Liverpool signing to be ‘below average’, Haaland = Sterling and nine more new season predictions

New Liverpool and Manchester City signings will flop and other new season predictions. Plus, Cristiano Ronaldo, Jesse Lingard, women’s football, the back-pass rule and lots more…

Get your views in to theeditor@football365.com…

Cynic’s predictions which will come true
Everyone seems to be excited over one thing or another due to preseason and overall hope for the next season. Last 10 years of United have sucked all hope out of me, its a bleak bleak world I live in. So let me just state some of the things that are bound to happen:

– Nunez will be below average. 4 goals, out of which one was a pen so he cant start scoring, 2 of them even a 10yr old kid would finish, and one decent goal. He isnt going to get even half the space he got in that match, and will struggle in the premier league. Add to that his lack of work ethic (compared to Firmino) will lead to liverpool making more mistakes and put a bump to their heavy metal football.

– Haaland will be no better than Sterling. He won’t even match Aguero, forget to surpass him in quality. I remember Werner topping all German charts not too long ago.

– Martial: 4 goals in 4 matches , and then 1 in 30 matches. Is how I expect him to perform. Our new Pogba

– Richarlison: the biggest mistake Spurs could make. Spoil the good boy vibes of Son & Kane with a petulant man child for 60m.

– De Jong will come to United at the end, and will be no better than McFred. Beekers will look on from the bench teary eyed.

– Arsenal will spend 200+ mill and still finish 6th or 7th. Cause Arteta is trash.

– Lamps to be sacked first, thats not cynical, just common sense.

– Leeds, Bournmoth and Brentford to say goodbye to the EPL

– City 1, Chelsea 2, United 3, Liv 4.

– Barca to go bankrupt in a way that will be the start of Spain’s financial crisis.

– Ronaldo – scores 20+ goals and will still piss people off at the age of 39. Finishes trophyless yet again.

That’s all I can think of for now. And these things are bound to happen methinks. Let me know your cynical thoughts if any.

Regards,
Aman

Upgrades…
Niall says Sterling ——> Mane is the single biggest upgrade in transfer history is clearly trolling and I’m biting.

Especially when literally a couple of years later a much better upgrade was made just within that team itself of Karius with Alisson.

But the statement has triggered an interesting question for me – who are the biggest upgrades in history?

Bravo to Ederson? Skrtel to Van Dijk? I’d imagine it should be based somewhat on impact so maybe McClair for Cantona? Whoever Boro had and had to make way for Ravanelli?
Nishul Saperia (curious to see opinions!)

Cristiano Ronaldo
The Ronaldo fiasco is highly amusing. First he claims that he’s too good for Manchester United but then every top club tells him that Ronaldo’s not good enough for them. This is ridicule that Ronaldo has invited upon himself and he deserves no sympathy for it.

In fact, it would be fun if United took their revenge too. Let Ronaldo stay at the club, but only as a bench warmer. Even better, give him a few appearances in the last few minutes when the match is already won and keep cashing on him via those Tshirt sales.
Adeel

Just reading Ian Kings piece on Ronaldo’s hubris and the thing about him not expressing his desire to leave till July triggered a thought. Whilst I agree that Ronaldo/Mendes are the ones driving this I’d not till now considered another possibility. What if Ten Hag told him to go. He walked into United at the end of June and the first rumours of Ronny going started less than a week later. We’ve all just been assuming this is Ronaldo pushing for a move because he thinks he’s too good for this team – which I’m sure he does – but maybe its because he isn’t going to be the main man at United anymore.

