Erling Haaland to Fulham as Man City players get drafted

Man City are making people turn off their TVs but we prefer to look at it all as great fun. And start with Haaland to Fulham.

Watch some football on Tuesday night and let us know just how bad Man Utd are. Mail theeditor@football365.com

 
Let’s have a Man City draft
There have been many suggestions of the most appropriate punishment for Man City, ranging from points deduction, to expulsion, to folding the club, to absolutely nothing. But what of the players? I’m not an NFL or NBA fan but I will admit that their annual draft seems to be one of the most exciting times of the year.

Therefore, there’s an opportunity for a one-off spectacle of a Premier League draft! Imagine the day; it can either involve all 19 current PL teams or possibly extended to clubs in other leagues who have been wronged by City (ie maybe Stoke can get a special invite to the draft to make up for the FA Cup).

For argument’s sake, let’s keep it to the 19 current PL teams. To keep things fair, the club lowest placed gets the first pick. Players have to honour the draft by committing to their drafted club for up to the end of the 27/28 season, after which they can be sold.

So, Fulham (currently 20th), I assume would pick Erling Haaland. Coventry in 19th would then get the next pick, and hoping to confuse the lad with a striped blue and white top, pick Enzo Fernandez.

(This was before Coventry beat Newcastle and rose up the table – Ed)

Spurs are next in 18th, and after much deliberation choose…Kalvin Phillips.

Bournemouth in 17th are in dire need for some defensive stability and go for Guehi. Sunderland (16th) looking for some extra creativity, and hopefully providing some familiarity from his previous 7 game spell, bring in Semenyo.

Villa (15th) are stupid and bring back Grealish. Forest bring Elliot Anderson back whilst Marinakis spontaneously combusts thinking about his genius. Man U, looking to outdo Spurs, draft Kovacic. Palace naturally bring in Doku ahead of an £80m sale in 2028. Newcastle finally sort out their goalkeeper problems by drafting Donnarumma. Ipswich are just happy to be there and happily take Rico Lewis. Liverpool draft in Rayan Cherki and wonder why no one else went for him before. Hull (I’m starting to wane here) go for Ruben Dias and Leeds go for Foden who experiences a career renaissance.

Chelsea snap up Bouaddi before arguing he grew up in Surrey for pure profit reasons. Everton do a Forest and bring back Ndiaye. Brentford take Ruben Dias and Brighton choose Jeremy Monga, who in a couple years’ time becomes the subject of £100m bids. This keeps going up to Arsenal in 2nd, who plump for Josko Gvardiol so Arteta can finally play a starting 11 of defenders, and then the picks start again.

Sorts out the players, City’s academy players are not included so they still have a squad of sorts, and everyone’s happy.

So Mailbox tell me, is this the worst idea yet?
Ronson, AFC

Don’t complain at them…laugh
City officials deserve every level of contempt, expulsion and sanction available to the Premier League.

The club need to be banished so hard they don’t make it back into the top flight for at least a decade.

But the fans? Well we’re sort of stuck with them if you ever venture onto social media or a football phone in, which tbh no self respecting adult should do, but we’re all flawed humans at the end of the day.

It’s been clear for weeks now that they’re getting off on the hate, so don’t give it to them. Laughter is the best medicine here, next time somebody at work pipes up about the red cartel or whatever, just chuckle and walk off, if you want to point and laugh at them instead well it’s a free country.

They are the football equivalent of Red MAGA hat wearers, they’ve been presented again and again with irrefutable evidence of criminality but they won’t listen to it. We’ve known the whole time that City were blatantly cheating and so have they, but since they’re that pathetic and desperate they decided to act as boosters for a war mongering hereditary monarchy with a pretty bad slavery issue for the guts of 20 years for what, a treble that everyone not in sky blue forgot about once Grealish had done his victory bar crawl?

