How Arne Slot’s Liverpool can win the Premier League in ‘funny’ outcome for Tottenham
The afternoon Mailbox discusses Man City’s 115 charges, the battle for fourth in the Premier League, and Liverpool sneaking a title win.
Make sure to send your views to theeditor@football365.com…
The fourth element
There are still a bundle of transfers to go through yet , but my earlier view that Liverpool , Citeh and Arsenal are ‘ a cut above’ leads me to think that the last Champions league spot will be an intriguing contest .
Newcastle have no European games where United , Chelsea , Villa and Spurs all do, don’t they ? Brighton and West Ham could also put the cat among the pigeons.
Looking at managers , Emery is far and away the most experienced at balancing European and national seasons . His work with Villareal was , for the size of the club , astonishing.
Squad wise , one cannot underestimate the breadth of Chelsea’s , supposing that all the above teams will get ‘hammered’ by injuries over the next nine months .
No England player really fancies going off for tough games so early into a new season. South American players probably even less so .
Imagine getting an injury on international duty now ? That ruins your entire club season . Rice, Saliba and Saka seem all knackered already . Those three and Kai are pretty irreplaceable.
Imagine City getting a points deduction but Arsenal’s injuries mean Liverpool sneak in and win the title . Funny for Spurs fans but harsh really .
Anyway, no point worrying about things that haven’t happened.
Regarding the sad passing of Sven Yoran Erection I once met Nancy Dell’olio, and that guy was ‘punchin’ !
Peter . ( ‘the Manchesters’ sounded to me like a married couple when used by a fellow mailboxer last week- what an image ) Andalucia.
Lack of Chelsea enthusiasm
I think the reason everyone is not that excited is because it doesn’t feel replicable. Six goals off ±1.5xg is wild. Six goals, including a 15 minute hat trick from a sub is a freak occurrence from a player who probably won’t even start next week.
For Chelsea fans, it must have been great fun. Just joyous. And good for you lot. But for those of us on the outside, it doesn’t appear to be evidence of anything except that a crazy mess is occasionally quite good. Just think of it as the Solskjaer years. It frequently worked. It frequently didn’t. But it never felt like it was replicable. Merely being a mess of who was in form and when.
Maresca is a systems coach. Your team winning despite being a mess is not evidence of the system working. And until there is a recognisable pattern, it’s just going to be guess work.
Andrew M, Streatham
Man Utd past v present
Interesting to read United fans trying to justify the club’s transfer dealings. But I’m wondering are they selling the wrong players and are they actually improving year-on-year?
I mean which group of players would win in a 5-a-side . . .
De Gea, Varane, Fred, McTominay, Ronaldo.
Or
Onana, De Ligt, Mount, Ugarte, Hojlund.
I know who my money would be on.
Jo (not going to see Oasis despite being at Knebworth) Kent
…Don’t! Please just f*cking don’t! Speculating on Man City punishments really is the shit that keeps on sh*tting.
Reassign their players if you really must.
But please, just fucking don’t!
Finlay x
More on Man City FFP case
I was reading with amusement the mail from Dave LFC this morning, where he said, “with City’s trial hearing coming up and it’s looking more and more like they will be found guilty of numerous breaches of FFP.” It really got me thinking, where is he, or any rival fan, getting this impression from.
There have been no new revelations to indicate how the case is going to go, one way or the other. It is still going to take probably upwards of a year to come to a definitive conclusion, so where has this optimism come from?
Is it from the usual talking heads, none of which have any clue about legal procedures, or any more insider knowledge than the average fan on the street? Or are they just projecting their own wishes on a situation that is far too complex to even speculate how it is going to turn out? It is tiring to see the same stories rehashed every time there is even the slightest rumour about anything related to the case.
Why not wait until there is actually something new to talk about before we go through all of this again.
Billy Boy
Manifest into existence
I’m going to try manifest something into existence by sending this message. It’s a Sancho-Alphonso Davies swap deal. Neither club is thrilled with their respective player and would like to see the back of them.
Apparently Bayern are keen on Sancho and the understatement of the year Man United need a left back. Alphonso Davies is running down his contract so he can join Real Madrid on a free, but Leny Yoro was convinced. Just putting it out there.
Dave (Please no Sterling/Chilwell) Foley
Dear Tickers
I have just read through Dave Tickner’s Winners & Losers and I have to ask what bloody United game did the bitter pr*ck actually watch?
According to Dave United got lucky against Fulham and Brighton fully deserved to win, his then quite bizarre take that United were poor stating the poverty of United’s play and they are damn lucky things are not worse. Dave watched a 2 minute highlight reel and not much else, either that or Dave still has PTSD from Fergie and is lashing out like a toddler who’s been denied Haribo’s for breakfast.
United were the better side in both games and but for a ridiculous but correct offside they would have beaten Brighton and been on 2 wins from 2, the chuckle brothers defending for both Brighton’s goals was terrible but to then tar the entire team and match as poor is myopic at best. Incidentally when I say ridiculous but correct I mean the fact a perfectly good goal can be chalked off for an accidental touch when the ball is already on the way into the back off the net and Zirkzee had no relevance on the final outcome, a farcical rule when looked at in isolation.
Anyway the Liverpool game with give us a better indication as to where United are currently at, Zirkzee and De Ligt should both be match fit and give us a more rounded looking team.
