Five sides ruled out of title race with only one able to stop Liverpool winning title ‘at a canter’
Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Newcastle have been ruled out of the title race for a variety of reasons, with only Spurs in the way of Liverpool.
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Posturing
The problem with saying that Arsenal are posturing is that Arsenal have said precisely nothing about any of their potential signings. How can you live in the modern world and not realise that anything written about transfers between now and the window SLAMMING SHUT is just made up.
Arsenal prefer Gyokeres over Sesko, Arsenal prefer Sesko over Gyokeres. Gyokeres prefers Man Utd, Gyokeres is waiting until Arsenal pull out. Sesko has a release clause, Leipzig are asking £60 million, £70 million, £80 million. Zubumendi’s signed, the transfer’s in doubt, Zubemendi’s staying.
Which of these do you pick as the “truth” and which do you get twisted about? Which is a leak from Arsenal? Your attention is being covered from all angles. You click on the X is signing article that preys on your hope and you click on the X isn’t signing article that preys on your outrage. The whole ITK industry preys on your naivety.
Besides the matter of objective truth there’s also the matter of negotiating tactics. If Arsenal publicly declared that Sesko is their one and only striker choice what do you think would happen to the asking price? An extra £20 million? It’s also not as if Sesko is relying on David Ornstein to tell him how keen Arsenal are on him, Arsenal are talking directly to the man himself.
Do yourself a favour, put your phone down and wait for the inevitable report on the private jet charter between Leipzig and London before getting upset that Arsenal haven’t signed anyone in the first week of the transfer window.
SC, Belfast
Why everyone hates Liverpool
An absolute classic of the genre from the This Means More FC gobshite kopite massive in Wednesday’s mailbox.
You just don’t see this heady mix of hubris and basic lack of intelligence from fans of other clubs in this country. Pride comes before a fall lads, oh, and Minty, I’m not even a fan of a PL club, let alone City.
Blinded by your own prejudices and over inflated opinion of yourselves as usual. Very big talk from a team only just out of 30 years in the wilderness, who are just about to embark on some potentially seismic & expensive change on the strength of winning a fairly weak league last time out.
The truth is that you’ve been hugely reliant on Salah for all your recent success, but time waits for no man, even seemingly indestructible Egyptians.
Should be a good season though, may the best team win.
RHT/TS x
Please give us a challenge
Dear rivals,
Please make sure you give us a challenge for the 2025-2026 season as it already looks like we’re going to win it at a canter, again.
Man City have bought, maybe too many, players. But it looks like they’ll be in transition as Pep starts rebuilding the next iteration of his great City side.
Newcastle have just declared that they won’t overspend, screaming that from the top of their hill as their deep-pocketed owners sit and watch all the nonsense built by Howe crumble into nothingness this season.
Arsenal are mucking around. I’m going to bet that they are going to faff around Sesko and Gyokeres (who are both at varying degrees begging them to make a bid) for a few more weeks and then sign Ollie Watkins (please please please do that instead) and declare their transfer business complete. They say they want another left winger but they don’t have any realistic options. They also need a holding midfielder, another defender and an attacker but haven’t done any business whatsoever. It just appears that Andrea Berta may actually be terribly out of his depth.
Chelsea still have a bloated squad and haven’t sacked their uninspiring manager, yet.
Man Utd are still a clown car in a horrible car crash, no way they are going to recover.
Am I the only one who thinks that it is Tottenham who would be challenging us for the title this year? Well done in getting Ange out the door, no matter how ruthless that was, it was the right decision. Maybe Frank can now step in and build on their European success last year.
Romulus Shani (LFC)
Empty seats, full pockets
In the 5 reasons why the Club World Cup is a load of tosh, one of the points was ‘The Americans.’ Not that there were any negatives pointed at Americans, but it could have been expanded a little.
In the real world cup, plucky underdogs are a part of the allure. But along with that, it also includes the best national sides based on a qualification system for each region. Even the best national teams have some chink in their armour. Not enough time to prepare or develop a cohesive game plan, or they have a weak position – left back, centre forward, etc, some element that will cause their followers some concern. So we get to see most of the best players in the world, decent, competitive football, but still with some jeopardy.
In this Club Cup abomination, where the Randomizer 2000 was used to deselect some of the best European teams and allow some marginal US teams, and where the better clubs can buy whatever they need to smooth out their weak spots and plenty of time to train and work out a system – there is no value, no real attraction in seeing part-timers dumped by ultra professionals. It’s not the FA Cup, either, with it’s history.
In the World Cup, with the US being a smorgasbord of heritage, there might be interest in seeing either the US national team AND a team from the homeland. Being a club competition, there is no reason someone from say, New Jersey, is likely to want to support Los Angeles in a match against a team from South Korea. With the US being a vast country, it also doesn’t make it easy to follow your own team across the country and back either.
And that’s before we consider the time of day, the fact that Americans receive significantly fewer vacation days (PTO, as it’s often called) than Europeans, and all the other major issues confronting the country. These same issues act as a significant deterrent for ‘foreigners’ attending these games – unless absolutely necessary.
