Mails: Everton need to get Moyes back

Daniel Storey

Fine work this morning, now make this afternoon as good. Send your mails to theeditor@football365.com

Pellegrini to United?
If Manuel is indeed kicked out because Pep walks in, can United do the smart thing and hire this guy. He plays attacking football. He is sensible. He is a nice guy and knows the league.

Besides, he does seem to play some youngsters too and feels like a great guy to have for the next cycle (Hopefully three years at least).
Sudarsan Ravi

 

Alex Teixeira: Where we stand
A quick review of where we stand on the Alex Teixeira mini-saga:
– The player wants to move. He has handed in a transfer request. He has liked everything LFC related on Instagram, & has given a interview reiterating his desire to join Liverpool to a LFC fan page.

– The player’s club are willing to sell. They say they wont keep the player against his wishes, on the condition that they simply receive the price they have valued the player at.

– The player is exactly what the club need – a proven attacker with 22 league goals in 15 games, making him one of Europe’s best goalscorers, outscoring Suarez, Ibrahimovic, Higuain & Aubameyang. Liverpool FC as a unit have mustered 30 league goals in 23 games.

So, what’s the issue here? Surely it can’t be the price? Yes, its the price. A transfer committee who thought it wise to pay £35m for Andy Carroll, £32.5m for Benteke, £25 for Lallana, £20 for Lovren & £12m for Borini, have decided that Teixeira is not worth the money Shakhtar want for him.

So now the talk is that Liverpool might wait until the summer, where they might get him for an amount closer to the the first bid they made. I’m not saying that signing Teixeira now will guarantee Champions League football for next season, but not signing him will surely rule it out. For the sake of the extra £10m it would take to secure him, why not pay up? The rewards for Champions League qualification will surely massively outweigh the extra money we would have to pay to get our man.

This transfer committee needs to disappear if this deal falls through. It is the simplest of simple deals to complete, and yet it has stalled. Chelsea have just got £25m for some dead wood, so they will surely fork out the extra money if Liverpool fail to do so.
Conor, Wexford
(MC – In their defence, Teixeira is 26 and has never earned an international cap for Brazil. He’s scored goals in Ukraine for the best team… ok I’m stopping there because I’m just going to write about him later)

 

Everton need to get Moyes back
Another masterclass in team selection and defending by Roberto Martinez and Everton. Congrats to City, they deserved to win.

Who plays a centre half at right back when you have one of the best right backs in the Premier League sitting on the bench? The mind boggles.

If you are reading this can I possibly give you a solution Bill – bring back Davy Moyes but keep Roberto and you will have one coach/manager who can set a team up properly and get them to defend and one coach/manager who can get the team playing good football and who are exciting to watch.

It would be a brave thing to do and people’s egos would have to be left at the door but in my mind it could work.
David (plastic fan from Dublin) EFC.

 

I’ll tell you what’s “hurtful and unfair”, Bobby M
Watching your team surrender lead after lead, often 2-goal leads, to draw or lose league games or cup ties is very hurtful and unfair. I’d be intrigued to know, since we threw away 2 points at home to Arsenal early last season, how many 2-goal leads we’ve squandered.

Watching a team you’ve seemingly waited a generation for, packed full of exciting, young talent and competent defensive individuals (3 of the back 4 that rolled over vs Swansea were around in the Moyes days), underperform to quite this staggering degree is hurtful and unfair, also.

Having a nice guy chairman who loves our club, on the face of it, is nice, but that fact giving rise to the reality that we’re stuck with this clueless bellend manager until he gets a better offer makes it into something, you guessed it, hurtful and unfair.

Martinez is the very epitome of all style and no substance. The attacking talent he introduced into what was Moyes’ team in his first season gave us a glimpse of what might be; his utter dereliction of any defensive duty whatsoever, however, has since turned the team into a horrendous “look what you could have won” taunt to all fans.

