‘New, slightly mental’ Man City are the Spursiest side around…
Man City’s batsh*t defeat to Real Madrid opens a Mailbox that also takes in Ange Postecoglou, pundit opinions and much more.
Send your views to theeditor@football365.com
Have Man City become Spursy?
Anyone get the feeling that this new, slightly mental Man City is what Spurs should be right about now? Actually entertaining nonsense played with the constant feeling of an actual nonsense occurring late on?
Jon (Poch turned us into running machines without this constant injuries), Lincoln
Onions!
It’s 2025 and Danny Onions is stealing the headlines playing in a team with Bellingham, Mbappe, Vinicius Junior and Valverde.
What squad building, my god.
Kylianes y cabrones, if you will…
Tom, Leyton
Footballers are allowed to keep warm
Our missing of VAR following the FA Cup weekend seems to have lasted about 25 minutes (well for Shearer anyway). He appears to lay the blame for Grealish’s injury at VAR’s door for taking too long to ratify the goal and moaned that ‘you can’t have finely tuned athletes standing around in the cold for 5 minutes’. An old favourite for bashing VAR.
Apart from the fact Jack appeared to get a knock before then, this argument is fatally flawed in the fact that these so called ‘finely tuned athletes’ don’t have to stand around waiting in the cold (unless there is some sort of rule I’m missing here). They can if they want, try to keep warm? Jog about a bit? Do a Joe Wicks workout? Do things athletes do to stay warm?
Long jumpers spend about 1% of their time actually running and jumping and when I watched the Olympics earlier this year, the scene around the sandpit didn’t appear to be straight out of Platoon.
Anyway, there’s lots of reasons to moan about VAR, but this really isn’t one and it rankles.
Gez Errico, Nottingham
Pundit opinions are not news
Want to bring up something that’s been bugging me for a while now which is the tendency of the media to present the opinions of football pundits as newsworthy items in their own right
Sadly, (and I always thought you were better than this) this is something which you good people at F365 are also becoming increasingly guilty of.
Just this morning on your home page there are items based on nothing more than the opinions of Messrs Ferdinand, Scholes and Carragher to name but three.
However the worst offence was a couple of days ago when you posted an item with a story about how Paul Merson says that Arsenal should sign Harry Kane to solve their lack of a true goal scorer.
Now you, me and the whole football world (including Merson himself) knows there is no way Kane ever signs for Arsenal given the crap that Sol Campbell got from Spuds fans. So this is just an attention seeking pundit spewing out nonsense for clicks, probably with his tongue firmly in his cheek. Fun banter at best and NOTHING MORE. Certainly not for something for recycling as news in any way whatsoever
To be clear, there is a place for punditry in the world of sport and some pundits (Neville, Carragher, Rio and Alan Hansen back in the day) are better and carry more weight than others (Merson, Redknapp, Sherwood etc).
Point is that while their views are of interest to fans and add to the overall picture we have of the game, pundit’s opinions do not matter a damn and therefore should not be presented as news.
Please stop doing this immediately – thanks in advance.
Rob, Bristol Gooner (probably pissing in the wind in a content-driven world)
(Sorry. Thanks. But yes, you are pissing in the wind in a content-driven world – Ed)
An F365 round-up of sorts
Here’s what will hopefully serve as a round up for the mailbox and other F365 pieces for the past couple of days.
* Beating lower-league teams clearly isn’t for everyone, only some of us.
* Losing to Plymouth Argyle is less disastrous for Liverpool’s season than playing a full strength team, winning and losing someone like Mo Salah to injury. It was the perfect opportunity for those less experienced players to put themselves into the manager’s first team plans, it just didn’t work. The front three who did play the entire match probably need to take a good look at themselves however.
* If Manchester City v Plymouth is the tie of the round, it’s neck and neck for second place between Crystal Palace v Millwall and Preston North End v Burnley. The broadcasters and train operators must be furious they won’t really be able to inconvenience fully 25% of the sides still in the FA Cup.
*As things stand, Manchester United will not be signing Jean-Philippe Mateta, despite the endorsement Mediawatch suggests Paul Merson has given him. The only way United can tempt players away from other Premier League clubs is to offer them more money, a strategy that they’ve tried repeatedly and gone nowhere with, because they don’t look like being able to offer European football. The lack of patience with managers will deter good players too – no one wants to be a signing associated with a failed manager. They also aren’t likely to turn it around and make the European places, because why would you be motivated to do well if all it’s going to lead to is someone else taking your place in the team?
*Arsenal and Liverpool will not be having massive clearouts this summer. Big clubs just don’t work like that.
* Fans of some teams – Arsenal are just the latest – dive deep into an “everyone hates us” mentality because they are scared of the reality: the majority of people, unless they support that specific team or one of their rivals, do not hugely care about them, and can often go entire days without some teams even crossing their minds.
Ed Quoththeraven
Isak to Liverpool?
Interesting article on Arsenal selling to raise funds but they will never afford Isak and even if they could he will end up at Liverpool. Better team and better manager by a long way.
Colin Owen
Still very much #AngeOut
Have I missed something with the “but Ange has to deal with so many injuries so cut him some slack” line?
The main reason for most of these injuries is surely Ange and the style and intensity of football he’s insisted on playing for most of the season. VDV’s hamstrings go because he’s the 100m Usain Bolt backstop that’s called into action 20 times a game because of that stupid non stop high line.
High intensity, no opportunity to slow the game and rest on the ball, run run run, mate mate mate. That’s why all the injuries are there so when he does get sacked for manager 873 of Levy’s reign please leave out the but he had to deal with injuries line.
Duck
…Just a reminder to any staunch ‘Ange in’ supporters – when we won 3 of our last 9 league games at the end of last season (when we were just soooo amazing), limply whimpering out a CL spot we should have secured – there was absolutely no injury crisis. Funny that.
Glen – staunchly ‘Ange out’ – Stratford Spur
READ: Postecoglou sack: Five #AngeIn myths debunked as Levy urged to act now
Slot talking (long) balls
Interesting to hear Slot moaning that teams have the temerity to go long against them as a tactic. His reasoning for getting beaten by the team rock bottom of the Championship was “So, constantly long balls, second balls, long balls, second balls. It’s difficult for every team”.
Fair enough, you didn’t do your homework and succumbed to Plymouth pumping long ball after long ball. 65 long balls in total, which in truth does seem a lot.
But then my eyes wander to the Liverpool stats, and hold on to your undercrackers my friends, lo and behold they’ve only gone and played 61 long balls. Which, ironically, is the same number played by Utd at Anfield, another cause of ire for Slot. Liverpool played 47 that day FYI.
Nice attempt at deflecting from a hilarious defeat to Championship relegation fodder but we see right through your weak sauce excuses Herr Klopp. I mean Slot.
Garey (just love talking (long) balls) Vance, MUFC
Embrace the hate
Arsenal fan here. I’m honestly not sure why Arsenal fans are annoyed about being hated. Personally I hate every other club. Every other single f**king club – no soft spots, no second teams, nothing.
I hate everything about all of you.
Up the Arsenal.
McG, Belfast