Sack Ten Hag now as Man Utd are the 7th worst side in the PL and ‘this Arsenal squad is anti-football’

One Man Utd fan in the Mailbox wants to see Erik ten Hag sacked as he ‘isn’t in the top 50 managers in the world’ and doesn’t seem to care. Plus, Arsenal and their anti-football ways, Anthony Gordon, Cole Palmer, Shearer and Keane debate and more…

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Curtains for Erik ten Hag
I will support ETH till the day he is a United manager. But it feels like this is curtains for him. He isn’t in the top 50 managers in the world, United aren’t in the top 30-40 teams in the world currently based on the way they play. It’s time to be brutally honest. 3 years is more than enough time to build a CL winning team, let alone a team that can compete for top 4. Slot, Maresca, Hansi Flick etc took on difficult jobs and within months the team started to play better football with an identity.

Injuries have been a valid excuse, but there is only so much you can blame on them. Ten Hag has to exit now for things to change. The players don’t seem to believe in him, the fans aren’t all in either. There is a feeling of not caring about things around old trafford. The players don’t care, the manager doesn’t seem to care and the fans have slowly stopped caring as we slowly fall further down the trash bin.

Watching all the other teams play till now this season, i can truly say that other than West Ham & the bottom 4-5 teams, United are the worst team in the league. As a fan, I now feel that if we win a match, there is no way we will win 2 in a row. There is no attack, no defense, no midfield, no tactics, no gameplan, no identity.

I think Erik is a good manager, but he is not the one to take United back to glory. Bad players bought, bad player management, bad everything. No one can take 2 trophies in 2 years away from him, but it’s time to say your goodbyes. Watching Chelsea & Liverpool, who should by all rights be struggling more than United, makes it all the more clear that there are no excuses.

Well, hoping at least we can beat Spurs!

Regards
Aman

The narrative…
Narrative will be how the Arsenal 4-2 Leicester scoreline does not reflect the game.. Correct, it should have been 5-0.

Leicester scored 2 freak goals. One wicked deflection and (fair play) one absolute Thunderbastard!
And their goalie makes at least 3 great saves + a number of other Arsenal chances.

So while we did it the hard way, it should have been much easier. Points win prizes and this was a great 3 points after the city result.

Nwaneri is gonna be a proper player.
Hats

36 Shots
16 on Target
17 Corners
75% Possession
89% Pass Accuracy

The narrative is so true. This Arsenal squad is anti-football. Really would put Mourinho to shame. True masters of the dark arts.

What’s the excuse this time? Oh, right. It’s only Leicester, calm down!

Regards,
Malcolm Alden

Anthony Gordon 
I’d like to bet £5 please that fat man scouse has a pop at Anthony Gordon and says that he dived for the penalty.
AD, NUFC (be more Elsa for goodness sake)

Nah Jude (ode to Cole Palmer) 
Nah Jude, just step asidePlay number 6 or number 11
Number 8 is ok too
But you aint our number 10

Nah Nah Nah  Nah Nana Nah Nah
Nana Nah Nah
Nah Jude
Nah Jude

Nah Nah Nah  Nah Nana Nah Nah
Nana Nah Nah
Nah Jude

Nah Jude

You aint our number 10
Ben

Shearer and Keane
Just wanted to thank James CAFC for the memory. Ah, good times.

I like that he brought it up during weeklong wrangle about shithousery, because Shearer and Keane were certainly among the biggest shithouses of their era. It’s why they were also two of the most hated players in the league. It’s also a big part of their own clubs’ fans adored them. Because to one or extent or another, we all love it.

Look, I hate to see a player from my club committing dangerous fouls, wrangling with referees, or diving. But I giggle with delight at certain sorts of shithousery, and I’ll bet you do, too. Especially when it’s your own player, though that’s not necessary.

Any kind of winding up of an opponent is a good time, and Halland was definitely at work against Arsenal. I don’t particularly like City – I can’t like any club that pummels the Mags so often – but I enjoyed the eff out Haaland’s performance, at least in that sense.

Petty microagressions can be great, too. It’s almost a shame that yellow cards for delaying free kicks are putting a stop to so many of those opportunities to get in opponents’ heads. Scuffing the penalty spot up while the referee’s back is turned is a good time; if another player is arguing with the ref to distract him, that’s the one time it’s okay. I also enjoy it when a goalkeeper or defender messes with a penalty-taker’s head.

Conor MAlone, Donegal, raises a fantastic example: vengeful reducers. The great thing about those is that they allow the referee to a part of the shithousery by missing the foul.

I love it when players force opponents to foul them. Bruno G is particularly good at this. Seeing an incoming challenge and using it strikes me as good shithousing. Oooh, and deception is the best! I was looking for examples of shithousery and was reminded of the time in 2017 when Harry Arter prevented a Nathaniel Chalobah goal by yelling “leave it!”

Good times, indeed.
Chris C, Toon Army DC

Why don’t people watch something that happened before they comment on it?

Keane threw the ball at shearers head, then threw a punch at him. Then got sent off.

Absolutely not what happened with Haaland and Gabriel.

You’re as bad as the commentary team in the Arsenal Bolton game. So many mistakes.
rojapy

James CAFC seems to be misremembering the Shearer/Keane incident. I only know because I recently watched a video of Keane and Gary Neville going through each of his red cards and listening to Roy’s distorted version of how he remembered it (He claimed the infamous Haaland tackle would never have caused an injury…). Anyway back to the incident, Shearer didn’t throw the ball at Keane, Keane threw it as Shearer and domed him with it before swinging and missing with a jab. I Think Shearer got under his skin by saying Mick McCartney was a good manager.
Conor Maximus, LFC

Not a conspiracist 
Problem with drafting emails on your phone while sat on the train, thoughts can run away with you, apologies Mark for the unnecessary volume/repetition.

