Aston Villa fans, West Ham fans and neutrals are united in disgust at Unai Emery and his seven changes on Sunday.
For mails on Man Utd v Liverpool, come this way; send your mails as always to theeditor@football365.com
What was that Aston Villa?
Without doubt the most embarrassing performance by a Villa team in many years. Disgraceful.
Paul
…Half time of this utter disgrace by Villa and am turning off. Made a fatal mistake yesterday when I said it might help that everyone wants Spurs to go down. I forgot about Emery, who clearly doesn’t give a flying fk. 7 changes?? Seven?? What a joke.
Mike, WHU
Spurs happy to support Arsenal
No true Spurs fan cares more about Arsenal’s title race than Spurs staying up. Tottenham fans will 100% support Arsenal next week.
Sam
Nothing funny about West Ham going down
The primary funny relegation outcome from the Premier League this season has been Spurs obviously.
The second funniest would have been Forest (if they should win the Europa) being in the Champions League whilst playing in the Championship.
It now looks likely that West Ham will spoil all of our neutrals’ fun.
Brian (not looking forward to the London Athletic Stadium at all) BRFC
Fanmail for Mike
Mike WHU, f*** you and the sanctimonious glass house you rode in on.
TGWolf (7 points from 3 games.Im no fan of De Zerbi as a man, but as a manager, bloody hell) THFC
Look at Mystic Meg here…
Permission to re-publish my letter from the end of last season?
There’s been a lot of discussion, especially on this website, about how the PL is becoming a closed shop and the gap is widening etc etc. Apparently the 3 promoted clubs are already doomed before they even kick a football! Personally I think this is all a bit premature and there’s too much reading into a couple of seasons where, frankly, the promoted teams were just poor and barely even gave themselves a chance at staying up.
One of the arguments seems to be that of the other 17 clubs there are no obvious candidates to go down. But I disagree. We could easily have a very open relegation dogfight with any of West Ham, Wolves, Everton, Fulham, Bournemouth, Palace and Brentford all potentially in the mix with the 3 newbies. Who knows which of those clubs will lose key players and potentially their manager over the Summer. A lot can change from one season to the next. Sometimes even a small change can make a big difference. Just look at how Wolves were transformed when they replaced their manager. What if they lose Pereira and make a bad decision in appointing his successor?
If you look back to the 22/23 season, the 3 relegated clubs finished 8th, 15th and 17th the previous season. Did anyone really see Leicester getting relegated that season? Not many, I imagine. Southampton went down after 12 consecutive seasons in the Prem and were not widely tipped to be relegated that season.
And fundamentally it comes down to how well the promoted clubs prepare themselves. When my team Brentford came up, we added a few new faces but most of the promotion winning squad remained intact. It was a long term plan coming together because we were (and are) an extremely well-managed club. Same with Brigthon. Same with Bournemouth. Same with Fulham.
So I really don’t agree it’s a closed shop. Is it tough to get promoted and stay in the PL? Absolutely. But why shouldn’t it be? In terms of depth, it’s the strongest league in the world, by a distance. But if clubs come up with no real vision and either just hope for the best or think throwing some money at players with little strategy will keep them up, they shouldn’t be surprised if they end up struggling. And they shouldn’t be blaming the Premier League for that.
Rob, Surrey, Bees fan
Not a happy Hammer
Cheers Brentford, kids crying now.
Gav, Edinburgh
John Terry going full John Terry
I see John Terry has finally stopped pretending he can’t work out why he is never getting a manager gig at anywhere of note, so he’s now decided, ‘f*** it, I’ll double down on the reason and get myself involved in ACTUAL far right politics, maybe they’ll give me a job’. Shocked that Dennis Wise agrees too, seemed such a nice lad when he played. Wonder what Simon “what’s the difference between getting teased about being ginger and facing racism for being black” Jordan will have to say about this (I’m paraphrasing ever so slightly because I can’t find the quotes for some reason – odd that, but he DID say this live on air), given he endlessly and hitherto inexplicably championed John at any & every available juncture. I would imagine lots of bluster involving mispronounced big words and self-righteousness like usual rather than telling us all what we already know about him.
RHT/TS x
(Arsenal putting Fulham to the sword at this juncture, through the medium of playing some decent attacking football for once was refreshing – what took you so long Mikel? Fair play to Gyokeres too)
Positive about Arsenal
A couple of players that need a mention, Gyokeres, running the channels so perfectly. He has tried in other games, unfortunately players just did not pass but in this game he has been outstanding.
Calafiori, when he players we seem to be fluid in attack and we play much better, in this game, I’ve picked up that whenever he attached Lewis-Skelly, whom plays in the middle, filled up that left back position nicely. Also, he has been good in the middle, his passing and intercepting Fulham play has been great.
Saka, is playing good. Hope this last for the next 5 games including (UCL).
Only Ben White, who has been a bit underpar. WE JUST NEED TO SCORE AS MANY GOALS.
Lwazi, Cape Town
Is Harold okay?
So I read the mail from earlier Harold Enzo Hooler about Alvarez and Gyokeres, but wish I hadn’t.
He did label it at the start as ‘ TL;DR’ but it wasn’t the length that was the issue, but the totally confused thinking!
Firstly, he says ‘Alvarez, at a reported 5ft 8in’ and ‘Gyökeres, at a reported 6ft 2in’ for no apparent reason. There is no other part of his mail which would give reason for their ‘reported’ heights to be of any relevance.
Secondly, he then includes some minutes per GC (presume goal contribution) statistics for each player where Alvarez has either 120 or 145 GC per minute whether penalties are included or not and Gyökeres has either 150 or 185, and then says that ‘the 18-month-older Swede is running literally pound-for-pound at the same value’.
I assume this very confusing comparison is about their respective ‘mins per GC’ where there literally is a difference between the two, so they cannot be ‘pound-for pound at the same value’. These stats show Alvarez provides a GC literally 30 or 40 minutes more often in a ‘less-fancied’ team.
I guess this is just a basic misunderstanding of the meaning of the word literally, because whilst Harold has given us heights for both, he didn’t give their weights!
Lastly, in his post script bit he talks about ‘the Gyökeres, Rice, Ødegaard, hair-playing’. Can anyone please explain to be WTF this is supposed to mean?
This was the opening mail to the mailbox, but thankfully it improved afterwards, and began to make some sense!
A, LFC, Montreal
Aguero moment not all that, actually, says Man Utd fan
I might be too slow to reply but:
The Aguerooooooo moment is not the best. It was reliant on two things:
Manchester City delaying the start of the 2nd half, an offence that they have been fine millions for and QPR just losing interest after they learnt Bolton had lost, giving city their easy win in lots of time available, see above.
It was a win based on cheating, one deliberate the other just not being professional.
My son was 8 and he hated the cheating. (He always hates cheats) he hated Bolton for losing and Man City for cheating. Strangely we live in Bolton and his cousin is a senior person at city. 13 years later he still doesn’t let it go. Why should he? It was wrong on so many levels an 8 year old would see it.
Me, I started watching Utd as a 13 year old in division 2. We won so much, it just meant I’ve never paid to go to a Premier League game again.
And I wish QPR the success for ever that they have had since then. Or worse!
Still annoyed by cheating and unprofessional w**kers.
Tony
