismaila Sarr meant first league starts of the season for Nathaniel Clyne and Eddie Nketiah. Meanwhile, Jefferson Lerma (10, with 4 starts) and Justin Devenny (11, with 1 start) have reached double figures for appearances off the bench, with Will Hughes (5 and 7) the other player to feature in most games.

There is a lot to be said for having a settled starting XI, and it’s clear that this is a huge part of why Palace are thriving this season, but a lack of willingness to give opportunities to squad players is currently one of very few shortcomings in Glasner’s management at the moment. I believe the club could do more to reward his success and keep the upward momentum going, but at the same time, I understand why they wouldn’t want to pay players he isn’t going to use.

Palace still have six games left to play in December and their next three are two Conference League games either side of facing Manchester City. These are clearly games where you’d want your strongest available lineup but they come at a time when key players would benefit from being rested. Whether they come through this on adrenaline or are puffing out their behinds by the time they face Leeds United remains to be seen.
Ed Quoththeraven

Saka shite

I rarely rise to bait but Seamus’s mail this afternoon was a doozy. I had to scroll halfway through before realising this wasn’t a Stewie special with a surprise Liverpool prologue.

Apparently watching one City game, probably their best performance of the season, now qualifies someone to declare the title race finished. This is the same City that nearly drew with the mighty Leeds the week before and almost let Fulham back into a game they were winning by four. Scraping past teams in 15th and 16th clearly screams future champions.

Ignoring the claim that every Arsenal attacker has regressed, you do realise the team is literally built around Saka. A huge chunk of our attacking structure exists to isolate Saka one-v-one and maximise his output. He is already the focal point. You can dislike Arsenal all you want but at least try to follow the football fella.

My favourite part was the proposed solution to our supposed attacking woes. Sign Kvaratskhelia. The same Kvaratskhelia who joined PSG less than a year ago for 70 million. You know the famously cash-strapped club in Paris known for their eagerness to sell their star attackers. And the same Kvaratskhelia who currently has fewer league goals than Saka or even Trossard, by the way.
Shy Ronnie (If only attackers can be world class, I guess Maldini, Lahm and Beckenbauer were all just decent squad fillers)

Injuries? Oh my days!

Cracking game between Villa and Arsenal, and a brilliant finale, for us at least.  I haven’t been involved in limbs like that for many a year on the Holte End.  I thought the teams were pretty evenly matched on the day and was impressed that Villa went for the win when most would probably have settled for a point.  Gooners looked way better than City did when they came to VP although we cut them open a few times – which they seem mostly to be putting down to their missing centre backs.

I get that teams will miss their best, (arguably) world class players like Arsenal with Saliba and Gabriel, like City badly missed Rodri and De Bruyne, and Liverpool used to miss VVD and Salah when out.

Villa know from last season what it’s like to have 3 out of your 4 (or 5 or 6 in Arsenal’s case) main centre backs injured at the same time. We were without Mings, Torres and Carlos for a while and had to play midfielders Bogarde and Kamara and left back Digne at left CB.  I don’t recall too much sympathy from many.

Arsenal’s squad is now pretty deep and valued at something like 1.3 billion –  more than twice that of Villa’s.  Their “makeshift” defence cost more than Villa’s first string defence, whose transfer cost / value would have been even less had Digne played instead of Maatsen.

Furthermore,  unless I’m misinformed or my memory is failing me,  wasn;t Ben White signed as a £50m right sided centre back and wasn’t Calafiori  signed as a very highly rated Centre Back for Bologna?  If so, no real reason to use Timber as a “makeshift” centre back.  Or play the new-to-the-PL Hincapie for that matter.  Would a defence of Timber RB – White RCB – Calafiori LCB –  Lewis Skelly LB be justifiably considered “makeshift”? Seems to me it was Lego Captain Black’s choice to play his right back as a makeshift centre back, it was hardly forced on him by injuries.     Just saying like.

And let’s not forget it wasn’t all bad news on the injury front for Arsenal either as they had a fully fit Odegaard recently back after a lengthy spell out.  While the injuries excuse isn’t entirely invalid,  I do think it’s been more than a little overplayed in some quarters.
Kevin Villa (Why do so many of the online Arsenal fans seem to have a vocabulary consisting solely of “oh my days!” on repeat ad infinitum on the relatively rare occasions they lose?  And what does it even mean?)

Listen, (FIFA) fair play (award)

Given the uproar on these pages at finding out that FIFA might just be corrupt with no morals, I expect there will be a fair few readers and mailbox contributors nestling all snug in their beds with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads come the 24th, expecting a visit from the big man. Lets not ruin the illusion for them, eh chaps?

What next? Are they going to be shocked that politicians don’t care about the people too?
AS Camden.

Assorted thoughts

A couple of things…

Firstly, I see the world cup boycott question is out there presumably because one clown gave another clown a made up award. If you’re trying to drum up reasons why you should boycott the world cup then look no further than FIFA. Not only are they the epitome of corruptness, they are also the ones deciding which country to launder money from next so that’s all the reason you need to boycott every FIFA event ever and look down on those of us that watch from your high horse. I will watch every world cup as I want to watch football although I’ll just likely start watching in later rounds now that 427 teams qualify.

READ MORE: Infantino pledges football’s unswerving support to Trump – not in our f*cking name

Secondly, in the reactions to Mo Salah, has no-one realised that there’s no real bombshell here. Just like the Ronaldo interview it is compared to, it was clearly a plot drummed up by his agent to get him out of current club to somewhere more financially rewarding, sunny and just plain easier for his last few years. Simple as that.

And thirdly, am I the only one that has noticed that this seems to be the first season in a long while where truly anyone can beat anyone. We’ve had too many seasons where the top 2 just run away with it, the jeopardy of every match is much more entertaining and should make for a better busy Christmas period as well as a more exciting title run in next year. Bring it on.

And lastly, what Liverpools current plight, along with countless other examples of teams yo-yo ing league positions from one year to the next with the squad available not explaining it shows us that the team harmony and momentum is such a crucial yet highly unstable part of the game. And this is what allows Leicester to win a league and every one else to have belief their team can win a cup one day. That’s the beautiful game, that’s why we love it.

Still 25 mins to wait for the footy, better waste some time on Facebook or Tinder now…
Jon, Cape Town (Not looking for drama, must love dogs, passport ready)