Nope…no point in convincing them, nothing hurts the tosser in the pub more than a crowd of people bursting out laughing at them, so do that instead. I mean the only natural reaction to an AI banner about how great Khaldoon is would be a fit of hysterics anyway, so it’s not like this course of action needs much encouragement.
Andy, Belfast

READ: Manchester City players obliterated – ‘no shame or no short-term memory’

Apathy has entered the Premier League
I don’t get the chance to write in as often these days, but I hope what I have to say is welcome.

I had a new feeling when watching the game on Sunday. Apathy. It didn’t matter at all. If Man Cheaty lost then good. If Man Cheaty won then who cares? A pyrrhic victory. They only find themselves in this position through almost a decade of fraudulent means and have been found guilty after years by competent and independent law enforcement and judiciary. Yet the Premier League have allowed them to still play. 0-3 but who cares now? Who wants to play them? Who wants to win? Let’s say they string this out and win the league. Who cares? Who will stick around to watch it? I don’t think I will. And I love the PL.

Perhaps yesterday was the best outcome for this. How can a club under such circumstances continue to steamroller the league? Such a convincing away win should strengthen the argument that this club needs to be punished severely as soon as possible now. I felt like turning off, I really did. And they won. Great. By cheating. So who cares? Actually watching this game truly made it sink in. I don’t think the PL have fully realised just how toxic a feeling apathy is. I didn’t really care for MOTD on both nights either.

Arsenal win, so what? Brighton win, so what? Spurs draw (giggle), so what? To use an analogy from athletics, I have prepared all my career keeping myself in the best possible shape, trained hard, sacrificed the best years of my life, and engaged Rocky style coaches along the way. And come the final race I am well beaten. Only to find out years later than the athlete who beat me comfortably was using performance enhancing drugs the whole time. We might as well all go home. Come on PL. Pull your fingers out before apathy takes hold and the bubble really does burst. It took athletics and cycling decades to recover from their cheating scandals, if they ever really have recovered at all. Toxic isn’t too strong.
Rich (WBA, half boing-boinging but what’s the point), Cambridge

READ: Liverpool’s absent creativity and Man Utd walking football among 10 massive f***ing disappointments

…I’ve spent the last few weeks post-guilty verdict watching, reading and listening to media and my fellow fans of the sport we all love circle around a consistent theme, especially in the aftermath of the farce we watched at Anfield last weekend: the emptiness of it all.

Given that most reasonably informed fans have known about what the cheaters were doing since 2008/9, I’m wondering why it took the announcement of the guilty verdict for so many of us to reach this point.

I don’t want any prizes for this admission, but I’ve barely watched the cheaters since the UAE showed up. Of course, I’ve caught most of the games they played against the club I support and many of the “big” games, but I’ve never seen them lift any silverware (at least not live) or waxed lyrical about the quality of their play because it HAS ALWAYS FELT EMPTY TO ME. Reading the flowery match reports and listening to commentators who knew better praise that cheating mob over the last 15 years has been the bane of my footballing experience, and now I’m struggling to understand why it took so long for most of us to reach this stage.

The friendliness of the “rivalry” between Liverpool/Klopp and that bunch was especially distressing for me. It was always clear that it wasn’t a fair fight and I found the cordiality of those contests nauseating. If I have to compete against an opponent I know (or suspect) is cheating, I’d struggle to be polite. Klopp and Liverpool had the greatest justification to embrace a scorched earth attitude towards those cheats, more of a justification than Ferguson and Wenger had for their entertainingly petty rivalry, but it was all so buddy buddy between Klopp and the other guy. Alas.

Ultimately, I take no small solace from the fact that Arsenal managed to win the league before the bald cheat shuffled off sip sabbatical sangrias with Dr. Cugat and Dr. Segura, but I’m hoping my fellow (veteran) mailbox readers can help me understand why the cheaters seemed so tolerable until about 3 weeks ago. Surely it can’t all be down to 3 old lawyers telling us what we all already knew?
Deen, Arsenal (yeah, the emptiness is even louder now)

Turn off the TVs
Sky should not broadcast Man City until the appeal is over, but they clearly won’t do that.

