Man Utd won’t improve unless they drop two players, Arteta out and…

Man Utd need to drop Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Cristiano Ronaldo if they want their attacking play to improve. Plus, Arteta out, Conte, Levy the genius and lots more…

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Laughable United & Conte + Spurs praise
As soon as Everton scored the first goal in the 1-0 win against United today, I knew that would be the winner. Everton simply got the goal they wanted and defended for their lives with 9-10 men in their own box since they are literally fighting for their lives in the league in avoidance of relegation. But how United couldn’t even score a single goal against Everton, who have been abysmal all season is simply laughable, but not surprising United have become a complete laughing stock. I didn’t watch the 2nd half due to expected disappointment once again, did the same for the Leicester game because the first half was rubbish, had a draw or loss all over it.

Would also like to add that Rangnick probably can’t wait to leave as manager by the end of the season, he’s only taken the job because he has been offered a nice comfortable permanent consultancy role for a further two years after his interim role. He isn’t fully responsible since he joined halfway through the season but fuck me he is boring bloke with such little charisma, and you can tell in his post-match interviews he is refusing to get emotionally involved, keeping himself to himself and waiting until the end of the season. He isn’t a coach AT all. Smart football man, but not a coach of manager at all. Drawn so many games in which we should have won this season (Burnley Away, Southampton at Home, Leicester at Home, Watford at Home). That is 8 points dropped and if United had won those games, would be 2 points ahead Spurs or tied with points with them if we had gotten 6 points instead.

He probably looks at the United team and just thinks I must keep it safe due to a midfield of Fred & Matic and a defence of Maguire & AWB and how fragile the players are. Such a lack of personality with so many of them and half of the team are bang average and very lucky to be at the club. It’s not their fault in the sense they jumped at the chance of being provided an offer from the club in joining, but the bloody people in the board/club who thought they would be decent signings! I don’t know how involved Ole was in signing Maguire & AWB, but whoever made the call to signed for a combined amount of £135 million needs to be deported from England and banned from all footballing related jobs.

I wouldn’t say this was the biggest mistake the club have made recently though in signings players like Maguire & AWB (Nearly forgot Fred too) but instead the decision to employ Rangnick as an Interim manager (2nd time this has been done, Ole was the first) and NOT employ Antonio Conte as manager during that 3-4 week period (When Conte was unemployed) between Ole’s sacking and having Carrick in there in-between because no one else was there to manage. Why in the fuck would United think it was a better option to employ an interim manager for 5-6 months (Mind you Rangnick is 63 years old and has never managed at the BIGGEST stage which was proven in the two games against Athletico Madrid) rather than a manager who has managed Juventus, Italy, Chelsea & Inter Milan (Won 5 titles in last 10 years with clubs managed) and gets shit together at clubs relatively quickly. Of course the players aren’t going to improve or play seriously under a man of such little charisma, rather than a man you would actually be somewhat scared of and would want to play well for due to the passion and tactical awareness he has.

I mentioned these points about Conte in my ‘Conte In, Pogba & Ole Out’ article after the 5-0 defeat against Liverpool back at the end of October 2021 and I would like to think some of those points were valid and correct because look at Spurs now, they are FLYING. When you try and employ the best football manager out there who is actually available, this is what happens, results & performances start to take place slowly but surely due to the work on the training ground. Conte even had his doubts when he first joined Spurs, but he stuck to it, worked his ass off and made those players work their asses off. Kane, Son & Kulusevski (Underrated player by the way and suits the Premier League very well) are all flying and Conte has used these three players incredibly well and intelligently. He has probably seen the rest of the team as good but not great and will definitely ask the board for 2-3 further key signings in the summer, but so long as those current players do the basics and get the ball up to the front 3 ASAP, (Especially Kane who has been a monster of a player under Conte so far, he is essentially a number 10 & 9 at the same time), results will take place and Conte is doing this by playing to his teams strengths.

It really sucks being a United fan right now, has been for the last few years even under Ole we weren’t a serious club and didn’t win a trophy under him. When Ten Haag comes in the summer and is even given some flexibility of who he can sign, good luck because you’re going to need it. The reputation of the club is as worse as I can remember, even worse than in the Moyes days towards the end of his reign. The club are simply a commercial driven joke of a football entity who can’t make any decent decisions and its toxic from the CEO’s & Board to the Players in that dressing room and Ten Haag is going to be right in the middle of that shitshow as Ole & Jose were. At this rate Ten Haag doesn’t have a chance to succeed and make United at least a Cup winning team.
Rami, Manchester (Pogba going to leave for Free AGAIN, you can’t help but laugh)

If you play Wan Bissaka then you lose any impetus on the right.