Perhaps there was a conversation in those first few days where ETH basically said ‘you don’t suit this team or my style, you won’t play that much if you stay, you can leave if you want’. Most likely not but it fits the timeline and ETH’s seemingly direct no nonsense character. Be interesting to see what come out after he leaves, whenever that is.
Dave, Manchester

Erik ten Hag…
Jon in Cape Town wrote a roughly a million words on something this morning but I couldn’t tell you what because I stopped reading the second I saw E10H used to name the manager. Ten is not his shirt number, it’s his name, and if you can’t be arsed to type out Erik Ten Hag (but you can be arsed to write a mail the length of which even Ed might think was overkill) surely ETH makes more sense. Absolutely infuriating.
Manjo, LFC

Jesse Lingard
I’m a Utd fan who is glad we’ve got rid of JLingz. Not because he’s a bad player but because he has had enough chances at united and has proven he is not quite good enough even for a place on the bench or in the squad. Whether part of it is the pressure of playing for a big club or just the unsettling manager merry go round, who knows. He did however have spells for Utd where he did play well and the same for England so it is no surprise Utd persevered with him for as long as they did.

And then for the Hammers, JLingz started 16 games, got 9 goals and 4 assists. It was as if he had been released from the shackles and finally proved his worth.  He is not a gamble. While he may not be a top 6 club player, he is definitely a good player and has a reasonable chance of replicating something like those West Ham stats for Forest. And if he scores even at half the rate he did at the hammers he’ll be worth every single penny to Forest and more.

Good luck to you JLingz, I hope he proves all the doubters wrong,
Jon, Cape Town (I’m also not hip or woke enough for womens footy Paul Williams as I don’t have time to add it to my limited sports viewing time. I have caught some snippets of womens games though lately and the quality does seem to have improved no end from last time I watched them – I may well watch a bit more of the Lionesses, good luck to them too)

Regarding Jesse Lingard’s move to Forest – it’s not quite as mental as Alan from Friday’s mailbox thinks. Crazy, yes, but not completely insane and not without precedent.

Man Utd spent over £10m to loan Odion Ighalo for a year, and all that got them was a five-goal substitute.Tottenham supposedly paid even more to borrow Giovani Lo Celso, before signing him permanently, which they surely regret.

The Guardian reported the Lingard deal as being for one year only, and close to £200K per week. So it’s effectively £10m for an all-inclusive one-season loan, borrowing J Lingard from J Lingard Enterprises. If he hadn’t let his contract run down, Man Utd would be taking most of that as a loan fee, but because the money’s all going straight to the player (and the player is a self-aggrandising douche), it rubs people up the wrong way.

Anyway, at least he’ll get some time on the pitch. Just wait until the following season, when he’ll be doing the same thing all over again after he’s helped ease Forest back into the Championship.
Martin, BRFC

Everton are indeed screwed this season…
No, you’re correct.

Everton are screwed this season.  This is the most pessimistic I’ve ever seen the fan base in my 23 years of supporting the club.  This will be the year we go down thanks to an inept owner, wasted transfer fees, wasted wages for bang average players, a board who are way out of their depth when it comes to footballing matters, and lastly, a man who’s been hanging on for years knowing he was never the man to take us forward.

When we go down, we won’t be coming back up.  We’ll be down as long as Leeds and Forest were (shout out to Forest, great to see them back in the Premier League with the history they’ve got.)

Yes, we are indeed screwed.
TX Bill, EFC

The backpass rule doesn’t go far enough
Dave Tickner is full of praise for the backpass rule in his recent article Celebrating 30 years of the back-pass law – the greatest change in modern football history. But in my mind it didn’t go far enough. What about headers? The rule is that you’re not allowed to kick it to the goalie and them pick it up but a header is fine. Where is the logic in that?

You still see lots of attacks defused by a defender heading the ball back to his own keeper – there would be a lot more jeopardy if that wasn’t allowed. I dare say that we’d see more goals and the game would be more exciting.

In general terms I don’t like seeing more rules added to the game but re-enforcing the backpass rule by including headers is change that I’d like to see.
The Logical Dictator

Man Utd fans…
I have been gleefully reading all the United fans’ responses to mine and my fellow Liverpool brethren’s emails which of course were intended to wind them up. As Fergie once said about Benitez; “I’ve got him”. You didn’t like it, did you?

