An excellent Mailbox features a defence of Man Utd, Villa and Spurs’ spending, a Julian Alvarez plan for Arsenal, and criticism of Van Dijk.
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Alvarez to Arsenal and then Barca?
First off, I’m glad that proper football is back!
I see that Atlectio Madrid won’t sell Julian Alvarez to Barca. Seems very sensible given their position as rivals. So, I wonder if Alvarez’s team will encourage him to sign for Arsenal, spend one season there (hopefully scoring loads of goals which secures him a Premier league winners medal) and then he moves to Barca for more money than Arsenal bought him for in the first place.
Madrid get their money, Arsenal (hopefully) get a world class striker to help them retain the title and then Barca get their man and Alvarez gets his dream move.
Unless there is a clause which prohibits him from joining Barca for ‘X’ years? Doubt it though. Would seem hard to enforce and doubt Alvarez would agree to it.
So you heard it hear first. At the end of this season, having won the title, Champions League, FA Cup, Carabao Cup and whatever else Arsenal can get their hands on, the search for a world class striker will begins all over again…
Unless Alvarez decides he prefers sunny norf London to Barcelona and stays forever? OK, no more beers for me.
Stu – (Hopeful) Gooner in France. And yes, I’m glossing over the fact he could spend the year not trying and making sure he doesn’t get injured. He’s Argentinian, so I’m sure of his sporting integrity.
Leave Man Utd alone
In unsurprising news, I’m more frustrated and angry over the reaction to Man Utd losing on Saturday than I am the actual performance and the loss.
Don’t get me wrong, it was rubbish and Hull absolutely deserved it. They wanted it more and knew their roles in a great structure. Man Utd never looked like scoring, despite having a superior Xg which yet again proves why I think Xg is just a pointless stat. They were unfit and at times felt like they believed they only needed to turn up.
But, it’s one game in. People have clearly made their mind up about Carrick and will stick to their guns. That rubbish on Saturday from one of the big newspapers that he lacks a philosophy comes to mind. We have literally had a few seasons with two managers brought in with so called philosophies on how to play that ultimately failed. Ten hag only succeeded when he had them play like they did under Ole. Amorim didn’t even do that! And besides, this obsession in recent seasons over styles of play and playing in a set way is pointless, because apart from a few subtle changes it all comes down to having a higher possession and pressing. And guess what? That’s what Carrick wants United to do. So, he does have a philosophy – it’s the same as everyone else.
They were never going to win the title so all this talk beforehand was rubbish anyway. They are building a team in phases. Last season was the attack. This season the midfield. Presumably it will be defence next year. The mistakes of the years since Sir Alex retired will take a long time to undo. Sure, a team of their stature SHOULD BE challenging for the title, but that doesn’t give them the right to.
We spend too much time discussing Man Utd as if they were the team they were 15-20 years ago and not where they are now. Its refreshing to have Man Utd actually have a transfer plan. Of course, the usual overreactions come into play complaining that they didn’t buy twice as many players like its Football manager with a cheat mode. The same people will also complain about the debt with no realisation the two are connected! Like any club we can only spend so much. Of course we can spend more than most but with no European football last season we are still paying for the mistakes of the past.
Back to the game. My gut feeling is that with some of the main players only returning to pre-season after a world cup, they aren’t quite up to scratch fitness wise. In an ideal world, Mount would have played like he did most of preseason but he got injured. Amad too. It’s also interesting that this is the 4th game where they have played and lost to a team with 3 at the back and wingbacks – Leeds last season, with Wrexham and Milan in pre-season. It appears Man Utd weren’t just rubbish playing in that system they are rubbish playing against it! We also saw what a loss Casemiro was as his ability in the air (both attacking and defence) was sometimes forgotten. But all these things can be worked on which is why I think it’s far too early to make decisions on Man Utd and Carrick in particular.
Anyway, if omens are your thing. The last All or Nothing for a premier league team was Arsenal and included their opening day 2-0 loss to newly promoted Brentford. With patience they didn’t do too bad in the end after that.
John Morgan, Derbyshire
Rinse, repeat
So, one game in (a somewhat fortuitous draw away at Newcastle, although Liverpool ‘won’ the stats), and I’ve already had enough of:
1. Gravenberch thinking his job is to support the forwards. Which leads to;
2. The ability of the opposition to play straight through the middle on the counter.
3. Van Dijk trying to be a ‘conductor’, by flapping his arms and pointing. Nobody’s listening, mate. Your job is to read the game and organise your defence accordingly, not direct the midfield.
4. Van Dijk up front. No. Unless it’s a corner I don’t want to see you cross the halfway line.
Exactly the same as last season, when Slot took the blame. New manager, new philosophy, but nothing seems to have changed on these issues, which begs the question, are the manager’s tactics being ignored?
On a side-note, that showed a solid DM should be an absolute priority for the transfer committee. And certainly over someone like Barcola.
DF (Is Iraola brave enough to play Ron/Jeremy together?)