As it stands, I’m also against conspiracism and wouldn’t want to try and justify/support it, but I am entirely in favour of promoting that unconscious bias does exist in a football context and pretending it doesn’t (rather than accepting it’s a feature of human nature and factoring it in) won’t fix actual problems.

To Tom G, ofc every fan base has their grievances and remembers things through team lens – which is why pulling up one off occurrences which are subject to randomness or mistakes isn’t a great position.

But it is why the data is important and why Rich’s stats are actually very relevant to this discussion – Arsenal’s outsized punishments vs foul numbers is enough of an anomaly to bear some analysis.

As I wrote in long before last week, I think a few conditions about Arsenal (club stature, fair play/don’t like it up them Wenger vs dark arts Arteta) do lead to margin differences in the way the club is treated and over a long enough timeline those will manifest in numbers – numbers I’m pretty happy Rich dug up as I am (supposed to be) working.

To be clear, your club will have systemic biases working for/against them too just as there is an observable home/away impact on referees and issuing cards. Just because you too think something is unfair about how your club is treated doesn’t nullify our argument (nor should we use ours to discount yours). If you want to tell me that Liverpool players get kicked to crap and give some punchy numbers like we have for how Saka is treated, happy to join forces to argue for better player welfare.

The real issue as ever is accountability/transparency/consistency in the process and there seems universal acceptance across footballing spectrum of the fact that referees rarely ever accept mistakes and their mates all circle the wagons after a shocker with ridiculous defences (then quietly take that ref off big games for a spot).

I actually think this stops the average fan from being more respectful/accommodating of referees and their actions – the (crumbling) ivory tower of the whole thing and being told ‘actually you’re just partisan mugs’ when I feel like football fans have better access to insight and information to build opinion on is immensely frustrating.

So yeh, I don’t hold with any of the ‘Northern Refs’ or ‘X referee has it out for us’ or ‘They don’t want us to win the league’ nonsense. Or even the ‘they’re paid privately by nation states’ arguments (although that should 100% be knocked on the head ASAP anyway). But I do think that data can demonstrate patterns of unconscious bias and there is enough to demonstrate that Arsenal are overly punished for the volume/severity of fouls and made an example of more often for things that are very common amongst other teams. But people would rather call us whingers and moaners for it than interrogate said data.
Tom (My mails published because I bought a monkey’s paw from a mysterious little shop – that has subsequently vanished – and asked that my voice would always be heard. Be careful what you wish for) Leyton

Arsenal corner kicks
It has been said that Arsenal are cheating by having three men surround the keeper on corner kicks.  I think it is legal if the three men stand still.  But ask yourself, why does it work so often?  Poor defending.  Raya is back in his goal, Saka is taking the corner kick, and three Arsenal men are surrounding the keeper, which leaves six Arsenal players trying to head the ball in.  Those six Arsenal players are up against ten defenders, and are clearly outnumbered. I think there is something wrong in the way teams are defending Arsenal corner kicks.  I hope they never figure it out.
Ron Jeremias. Woodbridge, Virginia, USA

Tottenham
Good evening F365 team,

Just looking to seek some clarification:

On the eve of Tottenham’s Europa League game, Dave Tickner contributed a fairly significant sized piece about why Tottenham should take the Europa League seriously, infusing it with a hearty dollop of “Spursy” and “trophy dodging” references that are – quite rightly – a requisite pillar for any F365 articles about Tottenham, along with jibes aimed at Ange over his use of the word “mate”. (Goes without saying I understand the importance of eschewing writing maturity for maximum banter points, given it’s what helps this award winning site truly stand tall above the football writing competition: hearing the same funnies over and over again, except in long form rather than in 200 character posts by 14 year olds on social media).

However, when said club and manager end up securing a pretty convincing, entertaining, unSpursy 3-0 victory after playing with 10 men from virtually kick off against opponents who reached the quarter final last season and almost put out Leverkusen, in said competition they were challenged to take seriously by Mr Tickner: there doesn’t appear to be a single congratulatory word – let alone article – found on these same pages anywhere? How curious. Did it get deleted?

Granted, I understand if nothing made it onto the site given that we’re dealing with this month’s anointed peak banter club, who hilariously finished 5th last year after losing their greatest modern day player while financially outmuscling everyone with their massive 7th largest Premier League wage bill, who’ve played 5 PL games this season and so remain favourites to finish in the position they’re in (10th) despite working through a major squad overhaul, and are managed by an Antipodean nitwit who stumbled into the job one evening as an extra off the set of Neighbours. Yet despite these circumstances, perhaps said clown club and manager might be granted the occasional credit every once in a while. Obviously, I wouldn’t dare to go as far and recommend this should be at the expense of the great work being put in by Mr. Tickner and co to focus solely on pillorying the team’s flaws such as the inability to handle set pieces (conceded one set piece goal so far this season) or playing a kamikaze high line (conceded one ball played behind the defence goal so far this season) while ignoring to highlight any of the easily accessible performance stats that suggest there’s a decent probability results will start to follow. Nobody wishes to challenge the established narrative now necessary for the sake of the #bantz after all. But maybe the odd occasion inbetween, such as right after they’ve just won a game that by Mr. Tickner’s own admission they should be taking seriously.

Forever yours,
F365’s AI generated number one fan (And please, never stop showcasing the work of some of the greatest football journalists this tiny ball of rock hurtling through space has to offer).

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