If this league is average then Treble winners were ‘dreadful’
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United front
Firstly, in no way am I even slightly hinting that Man Utd are having a good season. Let’s get that straight from the offset. What I do find strange is the vibe from the media and others on how certain teams are performing.
If you had offered being ahead of City to me at any stage of the season I’d have bitten your hand off. Yet Guardiola and City aren’t having a bad season, Man Utd are.
Win our game in hand (clearly we won’t but that’s by the by) and we’re somehow 2nd in the league. Spurs are having a fantastic season apparently, but Man Utd are dreadful by all accounts.
Even Arsenal are in my opinion not getting as hard a ride as Man Utd recently, even with Arteta taking them to their worst position in YEARS for this point of the season.
Whilst clearly beating around the bush here it just reminds me of that old theory of relativity saying that I’m about to butcher: hold your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it feels like an hour. Hold a pretty girls hand for an hour and it feels like a minute.
Relativity people.
Mick C, Dublin
Fair points
I am sure others will point this out but Morgan (we’re watching a whole lot of average!) Dublin suggests that a low points total implies a lack of quality.
By that token we can assume Man Utd were a dreadful team the year they won the treble since they won the league with 79 points.
It swings in many ways but low points totals could, equally, be argued to show an incredibly high quality overall; any team can win on any day such is the overall quality. A league where one team gets 100 points might suggest the rest of the league just stinks; nobody else can lay a glove on the one top team.
To some extent Europe can be the distinguishing factor, a team with a low points total in the league that goes far in Europe is still a top team most years. Also [Liverpool fan crying about injuries and VAR], so there’s that.
Minty, LFC
Fair play to Morgan Dublin for arriving on cue to disparage the standard of the PL.
When City ran away with the league in 2018 and Liverpool did last season there were the usual snide “easy league to win,no competition.”
When Liverpool looked like they may go invincible Arsenal fans were everywhere bemoaning the quality of the PL now compared to 2004.
In 18/19 when City and Liverpool were going for it toe to toe the league was poor as there were only “2 teams capable of winning it.”
Even though both European finals were all English affairs.
And now,when the league is tight and there is no outright leader(as in 7,8 points ahead) right on cue comes Morgan Dublin and the inevitable “the league is average,no outstanding team” garbage.
Talk about misery personified. Sport is escapism,if the PL isn’t entertaining you watch something else.
I don’t know Morgan but am guessing he’s a Man Utd fan pining for the Fergie glory years. Liverpool currently look on course to get round between 78 and 82 points. The Man Utd treble team got… 79 points. Was the PL a load of average then too?? Man Utd drew 2 of their last 5 and still won the league,including a 0-0 draw which relegated Blackburn. Does that mean the league is competitive or the league champions are so bang average they could only draw 0-0 with a relegated team?
What are the criteria for an outstanding league? Is it just when your own team wins it?
Finally,3 totally unrelated points:
The top division was useless & bang average from August 1990-July 2020.
Last season was the best football seen since 89/90.
Football was far better in the eighties.
Ferg,Cork.
No way, Jose
Hi,
As a José hater, I genuinely hoped we’d seen the last of him in England after he left his room at the Lowry when Man Utd let him go. He appears annoyingly rejuvenated at Spurs, and it means I may need to change my stance that he’s finished, and that is very annoying because who wants to admit they’re wrong and change a fundamental belief?
I was so tense watching the Liverpool vs Spurs game (as a Liverpool fan) I took to doing a Bielsa-esque squat on the edge of my sofa with clenched arsehole for 90 mins, like a tourist trying to go to the toilet in rural China. I was expecting a regulation Mourinho shut up shop bore-fest like we have seen so many times over the years in big games, but I think he got it spot on at Anfield, and despite his low block, it made for a fascinating game. The most interested I’ve been in a match since football restarted.
He had the perfect attacking tools, playing at the top of their game, to make the fans of both sides equally excited and petrified when Liverpool attacked, because it had to be lazer-like precision or they would have capitalised on any error and punished us, which nearly happened at least 3 times. It wasn’t a parked bus (I tried to think of a fun transportation-based metaphor here, but nothing’s coming) it was just an excellent strategy for beating this Liverpool team at Anfield.