While I can understand that some sports journalists have a job to do, the amount of fawning over this competition is sickening. Much was made of the first game and opening ceremony, as well as articles implying that it is a very English attitude to be against this competition while the Latin world is loving it. Spanish is becoming the lingua franca of football, as if those same pundits had never been to Miami to realize it is a microcosm of the Latin American world. However, it is so different from the rest of the U.S.; for example, Chicago, Boston, and New York would have more Irish and Italian heritage. The point being that one decent crowd for the opener in Miami was not going to define this tournament.
What’s worse is that teams like Man City, PSG, Chelsea, Real Madrid and Bayern, who already have dominated their national leagues through fair or foul means (more foul than fair) will come out of this with considerably more financial ammo to dominate their leagues into the future.
While I dislike the ‘transfer season’ and the influx of ‘never heard of before’ journalists claiming that every player under the sun is going, not going, u-turning, or batting their eyelashes at your team, it is still preferable to this tournament that primarily serves to feed the ego of that insufferable tw*t, Infantino.
Paul McDevitt
It’s no good if the Champions of England, Spain and Italy are not there, you say? That’s surely the most irrelevant of your largely irrelevant points.
First off, who cares? Secondly, who really f**king cares?
The entry criteria for the tournament isn’t about National champions unless you’re the host nation. Why do I feel like your gripe is actually about the absence of the Champions of England, the bestest league in all the lands in all the worlds. Merely including others to make it sound more reasonable but you fool only yourself.
Besides, the qualification cycle for this tournament doesn’t include the 2024/2025 season. It’s 2020/21 to 2023/24. So really the only champions of England – Man City – for the relevant period are there. Even if they aren’t, it’s still wouldn’t matter. Because it’s not about league winners.
Italy, the European champions at the time, didn’t play at the World Cup in Qatar. Because it’s a different tournament, with different qualification criteria.
Literally the only good thing about the CWC is the maximum two per country limit unless a country has more than two continental champions. The cynic in me believe this would probably be tweaked in future versions to enable more European heavyweights to participate but I hope it stays as it is (it won’t).
And don’t get me started on the complaints about player welfare. Yes it’s becoming a really big problem but not one uniquely created by the CWC. It feels like just another excuse to criticize the tournament.
How does the actual World Cup or any other summer tournaments address the issue of player welfare? Does the CWC make it worse in any way? No, it’s exactly the same.
AY (You don’t have to watch it if you don’t like it, not many are watching it anyway)
Return of the diddy men (Ed – surely there’s a better phrase?)
Back in the day, football was much simpler, you were either an artist or an artisan, and by artisan I mean borderline thug. Think Norman “bite yer legs” Hunter or Ron “chopper” Harris (where have those colourful nicknames gone?).
Conversely, the artists were, by and large, slight. Pele was only 5′ 8″ and both George Best and Dennis Law were both 5′ 9″. Then somewhere along the way it all changed and gave rise to the athlete. Thierry Henry was 6′ 2″ and built like a sprinter. And more followed, Drogba, Van Persie, Shearer, all over 6 feet tall.
Yes the old maxim “if you’re good enough, you’re tall enough” still applied, but you had to be bloody good otherwise it was men against boys.
As boring as “tiki taka” was, you have to give Guardiola credit for putting the smaller, technically gifted player back on the map, yet, in a flash they were gone again. And after seeing the manchild Haaland chew up the Premier League, I feared football was going to go the way of American professional sports.
So it was refreshing to see PSG and Barcelona lead the way back with their Diddy Men. Vitinha and Neves bossed the CL final and Barcelona’s seem to have an almost endless supply of Gavi’s and Pedri’s. It seems like only in the English Agricultural League where these players don’t appear to cut mustard. It’s questionable if even Paul scholes would make it in the EPL these days. And we all know that Messi wouldn’t be able to “do it” on a cold Tuesday night in Stoke!
So, fast forward to the 2026 World Cup, being played in the heat of the American summer. What are going to be the chances of the gut busting runs of Haaland, Mbappe, etc. going to fare against the economical styles of possession based teams?
Assuming they are even allowed into the country!
Adidasmufc (FIFA have obviously never visited the USA in June!)
Random selection?
Hi
So the game voted the most entertaining of the 2024/25 season has been scheduled between the same two teams, on the same weekend (the last before Crimbo) at the same venue for the 2025/26 season.
What are the chances huh.
Andrew
Worst XI
Simple really; your clubs worst XI in your lifetime (ideally that you’ve seen live). Players must have played a few times – not signings that arrived and left without much playing time. I’m going with performances over transfer fee and wages.
Ian Walker
Paolo Tramezzani
Stuart Nethercott
Ricrardo Rocha (props to Calderwood, Gardner and Ciriches).
Gilberto
Samways (Zakora can feel hard done by)
Paulinho
Ndombele
Jose Dominguez
Janssen
Rebrov (about fourteen players can feel hard done by)
Dan
Alex the greats
Since you decided to spend your sleeping time watching a player who made the biggest most influential decision in the history of decisions, by moving from one football club to another. I decided to make a team of Alex. Hope the rest of my team get a watch too.
Alex McCarthy
Alexander trentwatch
Alex
Alexsandro( new Brazilian CB)
Alex Sandro. (I love Brazil)
Alex oxlade Chamberlain
Alex iwobi
Alexander Song
Alejandro garnacho
Alexander Isak
Alexis Sanchez
Manager Alex Ferguson
If we sign Alexander Wirtz, we are definitely winning the league.
WAFF TOWN MAN. ( The heat in that stadium could have killed Trent)