Neville ‘failed’ to push ‘arrogant’ and ‘completely out of touch’ Ratcliffe as he used ‘Trump playbook’

Sir Jim Ratcliffe exposed himself as ‘borderline incompetent’ and ‘arrogant’ in that Man Utd interview, but Gary Neville ‘failed’ to make an ‘obvious point’.

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A £2billion punchline
Can I be the first to applaud the architects for United’s new stadium and their unique vision.

A big tent perfectly epitomises the clown show running the joint and on the pitch.

Bravo.
Tom, Leyton

The mixed messaging regarding a new stadium for Man United is so United it’s unbelievable

Yesterday:  We were running out of money

Today: We are spending a billion on a new stadium
Andrew S (It’s a real clown show there so the big top inspired design is apt though)

Drowning in hubris
You’ll be bombarded, no doubt, with letters about Jim Ratcliffe. So in case anyone else doesn’t make the obvious point that Gary Neville failed to make:

It’s not an unreasonable excuse, and really only proven with the benefit of hindsight for Ratcliffe to stand by ETH in the close season. It was perhaps too early for them to make that decision. However, it was also too early to be renewing his contract. A baffling decision then, and even more incomprehensible one now as they sack loyal club servants to fill the gap created by paying off Ten Hag £10m.

He’s not honest, he’s arrogant, out of touch and as is often the case with these rich old men, he completely insults the intelligence of all those around him.

United are doomed.
Mat (will happily lose to PSG and Newcastle if it means we win the league)

He’s basically Trump, isn’t he? Twisting facts, downright lying, completely out of touch, has his own selfish agenda, couldn’t give a flying fork about ordinary working people. Yes, he has that English smarm/charm (take your pick) and isn’t as deranged, but his rhetoric is straight out of the Trump playbook. And the comments on the myriad articles are illuminating, and explain why we are all so f***ed.

I said in the last email that he is insulting the intelligence of all those around him, but I appear to have given them way too much credit.

You can’t expect a billionaire to behave properly, and why even should he, seems to be the gist. What, you expect billionaires to put their hands in their own pockets and invest in the clubs that they are incredibly privileged to have as a hobby? What are you, some sort of idiot? So what if owners of smaller clubs have done that? That’s because they have a small club mentality.

His mental gymnastics about wage bills is utter misdirection to the point of being downright dishonest, and people are actually defending his use of “logic”, and this, in a nutshell, is why Donald Trump is the President of America, and why the rest of us are his playthings, having our lives in his whimsical hands.

I realise that football ain’t wot it used to be, that it’s a money machine these days and large clubs are merely businesses etc etc but watching so many fans (and not all United fans who would get a little grace as they all have Stockholm Syndrome at this point) roll over, part their cheeks and grit their teeth while billionaires make merry with them is a sight to behold.

United certainly are doomed, but I think that we all are at this point. Rich white men will f*** us all. They’re doing it right now and people are queuing up to be their fluffers.
Mat (God it’s all so depressing, we are a race of lemmings)

MORE ON THE RATCLIFFE INTERVIEWS ON F365
👉 ‘Do you?!’ – Neville baffled by Ratcliffe’s Amorim assessment amid Man Utd ‘salary bill’ whataboutery
👉 Six Manchester United stars ‘suit’ Amorim philosophy but some ‘key players are choosing not to’
👉 Sir Jim Ratcliffe: Fact-checking the Man Utd co-owner’s interview bull

A pivotal moment for United
It was really interesting to see Sir Jim and  Gary ‘Harry Potter’ Neville discussing Man United’s future on The Overlap. The biggest take away for me was that right now United need to be run by someone who understands finance.

Discussing the team, performances, decision making and treatment of club employees made Sir Jim look borderline incompetent.

But the opposite was true when it came to finances. Sir Jim was very open about the dire financial situation: MUFC  losing £330m in the last four years, being previously at risk of running out of cash by November ’25, £35m/a year servicing the debt and £89m to be paid this summer on transfer installments for existing players.

It was clear that while Sir Jim might not fully understand football he does have a very firm grip on the handle when it comes to the finances and what needs to be done.

The real masterplan and masterstroke however is the stadium/south manchester development. If United get to build a cross between the Camp Nou and the Westphalenstadion and have the biggest football club stadium in the world while getting their finances in order over the next 3 to 5 years, it will be a major transformation. Annual match day income alone could potentially rise by up to £100m.

It’s gonna be a bumpy ride. United are a car crash on the pitch and even more disastrous off it. However, Sir Jim does offer a realistic strategic vision to solve many of United’s structural problems. He may not understand football but he does have an achievable vision to secure United’s big club status which wouldn’t have survived another decade of Glazer mismanagement.