Spurs spending
There seems to have been a lot of complaining and annoyance about Spurs spending, which, as it stands today, is £74m nett less than Ipswich Town and less than Coventry City
Tottenham have underinvested in the squad for a long time now. Years. People may remember the end of the 2017/18 season when Pochettino said that the squad needs a rebuild. A painful one, as he could see it beginning to disintegrate. Tottenham had just finished 3rd. Not many people know this, but following Pochettino’s plea, which came on the last day after a hum dinger of a 5-4 win v Leicester at home, was followed by the first summer of any team since 2004 in the Premier League, without signing a player. Not a single one
Throughout the 8 years since, we’ve often spent fairly big on some players, the likes of Richarlison and Dom Solanke, Maddison, Gio Le Celso, Brennan Johnson etc, but they had one thing in common, or sometimes two. One – the selling club had to sell. Two – the players would fit into our limited wages system. We’re a club who turn over £690m plus but had fewer players on £100k a week than Palace last season, and a wage bill only 38% of turnover. We often bought players we didn’t need just cos they were cheap.
Fast forward to this summer. The principal criticism spurs have always had thrown at them is that we don’t spend big on wages. The likes of Talksport love to use it as a reason that we’re not a big club. The PSR rules that we’ve been playing along to for the past 7/8 years, have not come as a surprise to us, but seemingly it has to a number of clubs now having to sell to meet the more stringent UEFA caps. And that’s just it – the rules – spurs didn’t make the rules, we just took them seriously. We built a multi purpose stadium we could monetise, in lieu of a billionaire sinking their lives savings into us.
Are the rules unfair? Perhaps. If they’d come in this summer completely out of the blue. But they haven’t. Investment in infrastructure is still not counted, so the likes of Villa and Newcastle with their billionaire backers, could spend some of their money on this, and attract some other money into the club. That’s all Spurs have done. They took note of the iceberg rather than plough into it and shrug
Ange Postecoglou once said that “Spurs do weird things to people”. He’s not wrong. We seem to be stuck in this place where we’re mocked for not spending like a supposed big club and mocked more for actually doing it, even if all we’ve done so far is spend less than Ipswich! Once we add Marmoush and Savinho and sell Richarlison, we’ll have spent close to £200 nett. Then we’ll see where we stand
Ross H THFC
Calm heads, please
Could we have a bit of analysis-backed punditry please Ally McCoist and Jeff Stelling, and all others who have hit the Aston Villa panic button.
Aston Villa conceded four very sloppy goals and lost 4-0 – all triggered by the senseless act of one player which we’ll come to shortly -and suddenly Emery is going to walk away and everything is a crisis? Is it, really?
Aston Villa started last season without scoring a goal until 21st September. Then finished fourth and won the Europa league.
‘It isn’t the same team this year, look at who has left’, you may well say in response, having already reminded everyone who has left the club like every transfer article does before getting to the new news people actually do want to read.
Morgan Rogers – if not the most overrated player in the entire Premier League, he is the most overpriced (this year). To quote Paul Merson, he was “atrocious” for the first part of last season. He gave the ball away 16.3 times a game for the entirety, often in problem areas, and infuriates more than delights. Manzambi is an upgrade at half the price.
Tielemans, Konsa and Watkins will take some replacing but Emery can do it. Madjo already looks the business, Joao Gomes will improve, and Hemmings and Lynch have shone in pre-season. Others will arrive.
One bad loss means nothing for Villa. And so to the to act that triggered their first half collapse. The most senseless throw in I can ever recall seeing in a Premier League game. As Maatsen held the ball aloft behind his head it was all fine for a moment. Villa on top, all over Brighton, his teammates expecting the ball to go forwards, or sideways at the very least, to maintain momentum. Instead what they got was not just the surprise of him throwing it backwards but the folly of him telegraphing it and the shock of the inexplicable, inexcusable pace with which he propelled it. What thought process went into that? ‘We’re on top so I’ll hurl the ball backwards to what I’ve made a contest so hard my teammate has to chase it and find himself under needless pressure in a dangerous area.’ And the commentators blamed Torres! Yes, Torres should have dealt with it better but he should never, ever, have been put in that position. He fluffed his lines under the unexpected pressure, made a mistake, and then Lindelof was pulled into the mess scoring the unavoidable own goal. It shot their games to pieces and shell-shocked the rest of the team.
Brighton were ruthless. It’s easy to be ruthless when gifted possession in shooting range three times and not having your runner tracked for the other. But credit to Brighton, they played well after going ahead.
Villa will.move on, slowly again perhaps, but if Unai Emery says he’s excited about the new Villa, then he is. And everyone at Villa is too.
From,
Paul, Melbourne
Saudi grapes
If I hear one more football pundit that say something along the lines of, “it’s easy to say you wouldn’t go to Saudi/A N Other sh*te but filthy rich league until you are offered that kind of money”, then I’m going full Michael Douglas in Falling Down.
For mere mortals like the motley crew that make up the contributors to this website, it would be a rightly mixed result I suspect – some people would take the money regardless, whereas for some people (like me) there’s not enough money in the world to make me go live in Saudi.
For multi millionaire premier league footballers though, it’s greed plain and simple. They already have more money than they could ever need, unless they are even more dense/poorly advised than your average cosseted elite footballer/potato, so it’s irrelevant. All they are doing is telling us they know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
RHT/TS x (If you haven’t seen the Crewe winning goal versus my lot, and you’re feeling glum, google it)