Liverpool left with ‘wet paper towel’; only hope is Enzo Maresca
Liverpool fans are distraught at Arne Slot still being Reds manager; the only silver lining is the mess at Man City.
There’s also a lot on VAR but frankly, it bores us so very much. Mail us at theeditor@football365.com
Never wanted Alonso anyway
If the Liverpool Echo comments section are any indicator, the mailbox should be full off Liverpool supporters telling us why they never wanted Alonso, why he was always wrong for LFC, and how they are better off without him.
Colin Brown
Liverpool got stuck with wet paper towel
Well done FSG, you’ve stuck with the wet paper towel who has clearly lost the players and the fans and missed out on the perfect fit. Now he’s on the dark side. Liverpool needs an inspirational manager, someone who connects with the city. Iraola ‘ain’t that. Slot ‘ain’t that – no idea who is that. Maybe Nagelsman? Enrique? Would either of them want the job after Arne’s dismantling?
Luckily this is happening right at the time where I am losing all interest in football.
It’s dull, it’s formulaic and VAR has sucked the life out of it. Yep, Semenyo goal was great, but the game was mainly Chelsea players throwing themselves to the floor hoping VAR would give them a leg up. It worked for Celtic.
Klopp was a spark, Alonso should have been the flame. Everyone else just dowses the fire.
T A
…Failure to qualify for Champions League is $150m. Firing Slot costs $10m. Do the latter and the former is guaranteed not to happen because these players would be inspired more by a cardboard cutout of Klopp.. It’s pretty easy this ownership lark.
Niall, Annapolis
Pep out, Enzo in?
Dear Barclays gods, please let Pep go and Maresca replace him, please let Pep go and Maresca replace him, please let Pep go and Maresca replace him, please let Pep go and Maresca replace him.
That is all.
Steve (ex-Flixton Red), Ontario
Man Utd fan on Liverpool
Long-time reader first-time contributor..watching Liverpool’s recent struggles as a man u fan has been an absolute joy I have to say ..especially Carragher’s toddler like meltdowns on Sky every time they lose…since Carra is Mr Liverpool himself I can only assume his reactions mirror the reactions of ordinary pool fans (or at least the ones that write in the mailbox) and that makes it even better..these are the same fans that have been telling us United fans about how in the history of football we were only returning to what we always were, winning the odd cup and a league once a lifetime.
Well perhaps pool fans would like to look back on the last 35 years of history and realise that they are the ones that are reverting to the mean. After watching the car crash that was letting Ten Hag continue before sacking him three months later I would imagine pool are heading for another nothing season next year if Slot continues..however I have doubts whether Alonso was going to be the answer but I’d say he will be back on the market next summer when the Chelsea job blows up because that club is just as big a snake pit as Madrid…looking at the Liverpool current squad of players and allowing for the usual mix of injuries/loss of form/suspensions I’d say Glasner is more the man for Pool…don’t forget VVD who has been absolutely getting away with murder this season hes been so bad is going to be another year older and slower a la Ferdinand 14/15 season.
As for United with Carrick…play the kids in the cups and get top three in the league and put in a good showing in Champions League and I will take that as progress…doubtful we will win anything but as Klopp and Arteta have shown progress doesn’t always end with a trophy.. Tom, Eire (United since 79)
Finding fault in an e-mail
I’ve got to take issue with the mail published earlier from Damola AFC Berlin Germany, which included a couple of examples of someone making stuff up to make a argument, and one massive, glaring factual error.
Firstly, Damola cites some ‘headlines we read last year’ but clearly makes the headlines up to suit his point. Themes perhaps, and I’m not sure that ‘what phase is Mikel Arteta in?’ would have been amongst them.
Secondly, he says that ‘suddenly everyone has not discovered that maybe building a consistently elite team matters more than occasional spikes in performance’ (his nonsensical words, not mine!) and that ‘If consistency doesn’t matter and all that matters are trophies, why are you calling for his head’ – his Damola not considered that some consistency in an actual title challenge might have been acceptable to Liverpool fans this year, given then squad rebuild and other factors?