United have 5-7 years to completely revamp the club. If they fail, they’ll lose their position in the top 3 clubs globally and will be overtaken by Liverpool, City, Chelsea, Arsenal and maybe even Newcastle in England as new generations of fans switch to teams that actually win football matches. This is a pivotal moment in United’s history and what they need more than anything is an effective masterplan to guarantee their future. Regardless of what you think about the Dan Ashworth debacle, hiring a manager whose tactics dont fit the squad or treatment of employees, this is what Sir Jim is offering.
Ben

Arsenal and a silly narrative
The narrative around the title race and Arsenal’s injury crisis or lack of a striker being the only reason they didn’t walk to a title needs to be revisited. As does the idea that Arsenal have been great challengers or even a great premier league team.

This is a team that has been praised beyond belief by this and other websites and pundits. While they’ve improved and have challenged man city in recent years, they’ve failed to break 90 points. After a quick google, I see that 13 teams have done this in the premier league era. However, I don’t want to criticize them not achieving a high standard like that.  I want to criticize the coverage in the same way I used to critique how this website and others presented King Kevin De-Cline as the best midfielder in premier league history even though no body chooses him over Keane, Gerard Lamprd or Scholes in an all time eleven or that City were better with him out of the team and Bernardo dominating  the league before De-Cline returned next season, won POTS even though city had dropped about 30 points.

Arsenal are being bailed out by the media with injuries. However, this league was lost before they gained injuries. When Saka was injured against Palace, Liverpool were 3 points ahead with two games in hand. They won the next day to go 6 ahead and a game in hand. That lead has stayed the same up until it looked like the pressure was on Liverpool a few weeks ago and Arsenal decided to implode. Granted they’ve had injuries, but Arteta’s negative tactics and focus on winning corners rather than games has meant that Arsenal have weirdly performed no worse with injuries. They have 35 points after 17 games which is on course for 78 points. They now have 55 from 28 which is on course for 74 points. However their form from Saka injury to the west ham game (9 games- 18 points) was on course for 76 points.

They have dropped slightly but it’s clear the problems with this team were there before the injured and Arteta has developed a system that no matter full or partial squad will gain you 76 odd points a season based on this year. To me Arsenal can play great football and with  a full team, could beat Liverpool on any day. But the mentality from the top down is why they are underperforming so much. The sense of entitlement from the fans and manager about being in a title race against teams that have done it in the past is a major problem. The celebrations of the players when they win a big game shows a weak mentality. While Carragher is insufferable he was right last year when Ode was out with the camera. Behaving like a team that is romping to the league and setting new standards in football even though they’ve been beaten in every competition bar an FA Cup 5 years ago with a squad that wasn’t his.

This is a manager and a club that has been backed. They chose to sign a left back, centre mid and sterling last summer. It is not an excuse that they didn’t sign a striker. Just like Liverpool chose to sign Chiesa only and not play him. The underperformance of Arsenal should be compared to the predictions of squads at at the start of the year. Liverpool on paper were the third best squad last season having had a successful  rebuild by klopp that ran out of steam. One failed signing and we’ve outperformed Arsenal in almost every metric. Arsenal were tipped to win the league as it was their ‘time’, wasted more money and now get to blame injuries and the decision to not have a striker.

Last season when Liverpool won the cup with kids and the squad burnt out and imploded, the media and fans  went out of its way to say that injuries are no excuse. For some reason, this Arsenal team doesn’t abide by that. Instead of taking a long hard look in the mirror or at the Photograph (taken by their captain 🤣) they use excuses. Mocking Halaand for stay humble when he was completely correct about the mentality sums it up. Lewis Skelly mocking his celebration showed that even when they’re winning a game to keep title race alive they are more focused on setting the media narrative. Same with Rice rushing to shush the fans when he scored an equalizer in a game where they were 16 points behind a team that no one thought would get top 4.

I might have found Kevin De-Cline to be overrated but I always respected his attitude and behaviour. (Except when this website and others said he focused too much on technique and tried to place it too much when he sent a penalty wide 🤣). I feel the same about Cold Palmer, excellent player, getting crazy media hype. However this Arsenal team has never felt excellent. It feels like a team that has a chip on the shoulder and wants to be respected as the best premier league team without ever actually being it. Arsenal should take a long hard look at the table and reflect on how to improve. Actually maybe they should take a photo, it’ll last longer. I know a certain underperforming captain who could take it.
Sean 

A Gooner defence
Howard, happy to help, as I imagine many people are pretty sick of ‘injuries’ given as boilerplate excuse with no context by us Arsenal fans.

The issue with Arsenal injuries this season isn’t limited to Saka in particular, but with the constant change throughout the year across the team – something that in the positional play Arteta favours creates productivity through interplay and in particular triangles.

Now Arsenal of the last two whole seasons from an attacking standpoint can best be understood as the development of attacking triangles – in 2022/3 the balance on the left between Martinelli, Xhaka and Zinchenko and on the right with Saka, Odegaard and White and then in 2023/4 how it became focused on the right.

2022/23

Left side: 23 goals, 14 assists
Right side: 31 goals, 24 assists

This was very balanced and basically led to Arsenal having the incredibly hot start that was derailed by Jesus’ injury, the World Cup and eventually the bottom falling out of our defence in a harrowing game against Sporting in EL (my last game at the Emirates…) with Tomiyasu and Saliba going out.