I’ve been a signed up member of the ‘Jose plays anti-football’ brigade for years, but people seem so invested in that narrative, that they see what they want to. Liverpool probably just deserved to win on balance, but we were a lot less efficient going forward than Spurs, and they were the width of a post or Harry Kane brainfart away from taking 3 points on Wednesday.
I’m looking forward to the rest of the title race and ideally fewer hamstring twangs between now and may,
Steve, Tier 3 dweller.
It’s appropriate that you used a basketball analogy since spuds spent the match handling the ball as often as they could.
Ball to arm? Accidental? Those things don’t exist in the 2020 rulebook. Maybe they should but they don’t, as Joe Gomez and many other can attest to.
Also there were at least three quality chances for firmino, Salah and mane who all rolled harmless shots at the keeper but the chances were guilt edged so I don’t think your analysis of the spuds holding a harmless Liverpool at length with a palm to the forehead. Our strikers were shit but the rest of the team were great.
The son Kane super duo that we keep hearing is the greatest thing since…well ever apparently was not all that impressive against our awesome defence of a midfielder a youth player in his first premier League game and a wing back returning from illness. Only Robertson of those four is a first teamer, in the correct position and at full fitness.
Put the same quality of players in the spuds defence against Salah and mane and it would have been a different game indeed. I understand why spuds fans get annoyed because you’ve sold your club soul to the devil of the dark arts and now all your players are doing all the things you used to criticise your rivals for and your team is playing the same brand of football you used to mock your rivals for…and it’s working. And you want to justify the 180 you’ve done from abhorring that type of football to suddenly thinking it’s not bad once you realise it works.
But the simple truth is…the spuds got planted…again… It’ll keep happening because Jose has tried this tactic multiple times against klopp with multiple clubs and it rarely works. That’s why he was sour.
Lee
To Paul(Spurs) I understand why as a fan it’s easy to like a coach who goes out of his way to get results sometimes at the cost of the aesthetics of the game but us neutrals know Mourinho’s brand of football, we just don’t enjoy it and would indeed prefer basketball over the dross he serves up occasionally.
It must be said it was a winning brand of football until most good teams figured how to go about it and it stopped delivering the same success it did ask United and Chelsea fans×2. You haven’t got to the phase where it’s no longer palatable but trust me it’s around the corner, he’s third season is not that far off again ask United and Chelsea fans ×2.
Just to be clear most of us don’t enjoy watching 11 c**ts frustrating games and hoping to ride out games on fine margins. Some of us also view football as not a life and death thing but ENTERTAINMENT, a sport not a show for 11 men to come and show the world how effective they can be and focus only on the result we see it as a chance to wind up from our sometimes strenuous routines occasionally with mates over a bottle at our local pub and that’s why we appreciate player’s going out of their way to entertain and sometimes take risks like Pool did against Tottenham ( that’s why most mates stay up late in some parts of the world. The game ended at well past midnight in Kenya)
Joe Nairobi Kenya
I found it odd that after the Liverpool-Spurs game much of the focus was on which team controlled the game. Both managers claimed their team did so. Would it not be fair to say that each team controlled their own way of playing?
Liverpool didn’t force Spurs to sit back and defend for large periods of time, just as Spurs didn’t compel Liverpool to attack the way they did. This was a clash of styles that ended with a tight, marginal victory. That’s all.
Kevin Kav, Waterford boi
Steve and Frank
I’ve made this point here before and I’ll make it again. You do have a tendency to victimise people. Your two current targets Bruce and Lampard have had more words written about them than any other managers. Lampard gets lot of weird abuse about his character but I’m not here to discuss him.
Bruce gets about 10 paragraphs every time Newcastle lose! This doesn’t apply to any other manager! You realise if they win their game in hand they will have the same amount of points as Nuno – who you have spent the last 3 years touting for a top job.
Ah but his team have been lucky you shout. You said that last year! Surely there comes a point when you have to admit Bruce is actually doing ok. (I realise you would rather die than admit this).
The only other possible option is Newcastle have a good team. However that can’t be right because they have an owner who doesn’t invest in his team… Public apology to either Steve Bruce or Mike Ashley please. I know whose side I would rather be on.
