Kane statement ‘comical’ after ‘absolute cock up’
Keep your mails on Kane or whatever else to theeditor@football365.com.
Kane cock up
When I was a young man, and frequented the nightclubs of Dublin, I would make eyes at ladies that were, shall we say, way out of my league.
Having been rebuffed, I would come back to my friends with the old trope “I didn’t fancy them anyway”.
Needless to say I was laughed out of town as none of my friends believed me.
Harry Kane coming out this afternoon saying that he has decided to stay at Spurs is absolutely comical.
For him to release a statement like this and to infer that its his decision, rather than the fact he is under contract, his club didn’t feel any of the bids were acceptable, and the bidder didn’t see fit to pay the asking price is an insult to Spurs fans everywhere (one of which I am not).
Kane and his “team” have absolutely cocked this up royally.
Next summer he will be 29. We all know Erling Haaland will have a ridiculously affordable buyout clause and will be 22 and is an eminently more attractive proposition than Kane.
This is the worst attempt at engineering a transfer since Peter Odemwingie turned up in that carpark all those years ago.
Its Kaveh and Dharmesh I feel sorry for.
DC, BAC
Kane looks a right ass
What an embarrassing state of affairs for everyone involved. City don’t get there man, but at least the world knows the won’t be held to ransom. Kane has made himself look the right ass and is now stuck with Tottenham surely until his legs give out and he isn’t offered a new deal. Spurs themselves come out of this very poorly. Good luck getting any good players with ambitions to commit to their cause after yet another promise broken.
Calvino
This will cost Levy…
With the news that Kane has “decided” to stay at Spurs I thought I would give my take on what will no doubt be seen by many as a great victory for Daniel Levy. At the time Kane signed his 6 yr deal it seemed to me that he was doing it as much out of a desire to ensure that if he moved on that his home town club would get a hefty transfer fee as than he really thought he would stay at spurs for 6 yrs. With that in mind £120m ( which I think City would have paid) would have been a decent wedge of cash for him this summer given his age and injury record and the move to Man City would have rewarded Kane for fact that he was decent enough to give spurs that leverage in transfer negotiations in the first place. But with Levy unwilling to take into account a players wishes or even negotiate without crazy money being put on the table what up and coming spurs talent in their right mind would sign a long term contract with them now? Levy might have kept spurs their talisman for another year now but I think it will cost them in reduced transfer fees and losing players over the longer term.
Bobby G, Scotland
Would Mbappe come to England?
I’d like to think so. For one, it’s the biggest league in the world and has the most money. Huge exposure for him and his brand while at the same time testing yourself in a highly competitive league(ish). The pandemic has hit football hard, but the Premier League has endured and we may be in the decade of English dominance in Europe.
If he were to come it would most likely be a free transfer next summer. The allure of Real Madrid is mighty, but what’s not is their financial struggles, too young/too old squad and La Liga’s slight contraction in status.
So where to? The obvious two going off of media would be Liverpool, long been interested and touted as a potential destination, and Manchester United, where there has been recent interest, and the ambition to sign a major striker.
Chelsea have just got Lukaku so that would be them out(That said, you can never rule out Roman). Man City could enter the mix if all with Kane fails, so for them, we will have to wait and see.
Why Liverpool? You have their illustrious history to go along with their passionate supporters and fired up champions league nights. There is Klopp and the chance to play in his high energy, high pace system along with players such as Salah, Sane, Thiago and VVD.
Why United? Once more, you would have the illustrious history, passionate fans and great match days. He would have the chance to link up with his international team mates Pogba, Varane and Martial(Though he would likely be gone if so) and also Fernandes, Rashford, Sancho and Harry M. He would play in an attacking system built on pace.
Why not Liverpool? Is he comes in 2022, the majority of the teams best players will at, just about or over 30. If they have a bumpy season this season that may also work against them.(Afcon in Jan will be an interesting shuffle)Then there is the pay, if everyone starts around the 400/500k range, would they break their structure for him?
Why not United? Time will tell whether 2021 was transfer wizardry or the new norm. So for me, the jury is still out with United and their ability to get big signings over the line. If City, Chelsea and Liverpool all have great seasons and we scrape over the line, that wouldn’t be too appealing. Lastly, and time will tell, would be the allure from OGS and his style, along with United’s lack of trophies recently.
