Ten Hag, Arteta, PGMOL, VAR and conspiracy theorists all get a right good kicking

Absolutely massive Mailbox, this. Almost as if there’s a massive shitstorm affecting Liverpool while Manchester United and Arsenal have both lost Champions League games.

If you’re moved to respond on any of the huge amount of good stuff below, you know what to do: get your views in to theeditor@football365.com…

ETH Out?
After being absolutely shocked that some United fans could possibly be ETH Out after last season and all the good he seemed to have done in the summer, I must for very much not the first time begin to hold my hands up. Unbelievably, I’m starting to question him too. Not because of Sancho for the record, he’s 100% in the right there. Not because we have 1 fit full back in the squad – hardly his fault.

It’s because we’re badly coached. And managed.

In the first half United were very, very good. I believe the xG was something like 1.2 to 0.2. Should have scored multiple times. But. Their number 7 on multiple occasions just waltzed by Casemiro, and was open in the box. So many times the commentators kept saying it. So who was shocked that the equaliser came from a benign throw-in on the halfway line…because Casemiro let the player run right past him?

When you score in a high-pressure match like that, you slow things down. I learned that at school, literally. Keep the ball for a few minutes. With a midfield made up of Mount, Eriksen and Casemiro – with Amrabat, Varane and Lindelof behind them and of course a ball-playing keeper – that should be easy right? Nope, United go back to one-touch hoofing towards the strikers, desperate to get forward. What is ETH telling them?

United are chaos merchants, on and off the field. ETH is supposedly a very smart football man. And yet, a group of very experienced players are playing like amped up school children, under the ‘leadership’ of the worst culprit of all.

Bruno should have been off at half-time with that ‘performance’. Immature, selfish and worst of all – really bad at football. Instead he’s the captain. He is the symbol of this United team: talented, capable of moments but really, frankly, stupid.

ETH needs to change things dramatically in the middle of a massive injury crisis or else he’ll be gone very soon. And we can’t afford to hire a new manager because we have the worst owners in the league. No idea where we go to be honest.
Ryan, Bermuda (let’s not even mention whatever the hell Onana is up to)

…The game was hilariously horrible to watch as a fan. I cant help but laugh at the comedy of errors that pay out each and every game. Simple stuff that a 10 year old can do, players in the United team are unable to do. In the end, it all comes down to Ten Hag unfortunately.

I believe ETH is a good manager, but a horrible judge of player and character. If he had some balls, this is what would happen next:

– Onana dropped for a few games

– Rashford dropped for a few games.

– Dalot absolutely dropped for a few games.

I wouldn’t mind of all 3 of these players are thrown out of the club at the earliest. There is too much tolerance for average players at the club. No more.

But he doesn’t have the balls to do it. All his buys have been an expensive waste of money. Antony, Onana are disasters amounting to 130m or a Harry Kane + Madisson. Mount looks good, Hojlund is great in spite of United, not because of it.

Something needs to change, ETH needs to take some calls that will upset fans, players and the club, but he needs to either have the balls to take those calls, or let go of this position and let someone else come in who can do it. I am still fully behind him, but there need to be consequences for actions. Onana tried to give out 3-4 goals last night. Rashford should have scored at least 2, Dalot should never have let Zaha take that shot. These are not things a coach can teach you, these are confidence oriented things. I am so so disgusted and disappointed with the team .

All a manager at United has to do is ask himself, What would Sir Alex do, and just fucking do the same! Stop with all the nonsense now. I am done. It’s exhausting. The fans deserve better, the club deserves better, and Hojlund for sure deserves better.
Aman

ETH In?
Oh boy do we like doing things the hard way. I was away at the weekend, saw the game but thankfully missed most of the media reaction. Was hoping to bounce back tonight but sure that would have been too easy. Cue more pain and misery.

There were definitely positives, which I will come to, but the comedic defending stole the show. Individual errors, coupled with poor defending as a team allowed them 3 clear cut chances and ultimately 3 goals. TH needs to find a way to stop the defensive rot and quickly. Amrabat into MF, Dalot to LB and Lindelof RB seems a ‘needs must’ solution. Tighten up, make us tougher to break down and build from there. If that also means going for a more controlled possession-based approach at times, especially when in the lead, then do it.