I know there is a certain idea as to how football is played “the right way”, which seems strangely to conflict with my idea that “the right way” is whichever way gets you more goals than the other lot. I would happily trade the sexy footballers at our disposal for a season of 2004/05-esque boring 1-0 wins and a top 4 finish.

I purposely waited until the morning so that this mail wouldn’t quite be so ranty, but evidently I should have waited longer. Soz.
Dave (too sad for bracket names) Allen, IoM

 

Chelsea: The masters of selling
I would love to know who has been in charge of outgoing transfer negotiations at Chelsea for the last few seasons because they must be the best negotiators or have some very bad dirt on some people.

£25 million pounds for Ramires is a great price. According to Wikipedia he played a total of 29 games last season.

Other great bits of business include:
David Luiz – 40 million just how?
Filipe Luis – Bought and sold one season later for 16 million (basically a money back offer if you’re not satisfied)
Lukaku – Bought for 10 million + add ons, sold for 28 million. Not bad for 15 Chelsea first team appearances + NO GOALS!

Even the 37 million for Mata was a great price considering Mourinho’s public lack of faith in him. De Bruyne went for 11 million profit.

The guy negotiating some of the questionable incoming transfers (I’m looking at you Fernando) is seriously letting the team down.
David (why didn’t PSG come in for Jonny Evans) Ireland

 

This Chelsea fan wants Mark Hughes
As a lifelong Chelsea fan, I’m really hoping Mark Hughes is offered the chance to manage the club.

A truly wonderful player (worthy of an Icon), I think he would be a manager the fans could really get behind as we rebuild towards a title assault next season. Heck, get Gianfranco in as his assistant or co-manager.
Baz(Roman, Give him the job ya sh*t) Dublin

 

Time to get rid of FA Cup replays
I have recently found myself considering the fixture congestion we have in English football. Many a manager has claimed our lack of a winter break tires out players and ruins them for the international tournaments, amongst many other arguments.

I’m sure most fans agree a winter break isn’t the answer (when would you catch up on all those games) so I think we need to look at the cup competitions.

FA Cup replays are not necessary, the main argument I hear for these is the money smaller clubs get for earning a replay against a bigger team. For me the FA Cup is not there to be a cash cow for smaller teams.

Let’s take Liverpool and Exeter for example, Exeter earned a hard fought draw to Liverpool and got a replay at Anfield which they predictably lost. Why shouldn’t the tie be settled in the first match where they may have earned a famous penalty shoot out victory and a possible pay day in the next round?

As for the League Cup, why don’t we only open this to teams that aren’t competing in Europe? This will ease fixture congestion for teams competing in four competitions and allow the other clubs a realistic chance of silverware.
Mark (Manchester)

 

‘Spurs’ best transfer business in a while’
£12million?? £12-bloody-million? Levy is a genius. Probably the most exciting transfer news Spurs have had in a while.

Also, what constitutes a formal offer? Are there such things as informal offers? Maybe instead of a suitcase you bring the money in a plastic bag.
Doctor What

 

On Townsend
Steve McClaren: “Andros is a winger with an old-fashioned style. He can play on the right or the left, is two-footed, quick, very direct and loves taking on defenders and crossing the ball.”

If by “taking on defenders and crossing the ball” you mean “cutting inside and shooting into the crowd” you’re absolutely spot on, Steve.
Ian

 

City vs Everton conclusions
A few conclusions from the City – Everton game.

*Silva is still very much not at the races since returning from injury. Hopefully he will pick up because Yaya is looking more than ever like a man with one eye on his next gig and….

*that De Bruyne injury looked serious. I completely disagreed with F365s implication that we are a one man team around Aguero. KDB is looking more than ever like a man who regularly has won us games all by himself.

*I’m just going to chime in with my penny’s worth and question whether Sterling had taken the ball over the line. The rule is ‘…the whole of the ball over the whole of the line’. This means that the ball does not have to still be in contact with the paint. The only worthwhile angle (from above the action) looked about as close as you can get.