You neutralise your own right sided attacker as with no attacking support from the full back their options are limited to passing infield or trying to beat their man individually. That’s enormously easier to defend against than also having to keep an overlapping full back in mind.

This constricts your attacking play in the center as defenders don’t have to cover potential attacks out wide and simplifies positioning and defending across the entire pitch as the defending team effectively have an extra man and a very restricted set of attacking options to worry about.

Add to that a center forward in Ronaldo incapable of playing a role to help the team and who insists on dropping deep into the centre space that’s already compressed, both removing the option for Fernandes to find an attacker ahead to play off, and also duplicating the role played by Fernandes meaning no space for the playmaker, no ball for the playmaker and far fewer options for the playmaker and you have the turgid swill we just watched.

It’s bloody annoying, Everton deserve to be relegated and Burnley don’t.

I have massive sympathy for Rashford,  Fernandes and particularly Sancho. Ronaldo and Wan Bissaka are lead boots to how those three want to play the game, and until United stop playing Ronaldo and Wan Bissaka they will never start forming the attacking connections between players needed.

I really hope Liverpool stuff Blood Money Financial Doping FC on Sunday, and Fulham stuff Coventry beforehand because that was a really irritating start to the weekend.
Tim Sutton (Man City are the Rishi Sunak of teams)

That sports psychologist that Manu hired really seems to be working out well…
Adidasmufc (Even Jesus couldn’t save this lot)

Man Utd ruin everything…
Damn this mediocre version of Man Utd, I was all in on this Partridge-like version of Frank Lampard we were getting. I was looking forward to the day when Everton got relegated and he got sacked and lost his “big name credentials” in the football manager field and he’d be having to gauge if football management is really for him in lieu of weighing up a Sky analyst contract or a ‘project’ at Hartlepool or Plymouth.  I’ll not be able to imagine him running in his sports tracksuit barking “300k!  300k or we take it to Sky!” anymore.  No synopsis of “the bitter life of a failed football manager turned radio Talksport presenter” to gloss over.  This current Man Utd just suck all the joy out of football don’t they?
Dave (Sad Panda), Dublin

Thank f$&k for that !!!
TX Bill, EFC

Boring, sterile Arsenal
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Persisting with Laca as striker, playing Xhaka as left back, playing ESR and Martin in midfield are all tried and failed experiments. We’re going no where with Arteta as coach.
#ArtetaOut
Kenneth, defeated In Dallas

Hi 365,

As you know, I don’t like to gloat but…oh dear Arsenal fans. When will the Arteta delusion end? Quite the achievement blindly backing Pep’s mediocre janitor who spent more money than any team in Europe, playing just one game a week, out of the lot in February, but unable to lay a glove on blunt Brighton or score in a brothel. At this point, even Boris bloody Johnson has got more credible excuses for being s***t than Arsenal fans!

Seriously, Vieira should have gotten that job. Clearly superior, way more coaching experience but hmm, can’t tell what the difference between him and Arteta is? 🤔

Three years, over £250m spent, turfed out your best striker, kept hold of a joker 5 years younger than Benzema but who plays like he’s twice his age! Hilarious. Guendouzi is scoring goals for France and a top midfielder in Ligue 1 – but apparently, can’t get minutes ahead of Lokonga or Nketiah. Saliba is also now a French international, suddenly. Arteta should have been sacked after his shitshow Europa League elimination last season; but Emery definitely needed to go eh? As he beats Bayern in the CL with a squad costing about one Granit Xhaka. Arteta is incapable of man-management, which is errrr, problematic when you’re tactically devoid of creativity.

Comprehensively thrashed 5-0 on aggregate vs Palace and Seagulls in consecutive games, at the business end of the season. Even though Palace are involved in more competitions. Embarrassing.

If any of the other 17 PL clubs outside Everton/Watford would swap your manager for Arteta, I’d love to hear from you!
Stewie Griffin (Arteta cannot compete with Brighton coast oil money)

Right at end of the January transfer window, I questioned Edu and Arteta’s decision to strip the Arsenal team to the bare minimum by ordering a clear out.

Now that Partey and Tierney are injured, the coach has no answer to the formation and the squad depth is exposed. Two straight losses to Crystal Palace and Brighton!

