Ten Hag sack? Wiegman to Man Utd mooted as Arsenal surprise Havertz is praised

Editor F365 07 Apr 2024 10:47 AM

Kai Havertz celebrates his goal with his Arsenal team-mates

The Mailbox includes plenty of responses to Stewie Griffin after Arsenal’s comfortable win at Brighton. Also: are Manchester United targeting the wrong England manager?

Send your thoughts in to theeditor@football365.com…

Smells like team spirit
Once again Arsenal visit a difficult venue and get the job done without much hassle. A ground where the hosts hadn’t lost for quite a while. One might add that to the clean sheet and arguably more domineering performance at the Etihad together with ending humble but awkward Luton’s goal scoring record albeit at home.

I was worried about Zinchenko’s defensive capabilities but he was fine. The defence look solid and Raya showed his quality with that fine save (certain fans don’t notice a keepers qualities until such saves are made). He’s a reliable keeper.

The main thing to take note of this squad is that they have recovered from that blip last year and they keep battling on. Celebrating a block in injury time at 3:0 up is scintillating.

Whether Arsenal win the league or not this season it doesn’t seem too far off. A Liverpool fan I know says Arteta is a fraud…really? I don’t think so!
Chris, Croydon

OPINION: Gabriel Jesus no more than a supporting character for Arsenal as title race happens around him

A Reminder for Stewie “sourpuss” Griffin
Dear Stewie Griffin,

After reading your long ramble (or, grumble) a few mailboxes ago, I just wanted to remind you that the “£65m milestone” you’ve so regularly slated scored at the Amex yesterday evening as the Gunners swatted the Seagulls aside in 3-0 professional performance.

The “Arteta transfer c*ck-up” also scooped the MotM award after he scored 1, assisted 1, created 4 chances, made 13 sprints and… oh well! It’s just Brighton. Bayern should be in town by Tuesday.

No matter the result of that match, or what happens at the end of the season, I know you’d still have something to gripe about this brilliant team.

And it’s a shame really because even as a neutral, there’s a lot to enjoy about this team, even if they “ludicrously finish second to Liverpool.”

I didn’t intend this mail to be this long. Continue stewing, Stewie.

Sincerely,
Anonymous Gunner – (No statue has ever been erected in favor of a critic)

Stewie on Kai Havertz
Did I get that right? Stewie argues that Arsenal won’t win the league… he attributes this above all to the signing of Havertz, because he does not perform against the top 7 and therefore Arsenal lack a cutting edge. And yet, in the very same email, he already acknowledged that Arsenal are “way more competitive in big matches now”. In fact, we are top of the big six mini league. So I’m not sure I get the point?

Incidentally, I write this shortly after Havertz’s goal against Brighton. 60 million down the drain, eh Stewie?
Shaun Russell, Berlin

Finchy!
The denouement of The Office (UK) isn’t when Tim finally gets together with Dawn. It’s when David Brent, after awkwardly smiling through years of shit banter, turns to Finchy and simply says: ‘Chris – why don’t you f*ck off?’

I offer similar advice to Stewie Griffin. Arsenal are top of the table (as I write, at least), on a fantastic run of form since the turn of the New Year, scoring goals for fun, stopping Man City’s scoring record at the Etihad, conceding only due to a Ramsdale brainfart and excelling on just about every metric you can muster. And whilst we dream, most fans think Liverpool or City are better bets for the title – and that’s fine. We’re having a great season.

Stewie – you do realise that all teams draw and lose games they, on paper, should have won, don’t you? It’s why we watch football rather than just get the lads at Opta to crunch the statistics and declare the winners and losers.

You can point out Arsenal losses and draws to Villa, Fulham and all – but City (Villa away too, Crystal Palace) and Liverpool (Luton away) have their own and neither were able to beat each other at home. It’s mental to criticise Arsenal for not having a Salah-style player to score goals at the Etihad, when Liverpool have a Salah-style player in Mohamed Salah and still had to settle for a 1-1 draw at Anfield.

This cherry-picking, one-eyed, smooth-brained analysis is so weird in the context of a team having a great season up against two of their Premier league managerial greats. Just stop it.

I even heard Arteta once threw a kettle over a pub.
Jonny

Wiegman to Man Utd?
Just a quick one (said the tart to the bishop), but for all the talk of an England manager taking over from Ten Hag, surely it’s about the wrong one?

