Have Liverpool really been warned off Haaland?
Dream it possible
Paul Pogba wants to leave Manchester United. Or at least Paul Pogba’s agent wants him to leave Manchester United, which amounts to roughly the same thing. And here are the Mirror website with one of (there are 19 mentions of him on their football homepage) their hot takes:
‘Five clubs Paul Pogba could join as Mino Raiola confirms he wants to leave Man Utd’
Real Madrid, Juventus and PSG are the first three options but there’s just the slightest hint that the fourth club is not really an option as they write of Manchester City:
‘This really would rub United up the wrong way, but if they choose to sell it is a possibility that exists.’
‘It is a possibility that exists’?
Why not just add Liverpool? Or Brighton? Or Cheltenham Town? They’re all ‘possibilities that exist’ along with the very, very slim possibility that Manchester City would break the British transfer record for a player who Guardiola rejected almost three years ago.
Haal on earth
‘Mino Raiola fiasco could cost Ole Gunnar Solskjaer dream Man Utd transfer target’ – Daily Star website.
Yes, because the world’s hottest striker Erling Haaland was giving serious consideration to joining sixth-placed Manchester United before Mino Raiola opened his mouth.
This means more
When the football world is talking about Pogba and Haaland, where does that leave club-specific websites like the Liverpool Echo? Trying to pretend the story is relevant to Liverpool for clicks, obviously.
‘Liverpool given Erling Haaland transfer warning as Jamie Carragher slams Paul Pogba’
Did Jamie Carragher mention Liverpool? Did he balls. Did Jamie Carragher even mention Erling Haaland? Nope. All he did was speak very disparagingly indeed about Paul Pogba and his agent Mino Raiola.
And yet ‘Liverpool have been handed a warning over a potential move for Borussia Dortmund striker Erling Braut Haaland by Jamie Carragher’, apparently.
They really sodding haven’t.
A drop in the ocean
A day after the Manchester Evening News told us ‘Man United have two midfield undroppables vs RB Leipzig’ – the latest in a long, long line of ‘undroppables’ – they now tell us that ‘Manchester United know which players are droppable and undroppable’. We are certainly glad that somebody does.
And are these ‘undroppables’ the two players who have scored a total of 20 goals this season, comfortably more than every other member of the United squad put together? Well yes. And Manchester United ‘know’ that. And some people still think that the club has no real clue what they are doing…
No place like home
‘HARRY MAGUIRE joined Manchester United to be part of make-or-break showdowns like the one they face with RB Leipzig,’ writes Neil Custis in The Sun.
Did he? Did he really join Manchester United to play in final group stage game in which they desperately need a result after somehow losing to Istanbul Basaksehir? We suspect he actually joined to win trophies and yet the only medal on his mantelpiece is still from a Championship play-off victory with Hull.
But this is Custis, who writes with a presumably straight face elsewhere:
‘Last season’s third-place finish and three cup semi-finals was just the start from Solskjaer.’
Ah, so that was a good season? Right.
‘Now after a rocky start to this campaign, United are up and running again, particularly away from Old Trafford.
‘They have lost just once on their travels in all competitions and are on a club-record nine-game winning streak in the league on the road.’
Quite right. So it really is a shame that football matches are also played at home, where United have lost four games.
Wag the dog
Manchester United dominate The Sun newspaper but of course the website is more interested in Piers Morgan and ‘Aston Villa’s Matt Targett’s stunning Wag Jasmin Buckle’, who you are invited to ‘meet’/look at pictures of.
‘The pair began dating long before Targett established himself in the Southampton first team, and are childhood sweethearts who met in Hampshire.
‘And as the defender has gone on to become a professional footballer, he’s made sure his other half has become accustomed to Wag life.’
What a bloody hero.
Buckle is described as ‘very much a typical footballers’ missus’ on a caption of her drinking a cocktail in the sunshine. Which comes as something of a surprise to those of us who have ever found themselves drinking cocktails in the sunshine without realising the only thing we were missing from this decadent lifestyle was a footballer.
Art of Noise
In the Daily Mirror, Stan Collymore accuses Mikel Arteta of ‘one of the worst pieces of football management, coaching and tactical play’ he has ever seen in the Premier League. We agree; it was poor.
But we have to part ways with Collymore when he rolls out the usual woe-is-me nonsense about English managers.
‘If an Englishman had been in charge rather than a Spaniard – or Frenchman, Portuguese or Italian for that matter – he’d have been hung, drawn and quartered, then sacked, on Sunday for knowing nothing about the game and being tactically naive.’
And if your auntie had balls, Stan?
Right now, eight Premier League clubs are managed by Englishmen, four of whom are in the bottom five. And of the seven permanent managers sacked last season by Premier League clubs, only one was an Englishman. And all three managerial changes that took place in the summer of 2019 saw a non-English manager replaced by an Englishman.
One of those appointments – Frank Lampard – had a run of five Premier League defeats in seven games last December. And how does Collymore describe the Chelsea manager? As ‘the brightest English coach to emerge for a generation’, of course.
Arteta’s Arsenal are rotten but to suggest that he has kept his job simply because he is Spanish is utterly absurd.
Oh Danny boy…
Yeah, why would Everton need a manager who’s won 3 Champions League trophies and 4 league titles? Should have asked Sam Allardyce to come back. 🙄 https://t.co/S1Wg5uIIpV
— HLTCO PODCAST (@HLTCOPOD) December 8, 2020
Recommended reading of the day
Jonathan Liew on crossing
Daniel Storey on James Tavernier