Your stance on Lampard is even more of a joke, compared to your idolisation of Arteta when (for half an hour) Chelsea were top 2 days ago! However at least I know why you victimise him – because he once said something Tory – even though we don’t know what he is like now and he seems like he has changed a lot. With Bruce though – why do you hate him so?!
Thanks,
Howard.
Linesman’s call
Adam sounds like a perfectly pleasant chap, but I’ve got to take a bit of an issue with his letter in today’s mailbox.
Adam wrote: So last night during the Liverpool Tottenham game there was yet another tight VAR call that raised everyone’s temperature somewhat and rubbed some more salt in what is already the bitter taste of VAR.
He then goes onto suggest a ‘lineman’s call’ for these kind of scenarios.
The difficulty is that there wasn’t any controversy yesterday. The linesman didn’t flag in the first place, and while to the naked eye it looked like Son might be found to be offside by VAR, when they drew the lines on the pitch you could see he wasn’t – there was literally a bit of green grass between his foot and the blue line the VAR people drew for the Liverpool defender. So a perfectly good decision about a perfectly good goal was simply confirmed by the TV check.
So, what would be the point of giving this kind of decision to the ‘judgement’ of a linesman or ref? Would it have been any less controversial to rule out a perfectly valid goal because everyone was a bit surprised that Spurs scored?
And in any case, isn’t the main problem most people have with VAR offsides being when perfectly good goals are ruled out because the attacker had an outreached elbow in front of the defender, but otherwise they’re essentially level? So how does giving the opportunity to rule out more goals, even when the attacker a) isn’t flagged offside by the linesman, and b) isn’t offside according to the VAR check?
I think there’s a much simpler solution. Just tweak the rules so that something like ‘part of the attacker’s torso must be in front of the defenders last body part’ for offside to occur – then you’d give more benefit of doubt to the attacker, and you’d lose this nonsense of someone having a ‘bitter taste of VAR’ when a perfectly good goal is scored against the run of play.
Tim
VAR
I would like to bring a theory to the var debate which is worthy of exploration.
The broadcasters invest of billions of pounds in TV rights and of course look to generate revenue through the football programming on offer. Over the past number of seasons, the premier league has become more and more unequal. What does this mean? It means the games are more predictable and normal news narratives like title races, relegation battles and even transfer deadline day have become less relevant. Social media driven platforms by clubs have made the news flow around their players more controlled.
For example, I’m going to twitter for my football news straight from the club account or reliable blue tick journalists. We even see with transfers that clubs now keep local journalists in the dark on transfer business. In short, the traditional media forums are either being sidelined or struggling for relevance.
So where does Var come in to play in this world? If you paid 1 billion pounds for a product and need a way to generate interest, VAR’s your uncle. Football is now a 24 hour news cycle with around the clock repetition of stories. Sky Sports broadcast the games, hire the big name pundits to shape opinions and run a dedicated news channel which covers the debate of pundits on sister channels. What do they need? fresh content and fresh controversy. And as all of the old product becomes stale, what better replacement for the mundane match reports than a system which can be corrupted to drive up debate and frenzy. Rio Ferdinand bemoaned the fact that these days we only talk about Var and not the game itself.
But the big games are mainly dull, uneventful events which will not satisfy our need for content on their own merits.
However, VAR is the new element of the game we all have an opinion on. We get to see the same screen and feel a sense of indignation when a call goes against what our eyes can see or refuse to see.
VAR is the perfect injection of drama into a game that is becoming more and more predictable. Find me a more genius advertising idea than to show us the same screen and tease us with the lines and replays. And while we say that we will reject it, we know in private that we will keep watching because we are hooked on drama.
Liverpool are perhaps a marketing tool without realizing it. If VAR can slow a title challenge and generate more clicks and viewers, even better. The fury of the last few weeks is ultimately down to the tiniest of tiny margins and the moment of a freeze frame is frozen. So why is this appealing?
Not every person watching a game truly understands tactics or even how to pronounce a players name, but they can see the drawn line and determine the rules for themselves.
And if you think I’m crazy or having a laugh, look at the history of the world and the corruption society by money and greed. To us, it is a hobby or source of entreatment, but to the Sky’s and BTS, it is a highly lucrative billion pound business.
So next time you are looking at the debate over the next dubious decision, ask yourself, who is this benefiting? And if your answer is pundits and media companies, you might be on to something.
Mike