Wiegman is the best England manager since ’66, give her the job.
Dave PVFC

To Andy D
Just reading the email now I think you totally misunderstood what I was saying, or I didn’t articulate it well enough So here’s my second attempt.

How will allowing owners to put equity into the club make things more fair? It makes it fair for the clubs who have wealthy owners and for everyone else it does nothing.

Awesome that you’re allowing Luton owner to put 300m equity into the club, shame it doesn’t have a rich owner but by total accident that change doesn’t allow city to keep spending while simultaneously helping nobody else who doesn’t also have rich owners.

I find the whole “fairness” argument disingenuous to start with because if you really wanted it to he fair then you would set spending limits at the poorest clubs level. Not the richest. The argument of city fans (to be fair I don’t see many Newcastle or Chelsea fans complaining) is this “we have money, we want to spend. It’s not fair we can’t spend what we want” and if you didn’t have rich owners you wouldn’t make the argument that everyone should just be allowed to pump equity in ad infinitum. You know why Luton, Sheffield etc fans don’t make that argument? They don’t have rich owners.

So let’s stop with the whole ‘financial fairness’ thing because you’re not arguing for that. And before you say “well the poor clubs could just get wealthy owners” wealthy people won’t invest in those clubs because there’s very small room for growth in small clubs from smaller less renowned towns with small stadiums surrounded by terraced housing. It’s not an accident the only clubs that got wealthy investors are all major city clubs. If you want to talk fairness I’m up for that, but we don’t have that conversation from the perspective of top 6 we have it through the lens of a struggling bottom six club with no ability to raise funds.

It’s all good and well saying just allow owners to pump equity in but that has the side effect of increasing all the costs at the club which is fine when you’re rich owners are still there to pay for everything but what happens if they’re not? If you’ve allowed increased wages because the owner pumps 200m equity in every year but then your owner is forced out for legal reasons (like Lazio and chelsea) and suddenly you can’t cover those costs because you’re not receiving that equity.

Finally it did make me laugh you called my email arguing from multiple perspectives reductive while simultaneously reducing the entire discussion to “ffp is cartel protection rules” you’ll also notice that my suggestion was to allow everyone to spend how they liked. I’m happy to reiterate it, let everyone spend how they please, even if it means Liverpool never win another trophy again, I’d rather have the trophies we fought for and won based on the abilities of the manager and squad to play and the clubs ability to be smart in business rather than a yearly treble where we just take infinite oil money and buy success every year. That to me is as hollow as pumping yourself full of steroids and winning gold medals because nobody else had steroids… But that’s just me.
Lee

VARsity level Referees
The refereeing in the PL has been absolute pits this year (just ask Kompany). VAR is just nitpicking over the smallest (and incorrect) things and the referees are not strong enough to overrule.

The Wolves “equalizer” was one example, there was no complaint from the West Ham players only for VAR to step in with that blunder. You would think the 3 referees on the field had a clear view that the Wolves player was offside but didn’t deem him to be interfering, yet once VAR said so they changed their mind.

VAR as a technology is not the problem, it has its value to the game. It’s the people applying it who are screwing things up, there needs to be tighter guidelines in terms of when an interference should happen and also for referees to take more ownership and reject the VAR interference if it’s incorrect.
Jason (Hope the title race does not get decided by a VAR blunder, that would spoil the season)

In aw[e] of Ødegaard and Haaland
I’m a British Arsenal fan who moved to Norway a couple of years ago. Needless to say I hear a lot about Haaland and Ødegaard, whose names are pronounced Hawland and Erdagawd, approximately. The aa in Norwegian is an aw-type sound.

Us British fans, presumably via the commentators, manage to approximate names such as Desailly, Jesus, De Bruyne and Lewandowski without simply reading the English pronunciations. Can we not do the same for the Norwegians?

P.S. for the perfectionists, the final D in both their names is almost silent.
Hannah (pronounced as you’d think)

Correction
Just a small bone of contention with Mr Nicholson’s goalkeeper article: Oliver Kahn must have been a better keeper than I remember having won Euro 96 “by being too good”, especially as he was on the bench.

Andreas Kopke was the starting keeper at 96 (and the following World Cup) as everyone who watched Southgate’s tragic penalty remembers.

Kahn was mint though.
Ash Metcalfe

Mailbox Kai Havertz