If you actually want a bit of perspective, then here it is. The twenty years of United dominance was hell for us reds. Absolute purgatory. Horrible. Watching the games, hearing the mocking chants, knowing Liverpool were streets behind United in every position. Seeing the team sheet of Beckham, Scholes, Keane and Giggs up against Stevie G and whoever else was flavour of the month that season – that’s why Gerrard is so loved by the way, cos we empathised with him having to carry the side season after season. Supported, in the main part by a cast of absolute shite. Traore, Biscan, Konchelsky… Absolute dross. Not fit to wear the shirt. He never won a title, but he carried a club for a decade.

We still supported the team, dreamed and hoped and occasionally good old Danny Murphy would pop up and silence Old Trafford with a free kick. But it was never enough. 13 titles. Honestly, well played, well done. Well deserved, a brilliantly run giant of a club, exactly what we were in the 70’s and 80’s. The worm had turned, we were knocked off the perch. We had to sit there and seethe. We had to take our medicine. For 20 years.

But that’s the past.

So now, with Liverpool streets ahead, you are going to get twenty years worth back with interest and you know what?  You deserve it. You are owed this. You know you are. You’d be the same – admit it. Yes, City are the top dogs, yes we will be lucky to get another title while they are so dominant, yes we “only” won two trophies (not the best ones either) last year, but you know what? We are miles better than you right now. Miles. Different planet. 9-0 on aggregate, could have been more. To see you streaming from Old Trafford with 30 minutes to play brought tears of joy to my eyes. This was payback.

On the plus side, Ten Hag looks decent, he could make a difference, and that’s the beauty of it, no one knows. Dear old Badwolf might be right about all that nascent talent at Old Trafford and if the stars align then I am sure he will let us all know. He’s not though.

But for now, like you did to us, you are gonna get it both barrels and that will continue unabated, unabashed, unashamedly until such time as you claw your way back. Take the medicine. Plot your revenge, wonder when it will be.

Dream on.
SS

Women’s football…
‘Morons, dickheads, trolls, sexists, and misogynistic idiots. Actual words in actual articles I have read in the last week to describe people who aren’t fully behind Womens football’

‘It is the same ball and that’s about it. It most definitely is not the same game’

Fine Paul Williams, I kind of get the general sentiment of what you are saying, in that if you don’t like it, don’t watch it etc. but the comment you made about it not being the same game just smacks of you going out of your way to trash talk a game of football played between quite clearly talented players, playing the best they can do.

Lastly, do you genuinely believe that by paying more for a product it must be better?  Bit odd that, but you do you man. Peace and love and all that!
Chris, on a hill, somewhere

Urgh. He used the W word. ‘Woke’

People aren’t liking women a football to be woke. They watch it because they’re interested. Perhaps they’re wanting to watch ANY football to get through to the new season. Perhaps they have daughters into football? Perhaps they actually just like it?

The reason people are getting pissed off is the constant criticism of something that isn’t for you. You don’t have to like womens football. You don’t have to like anything. The problem is you’re like vegans, or crypto dabblers…you just have to keep telling everyone how much you hate it. How crap you think it is, in a authoritative tone we MUST listen to. Nobody cares if you don’t enjoy it. You don’t tell the world about everything else you hate so just switch over your telly

But urgh. The W word. It’s usually an identifier for me that someone is a weapons grade walloper
Ross THFC

Found myself very confused by Paul William’s angry email about women’s football.

(a) Nobody is saying that not liking women’s football or not watching Euro 2022 automatically makes you a troll or a misogynist or all the other words he used in his email. That’s absurd. What people are saying is that there is troll-ish/misogynistic language being used about the tournament (and the women’s game in general) by some. If you’ve followed discussions about this tournament on twitter, I’m sure you have seen plenty of those messages. Those are the people being attacked not people who merely  have no interest or are just unconvinced by the quality.  What a weird persecution complex.

