Average ‘dullards’ too dense to truly appreciate the genius of Jurgen Norbert Klopp…

One Liverpool fan, evidently intelligent enough to recognise Jurgen Klopp’s nous, fears the Reds boss won’t ever be fully appreciated. Also in the Mailbox: Bruno Fernandes isn’t ‘elite’ level, apparently.

Get your views in to theeditor@football365.com…

Recognising Klopp’s brilliance
I don’t normally do this but on 11/4/23 I wrote on email after Liverpool drew 2-2 with Arsenal and we saw stew t in the hybrid role for the first time. In my email I was very excited at the potential for this move and what this tactical change would mean for us as a team, basically it would make Trent near unmarkable as a creative force in midfield and would revolutionise our team…remember where Liverpool were at this point.

I received this reply from Oliver Dziggel (yes we know you live in Switzerland so do lots of other people)

“Dave LFC: I am also a Liverpool supporter. I also thought Liverpool played better yesterday. But where the f**k did this notion that yesterday represented a radical change in tactics come from? I’m not going to comb through line-by-line of the tactical non-analysis but every sentence is a best-case-scenario which holds no water when placed under any scrutiny. Sure, Trent playing in midfield could create football nirvana where everything goes right for Liverpool and our opponents are flummoxed. Alternatively, it could all go terribly wrong and not work at all next game. Or somewhere in the middle and it works for a few games before opposition managers figure out how to counter-act it. All that aside, the thing which really sticks out is that this (a 2-2 draw vs Arsenal) is “the first time in two years Dave LFC has been excited about this team under Klopp”. We are talking about a team which literally won two cup finals last year, played in a third, and went into the final game of the season still in the title race. What. A. Ridiculous. Thing. To. Say.”

So Oliver, what do you have to say now?
It was the radical tactical change I had seen and called and has played out exactly as I said it would and you were proved utterly utterly wrong in your dismissive arrogance.

And yes I was and always will be more excited about the possibility of Liverpool winning the premier league and champions league (which we now look like we can do this year and next) more than the FA cup and league cup while limping along outside the top 4 like we did most of that year, that is until the “radical change in tactics I had seen” had their effect.

I do this not out of spite (well mostly!) but also just to highlight it as an example of the absence of any semblance of insight, awareness or value to a lot of the replies and emails you see on here now.

Even today football fan after football fan and commentator speculate on when will Trent become a “proper midfielder” even very experienced ones. The answer is he won’t, he shouldn’t and why the hell would he.

Limiting Trent to a traditional no 8 role would completely counter the effect playing him as a hybrid 8 produces, ie a near unmarkable creative maestro who can run the game from anywhere he chooses. Please stop asking when will Klopp destroy what he working brilliantly and which apparently most of the football world can’t even recognise still.

The other thing which bizarrely receives little or no commentary is Klopp’s use of subs this year. Average football man is too busy wringing his pearls over Jordan Henderson to pay any attention to actual football matters.

Klopp as you may have noticed has been pushing for 5 subs for years. Why is this? Because he knew that if this was brought in that he could move to a 16 man game, which is precisely what he has done. While Arsenal were busy winning the transfer window Klopp was on another level still unrecognised by the football world at large. He essentially has 10 interchangeable players of incredibly high ability and completely different styles to play the front 5 positions. Why is this?

After the champions league final vs Real Madrid where we lost 1-0 Ancellotti made a comment that he knew what Liverpool were going to do and knew how to stop them, we all did, the Mane/Firmino/Salah front 3 while brilliant was now stale and predictable against higher quality opposition, so the following year I think Klopp began constructing a squad of players which were completely unpredictable.

It is no coincidence that Liverpool win so many games in the last 30-40 mins in what is now usually a 100 min game, when the first 11 have run the legs off the opposition then the “bomb squad” are called into decimate the opposition.

This is not an accident. Trent’s hybrid role is not an accident or a stop gap before he “moves into midfield.”
This. Is. The. Plan. Only most football dullards can’t see it.

Klopp is playing the violin while everyone around him (with a few exceptions) is strumming their banjoes, the sound of which sails across the Swiss Alps still I suspect.