Now this is all just my opinion and who knows where and when he will go. Maybe he will run his contract down and disappear after Qatar 2022, maybe he will join Fergie 2.0 at United. Time will tell. For now, let’s just ooze in the possibilities.
Calvino (Haaland and Mbappe at United in 2022, a boy can dream :))
Raiola shock
Having just read the article on Riolas package for the Haaland transfer to Chelsea, im shocked, not surprised but shocked!!
How is an agent able to demand £34m for making a transfer happen and how have the governing bodies allowed this to get this far.
Firstly how did UEFA come up with FFP to stop owners investing money INTO football but theres no rules to stop agents taking money OUT of football?
Ive also heard that daddy haaland is requiring payment off around £20m in any deal, now this may not be true but if it is thats just shameful……piggy backing your sons success and again how is this allowed within the rules?
Theres a few things i dont get…..
Why aren’t agents payed by the people who employ them like you know the actual players and why aren’t agents fees capped at a percentage of the transfer fee…..maybe 5% or 10%
Why doesnt each club employ an in house agent to handle transfers and the player employ a specific agent to handle endorsements and sponsorship etc??
Surely theres a better way of football running this??
Anyone help me out with some suggestions??
Paul, Manchester
Big club glory hunters predate Prem
The Premier League was not the tipping point in fans following clubs other than their local team.
Being of a certain age and growing up in Kingston-Upon-Thames in the 70s and 80s at my primary school (5 – 11 years old) we were almost evenly split between Chelsea and Liverpool fans. For those of you unfamiliar with the geography of England, Kingston is in South West London (South East England) and Liverpool is in Merseyside in the North West. Opposite ends of the country. Now during the 70s and 80s Chelsea and other neighbouring teams (QPR, Brentford, Fulham etc) were hardly world beaters and so there was a large proportion of kids who followed the glory and chose Liverpool because they pretty much won everything all the time.
So in conclusion people have always followed the “big” clubs for the reflected glory and probably always will.
Simon, Woking (We did have one Arsenal fan at school but needless to say he didn’t really get picked for team sports.)
Bad takes
I claimed with pompous certainty that Torres signing for Liverpool was a mistake as Torres wasn’t a natural goalscorer.
Robinho’s debut goal was definitive proof City had signed a belter.
Ndombele was going to be Dembele’s heir, and that Spurs had just bought the best midfielder in the world. This hasn’t aged well.
Dan Mallerman
On the theme of worst takes ever….
At the ripe old age of 17, a friend asked my advice on putting a wager on the upcoming 1998 World Cup. He fancied France, he said.
I sagely advised that France had no good strikers and that you can’t win a world cup without good strikers.
Given that their 6 knockout goals were all scored by defenders (3) and midfielders (3), I guess I was half right, but it turns out that you can very much win a world cup without any good strikers*.
Dave Lillis, Dublin.
*6 years later, Greece demonstrated that you can even win a Euros without any good players at all, but that’s a conversation for another day.
Talking about getting things spectacularly wrong about football are we?
I once signed a letter of to this very mailbox with Martin “staying up with Harry and Jim” Ansell.
That went well.
Martin “fuck Harry and Jim” Ansell
Arbitrary offsides
Just to add to the debate about arbitrary offside calls and the impossibility of judging this stuff down to the last 1mm, I have been doing some maths. As far as I can tell, the images where they draw the lines in VAR calls are from the normal TV cameras, usually the high-angle ones, and zooming in on these shots makes them blurry and difficult to call.
So, assuming most cameras are at 4K resolution, a tight-ish high shot encompassing the full width of the penalty area plus a little space either side gives you about 45m of vertical view in 2160 pixels, which equates to a little over 2cm per pixel. If a wider angle is required, for instance to see if a defender on the far side is playing somebody on, you might have 90m in view, giving you around 4cm resolution per pixel.