So the positives, Hojlund looked lethal and we created a good number of chances. Rashford put in a better performance, yet is still low on confidence, and the intensity of our attacking play was much better. There are still plenty of points to play for, but we really need 6 in the next 2 games to stand a chance.

Finally, it has clearly been a poor start to the campaign. We can’t change that, so we need to let it go and try to turn things around. TH is still capable of doing so; a handful of bad performances should not detract from the positives since he has taken over. Keep the faith, bald is best.
Garey Vance, MUFC

Arteta doubt
Can I just preface this by saying I like Arteta and I think he’s doing a good job.

Good with that out of the way, let’s begin yo criticise the sh*te out of him.

He had a really really good thing going last year. He lost out on a Premier League title to a cheat machine who have actually discovered the secret to creating the perfect football team is to break 115 rules, spend more than your opponents, have sh*t fans and hire the best coach in the world (along with many of the best players). Beggars belief I know but bear with me.

Having competed with Goliath for a whole year unexpectedly, little David Mikel has decided he must reinvent the wheel in order to progress.

This my friends is where David has fallen down.

Arsenal were unbelievable last year, they lost through a lethal combination of bottling and City being more perfect than your ex wife’s new husband in the eyes of your mother in law. (Not from personal experience)

Mikel has in turn decided to sell Granit Xhaka, a crucial cog in our winning machine, with crucial leadership and positional skills. And replacing him with Kai Havertz, a man with the same level of confidence I had at my first teenage disco.

Then he decides to break the unbreakable. Saka is a machine he can play every match. I know he’s half injured but he can play every match. Oh, he’s injured. Should I test him for one game? (no you fool that’s what they want you to think) oh he’s out for the biggest game of our season so far. Well gosh damn.

We have a charismatic 8.9/10 goalkeeper who the fans seem to connect with? Let’s waste 25% of our budget replacing him with a keeper who is so marginally better/worse than our original keeper that we will actually lose out as both keepers will lose confidence/support from our fans after every mistake as there is a keeper equally as good on the bench.

As I said before I actually like Arteta but this season it just seems he is setting the difficulty at extra difficult for no reason.
Chippy

…I’m just going to come out and say it… I’m starting to have some genuine doubts about Arteta at the moment.

Yes, I know… We’ve won 5 league games out of 7, with 2 draws and 0 defeats. Still, some of his decisions this season have been worrying and others downright shocking. I think if this continues, we will fall off the pace with the top clubs and it will be his fault.

Here are some of his most baffling decisions this season:

Partey at RB – When the season started, Gooners were excited to see their new team in action. The addition of Declan Rice meant the midfield pairing of him and Partey would really fill a gap that was existing in the Arsenal midfield for a long time. However, when we saw the lineup or the first game, there he was. Thomas Partey. One of the best DMs in the league… at… right back? With Ben White, one of the best RBs in the League at CB and Gabriel, one of the (if not the) best CB in the league…. on the bench? This was an odd decision and the manager persisted with it, even though it was clearly not working. When Partey got injured which forced Arteta to revert back to the Back Four that worked so well last season, the team looked better for it. Strange, right?

Persistence with Kai Havertz – Look. I’m sure Havertz is a very good footballer; just one out of form. But clearly, things are not working with him in the squad right now. It’s so strange that Arteta keeps forcing him into the squad with Emile Smith Rowe and Reiss Nelson begging for some game time and who have been more impactful on games when they have come on than Havertz has been in the preceding minutes. It’s just odd and reeks of favouritism. He’s contributed nothing to the squad, he slows down play, is not very creative going forward and hasn’t been prolific in front of goal. I hope he drops him soon because it’s starting to get a bit crazy now.

Raya over Ramsdale – Can someone please tell me what Raya does that Ramsdale does not? He has played 3 games so far and conceded 3 goals. Two of those goals have been due to his own mistakes (Spurs and Lens). Apparently, his distribution statistics are fantastic, but I haven’t seen anything to show that he has been any better at it than Ramsdale. Aaron has barely put a foot wrong his entire Arsenal career. The boy helped us qualify for the Champions League and the boss’ decision to have him dropped for the competition is downright disrespectful. I hope Ramsdale gets his place back against City, if Arteta’s reasoning is to be believed and implemented.

