Man City expulsion?! F365 get a kicking in Mailbox alongside ‘Gareth Mitigate’ and Lewis Dunk

F365 get a kicking for the Manchester City ‘expulsion’ talk, while there is reaction to England 2 Belgium 2, with Gareth Southgate’s tactics, Lewis Dunk and Harry Maguire again being called into question.

Send your views to theeditor@football365.com…

England v Belgium conclusions
75 minutes into another lacklustre England performance, a few things have become clear ahead of the Euros:

1.  Kobbie Mainoo has to start alongside Declan Rice.  Mainoo can progress the ball from deep and is adept in tight spaces.  Despite his young age, he is clearly the best option available.

2.  Jarrod Bowen deserves a seat on the plane as an able deputy to Saka.

3.  Why is 32 year old Lewis Dunk being tried out ahead of more youthful options?  He never looked comfortable.

4.  Ben Chilwell is not good enough at international level.

5.  Left back (assuming Shaw will not be fit to play all games at the Euros) and central defence (i.e. Maguire) are major and obvious weak spots for England.

The solution to the left back and central defence issue is not obvious.  What does the Mailbox suggest?

One way of dealing with it is something we have seen before: a back five with Kyle Walker as the right sided central defender (alongside Stones and, in the absence of a better option, Maguire).  We can then add one of the various good right full backs (Trent perhaps being the best bet, if fit) at right wing back.  The downside is who plays left wing back which would probably be Foden and will blunt his attacking ability.

But against elite opposition in the latter stages of the Euros, that sounds like a better option than playing a back four that never looks more than a few seconds away from being exposed and punished.
James Hammond

READ MORE: Mainoo, Toney and Bowen boost Euro chances: England player ratings against Belgium

Ben Chil-unwell
Anyone else think that Southgate’s half time talk involved sending Chilwell to get the brews, then telling everyone else not to pass to him?

The amount of times in the second half that he was out on the left, in space with his arms in the air was really funny.

Hopefully Konsa and Guehi get a chance to start next time over Slabhead and Dunk. We know their skillset and, more importantly, their limitations. “But Maguire always performs well for England.” is an argument, but how will we ever know if the younger guns are any good if they don’t get the chance, especially in a friendly. .

Love Fodens cheeky flicks and back heels… regardless of if it actually works, it’s entertaining and very unlike an English player in an international. Mainoo was very impressive for a lad of that age. Maddison’s ball for the equaliser was great, but that assist from Lukaku was too sexy for prime time channel 4.

Is Chilwell crap now due to injuries or the Chelsea funk? Drinkwater wasn’t too bad either before the move to the Blues, then became gash. Same with Barkley, who appears to have finally shaken off the funk. Cucurella, Caicedo, Mudryk, Sterling are all more recent examples of perfectly serviceable footballers who became pants. Is this a coaching, management or environment thing?

Anyway, I now understand how Liverpool fans must have felt for chunks of the season, with the late, late goal from Bellingham. Feels good does that.
Dave PVFC

Main-no!
Mainoo really was brilliant. But Is it because he has literally had no time to train/be influenced by Southgate?

What’s the bet by the Euros he instructed to sit next to Rice and be disciplined.

Also I never bought the Maguire never let England down statement. He literally has ballsed up his job many many times. The solid performances are all against extremely poor teams and with Eng playing 2 DMs.

Eng will be much better off playing younger faster CBs even if they are not as good as slabhead at ‘defending’.

E.g. replacing Maguire with Dunk was pointless. Maguire should be the CB you bring on when u really need a 3rd CB late in the game and defending deep. That profile should not be in your starting XI plan.

To sum up. I think Southgate is uninspired and basically mediocre at best. Any result for England is despite him rather than because of him
Hats

Calm down, England fans
2-2 draw against the 4th ranked team in the world with 3 of our first choice outfield players on the pitch from the 10th minute.

Almost like England had lots of players missing due to injury like most (big 6/7) Premier League clubs have been pointing to as mitigation all season.

The Summer means more…
Brian (BRFC – loving the New England shirts)

I don’t like international football, but…
So I don’t like international football because I think it’s very slow and boring, reminds me of watching ligue 1.

