Why Arsenal don’t ‘have to’ win the league and how Ten Hag could be sacked by Christmas
Arsenal don’t ‘have to’ win the Premier League at all, even with Mikel Arteta spending a small fortune to secure consecutive runners-up finishes.
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They have to…
No they don’t. The ‘They have to’ statement is so idiotic it defies logic in my opinion. What I’m on about? For example, Arsenal (my club) have to win something because they were runners up twice and they spent x-amount on players a-b-c so now they ‘have to’ win something.
Really? Why? Are they alone in the league? Let me put on my ‘They have to’ glasses and look at the league apart from the aforementioned Arsenal.
Man C – They have to win the league cause they have Pep, they did it before, they have Pep, have money to burn and they have Pep.
This means that all players are sold if ManC doesn’t win the league and Pep is looking for a new job with hat in hand cause now no one wants this epic loser.
ManU – They have to win the league cause they are ManU and they’re a big club with a large fan base so naturally they’re amazing.
So what if they fail? All senior players are fired cause no one wants them, the manager stays cause he’s bald and being bald is a new thing these days. All 16 year old kids are propelled to the first team because they have heart.
Liverpool – They have to win the league because the new coach is bald. So what if they don’t? No one is fired and the coach will still be bald
Chelsea – They have to win the league because they bought so many players they’ll be able to create 17 separate clubs against whom they can compete. And what if they don’t win? They’ll just buy more players, FFP be damned. (I’d be surprised if half of them know how to spell Chelsea).
Newcastle – They have to win the league because of money money money. The barcode army is bonkers and just imagine Shearer losing his sh*t on MOTD. So what if they don’t? They’ll still have $ $ $. Their supports remain bonkers and how can I not want Shearer to lose his sh*t.
Tottenham – They have to w… Nope, they won’t. Ever.
Everton – They have to win the league because of my soft spot for them. Blame the Championship Manager days for that. What if they don’t? As long as they don’t relegate they can consider themselves 2024/2025 winners.
Aston Villa – They have to win the league because they have Unai Emery. What if they don’t? As long as they keep Emery they’ll be punching above their weight. To this day I am of the opinion that he shouldn’t have been sacked at Arsenal.
Everybody else. They have to win the league because look at the league table now. It’s a tie with 18 clubs sharing the nr.1 spot. Divided only by the alphabet! If only the alphabet didn’t start with an ‘A’… So what if they don’t? If the rest manage to bottle it after being top of the table for the entire summer they’ll be happy if they don’t relegate and will consider themselves winners if one of them grabs a Euro spot.
So there you have it. The winner is already decided because ‘They have to’.
Soei (Arsenal fan) Rotterdam
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United season expectations
As a somewhat jaded, longer-serving United fan, thought I’d chip in with my expectations on the upcoming season. It’s galling but for me it’s all about the injuries. If we go months without a fit left back, a fit centre forward and a new centre back pairing every week, we will continue to be disjointed, inconsistent and ETH will likely get sacked by Christmas.
If we can field a consistent back 4, our attackers manage to string together some matches and build an understanding and the young players continue to develop we could have a really good season, and easily make the top 4 and compete for trophies. Amad, Garnacho, Mount, Rashford and Bruno is some serious talent in attacking midfield, and one assumes that Zirkzee will have played more minutes than Martial did last season by next week.
But given we’ve already lost our new, potentially game-changing CB and the only CF that has ever played for us, in pre-season, while our only left back appears out too it does make me wonder if ETH was just really awful in a previous life.
Ryan, Bermuda
Chelsea: the modern-day Titanic
I could hardly agree more with the content of ‘Bobbyhundreds’ very recent letter. In my ever-lengthening lifetime I doubt that I have come across a more ludicrous club than Chelsea in its present state. It was a monumental achievement by Poch to tame the wild horse that was the Chelsea squad last season, and to end that season with merited optimism about what was to come in ’24-’25. To give Poch the boot, and then bring in a bucket load more, mainly very young players, and a new, PL-untested ‘Head coach’ is a recipe for disaster. If Chelsea avoid said disaster this coming season, I will be very surprised (and I’m sure many others will be, as well).
I think Boehly is an American who really doesn’t ‘get’ soccer. He seems to believe that spend, spend, spend on a seemingly endless number of young players is the way forward. I would say that those of us who know our (English, at least) soccer, will be shocked if his apparent conviction proves to be right.
Paul Carbonaro, Dayton, Ohio, U.S. & A
Caesar will fall
Johnny had me. I was ready to be a sheep. Yeh, the PL is broken. Yeh it is all about money. But then I saw a line that made me see the future.
“otherwise we face the same six or seven or eight teams fighting it out for the top six, seven or eight positions in what is effectively a sealed league”
Oh, so there was a time when I think it was the Big 4. Then it was the Sky 6. And now we can’t even agree if it is 6 or 8. Look at history, all things come to an end. How will Liverpool do post-Klopp. Pep will leave, ending Citehs dominance. Even with a financial advantage United and Chelsea have gone backwards. And Spurs are Spursy! Just because you have money… doesn’t mean you cannot be caught!
Villa, Newcastle, Brighton, Bournemouth, West Ham, Crystal Palace (formerly Brentford) … The future of the PL is in these teams hands. They bloody the nose of the establishment and prove that if you run your club efficiently and innovatively, you can disrupt the money teams who can paper over the cracks with a big signing. But the crack is still there.