I rest my case.
Yiembe

Clever Levy
With Kulusevski proving himself to be one of the best attackers in the league and Diaz going off the boil, it is safe to say that Levy actually played Liverpool completely like fools – forcing them to swoop in for Diaz and then picking up the far superior player in Kulusevski in secret.

The man is a genius.
Rob, Dorset

Petro-Dollars & Man Utd
Nice to see Minty’s meltdown in Friday’s mailbox.  Newsflash Minty.  Every single rich person and large corporation in the whole wide world makes a point of hiring super-smart accountants and lawyers to find sneaky ways to get around tax laws or, in the case of football, FFP.  These tend not to be illegal but are most certainly unethical.  I don’t condone it for a second.  I repeat, I do NOT condone it.  Nonetheless, I do wonder how many people reading this who suddenly won the lottery (for example) would end up, upon expert advice, not doing the very same thing.  (See Jimmy Carr et al).

Secondly, the complaint that City have squillions of pounds and, by extension, have a cheat code to win everything simply doesn’t hold water.  If it did, then that logic would dictate that MCFC would be winning trebles or even Quads every season.  But we all know that’s been far from the case.

Look at PSG.  Couldn’t even win their own domestic league with a cast of superstars and they have squillions of petro-dollars.  Look at Man Utd.  The so-called ‘biggest club in the world’ (not for much longer).  Rich as Croesus and what have they won recently?  Where are they now, seventh in the table?

If simply having the most money equated to instant, and even guaranteed continuous success, then you would have a point.  But it doesn’t.  Which is why Leicester winning the PL (magnificent) as did Liverpool, as well as the CL, deserved as they all were proves otherwise.

Anfield has a strategy that unites the whole club behind its manager, players, and staff.  So does the Etihad.  This is why both are twenty-odd points ahead of Man Utd.

And this is something I think a lot of United fans simply don’t get.  It literally doesn’t matter who your next manager is.  He is not the problem.  United have, possibly, the worst recruitment history of the PL in the last ten years.  And by that I include their choice of CEO, the absence of any credible DoF and their continued instance on buying shiny players that the current manager neither wanted nor asked for.

Apart from blind faith, what evidence do you have that your club owners will do anything differently now than in the last ten years?
Mark (Honourable mention to the Scouser trying to get his excuses in first about Manchester Refs.  Really not sure you’ll need to worry about that Our Kid).  MCFC

Falling into the Sky trap…
Lee’s email shows how people in this country have fallen into the trap that Sky have set us all.

The Premier League is fantastically successful across the globe. But in England, most of us simply don’t revere Barcelona and Real in the way that they’re revered elsewhere in the world. And only one club in England comes close to that sort of reverence from the rest of the world. They do play in red, but they’re from another city in the north-west.

That said, remember Ferguson saying he wouldn’t sell Real a virus, let alone Ronaldo…about 6 months before actually having to do it, because once they come calling…

The same thing happened with Suarez. Footballers simply want to play for these sides because they are bigger than any other club.
Aidan, EFC, London (still processing today’s early kick-off…good grief)

Season predictions are useless
It’s been said by many a pundit, it’s better to have the 3 points than the game in hand, or 2 games in hand. This is playing out before our very eyes with Arsenal. More often than not, the game in hand is against lower opposition. So for example, nobody out there will consider having a game in hand when the game is against Man City. So when fans talk about “a game in hand” they usually expect their team will win said game and gain advantage. Which is what Arsenal had, they had at one point 3 games in hand. How a team that isn’t in the champions league, or uefa missed to play 3 games over teams that had 2 play 2 games a week is worth investigating, but at some point this season, Arsenal had 3 games over either Spurs or Man U. As we speak , they have a game in hand over Spurs but are 3 points behind them, with a poorer goal record. So even if they win their remaining game in hand, they will still be below spurs. I can only remember Man U using games in hand to usurp Liverpool around 2008/9 , but more often than not, things don’t pan out as expected.

So I do wonder, is it better to have played Norwich, win, drawn, lost and know where you stand on the table, or have a game in hand. against Norwich? Classic definition of “a bird in hand, is worth 2 in the bush”. Spurs may have done better than Arsenal with their game in hand. The one positive I can see are the likes of Man U who gave up way too early. If Man U had kept true, won against Leicester and Everton, instead of limping through the rest of the season, that’s +6 , which according to the table, put them level on points with Spurs with a poorer goal difference record. So basically , we’d have 2 teams playing for the title, 3 place sealed, and 3 teams vying for fourth based on goal difference at this point. Maybe there twists and turns still left, but the above scenario would have been great to watch.
Dave(Man City will smash Liverpool), Somewhere