Lastly – the horrendous factual error – ‘the entire city of Liverpool have had enough’! I can only assume this was a mistake in Damola’s haste to blurt out his mail, but has he forgotten that their are two major teams in the City, and one of them probably find the current shambles at LFC very amusing and would prefer for it to continue?
A, LFC, Montreal
VAR from ideal
Just to get your summer right, here are the things that fans definitely want next season:
– Fractional, tiny touches of the hand by a player should be poured over with as many slow motion, frame-by-frame reviews as possible before allowing a goal, penalty decision or anything else fun
– Offside decisions should take as long as possible, and we should aspire to involve as many possible players who could maybe be interfering to rule out any goal
– The trend of full body wrestling at corners should be clarified as entirely fine, except when the VAR rolls a dice and it comes up six, in which case a foul or penalty will be given upon review
– Greater than 2 minute pauses for VAR reviews must be done every 15 minutes of game time to ensure no flow or drama can build in matches
– One in every five firm challenges shall be reviewed solely by freeze frame at the moment of worst contact to consider red cards. It is up the VAR team which challenge shall be reviewed, but largely dependent on predefined ‘type of player’ rating
– Finally all throw-ins, corner kicks and kick-offs that take place within 3 phases of play of a goal shall be reviewed to ensure they were correctly given, taken from the correct spot. This shall take no less than 3.5 minutes per goal
Keep up the good work, the sport is absolutely, totally better than it was 10 years ago.
Ryan, Bermuda
…Well I mean that United game was a good way to spend my Sunday arvy. Although there was a lot of swearing at our profligacy in front of goal; when it seemed harder not to score Dorgu chooses the trick shot of finding the keeper.
But my sweet baby Jesus. Refereeing is truly just vibes at the moment. I wrote down a whole list of things while I watched the game, realised that nobody else wants to hear them and got some highlights. Mainoo’s clean ball win at 39′, players falls over him and foul? Where? Casemiro soft yellow because Casemiro I guess. And a yellow for Luke Shaw after a foul late on where the ref seemed to be ok with just a foul but it seems he changed his mind because Gibbs-White was having a meth-fuelled fit next to him that he was like okay well yeah it’s late in the game so it probably won’t matter. Have a yellow. It’s all vibes.
And we all that was a handball. I honestly have no clue what has gone on there. Yeah his arms are in a natural position but it hits his arm, he gains an unfair advantage, thus handball. That goal doesn’t get scored without that handball. I mean if this doesn’t put one of the nails in the coffin or at least forces some rehashing of the rules then I do fear for football because this is not the football we all thought we knew the rules of. This has morphed into something else where rules are fluid and malleable
And in contrast to where VAR shouldn’t have gotten involved in with the handball, an example of where it should have. In the build up to the Forest goal, it looked like there was a foul on Bruno who was incensed and you could see saying It’s a Clear Foul. So again why was that not looked at and further why were the no replays at all? We had replays for a bunch of other random things but a claim for a foul in the lead up to an equaliser is pretty significant so why are they not showing them? Obviously it’s not an anti-unites bias, I’m sure it’s happening in other games, that’s just where I’ve noticed it so far
Curious for other mailboxers’ thoughts
Out here Hitting nails on heads apparently,
Disgruntled, RSA
…During the week there was alot of headlines by English news outlets and pundits along the lines of “Scotish football is a joke” after the Celtic/Motherwell handball incident. (I actually thought it was handball)
Have they not been watching the EPL since VAR was introduced? Every week there are decisions by refs and VAR which baffle everyone watching.
Yesterday we had two decisions alone. Mbeumo handball decison for Cuhna goal, Soucek handball for West Ham v Newcastle. Two of the clearest handballs you’ll ever see and neither a foul. Every week whenever there is a corner, they allow rugby tackles go unpunished.
Having watched refs from other countries at Euros/WC/UCL etc its obvious English officials are the worst (except maybe for the lad who did the AFCON final).
If it was me I would only use goal line technology and offsides and just let the ref’s get on with it.
Ken, Cork, Ireland
…I was at Firhill on Friday night for Partick Thistle’s victory over Dunfermline, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The football was competitive, the referee largely let it flow, and — most importantly — VAR was nowhere to be seen. When Thistle scored, I celebrated without that anxious sideways glance at the officials. Pure, uncomplicated joy. It was bliss.