Therefore, the football community should just come together for once and agree to turn the TV off whenever Man City are on. Pubs should refuse to show them (I honestly think if a pub advertised, “we don’t show City here, they would see an uptick in business).

This really should not be too hard to agree on. The games are totally irrelevant and pointless anyway. It’s totally ridiculous to treat the games are normal.
Conor

Or don’t turn up at all
A number of years ago, in a good will to all pre-Christmas mail, I innocently suggested that if a player was being subject to racist abuse, the opposing captain should lead his team off the pitch. Naive indeed but it was a nice festive thought, and it got published in the last mailbox before Christmas.

Jdb from the previous mailbox has come up with the perfect solution to the current conundrum which is rendering all Premier League football meaningless: like Liverpool on Sunday, just don’t turn up.

But really don’t. Forfeit every game 3-0.

Let Man city turn up, win the toss and score, celebrate the meaningless goal in front of no one and then have the game abandoned because there’s no one there to take the kick-off. Or lose the toss and… well that’s clear.

Let Man City win every game from now until the end of the season 3-0 by default, by refusing to play.

If they are innocent, they’ll turn up, and gladly lap up those points and goals-scored records.

If not, well, it’s only their own time they’re wasting.
Dave AVFC

…Not sent anything in for a very long while as have massively fallen out of love with football. Long time Arsenal fan and former Highbury season ticket holder but rarely going to any games for a long time. Much preferring Rugby these days.

However, this City thing made me feel compelled to write something though. This is such a disgrace and national shame that City are still playing in the Premier League after the damning verdict. If the Premier League and FA are too scared to dish out punishment surely the answer is for the remaining 19 clubs not to play their fixtures against City? Just boycott them and show City and the current league up for the farce that this disgraceful episode has turned it into. They will act then.
Arif, London

Liverpool let down by the weekenders
Like many Liverpool fans I was slightly underwhelmed by the atmosphere at Anfield on Sunday, and feel the crowd could, and should have been, much more vocal.

I feel the problem was that the game was played at weekend and Liverpool, like many other clubs prioritise corporate and tourism tickets at weekend games. I’m pretty sure, had this fixture been played mid week, we would have seen a much more febrile atmosphere. Another sad but inevitable side effect of money in our game.
John Hargreaves

Somebody is promising their last ever mail on FFP etc
I’m extremely bored of the whole City thing and would rather not hear about it again until sanctions are imposed and appealed. This doesn’t finish until the end of this season imo. One thing I would like to see off the back of this all is a tweak to the financial rules.

Thus, I just wanted to share my idea for a tweak to SCR/PSR/FFP etc…

The PL rules state that ‘on pitch spending (player wages, amortized transfer fees, and agent fees) is limited to 85% of a club’s football-related revenue and net profit/loss on player sales’. That figure is 70% in UEFA competitions. How about we scrutinise that ‘football-related revenue’ bit? Is money made from concerts* or other sporting events hosted at your stadium really ‘football-related revenue’? Same with regards sponsorship deals to a degree. That’s more brand related. Gate receipts and matchday revenue, all good.

So, may cap the amount that can be made from ‘extra-curriculars’? On field success (CL football) and historical in built advantages (big ol’ stadiums) would rightly remain, but the ability to pull away even further is reined in somewhat. There’s then no point in City or Newcastle writing sham deals if only a certain amount of it can be used for SCR purposes. Some money from sponsorship and gigs and what not should still go towards it to encourage clubs to grow, and the money from those revenue streams that doesn’t go towards SCR can still be spent on infrastructure. The amount could also rise year-on-year with inflation.

I don’t know, just an idea really. I promise never to talk about the financial rules again. Unless provoked BTL.

Villa are beginning to look like things could be starting to click. There’s a lot of doubt in that sentence isn’t there?

*Not a dig at Spurs. Lots of clubs do it.
Gary AVFC, Oxford (waiting to be shot down)

Liverpool have made a mess of spending money
A few points on Liverpool v City and Liverpool’s direction of travel.