Obviously this doesn’t account for the foreshortening effect of perspective, which means that the further away from the camera you get, the lower the resolution becomes, but I gave up maths after GCSE so I wouldn’t know about that sort of thing. Anyway, you get the idea. At best, assuming they could extract a very clear still image with zero blurring from the moving footage, the VAR guys can only see tight decisions down to the nearest 2cm. The rest of it is based on looking at fuzzy, zoomed-in freeze-frames and making an educated guess at what was going on at the exact moment the ball was played.
Martin, BRFC
Rescued from the abyss
Response to Ved Sen (1 step forward, 2 steps)
Firstly, are you a Paula Abdul fan ?!
Secondly, I think it’s important to reflect on the psychological & physiological elements of what ‘should’ be offside. For years we, as fans, players, pundits, reporters’ and everybody else could constantly discuss, argue, complain whether a player was actually offside. Back in the day (BS as it’s called, ‘Before Sky’ or maybe something else…) tv cameras just didn’t have the right angles or frame speed.
Then comes along Keys and Gray who initially genuinely analysed football matches. This part of Sky Sports we can say was the ‘Golden Years’ where the replays and the focus of discussion was on tactics, player errors and quality of football on offer as the money, and the foreign talent flooded in BTTT (before Townsend’s Tactics Truck).
Then Keys and Gray got lazy and realized they could rattle the viewing public by the injustice of an unfair offside or penalty decision. As this created a lot of clicks, likes, internal angst and depressive states all the better and so the focus fed on itself and we fell down the rabbit hole.
As was so succinctly (eventually) summed up last year, we got what we asked for. But then all of a sudden we didn’t like it. Mo Salah’s armpit, Sterling’s toenail and Bamford’s pointing arm were all deemed (correctly) offside…..but it just didn’t feel right, did it? Sleepless nights, the injustice of it all, life wasn’t fair, the world is against us.
But the human race is nothing but adaptive and adapt they did. They made the line thicker so Sterling’s chiropodist could sleep easier at night and Salah could finally stop shaving his armpits (Bamford decided to keep the arm). So yes Ved Sen, it’s not quite the rules but it’s on the way to the right guidelines. We have stared into the abyss but were rescued, ‘I was blind but now I see’ as the song goes.
Football is back to something we can actually recognize again. Fernandes will have to stop falling over every time someone breathes on him, Salah and the rest of them will know they can’t ‘Frosby flop’ their way into penalties and you can actually tackle someone again. THIS IS FOOTBALL.
It’s not rugby, it’s better than that….
Hong Kong Ian (fans are back, football is back, just enjoy it and don’t get too annoyed, it’s only a game, maybe my ex-girlfriend was right all along, I hope she reads this (she won’t)) LFC
Implement or adapt?
A question for the mailbox.
Should a coach try to implement his preferred style of football, for eg. Sarriball or tiki taka, whilst not having the right personnel for it yet, and hence risking losing some/many games? Or should he adapt to the players he has and understand their limitations to implement a style suitable for the team and then build each season?
I ask this after seeing the examples of Arteta and Ole. I feel Arteta has been trying to implement an open style of play but Arsenal do not have the right personnel for it. On the other hand, Ole is arguably lacking only a couple of players (3 at max) required to play the rumoured 4-3-3 that he was planning to implement (I seriously doubt the credibility of this rumour), yet he seems to be taking more cautions than necessary in relying on the now infamous McFred. The difference is that Ole has been making steady progress (maybe too slow for some), whereas Arteta is still struggling to show any. And yet Man Utd fans desperately want Ole to play with only one of the two midfielders.
So I ask this question, with the special request that you assume that Arteta and Ole is of a similar coaching level (as these two are merely examples)
FerventFootballer
Spurs pints
Can I end something once and for all?
Tottenhams new stadium is very impressive. But certain claims keep getting a touch overblown. Specifically. Pints.
The pumps are cool. And can do a pint in 3 seconds. They can’t serve a pint in 3 seconds. They still need lifting off. Tottenham themselves claim a max rate of 10,000 pints a minute. That’s very impressive. In a half time, if they managed to sell 150,000 pints in 15 mins to 62,000 (they won’t). They would make £750,000 in revenues. Probably half in profit once take away beer costs and staffing.
So just to be clear. Tottenham aren’t going to be getting £9m every halftime for Ronaldos wages simply because the pint pours upwards. And that’s from Tottenham themselves. (Google it).
Tom