Paul Murphy, Manchester
Interfering with play
Today I read an apparently serious email from a United fan asking how a player putting the ball into the goal can possibly be interfering with play.
Brilliant. I cannot come up with any witty comments or put downs to add to try and make it funnier or more bizarre, it has genuinely stunned me.
Dixon (are the comments gone for ever?) Hunt.
On Nottingham Forest…
I suspect you don’t get many Forest based mails (although someone did ask a question this morning which i’ll get to) so i thought i’d contribute my thoughts.
We were widely seen (including by some at F365) as one of the favourites for relegation, just behind the 3 promoted teams. Its early days this season, with the extra caveat that we’ve had a generous start fixture wise, but the Forest project is coming along nicely.
A lot of players have been signed over the last 2 years, i won’t go too much into that but it was required. We now have a relatively settled squad and now are focussing on signing upgrades in particular positions. Southampton are very poor and have the look of this year’s Sheff Utd but we restricted them to only 0.2 XG, pretty impressive from an away team, who now have 3 away wins in a row after the previous appalling record. The centre back partnership of Murillo and Milenkovic looks well balanced and will be one of the best outside of the big boys. A big thing for us in having Sels in goal from the start of the season, he’s not the most spectacular keeper but he is a massive upgrade on Turner and will make a huge difference over the season.
Forest won’t be pulling up trees this season but those hoping/expecting another relegation battle may be disappointed. The club has been seen as chaotic but the club is making improvements each year and this will continue under a very ambitious owner.
Re the question this morning. The player in question, David Carmo, is a very highly rated left centre back. The logic is that we will probably have to sell Murillo next year (he’s class for those who haven’t seen him) so Carmo will come in as his replacement without sacrificing 1st team football this season.
James NFFC
Ouattara’s no-goal
I didn’t agree with Tickner’s take on the Bournemouth winner disallowed for a Ouattara handball, but I do sort of get it. That was a weird and unpleasant way to earn a point.
I’ll stipulate that it was a lucky call for Newcastle, and not one you can count on in VAR. Andone Iraola’s real-time and post-match reactions were pretty laughable, though. I wasn’t entirely sure that the ball struck below Outtara’s sleeve, but I certainly wasn’t sure it hadn’t. That might be an argument that the goal should have been awarded in the absence of a clear and obvious error, but that wasn’t the argument Iraola chose to make; rather he just insisted that he knew best what had happened. Somebody on that VAR team evidently disagreed, and so did the referee.
At any rate, I thought it was clear that Outtara was fouling Dan Burn when he scored, elbowing him in the neck as he leapt for the ball (and possibly by then hooking his armpit over the defender’s shoulder and preventing him from leaping; this isn’t always given). The goal should have been disallowed for the fouls, even if it wasn’t scored on a handball.
Iraola will need to develop a thicker skin for perceived bad calls in the Premier League, because they’re going to keep coming, even with VAR. Though it’s possible he’s learned to associate Mikel Arteta’s whinging with his success and has found a new role model.
Chris C, Toon Army DC (That Joelinton clothesline surely deserved a card, though. See? Bad calls.)
Johnny Nic on modern football
‘The best league in the world’ has backed itself into a financial corner and cannot fix broken model’
‘Disband the PGMOL; the new version of VAR is even worse than the last’
‘The Premier League is like Budweiser: Gassy, hollow and soulless’
‘England can only be as good as England’s players and they are overrated’
‘VAR is like adding a turd to a perfectly delicious eggs royale; vote it out with the Tories’
and now…
‘The Premier League: boring, over-hyped, self-satisfied, predictable and often just quite simply bad’
I’m beginning to think John doesn’t like modern football…
Mike, LFC, Dubai
Ipswich in Manchester
Nice to see Ilkay back and looking happy to be here.
Not so nice to meet the group Ipswich Town fans walking up to the game from the centre of town though. I know they’ve been away a while but maybe some need brought up to speed…
– Manchester does indeed have a large and thriving Pakistani community. It also had large and thriving Indian, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Caribbean, Polish, Romanian etc etc communities. So to scream that it is “Just a town full of P**is” is a little inaccurate. I moved away a few years ago but it’s still as multicultural as I recall growing up.
– City’s owners are indeed from Abu Dhabi. This does not mean that they are “R*gheads”.
– City fans are, on the whole, not huge fans of Al Qaeda, despite your loud exhortations. I’m making assumptions to be fair, you were screaming about Al-Jazeera so I’m guessing you meant the terrorist organisation not the news channel.
– It was indeed Manchester Pride at the weekend. This does not necessarily mean that every man in the city is planning to “bum” you all. I’m sure they could all do a lot better for a start.
Anyway, see you in the new year and I guess we’ll have try to act a lot more EDL to fit in?
Gav, Fife
Where are the comments?
Thank you for removing the comments section and veering away from the usual tiresome social “meeja” shouting that plagues the world.
Fellow mailboxers, we know if an opinion is worth typing then submit it to the Mailbox.
If an opinion on football is considered worthy of publication, even if it is mere rambling nonsense not unlike this, then it’ll be published for us to appreciate or criticise.
Eoin (social media didn’t make people stupid, it showed us who the stupid people are) Ireland
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