I don’t think the game could ever live up to its billing and, safe to say, it didn’t. The atmosphere never quite tipped into outright hostility with fans caught between abusing the opposition and supporting their own team, and the football was more Benitez v Mourinho than Klopp v Guardiola, lots of caution and neither side wanting to blink first.

It was even for an hour before the decision that changed the game. Gravenberch gave the referee a decision to make with the second yellow and can’t have too many complaints about that one. What leaves a bad taste is the first, which was barely a foul, never mind a booking.

Particularly because the referee had spent the first half letting almost everything go. Anderson, Dias and Guehi could all have been booked for similar “tactical” fouls. Then he emerged for the second half apparently having decided those challenges were yellow cards after all, with Gravenberch unfortunately becoming the example.

The sending-off obviously changed the game, although I’m not convinced it changed the result. City could introduce Doku, another genuine game-changer to complement those already on the pitch. Liverpool couldn’t.

And that’s the bigger concern.

Whoever happens to be in charge of Liverpool’s transfers this week has made a mess of the squad over the past few years.

The transition from Salah, Firmino and Mane was always going to be painful, as was replacing Klopp. Winning a title during that transition suggests plenty has been managed well, and there have been successes in the market: Jacquet, Munoz, Ekitike and probably Leoni if he returns properly from injury.

But the enormous bets on Barcola, Isak and Wirtz may ultimately determine Liverpool’s direction for years.

At the same time of transitioning out older legends, Jones, Robertson, Konate, Elliott, Diaz, Nunez, Quansah, Doak, Kelleher, Alexander-Arnold and Morton have all been allowed to leave in part to fund those big bets. We’ve substantially reduced both our squad depth and our home-grown options and now look short of genuine quality at full-back, central midfield, right wing and while the injuries continue, centre-forward.

Isak has at least started to impress this season, but Wirtz has regressed badly and Barcola so far looks like another “nice” player who flatters to deceive.

Spending the better part of £350m on three £100m-plus players should produce considerably more than Liverpool are currently getting. If those bets don’t work, the consequences will hang over the club’s transfer strategy for years.

And perhaps the problem is that Liverpool have forgotten what made their recruitment so successful in the first place.

I’ve always thought our sweet spot was just below the absolute top of the market: spend serious money, certainly, but identify players capable of becoming world-class rather than repeatedly paying world-class prices for supposedly finished products.

Maybe I’m still scarred by Collymore and Carroll, but Liverpool’s best recruitment rarely involved setting the market. Alisson and Van Dijk are the obvious exceptions, enormous fees which bought genuinely transformative, best-in-class players.

For some reason, post-Klopp Liverpool seem to have concluded that the squad was already so good that the only possible improvements were available from the very top bracket.

So instead of trying to find the next £40m player worth £100m two years later, we’ve increasingly tried to buy the £100m player.

So far, it isn’t working.

Liverpool don’t need to stop spending big money. They need to rediscover why they were so good at spending it.
Lindsay

Never forget
Well said Aidan. I watched that live. Never mind the European ban the animals calling themselves Liverpool fans that night managed to get for the rest of the top flight, 39 people never went home because of their appalling behaviour. Different generation of fans now aye, but given how much they love to drone on about their history, I almost never hear that night mentioned, let alone anyone ever admitting culpability.

Even when it is you get “wasn’t our fault” fantasy responses like the nonsense Rimmer posted. Judging by his comment output, probably a kid from nowhere near Liverpool who CBA to educate himself on what happened that day, lest it upset his black and white worldview. Fine. Doesn’t alter what happened though, nor the convictions that followed.

What City have done, pending appeal, isn’t even in the same galaxy whether Liverpool zealots like it or not. Christ, even The Anfield Wrap managed to admit it was their fault (mostly) through gritted teeth in their 30th Anniversary article.
RHT/TS x

(Meanwhile, the actual football was decent last night – that Botman finish though)