But since we are managerless in the summer I’m watching them to get a look at potential signings or managers.

I watched the England game, very very dull. Which is largely because of brasils awful tactical fouling carpet bombing campaign. I wish Brasil had stuck it out with deniz, sooner or later he’ll come to Europe and we’ll see some very exciting football.

Anyway I was struck by the team selection. Why were so many Southgate pets selected (stupid I know, answered my own question in the question) Elliot is having a great season, scores goals, creates, defends a lot and works hard. Will Southgate pick him? Of course not.

Why pick Maguire? Henderson? Rashford. Henderson and rashford have been awful this season. Maguire has been alright but you know what you’re getting with him so why pick him for friendlies? Be brave call up some youth players and remind the regulars that there are players waiting to take their spot.

Secondly for a team that’s advanced to the latter stages twice recently the tactics are so negative. Two pivots? Why? This wasn’t Brazil 2001 its an inexperienced young team with a new manager. Rice can handle the vast majority of midfield alone and if you instruct a box to box (like Bellingham) to help out when needed via pressing rice doesn’t need to even be a midfield destroyer.

I think people are stuck in the past of thinking you need a defensive midfielder. The midfield IS the defence. Carlo, klopp and pepp all play that way – does Gareth? Of course not. Gareth is the English benitez. Safety first.

Rice as a deep midfielder with Bellingham box to box and foden with a kind of floating number 10 role gets the best out of all three of those. Foden is wasted as a winger in my opinion.

I watched Germany as well, because I think nagelsmann might get the Liverpool job, and while his tactics look insane there’s no safety first approach for him and he was against France..he had centrebacks running up the wing crossing the ball and midfielders dropping to fill in…it was like musical chairs. It was great to watch and you can tell from the tactics and line up that nagelsmann went into that game with no fear of France and no fear of losing.

Gareth should be called Gareth mitigate because his entire approach is – how do I mitigate against losing?

Don’t get excited about this summer England fans. You’ll win nothing but disappointment again, and probably be bored will getting it. There were England managers who made the game fun, tel and hoddle teams were great to watch. That was a very long time ago.

Here’s to a boring summer of mostly flat, slow, safety first football from pretty much everyone.
Lee

Orgasmic
Well, everyone is VERY excitable, at the moment, at the prospect of City’s punishment finally coming to fruition and F365 must be delighted at their strategy for boosting readership, during a dull international break, by publishing as many insanely speculative articles as they possibly can.

Instead of fining City, let’s relegate them. NO, that’s too good, only expulsion from the League will work. NO, deport them to Rwanda. NO, let’s nuke east Manchester, THAT’LL SHOW’ EM!!! The smell of desperation is overwhelming.

You lot are going to have an aneurism at this rate, especially as it’s forecast that any verdict will be handed down at the end of next season. That’s a long time to wait when in a state of righteous, perpetual, fury.

Which might be completely misplaced anyway because, you know, City can defend themselves in this and as much as you might all exist in a state of utter disbelief at it, can also win their case? In the race to the bottom, has anyone considered that? No, I daresay not, because that would not fit the narrative, would it…

Hopefully that collective sugar rush will ebb soon and we can return to normal adult discourse. Personally, as I’ve said all along, I suggest we wait until the verdict lands, then you should have your say.

Can’t be more reasonable than that.

Obligingly yours,
Levenshulme Blue, Manchester 19
PS. Can we imagine the reaction when the case against City is shown to be a load of bollocks…again? Hoo wee….Off. The. Scale….

Imminent expulsion!
I am very disappointed in Football365 only publishing 38 articles in the last week on Manchester City’s ‘IMMINENT EXPULSION’. Surely there are many more people you could quote who haven’t a clue about City’s finances and even less knowledge about how the Legal System works and spin even more articles about it? Jimmy Bullard for instance, or maybe Lee Anderson? And how difficult would it be to ask Eastenders star Jesse Wallace what League she thinks City will expelled into if they’re found to be guilty of all the charges?

