Sterling to Arsenal and two ways Liverpool dealt with Slot far better than Man Utd did Ten Hag

Raheem Sterling could give Arsenal and Mikel Arteta that last little trophy push they need – and Chelsea some more money to spend hilariously recklessly.

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Dutch courage
A while back, I emailed in a thought experiment about Ten Haag taking over at Liverpool rather than United. Not long after Slot was appointed which set up a nice, shiny headed, comparison for this thought experiment.

Whilst I’m not intending to provide a running commentary on it, I do think it’s already clear there’s been deliberate managing of Slot’s profile which has made his start easier. And I mention this as I think it supports the idea Ten Haag would have been better at Liverpool than he has been at United.

The common wisdom has been that replacing Klopp is a poisoned chalice. I think the club have in a quiet way sought to lessen this as much as possible. Firstly, I can’t recall a lower profile of a management appointment at Liverpool in my time as an actively aware fan. Houiller, Benitez, Hodgson, Dalglish, Rogers, Klopp all had in their own ways hype around them being the ones to reawaken Liverpool or how big their reputation was. They were all supposed to be Shankly incarnate and the club actively encouraged this.. This didn’t happen with Slot. It’s important because of all the fan bases Liverpool seem to attach themselves to a manager more than most. That this hasn’t been put on Slot is a significant pressure off.

Compare this to the fanfare of Ten Haag and how he’d revolutionise United as he had done Ajax.

Secondly, transfers. The club have been pretty frustrating in the caution, however not splashing out on a player just because Slot likes them (or even allowing him to be perceived as such) has kept an albatross off his neck. He’s working with the tools he’s got- no pressure on getting the best out of a huge signing. Don’t think I need to spell out the difference there.

It might well be that the wheels come off, but I do think that Liverpool have actively sought to create the best environment for a coach to work despite the looming shadow of the recent past in a way United couldn’t mange for Ten Haag.

Perhaps that’s bullsh*t, but it’s week 4 of the summer holidays and I’ve got to much time on my hands so it was interesting to me.
Dan

Knock them off their ‘berch
Not looking to scrap with supporters of my own club on here but my criticism of Ryan Gravenberch was far from clueless.

‘Tomer, LFC’ if I come across you I’d still buy you a pint (or a Ribena…), but it doesn’t make you some kind of wise, patient, oracle-like footballing savant to simply say that youth need time, patience and nurturing while you stroke a sagely, Klopp-ish wizard beard and act like the arm-around-the-shoulder guy.  We all want to be that guy.  We all want to extend to our young players as much benefit of doubt as we can while they wear our colors don’t we.

But honestly, the Gravenberch of last season was so extraordinarily subpar across every metric, and across every appearance he made, that it really did not appear to be your typical teething pains.  His only consistency to speak of were a litany of basic errors made over and over, mental and physical.  He didn’t even pretend to look at the races.  That he suddenly appears to have found a platform doesn’t make my observations from last season  “clueless” and it’s only too easy to be wise after the event isn’t it.

As I said, it’s a very small sample size and we’ve no idea if or how Gravenberch kicks on (or how any young footballer might progress, duh).  But last year this lad looked worse than abysmal, and if he scores two own goals at the weekend I’ll definitely go clueless again and you’ll hear about it.
Eric, Los Angeles  CA  (Spurs and Leicester finished up as I wrote this and seeing Cristian Romero ghost past Vardy to gift him a free header was hilarious perfection.)

Boehly’s millions
About 12 months ago I sent in a mail jokingly comparing Chelsea’s spending to Brewsters Millions (80s movie about a bloke who had to burn through an insane amount of cash in a month for reasons I can’t quite recollect), but after another two transfer windows the reference keeps popping up in my head – spending for spendings sake. The goal isn’t to improve the on-field performance of the team, the goal is to spend a lot of money, even if you have to sell likely better performing players to fund that spending. But why?

A few Chelsea fans on this page have suggested that a re-build is in progress and that patience is needed, but I’m not convinced by that argument. The new owners inherited a strong squad that had recently won the CL, and contained plenty of good young talent. Think Abramovic wrote off they debt they owed him, so weren’t in a financial mess, and spending billions wouldn’t have been the solution if that were the case. So why was a re-build required? Very different scenario to Utd or Everton for e.g. Kick on from a strong base, don’t burn the house down.

Maybe they’re coming at it from a venture capitalist perspective, buy young talent and sell for a big profit in the future? Maybe they’re thinking of American franchise sports where short term failure is often accepted in order to bring in the best young talent via the draft system to build for medium term success? But either way this can’t surely be seen as a viable strategy for a PL club. For that talent to develop into strong players that help the club win trophies and / or be sold sold for a profit, you need to carefully integrate them into a functioning team with the right balance of experience (and a few local lads has tended to be positive). The guys who do start are being thrown to the lions, but the majority of the signings won’t get the game time that allows them to develop. These ‘assets’ will de-appreciate.