Klopp’s achievement in outperforming clubs who had infinitely higher resources is really remarkable but I wonder will he only ever be partially recognised for what he has done in years to come due to the general lack of intelligence of the average football man and the intense tribalism which surrounds our game.
Dave LFC

Bruno ‘not a top Prem player’
Simon, London makes a good point about Bruno, that he is simultaneously Man United’s most important player and a significant drawback in their development. But the fact that Bruno Fernandes, a good but not elite Premier League player, is United’s best player is part of their problem as well. Would he be, I don’t know, West Ham’s best player? Or Crystal Palace’s? You could make a convincing case that Lucas Pacquetta or Eberechi Eze, as well as being more disciplined and more able to fit into an elite system, are just better at playing football than Bruno.

He might be to Ten Hag what Coutinho was to Klopp. A clearly excellent player, capable of moments of game-changing brilliance, but a problem to be solved rather than a solution for an existing problem. People often talk about how Liverpool’s Great Leap Forward was as a result of spending the Coutinho money, which is true, but it was maybe just as much a result of releasing a player who didn’t quite fit the system, but who was so good that he needed to be accommodated within it.
Dara O’Reilly, London

No FFP excuses
We’re seeing a lot of misplaced ire being thrown at the ‘incomprehensible’ EPL financial regulations by the gullible pundits and fans that trot out the excuses being made by the clubs involved.

It’s both stunning and frustrating that the pundits, in particular, can’t do some basic research or understand the basic principles.

The spending regs are for 3-year rolling periods. Let’s say years B, C and D.

In Forest’s case, they claim it’s ‘unfair’ because they essentially sold Brennan in year E, but it was oh so close to year D. It’s a travesty. No mention of the 22 players acquired when first promoted, several of whom would have fallen into year A. And loads of chances to offload in the intervening years. A shopping spree at its worst. No.

Everton are being a little sneakier. “How can we be done twice for the ‘same’ period?”, they scream to the rafters of their olde, but soon to be replaced, stadium. But it’s not the ‘same’ period. If you go nuts in year C and fail to take care of your finances sufficiently in year D, you risk falling foul of spending regs for two periods, BCD and CDE. (It’s possible to have 3 infractions that include the same year but are different 3-year rolling periods.) It’s not rocket science. But Everton needs to feed the masses with some faux excuse to get them on the side.

We sold X and Y, and they said, what more could we do? Well, that is the challenge when you have a scattergun approach to buying players – players you overpaid for that other teams don’t want.

Even Everton’s claims that the regs allow them to remove infrastructure loan interest from the calculations is a red herring when they can’t prove what the interest is for – players, new ground, etc. Just as they tried to claim the last time they lost naming rights income for a stadium not yet built, that is usually spread out over the life of the naming rights and came from a dodgy Russian in any case.

It’s a conspiracy of the elite, they say. These incomprehensible rules favour the big guns. The jury is still out on City, but most of those bigger teams are spending within their budgets. Liverpool, Spurs, Arsenal, etc, are all constrained. Arsenal can’t afford a new striker, Liverpool couldn’t afford Harland and certainly won’t buy Mbappe. With all their new money, Newcastle can’t afford replacements for their injury list. Liverpool’s most significant spending happened selling their ‘best’ player – Coutinho – for a small fortune.

Well-run teams like Brighton look for bargains and are willing to wait, coach, and bring them into a team with a plan. Everton and Forest were both scrambling. Everton constantly changing managers as well as players and Forest, well enough said about what they did.

But let’s stop feeding the whole conspiracy theory machines. It was terrible management from both teams—terrible management.

I guess one irony is that the extra exposure on finances that has come as a result of the Government threatening to regulate and oversee the EPL because of the uproar from fans, but teams like Everton, at the ‘big’ 6 joining the ESL, are hitting Everton hard.
Paul McDevitt

Read more: What the FFP is going on with Man City, Chelsea, Everton and Nottingham Forest?

How to get Mbappe to Liverpool
Reading the mailbox this morning, Lee mentioned Mbappe being too expensive for Liverpool, even on a free.
I happen to agree, but it raises an FFP question. (I also think Mbappe is pretty poisonous for a club. PSG would do well to get rid IMO).