Squad Rotation and Treatment of Saka – At the beginning of the season, Arteta went on about the amount of games football players are expected to play nowadays. What with the League, European competitions, Local competitions , World Cup and the Euros. He also said that it’s very important Football Clubs have two strong squads to compete on all fronts. Yet, for some reason, he barely seems to do any rotation? I mean, if you go on and say that yet keep starting the same 11, you look a bit… weird. Bar the Carabao Cup against Brentford, the first 11 have been pretty consistent. Odegaard has literally played every single game this season. Declan Rice has played all but one game and don’t get me started about Saka. The guy is not Superman and Arteta’s insistence to play him yesterday was downright shambolic. He went down against Spurs and it looked worrying. He then went down again with a massive knock against Bournemouth. I thought he would give him a rest, you know, what with the biggest game of the year coming up at the weekend. Against the best team in the world who are one point ahead of you! But, no. Saka started. Again! And limped off injured. To literally no-one’s surprise. This is so stupid. You have the squad depth to utilise in games like this. If your back up squad isn’t delivering, you put in the big guns to get the result. Now look at what happened. We have our best player who will likely be out of the game against City and a first 11 that is borderline exhausted.

These things just make no sense to me. On top of the fact that we have looked toothless in front of goal. We need a striker. It’s been glaringly obvious to everyone. But for some reason, we spent the 60m elsewhere. Would have been nice to get that guy Hojlund. He looks half decent and I’m sure would be much better with decent players around him.
Malcolm (VAR video is a farce by the way. Just correct the decision, fools) AFC 

VAR was right
The more I think about it, the more I realise that the issue with the (not awarded) Diaz goal on Saturday wasn’t with the concept of video replay.

The actual Assistant Referee… you know the one who was on the pitch, in person, actually right there in the stadium… got it absolutely and totally wrong. It was so glaringly obviously onside that the VAR officials apparently thought it was a legitimate goal because how could the Lino possibly have raised his flag? As we have now heard in the released audio, they confirmed quickly “check complete” that it was onside.

Now, yes there was miscommunication between the on field crew and the video crew. Yes, utter panic set in a few moments later.. Given that they realized the error so quickly, I do not understand at all why we can’t just go back, reset the clock to whatever it was at the point that the goal was scored and then restart with a kick-off,.

But VAR did not get the call wrong. VAR actually got it right. The issue was that the Referee and his Assistant Referee made a complete arse of it in the first place and called it offside when it wasn’t. Having a go at VAR in that context is completely misplaced.

It also proves how important it is that you let play go on… even if (most of the time) doing so frustrates the living daylights out of most of us. Me included.

So well done VAR, well done new rules around letting play continue. Slow hand clap for the crappy job done the old-fashioned way by the Ref and the Assistant Referee, and also for the communication between them and the VAR officials.

If we hadn’t had invented VAR, Liverpool fans everywhere would be doing what all fans have done since time immemorial and would be complaining about what the linesman on the field missed. And if they were doing that now, they would be entirely right to do so.
Father Dave (Maidstone, THFC)

Wading through PGMOL turd heaps
The latest PGMOL bomb has landed and it’s a doozy. This time we’ve got two heaps of steaming turd to wade through.

First is the audio, which is presumably what most people are interested in. It’s quite enlightening. First of all you notice the speed with which everyone’s talking and how unclear it is what is actually going on. “Coming back for the offside, mate” is about as clear as it gets though some mutters “Give it” just before and I’ve no idea why. I know we want decisions quickly but everyone can afford the lino a second to take his breath before they go up to the VAR. Absolutely no one says what the decision on the pitch is which I find astounding.

The “Replay Operator” is actually pretty calm, checks things every time and is the one that spots the mistake as soon as it’s happened. But you get the feeling he doesn’t necessarily feel comfortable doing any challenging. “Are you happy with this?”  when the he should be yelling “Holy sh*t!! We’re all gonna burn!!” is incredibly polite. He seems to be the only competent person in the room.

The actual VAR comes across incredibly arrogant like a man who’s got his feet up and just wants to go home – I guess that trip to the Middle East really took it out of him. He barely gives himself any time to check ANYTHING. I’m not sure why he has to go quite this fast, it’s not exactly a threat to life situation is it? The worst that’s going to happen if you take your time is not as bad as what actually did happen. At least his expletives were appropriate.

The referee saying “Well done boys, good process” is one of the most ironic things I’ve ever heard. And I had Jagged Little Pill on cassette. If this whole thing doesn’t spawn a thousand memes then the world is truly lost.