*Who was that annoying co-commentator on Sky? Besides taking a pop at City every chance he got, he also claimed that all three City goals were “unlucky”. The first deflected, the second over the line and the third…pauses awkwardly and then relabels all three goals “avoidable”, making even less sense.

*It may not be a Merseyside final but it is the second round of ‘Sterling returns’. What’s the betting he either scores the winner, or costs City the game?
Quackeththeduck (Not Ed the duck)

 

Everton’s defence really sucks
What a match and much of the focus will be on Man City’s second goal, which is detracting from how much better Man City were. They hit the post twice and deserved to go through. Man City’s attack was pretty sharp and Everton’s defending was atrocious.

As much as I believe that the ball had crossed the line and Sterling’s cut-back should not have counted, it was appalling defending on Everton’s part. Everton had four defenders (excluding the man trying to stop Sterling) as opposed to two Man City players waiting for the cross. It was almost like they were forming a guard of honour for the cut-back. Everton’s defenders dealt with the crosses very poorly also. Silva hit the post and Aguero scored the third goal with headers when the Everton defenders were all at least 10 cm taller than them.

Everton will not be anywhere near the Champions League or the Europa League spots if they continue to defend like that. At least they are entertaining though…
Wayne, ManYoo, Singapore

 

AWAY GOALS DON’T COUNT DOUBLE
Here’s something that grinds my gears. I’m keeping an eye on the Man City / Everton score on the BBC website and a little sidebar informs me that “away goals count double if level after extra time”.

Why do people always say this? Away goals don’t count double at all. It’s simply that, in the event of a draw, whichever team has scored more away goals is the winner.

If Man City end up winning 3-2, the aggregate score will be announced as 4-4 (Everton win on away goals), not 5-6 to Everton.

It makes no more sense saying away goals count double than saying they count treble or quadruple.

Sorry. I imagine you have far more weighty emails to publish.
Matt Pitt

 

I don’t want to know facts
I enjoy this site quite a lot. I enjoy the point of views and the well written articles published on this website.

I presume you will surely consider putting your own article on Liverpool’s transfer dealings in the Mediawatch section on Thursday? Otherwise you would come across as complete hypocrites.

Keep up all the good work apart from that.

Much love,
Paddy(this certainly wont be published) Ireland
(MC – We found the information, and though it was really interesting. We presented it in raw form, rather than offering opinion, and intend to do the same for other clubs, starting with Newcastle today. If you don’t like it then that’s fine of course).

 

Thanks to F365 and Iain Macintosh
Someone once told me it’s nice to be nice. A standpoint I find increasingly difficult to square with when one pays even a fleeting visit to The Daily [Hate] Mail or pays any attention to the widespread shithousery that is social media. It simply showcases the toxic nature of the vast proportion of humanity; it seems.

Just this week we have the sizeable ripples through what is actually a fairly friendly rivalry (hence it being referred to as the friendly Derby) following the ‘all Liverpool fans are murderers’ comment from that Everton steward. For what it is worth I believe she was referring to the earlier disaster and for that she may have the beginnings of a point.

But with social media being what it is knives were sharpened on both sides and Defcon1 was quickly reached. My own opinion is that she should not lose her job but perhaps some anger management might be in order. She does have five children to support after all and I hope the club can show her some clemency.

Anyway the reason for writing in is to thank F365 and Ian Macintosh for the immensely enjoyable CM01/02: The Return. Never before have I found myself willing Everton so. I find Ian’s outlook refreshing amidst the flame wars and general tribal entrenchment one finds on the www when it comes to football. I’m only up to March and saving the final installments for the train home. Rooney is just breaking into the first team and (presumably) yet to score that thunderbastard against the Arse. It’s a trip down memory lane for me and I am thoroughly enjoying the blog. Bravo to Ian and bravo to F365 as without Daniel’s top ten football games (no Kick Off or the resultant Player Manager…for shame!?) I would never have found the pages and missed out.

See, the interweb is not so bad…
Gregory Whitehead, LFC