In 2023/24, this became even more concentrated on the right. In 35 games played together, 38 goals, 23 assists were generated between Saka, White and Odegaard. Whole gameplans involved getting players on the other side of the pitch open for types of cross we could put in by creating space/overloads on the right.

Now the 2024 summer transfer market was supposed to rebalance the team – the left side had taken a big step back in creativity with Xhaka leaving and Havertz not taking his place, but instead becoming the CF. So Calafiori and Merino came in and this was supposed to unlock Arsenal’s potential as a balanced force again.

What happened instead was a complete disintegration of the right side due to revolving injury.

Saka, White and Odegaard have played 5 games together this season. Saka and Odegaard, Arsenal’s two elite creators have only played 9 games together. In total this season, the three collectively have 7 goals and 14 assists.

Simultaneously, the left has never truly developed. Calafiori has been in and out with injury, Merino got a freak shoulder injury that meant he missed 2 months at the start of the season and Martinelli has struggled for fitness and missed several games. But the new signings can also just be seen as a bit underwhelming – no doubts there.

Injuries have forced players into positions they’re less comfortable in – Partey has played far too much at RB (full stop if you ask me) and Timber for a while played on the left to cover injury (before we knew MLS could play) which limited our overlapping.

You haven’t seen a fully functioning Arsenal all season basically – I think the win against Villa at the start of the season is maybe the high point from a team availability standpoint? Compare this to Liverpool who again have had more or less their full attacking roster fully available for Slot to work with (and Salah having an all world season) and you can pretty easily understand the gulf in production.

Now, does this mean it’s all just bad luck? No, we have definitely seen some of the limitations of Arteta’s style and I don’t disagree that Arsenal could have more flexibility to change things up in game, but I think there has not been enough availability to draw too many conclusions about Arteta’s managerial ceiling for example.

Squad construction can definitely be questioned – you would definitely feel like Berta’s first job as DoF is aggressively cutting the dead weight and maybe being a bit less sentimental about players whose body’s can no longer be relied upon (Tomiyasu and Jesus I would try and get anything back for ASAP for example).

This is also why any real further analysis of this season for Arsenal is a bit of a waste until Saka is back – it’s not that mysterious why Arsenal are struggling to create/convert chances when Odegaard is a one man band, trying to set up a DM playing CF. Nwaneri will flash intermittently because he’s 17 years old. Maybe with Martinelli back, Trossard can come back into the centre and we’ll have a bit more balance, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Tom, Leyton

Is Mo Salah the greatest Premier League player ever?
It’s a simple question, is Mohammed Salah the greatest Premier League player of all time? Immediately you’ll be tempted to dismiss it, especially given the names in the list but it’s not ridiculous.

To decide this I think you have to break it down into a few categories; longevity, consistency, talent and achievements.

Longevity – he’s been here for a while now, almost a decade, and he’s actually having the best season of his career at 32 in the hardest league in the world. Can you name me another player for whom that would be true? Of the people at the top of this list you could argue shearer, giggs and Rooney are probably above him as players who were here a long time ago the top of their game

Consistency – multiple golden boots, guaranteed min 20 goals per season andn double digit assists..there’s actually only rooney who’s done that and Salah recently broke his record. It’s fair to say he’s extremely consistent. He’s also a big game player scoring against literally every big team he’s ever come across and outright bullies some of them.

Talent – I think we can all agree he’s an extremely gifted player who can dribble, shoot, and in the last couple of years has added passing, crossing (trivela style) and superb vision to his game as well as having a ridiculous battery and injury resistance. He’s genuinely equal to any other player talent wise and better than most.

Achievements – won more trophies than shearer but less than the other names in the top 5 all time scorers (shearer, kane, Rooney, cole, aguero/salah) but he has won every single trophy available except the balon dor and it was a crime he didn’t win it when he broke records the first time, he surely deserves it this year?

For context, he’s scored more goals than all but four players in the history of the premier league, has more assists than any other member of the top 5 except Rooney. Is injured less than anyone in the top 5, and has won more trophies than the top 2 (strangely everyone has won more than the top 2)

Henry is often lauded as the greatest foreigner to play here but Salah has more goals, more assists, more trophies. In my opinion the only person in the top 5 who is comparable is Rooney. Sure shearer, cole and aguero were better goalscorers , but better players? Not for me.

Even if you disagree he’s the best player to ever play in the premier league this surely has to be the best individual season a player has had?

27 goals, 17 assists in 29 games is frankly bullshit and I think there’s really only Messi who posts better goals and assists numbers at the same time. That’s extremely rarified company, even if mo isn’t the same level then fact only these two have done this is pretty wild.

I also think the reason he doesn’t get spoken about in the same legendary fashion as other players is because he’s from Egypt. If he were french or Brazilian he would have a very different rep.
Lee

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