Then we get to the reason that we’re getting to hear any of this – you can’t change a decision after the game has restarted. This is something which I assume will change going forwards but it did give us another hilarious moment as the VAR realises he is truly shafted.

Right at the end we get the following statement:

PGMOL has undertaken a full review into the circumstances which led to the incorrect outcome, with key learnings, a revised communication protocol and a clear reiteration of established best practice being implemented to mitigate the risk of errors occurring in the future.

This is corporate jargon or complete bollocks as we council house lads like to call it. I can speak a bit of this language so let’s break it down piece by piece.

“PGMOL has undertaken a full review into the circumstances which led to the incorrect outcome…”

We’ve investigated our own people to find out why they made a massive cock up. We didn’t refer to independent bodies because there isn’t one and we didn’t think to get independent help to do the review because we want this to go away quickly and we still know what we’re doing. Honest.

“with key learnings…”

Which we won’t be sharing…

“a revised communication protocol…”

We’re going to write down what we should actually say to each other so it makes sense and is more clear. We have written it down before so it’s just that we’re making it better. Honest. But we won’t be sharing it…

“and a clear reiteration of established best practice being implemented to mitigate the risk of errors occurring in the future”

We’re going to do all the same things again to stop this happening in the future. Hey, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, am I right?! The best practice in question is clearly our own, we’ve nothing to learn from other countries or sports. We won’t be telling you what those best practices are though.

It’s basically all written in a way to say we’ve released the audio and apologised now pop along there’s nothing to see here. It’s covered in big processy words which are meant to sound great and convey a sense of trust that they must know what they’re doing because they’re using clever language.

For me, it shows one of the reasons why PGMOL are not fit for purpose – they do not understand their key stakeholders: the fans. We don’t want this crap. We want competence. We want to be able to trust that the right decisions will be made. We want transparency. That means making the comms available for every game. That means communicating with the fans at the game. Takes absolutely nothing for the ref to say “decision on the pitch was offside”.  Takes nothing to publish your processes. Scrutiny is a good thing because it will highlight potential mistakes before they happen.

PGMOL should be commended for releasing the audio this time but more is required. I think they need an independent body to monitor performance. If it’s good enough for the PoPo it’s good enough for PGMOL.

Let’s see if Liverpool can get something to happen. But I won’t hold my breath.
Ash Metcalfe

Everyone is winging it
I think those that believe in conspiracy theories are secretly scared little children who want to believe that in our modern godless society there is still some greater power in control of things. Even if the greater power is alien lizards who don’t support Liverpool, who manufactured covid in a lab and engineered the war in Ukraine, all as part of some global master plan to control population and create fear to keep us spending (and breathe).

To them that is more palatable that the notion that we’re hurtling through space on a giant rock with very little plan, manufacturing our own demise and being governed by people who are slightly more inept than us.

Hopefully the release of the VAR recording dispels those conspiracy myths and clearly shows the conspiracy believers the truth! Everyone is pretty much winging it….none more so than those at Stockley Park!
Anon (I don’t want the alien lizards to get me)

Well done boys, good process
So, it’s now clear what happened.  The VAR officials made a mistake and were let down by a process, which is completely unfit for purpose.

Having heard the audio recording, I genuinely feel sorry for the officials.  As Klopp stated, they don’t set out to make mistakes, and everyone is fallible.  They, like us, have been let down by a system that is simply not fit for purpose.

I wrote earlier in the week (unpublished) that PGMOL requires a ground-up rethink.  This perfectly exemplifies why.  It would take less than an hour to design a VAR process, which not only reduced the chance of manual error in the decision-making process, but also totally eradicated the possibility of miscommunication.  Why this design hasn’t happened before is completely beyond my comprehension.

I read today that Liverpool are not looking for a replay, and have accepted the result, but are committed to ensuring the this never happens again.  We should all support this. Let’s hope Saturday’s events lead to a better future.
Rob

Memory hole
As a Spurs fan of 47 years the 1991 final was I thought a memorable moment, especially given how sparse trophies have been since. Having watched the Gary Lineker video in your offside goal articles I was surprised that not only do I have no memory of the appalling offside decision but also the penalty miss. Most of all though I am surprised that I have no memory of Rudi Voller being the referee.
Nick