So there is a future! PSR is not helping and you have to assume will be resolved at some point but I would rather build a sustainable future for my club than have a squad of 47+ first team players or a poisonous, toxic culture at my club! That big six or seven or eight, will become the big eight or nine or ten, and then my friends we have a league!
Rome wasn’t built in a day …. but I am also not sitting here eating pizza and speaking italian so it goes to show everything must come to an end. Our time will come!
Mark (Villa fan in London) PS – I had pizza last night so i can’t have it again today.
Though I found it funny that John’s original article lamenting the lack of diversity in the top six was largely debunked, particularly over the past few seasons, and so he had to extend it to a “top seven or eight” he does now have a point. Though I’m not convinced he’s right about the cause.
Yes there is more money in the Premier League now but as has been pointed out there are other factors which are arguably more important. State ownership is a massive one, but as far as I can see Chelsea are not currently owned by a state and are spending so freely it makes you wonder if PSR hasn’t got some serious loopholes.
I think you can draw many of the current problems with European football – including City’s dominance of the league (and United before them) and Real Madrid’s dominance of the Champion’s League all the way back to the extension of Champions League places to runners up and then further to third, fourth and now fifth place in respective leagues.
Now teams don’t have to perform that well over the course of a season to have a seat at the most lucrative table. You don’t have to be champions of anything to play in the champions league. Losers are given access to significantly greater sums of cash and the ability to attract better players. For over 25 years we’ve reasonably familiar teams from the likes of Germany (Munich/Dortmund), Italy (Inter, Milan, Juve) and Spain (Real, Barca, Atletico).
Is the Premier League actually more competitive in that we’ve had several different teams competing in the champions league in recent years. Off the top of my head we’ve had Leicester, Villa and Newcastle joining your United’s, City’s, Liverpools, Chelsea and North Londoners. And you could even argue that without state ownership that list would be smaller.
So yeh I’m definitely all in with my Champions League ruined everything theory.
This could also be another argument in the give a Champions spot to the FA Cup Winners argument.
Ash
What I dislike about modern football
Good afternoon everybody,
It’s Monday, and hopefully this letter will reflect how I feel on a Monday – despairing and miserable AF.
Anyway, things I dislike about modern football.
1. Refereeing. This could be an essay on it’s own – where I bang on about tactical fouling, fouls punishable outside the box being allowed inside… a lot has been thrown about in the mailbox lately about how the rules could be tweaked to improve the game, but I’d suggest the rules are OK – it’s just that football succumbs to some weird etiquette in terms of how the rules are actually enforced by our refs.
I think if games were refereed perfectly, to the letter of the law, there would be anarchy, so entrenched are the expectations of fans and players in terms of what normally happens in a certain situation.
2. VAR. I’m very pro-technology, but let’s not fall for the idea that VAR is a technological system, it’s just more questionable refs sat watching a telly, giving yet another subjective view and generally pissing everybody off in the process.
If I could communicate to the ref while watching a game on Sky, I’d basically be VAR.
3. State Ownership. Skews the very fabric of the game and turns a sport into something else. Nothing to add that hasn’t already been said better.
4. Coverage and conversation around the game. Go to any football site (yes 365, any), and try to find an article or feature that isn’t about one of those 6 teams, and that also talks in a nuanced way about the football being played on that big green rectangle. You may find something, eventually, among the baiting, transfer nonsense and who’s been caught with their pants down. I understand totally why websites take this route but it still sucks massively.
5. The clock. I don’t care how often a ref points to his watch in the 94th minute, it absolutely pays to waste time and kill the game when defending a lead.
Stopping the clock is such an obvious and fair solution in my opinion.
6. Gamesmanship. Diving is cheating and is the biggest case for an orange card in my opinion – not worthy of a red, but sin binning for 5-10mins would be pretty proportionate. But the cynical stuff needs to fuck right off thank you. Can’t be arsed tackling and winning the ball through ability? That’s fine, just pull your opponent down. Can’t be bothered defending a corner?? No worries, just hit the deck clutching your head. In both cases, you might even get the added bonus of commentators praising how smart you are.
Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.
Best wishes everybody.
Stu BRFC
The Meaningless Shield
I enjoyed James Outram’s hot take on the Charity Shield when he said, “The only fans who deem it to be an actual trophy when they win it seem to be Manchester based, for some reason”. No doubt Liverpool and their fans, including James, didn’t celebrate it the last time they won in in 2022.
Having said that, there must be something wrong with Google as it seems to be throwing up images of players doing laps of honour, a video of Klopp fist-pumping to a delirious crowd (presumably City fans), post-match changing room celebrations and Darwin Nunez biting his medal like the cat who got the cream after scoring the third.
You wouldn’t even know they’d won it they kept so quiet about it, so I had to double-check by looking on the club’s website. (Clicks into the section entitled “Honours” expecting to see nothing about it but was faced by something so horrifying it blew my mind). Apparently “The Reds have got their hands on 16 Charity/Community Shields over the years”. Why the hell are they acting like Mancs and celebrating winning a glorified friendly James? It’s high time you stormed the Shankly gates and demanded answers.
Garey (are we there yet?!) Vance, MUFC