What you definitely shouldn’t do though, is mention many newspapers have reported in the last few days about Etihad preparing to float on the Stock Exchange, suggesting they’re not worried about offering full unfettered access to their Financial Accounts, which they would be unlikely to do if they were trying to cover up fraudulent activity.

Far better to run with quotes from celebrity Everton/Forest/Leicester fans asking ‘why haven’t City been docked 115 points?’, despite knowing full well that the charges against City, which they deny, are a completely different matter, and (and this bit is quite important) not proven.
Michael The Bert

READ MORE: Haaland or Palmer could join Loyal XI who stuck with clubs through demotion – and rejected Man Utd

FFP = less competitive?
FFP, why bother?

Football has always had a financial hierarchy with one or two clubs always having far bigger spending power than the rest.

Liverpool/arsenal in the years before the Premier league reinvented football.
Blackburn briefly breaking transfer fees, man utd buying the cream of the premiership. Chelsea literally buying people to stop their opponents having them(SWP) being a prime example.  Now it’s city and Newcastle would like to join the party.

All I can see FFP achieving is red circling the teams that have already spent big, acquired their assets, built their infrastructure and brand and therefore their wealth.

I’m no Newcastle fan, in fact I’d like to see them relegated as they always take 6 points off my lot. That said why shouldn’t they be able to spend their new found billions to catch up. Surely we are stopping everyone else ever dining at the top table bar years of planning, luck and patience.

I get we want to protect clubs from going under but to a degree you have to be able to speculate to accumulate. The current model will always give those established teams the advantage and make it tough to catch up.

The only true way to level the playing field would be a level spend cap, max wage cap, max squad size, nfl style draft etc…never going to happen.

FFP, making competition worse in the medium and long term?
Pj. Spurs fan, sitting somewhere in the financial middle.

What is FFP even about?
I fail to understand what this FFP is all about, when Chelsea was awash with “Laundered”  Russian olligarch money that was OK. Jack Walker  ploughed loads of money into Blackburn  nobody said much. The original financial dopers of football “Real Madrid” won bucketloads of trophies & are now football royalty, the whole thing is far too selective. It appears now that the main criteria is “Stop the Arabs”!

The FA, EUFA, & FIFA are all at it, and can’t be trusted to officiate anything fairly. World Cup venues are up for sale as is Formula 1 & golf. The people who run sport themselves should be carefully vetted!
Wm

Should Tesco pay X?
Ian H doesn’t think the Premier League owes the EFL a goddamn thing , which is a logically, if not morally defensible position. But the example he uses is Tesco. As it happens, Tesco have been accused this very week of using deliberately predatory practices to force small local shops out of business.

Tesco own Booker, the largest cash and carry company in the United Kingdom, and they are allegedly restricting deliveries and orders to local shops/post-offices etc, with the concomitant effect that these shops are being forced to close, steering shoppers to large out of town supermarkets.

Who cares, eh? I don’t live in an isolated community, or if I do, I’ve never run out of milk, or if I have, I have access to a car at all times. Why should I care about a local shop existing or not existing? It’s not like the existence of viable businesses in a community is a good thing in and of itself, is it? It’s not as if these small communities have very little in the way of local jobs. Law of the jungle, buddy.

Anyway, not sure why I raised this. It’s not like it’s at all relevant to a discussion of grassroots vs Premier League football or anything.
Dara O’Reilly, London

I’m puzzled
A country’s flag is a country’s flag if it has the design and colours of said country’s flag. If you change the design or the colours, it’s no longer that country’s flag. My question therefore is, what is the point of the ‘colourful’ cross on the collar of England’s shirt? I fail to understand Nike’s reasoning. I also fail to understand why John Nicholson can’t understand my confusion.

I’m not angry, but everything is done for a reason. So what is Nike’s reason? Were they indeed intending to make it a rainbow cross? If so, why?

I’m sure John would have been all right with that as well and those who have had enough of everything being seen through the prism of identity politics – me included – would be denounced as transphobic/racist/homophobic etc.

Some things don’t need to be tampered with. Imagine, if Nike had left our flag alone, we could have avoided all the nonsense that has been said and written, including John’s column and this email.
G Thomas, Breda