(b) Contrary to his assertion, the women in the game are not asking for parity of earnings-as with any other industry in any part of the world, they will push maximize their earnings as the club game grows but that’s not the same as them demanding PL-elite salaries. Maybe he is talking about the US women lawsuit in which case he should probably familiarize himself with the facts of that particular case before he embarrasses himself.

(c) Yet another unironic use of the word ‘woke’ in the mailbox. Can we just leave that in the Daily Mail comments section please? I’m sure Paul feels more comfortable there anyway.
Turiyo Damascene, Kigali, Rwanda

Correcting the incorrect
A somewhat tedious reply to Our Kid, Ordsall, is necessary.

Seeing as you appear keen to prove City fans wrong when they say that Old Trafford is in Salford (very few do say such a thing) but you then go on to state that Old Trafford is in the City of Manchester. Well, you appear to be well up on where Salfords’ border lie…but not The City of Manchester’s borders because the name of Old Trafford suggests that The Sty is actually in the Borough of Trafford… which it is. The border lies at Hulme from whence God’s Own City changes to become an artificial construct to accommodate Stretford which, back in the 1920’s, voted to remain outside of the City borders.

Likewise, the other Old Trafford (the ORIGINAL Old Trafford, of course) is where Lancashire CCC strut their stuff. Since the borders changed in 1974, this ground is not in Lancashire now but actually in Greater Manchester, like your later version of Old Trafford.

IN Greater Manchester.

NOT in the City of Manchester…. unlike Levenshulme or The Etihad.

Hopefully, this lesson has sunk in because you wouldn’t want to be consistently wrong again, in the future, would you?

Just trying to help,
Levenshulme Blue, MANCHESTER 19

Sometimes you need more monkeys and more typewriters
Well MAW just became my favourite mailboxer. What an absolute triumph of madness that was. Bravo MAW, bravo. It was like Jackson Pollock moving into the medium of Alphabetti Spaghetti. A glorious confusion of condescending rage and self-defeating arguments, as though the souls of an angry toddler and baffled crackhead merged for one magnificent moment. Is this what an aneurysm looks like in text form? MAW might be further from becoming self-aware than a 90s chess computer, but if anything that just makes life more fun.

MAW, bless your little cotton socks. If you need to believe that arsenal are a bigger draw to players then go right ahead. Don’t let a fun little list on F365 make you so upset. It’s okay. Yes, it’s probably a bit odd to prove your argument by citing players that we signed that, apparently, your lot just didn’t even want. Or by referencing players you didn’t actually manage to sign, but almost did, kind of, ish, until they went somewhere else. That feels a bit like clutching at straws. It feels slightly desperate. Just slightly, mind. Also, when you talk about using “relevant actual facts”, could you at least provide a list of what factual evidence is and isn’t acceptable? Beyond professional twitter gossips, of course. Just so I’m clear on MAW’s rules of discourse. Not sure if the fact that we also can offer Champions League football is okay with you? That alright bud?

It’s lovely that Martinez personally called Arteta to reject him, but Rivaldo once sent us a nice letter saying thanks but no thanks. And I’m sure you would agree that Rivaldo was of a much higher profile, so therefore there can be no doubt as to which club is actually the biggest draw. It takes much more effort to write a letter than make a phone call. You have to find that curled stamp book in the drawer of random tat, track down an envelope you haven’t scribbled on. Do you use yours sincerely or kind regards?

But I would have loved your assistance with my homework. Just to enjoy the surreal sense of watching someone mentally climb inside themself while screaming out of their eyeballs.

And I’m assuming all of that means you agree that Newcastle are more appealing than Arsenal, right? Because people are betting on certain players going there, rather than to Arsenal. I’ve extrapolated the data and, according to Steve Harvey, 86 people said yes.
thayden