The contrast with the rest of Scottish football that week could not have been starker.
At Motherwell, Celtic were awarded a last-minute penalty after a VAR intervention that has thus far defied coherent explanation from anyone outside the Celtic support. Days earlier, Hearts had been denied a penalty at the same ground — VAR failing to intervene — an error the SPL has since acknowledged. The cumulative effect? Celtic won the league by beating Hearts on Saturday, aided by correct VAR calls this time.
Without VAR, Hearts are champions. I have no particular stake here — if pressed, I’d pick Celtic over Rangers and Hibs over Hearts — but the injustice is plain to see regardless of allegiance.
Then at Old Trafford, VAR spent the best part of four minutes deliberating over whether the ball struck Mbeumo’s arm, only for the referee to review it and uphold his original decision — which, by the letter of the law, was correct. If it takes five minutes to determine that the referee was right, it was never a clear and obvious error. It wasn’t clear. It wasn’t obvious. So why are we here?
The SFA’s response to all this has been instructive, if somewhat self-serving. In the wake of a referee and his family requiring police protection — something that is, without qualification, abhorrent — they issued a statement that correctly identified the role of media and social media in cultivating a climate of hostility. That much is fair. But they also implied that criticism of refereeing decisions is itself the problem, which rather sidesteps the inconvenient truth that refereeing errors have material consequences. Celtic do not win the league this week without that penalty. The SFA cannot simultaneously introduce VAR to eliminate error and then act surprised when errors that weren’t actually eliminated become the story.
The deeper issue is one of culture and technology in conflict. In the old days, a bad decision would draw a chorus of “the referee’s a w*nker” and be largely forgotten by Monday. Then came television replays. Then 24-hour sports news. Then social media. Now a single contentious call spawns an infinite content cycle — the same clip, the same slow-motion angle, the same hot take, in perpetuity. Referees are not afforded the dignity of being human any more. Neither, frankly, are the fans, who are conditioned by endless repetition to feel the grievance as fresh as the moment it happened.
VAR was supposed to fix this. It hasn’t. In Scotland, it appears to have made things measurably worse. In England, it has produced a rulebook of baroque complexity — different handball laws depending on which box you’re in, whether you’re the scorer or an accomplice, whether the moon is waxing or waning. The authorities have bent the rules around the technology rather than building technology that serves the spirit of the game.
There is a version of VAR that works: time-limited reviews, no pitchside monitor theatre, a focus on clear and obvious errors only, and crucially, transparent communication so fans understand decisions rather than feeling them handed down from an inscrutable black box. I remain an optimist that this version is achievable.
Though I’ll concede that even AI-powered officiating robots with a 100% accuracy rate might not be enough. I have a friend who used to rage at arbitrary offsides and “ridiculous handball decisions” on Pro Evolution Soccer — a game refereed entirely by an algorithm, with no human fallibility whatsoever. The problem, it turns out, was never really the referee.
Ashmundo
…My goodness, what an end to the Celtic game, and what a perfect reminder of why VAR needs to be binned.
That 3rd goal could never have been ruled out by VAR. No potential foul, no potential offside, no potential handball. A very unique situation where every fan knew it was a goal 5 seconds before it hit the net. VAR was never going to be brought into it.
So what do we get…. absolute SCENES. Grown men and women losing their minds.
Rewind to Celtic’s second goal. A perfectly onside goal. The nerd of a linesman decides to raise his flag in the knowledge that mummy and daddy VAR will check his homework and see if he made a mistake.
So what do we get… a player who cant celebrate a goal, fans who cant celebrate a goal… and eventually more muted celebrations when the ref gives an obviously fine goal. Future highlight reels are going to involve slow motion replays of referees pointing to the centre circle. The moment ruined.
Just bin it, bin it now… i want to enjoy goals again, like we used to, remember those times, they were good, they were great and they f**ked it, they f**ked it for all of us.
Shz
Call the cops
Congratulations to Bruno for equalling the record for assists in a season. I’m sure the Celebration Police will be out in force to have a word with the Man U players, especially goalkeeper Lammens who ran the length of the pitch to hug the Portugal International.
Ken Charlatan (Did somebody say handball?)