How do third party payments work in regards to FFP (anyone got a number for one of City’s lawyers)?

In rugby league in Australia there is a salary cap. Players are allowed to earn an unlimited amount of money from third party deals – so long as there is no reference to the NRL, their club etc, and there is some ‘distance’ between the club and the revenue source (so not a sponsor etc).
This is pretty blatantly rorted. All the clubs have a salary cap, except for the Sydney Roosters who it’s said have a salary sombrero.

I have no idea if this exist in football or not. Could Nike for example pay Mbappe 700k a week as a Nike ambassador, and Liverpool pay him 300k just to get to the theoretical 1m quid a week?

I know there was some shenanigans around Tevez and Mascherano being owned or part owned by a third party when they went to West Ham. I don’t know if this is still a thing or not.

For those interested in punishments – the Melbourne Storm were stripped of two titles for salary cap breaches (players saying with a straight face they didn’t realise where their new speedboats or house extensions were coming from), but the titles were left vacant. There is a knockout playoff system for the winner, and it was not considered fair to just give the titles to the losing finalist due to the vagaries of draws, knockouts etc.
Dixon Hunt

…So Lee the Liverpool fan thinks that paying £1M a week for Mbappe will (quote) “bankrupt them”.

Can I suggest that if LFC are £52M away from going bust, surely there’s no way they can legitimately pass FFP / PSR ?

My anonymous tip-off to the Premier League has already been submitted.
Phil (MCFC)

Close to walking
I just knew that someone would spew the Emirates sponsor line…to Neil, LFC, USA and all the others.

I don’t buy the Arsenal shirts or pay a penny to support the club. I don’t pay towards any subscriptions. I didn’t watch the last world cup, not a single second of footage. I dont watch LIV, or formula 1, I would never go on holiday there or have anything else to do with a region that oppresses, and brainwashes its people. I am clinging onto this iteration of football in the hope we see change and merely have my toes in the water, as a form of entertainment.

Arsenal has over 60 sponsors, Emirates are likely the worst, but im sure some of the others arent white nights. The Emirates do not have a single element of control over the club. It’s an airline, an oppressive-state owned airline at that, and I hate it. But I still want to watch the premier league, and sponsor is about the lowest I’ll go to survice in this hell scape. If we were owned, I’d walk away, I’m close to doing that as it is.
Strevs, AFC, Canada

…Glad to see Neil, LFC, USA flagging Arsenal’s less than spotless record on sponsorship from regimes that have a dodgy human rights reputation.

As well as the main shirt/stadium sponsors you need only look at the shirt’s sleeves which promote tourism to another, ahem, problematic country…there seems to be a pattern emerging…

Clearly they have a few moral issues of their own to sort out before they start bleating on to supporters of other clubs
Monkey Steve

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Hands across London​
Mike, WHU basically wrote in to have a dig at Spurs.

I’m not like that, so I’m going to be gracious and congratulate Mike and the rest of the West Ham cringe-crew who now proudly shout ‘Champions of Europe, you’ll never sing that’ at every game, including at City 🥴

The only decent performance in winning the Euro LDV Vans was by the fat bloke dishing it out in Holland!

And now you have to watch Moyes ball for longer. Fun..!
Dave (Spurs)

Good and bad business
Off the back of the two articles on best and worst bit of transfer business over the past few windows. I’d love to see an article or mails on best and worst sales. By this I don’t mean most money made etc., but selling a good player for good money who immediately went on to be rubbish, caused another team problems / got banned etc. Examples I can think of Henderson (potentially), Mane (didn’t go too well at Bayern), K Schmeichel, Sanchez, Cucurella. Or selling a player who was rubbish for that club, for pittance and went on to be integral for someone else and the selling club could really have done with that newly rejuvenated player, Pirlo would be the obvious one here if he had been in the Premier League, but finding this bit more difficult to think of examples.
JC STFC

Deductions for everyone
Just wanted to write in to say good job on the Docked Points article. I’ve been reading this website for 20 years and I think this one deserves to be recognized alongside the best. Excellent idea + execution, very funny!
Oliver Dziggel, Geneva Switzerland