But surely the owners aren’t so stupid that they think they can just sell every established player and just buy 40 young lads who appear to be tidy, and expect a winning team from that? Even if you are spending a couple of billion, just not a reasoned pathway to success.

Which then begs the question, are these guys stupid or is there an ulterior motive? Being an American billionaire isn’t a firm indication of intelligence, take Trump for e.g., but are these guys not a bit more self-made? I don’t work in the world of finance, and those that do might debunk my ill-informed theory, but is this not just a massive tax write-off? Spend a couple of billion US profit, spin £30m for Sterling to the UK taxman as just covering that loss so no tax? Which brings me back to Brewsters Millions, said it as joke the first time but genuinely starting to wonder if they’re spending for spending’s sake for an ulterior motive – big tax avoidance scam. Certainly not improving the team, even the most mis-informed owner (or fan) can see that
Simon, Bristol LFC

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Sterling to Arsenal
After reading your Sterling piece, the thought occurred to me; Sterling to Arsenal!

The Gooners need more experience, a certain wow factor, increased squad depth in the forward position, and a genuinely good footballer to get them over the line. Could easily be our starter on the left, worked with Arteta before, played with Jesus and Zinchenko, and won numerous titles, and is only 29!

Wages and maybe the expectation to be a key player could be a downfall, and it would mean we probably couldn’t sign a striker, but Havertz, Jesus, Trossard, Martinelli, Saka, plus Sterling and our goal-scoring midfielders, our tight and freakishly tall defenders would surely be enough to win some pots and pans this year.
Neill, Ireland

End of my pundit tether
Should there not be a minimum bar established for pundits on radio and tv that obliges them to familiarise themselves with fundamental rules (ok…”laws” for the pedants out there) of the sport they are BEING PAID GOOD MONEY to provide their expert opinion on?

It appears to be a universally accepted truth that if a player “gets the ball first” or even touches the ball at any stage of a tackle then it is not a foul. Contact with the ball is not mentioned anywhere in the rules…a foul is a foul if the referee deems the tackle to be overly careless, reckless or made with excessive force.

The latest example was on 5Live where Steve Sidwell must have gone on about it about five times. John Murray even tried to subtly correct him but my god these guys are stealing a living.
Clumsy Hector

Johnny come lately
“The tedious farce of VAR continues to soil an ever-dysfunctional and uninteresting product: The Premier League.”

When your stick seems to be all about “the money done ruined things”, and this is the opening passage of a column that you’re being paid to write, presumably as part of a contract that you signed, for a website that focusses predominantly on Premier League football, you surely have to sit back and ask yourself in the famous words of Mitchell and Webb, “Are we the mercenaries?”
Adam, LFC

You say potato
Footie’s back, hurrah!

Unfortunately it’s also back with VAR, or should I say, it’s back with the same incompetents in charge and responsible for running the sh*tshow.

This weekend was no exception and there’s no need (or point) in going over the errors.  The PGMOL has really listened to us fans, took on board our frustrations and thankfully done away with the ridiculous “clear and obvious”, a phrase that boiled many people’s p*ss, an error is an error, these can and do happen every week, the game is so fast that referee’s cannot be expected to get everything right and thank god VAR is there to pull them out of the sh*t when they do.

In a radical move they’ve replaced it with “referee’s call”, or put another way, they’ve changed absolutely nothing, the referee’s incorrect decision is now just explained away using different words.  This is the contempt they hold us in, they continue to treat us as idiots and have a “we’re better and know more than you” attitude which they have no intention of changing.

Given the number of “apologies” issued last season, why not award the offended team a point, e.g. Palace get a point and Brentford keep their three.

I’ve heard a rumour that red cards are going to be abolished and will be replaced by the officials indicating that the player be removed from the field of play and an impending game ban of undetermined length by using the same arm motion as cricket umpires when signalling the end of a power play.  This will ensure that the officials get even more screen time.
Howard (brackets are old hat, parentheses are the way forward) Jones

AI headlines
Regarding Alexander writing about AI generated headlines. Yes buddy, it probably is and if so is just a natural progression of lazy journalism that just churns out the same article with 3 different headlines to try and increase the clicks. The online article will then have about one sentence before the next ad and by the time you’ve scrolled past about 5 ads you start to realise there is no story but the ads have made their money by now, journalism job done…This really annoys the crap out of me too.

However, we’re the ones falling for it. Here’s 2 very simple rules to decipher the code of clickbait:

1. Any headline mentioning a superstar or big club or multiple stars and/or clubs without hinting on what the actual story is about is clearly clickbait – DON’T CLICK ON IT

2. If you read the headline and aren’t sure if it’s clickbait or not, it clearly is –  DON’T CLICK ON IT

Actual journalism has articles with headlines that clearly state what the article is about, just look at the headlines on F365 then look at the headlines on newsnow and you’ll see what I mean.
Jon, Cape Town

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