Van Nistelrooy infuriates managers, ‘bonkers’ Amorim and Slot is the next Paisley
Future Leicester manager Ruud van Nistelrooy is coming over here and taking our jobs, while it is so difficult not to see Arne Slot as the next Bob Paisley.
Amor the merrier
‘Ruben Amorim breaks Man Utd’s 33-year duck in just 48 SECONDS during Bodo/Glimt clash’ – The Sun website.
When the Man Utd ‘duck’ Ruben Amorim has broken is to score ‘in the opening minute of a major European game’, it doesn’t half dilute the use of block capitals about it taking ‘just [x amount of] SECONDS’. If anything, they left it pretty late.
Man I’m just living my life, there’s nothing crazy about me
The same outlet carries this headline:
‘Amorim’s bonkers tactic pays off as Man Utd see out win over Bodo/Glimt’
And while playing without a recognised centre-half for about half an hour is some shade of noteworthy, Casemiro and Luke Shaw have both been used there before so even if Amorim is a foreign who likes woke nonsense such as tactics, ‘bonkers’ seems a bit off.
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In Ruud health
Three things get Neil Custis’ back up: 1) Louis van Gaal, 2) airports and 3) awards ceremonies.
He only touches briefly upon one of those things in his Sun column on Friday, on Leicester’s impending appointment of Ruud van Nistelrooy which ‘must have lower-league bosses fuming’.
Feels like they might be a little too busy focusing on their own stuff instead of stopping to care what a temporary Premier League club is doing with their managerial situation but sure, run with it:
‘RUUD VAN NISTELROOY walking into the Leicester job must have managers further down the leagues tearing their hair out.
‘This week at the Northwest Football Awards, for example, Dave Challinor of Stockport was named manager of the year ahead of Pep Guardiola.
‘Now that may be because organisers felt he would probably turn up to get his gong, unlike Guardiola.
‘Still, two promotions in 2½ years to lift the area’s poor relation from the National League to League One – where they sit fourth – is incredible.
‘Yet that and a managerial background at Colwyn Bay, AFC Fylde and Hartlepool would sadly never put him on a Premier League club’s radar.
‘It never does.’
And it never should. Challinor has done some exceptional work but this is his first season as a manager in a division as high as League One and he has coached about three times as many games in the National League as he has the Football League.
How weird that even just a year of managing PSV in the Eredivisie and European competition is more relevant when it comes to taking charge of a Premier League team than exclusively managing in the lower leagues.
And hell, Challinor might well have been on Leicester’s ‘radar’ but when targeting Steve Cooper’s replacement they have been specific in wanting to appoint a free agent. Would Challinor have even left something successful behind at Stockport to take a Leicester job he might have been removed from after a few bad results? Does Custis care? Has he ever heard of Nathan Jones? Does he miss him as much as we do?
But this is about Van Nistelrooy and his unjustified promotion to a permanent Premier League post:
‘If all the paperwork is done, his first game as Foxes gaffer could be at Brentford on Saturday.
‘Meanwhile, Challinor, 49, is set to host Brackley in the FA Cup.
‘It seems if he wants to manage in the top flight, he will have to get there with Stockport.’
Or manage in a division slightly higher than England’s third tier for more than about a third of a season. Just a thought.
Will Challinor really be ‘fuming’ and ‘tearing his hair out’ because a job he probably didn’t want and definitely didn’t apply for has gone to someone else? Would Custis take the time to pretend to care if the situation didn’t involve a former Manchester United player and an opportunity to reference a tired Sir Alex Ferguson anecdote?
Cars boot
This was some enjoyable Custis too:
‘At a time when image is everything, however, the Dutchman comes across very well.
‘Just look at how Lee Carsley was dismissed as a potential England boss because of how he handled the media glare.’
Think it was more the home defeat to Greece in which he used an awful midfield setup because it looked decent after 20 minutes of training, but yeah.
It Pais to be happy
Fair play to Oliver Brown, who writes in his Daily Telegraph column that ‘just five months into the sunlit reign of Arne Slot, there is a temptation to perceive the Dutchman as the Paisley to Jurgen Klopp’s Shankly,’ while simultaneously avoiding the temptation to write something useful, positive and meaningful about his most beloved subject: women’s sport.
And hey, almost everyone else bar Paddy ‘The Baddy’ Pimblett and a couple of other randoms have avoided the apparently irresistible temptation to compare Slot’s 19-game reign with Paisley’s nine-year one, but here we are.
There are similarities, in the sense that both were more reserved successors to worshipped, celebrated managers who delivered immense periods of success. And as Brown points out, both won their first meetings with Manchester United, which essentially makes them twins.
But again, Paisley literally won more trophies as Liverpool manager than Slot has managed Liverpool games so far. It is a ludicrous comparison.
Real deal
Brown embarks on a tangent which takes him over to Liverpool’s vanquishing of Real Madrid.
‘The significance of the result against Real is impossible to overstate, with the team Klopp failed to beat in six tries brought to heel at the first time of asking.’
It might be ‘impossible to overstate’ but you’ve given it a fine crack. It was an excellent result but not nearly as impressive as many would like to pretend.
‘To summon a mental image of Klopp is to picture a whirlwind of teeth and fist-pumps and splenetic outbursts about having to kick-off at 12.30pm on a Saturday. Slot has eschewed such amateur dramatics or rows with officialdom, making a point after the Real win of shaking the referee’s hand.’
Mediawatch admittedly cannot immediately cite one specific example from memory, but pretty sure Klopp might have shook a referee’s hand after a 2-0 win at least once, whether or not he was ‘making a point’ in doing so.