Mikel Arteta ‘lost in his own aura’ as Man Utd blasted for Garnacho decision

‘Everyone has worked for an Arteta at some point’ but is he a good manager? Should Arsenal fans be happy? Plus, more Man Utd.

Send your views on all subjects – including Man City if you saw the game – to theeditor@football365.com

Arsenal and American football
I’m going to talk American football for a while, so bear with me.

Growing up in Los Angeles (hi Eric, the traffic these days is much much worse than when I lived there), I was a fan of the Los Angeles Rams. This was in the late 1960s and 1970s. They had very good teams that invariably made the playoffs but then invariably lost to the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, or Dallas Cowboys, and couldn’t get to the Super Bowl to save their lives.

I hated it. It was an ache that wouldn’t go away. As each year rolled around, the inevitable failure got harder and harder to take.
Then, just when I’d given up, the miracle happened. In the first round of the 1979 playoffs, late in the fourth quarter, Vince Ferragamo threw a pass, Billy Waddy caught it and went in for the touchdown (it’s famous enough that you can watch it here). The Rams had upset the Cowboys. The following week, in the conference championship, they were lucky to meet a fairly ordinary Tampa Bay Buccaneers team, squeaked by them, and were in the Super Bowl.

They faced the mighty Pittsburgh Steelers, defending champions and big favorites. Well, the Rams played brilliantly, and actually led going into the fourth quarter, whereupon the great Steeler quarterback Terry Bradshaw threw a 73-yard touchdown pass, then another long pass that led to a touchdown, and the Rams lost. How did I feel? Great. We’d come as close as I could reasonably expect to a title, and the everlasting ache was removed.

Anyway, Arsenal. The parallel isn’t exact, because the Premier League doesn’t have playoffs or a championship game, but you get the idea.
It’s up to each fan to decide how they feel about it, but I suspect if I supported Arsenal I’d be thrilled right now. The team has played some outstanding football in recent years, and come ever so close to unseating one of the great teams of all time.

Mikel Arteta may have reached the end of his particular road (this has yet to be determined), but if that’s the case, I’d salute him, thank him gladly for what he brought to the team, and go on.

Oh, and 42 years later, the Los Angeles Rams won their first Super Bowl. That was great too. Who was their owner? Stan Kroenke.
Peter G, Pennsylvania, USA (the Rams also won a Super Bowl when based in St. Louis, but that emphatically doesn’t count)

READ: Arsenal striker signing to offer second PL title boost as glaring problem remains with two-face Havertz

On Amorim, Ange and Arteta
You guys should have been here 15 years ago. Most days there were five or six like Neil’s on Monday. Back then, I’d have asked to sign up for his newsletter. Now, get this man a podcast and a crypto scam.

Then all this Amorim/Ange/Arteta stuff. In order:

At least let Amorim get a competent 3-4-3 together before judging him. Trent and Robertson. James and Chilwell. Baines and Coleman. That’s PL standard in the positions that will make the shape work. Until that changes, Amorim isn’t the problem.

I’d expect my cat to notice that Spurs are very rigid and vertical and struggle to change tempo, and he can’t see too well, sleeps from midday to midnight and, judging by his shirt, prefers Juve. Given space to run into and a fitness edge, they get ahead early and keep threatening. Misfire and they’ll struggle to stay in the game. It’s their gameplan, it doesn’t suit Son or Maddison, and the harder Ange backs it the more it seems like he only knows how to use half the tools in the box. Brave appointment, good value as a character, now go find someone else. Lisbon, Lille, Leverkusen, Brest or Bergamo might be good places to start.

Lastly, everyone has worked for an Arteta at some point, bit lost in their own aura, can’t quite pinpoint what they bring so just bring everything at full volume all of the time, contradict themselves in consecutive sentences but are already on the next motivational gimmick before it can be pointed out.

The most annoying trait is that being everything to everyone on full blast all the time means enough people on the team get enough of what they want to keep the whole thing moving where it’s meant to, and he looks so busy all the time that some of it must be down to him…

So sure, Arsenal fans, you’re six and a game behind. But have you seen who Liverpool play on the final day? Judge Arteta then.
Rob, South London and Proud (Thank us when it happens)

Amorim a stupid move? Maybe not…
Just a thought in response to A’s email re. The stupidity of appointing Amorim mid-season.

Perhaps the club’s logic was that, in a season that was already a write-off, they weren’t actually focused on making a managerial appointment that would improve their position this season to the lofty heights of eighth or ninth in the table, but more on the long-term plan?

A asks, “why not give him two months with the players to train his system in the off-season” to which, I would respond, even better to give them nine months!

I hope (and it really is more hope than belief, given their dodgy decision making) they were aware in appointing Amorim that he was going to implement his particular system and style of play. I’d also hope they were aware that the squad wasn’t ideally suited to that approach, so were committing to a longer-term, potentially painful, rebuild.

The thing is though, even if there are players in the squad who won’t have long term futures at the club, there is a sliding scale from – “he’s toxic, get rid immediately”, to “he’s not a world beater but he has the right attitude, can work in the system and has a longer-term future in the squad” via “that guy isn’t well suited to the new model, but can do a job in the very short term”.

Surely, when you’ve essentially written off the league and committed to essentially a complete, long-term rebuild of the squad, it makes perfect sense to bring the chosen manager in sooner, so he can thoroughly assess what the players are capable of under actual game conditions (rather than a six-week training camp/promotional tour) and get to grips with what he needs urgently (a left wing-back), what he needs in the medium term and who he’s going to keep and build around (surely there are one or two players…)

United’s issue has been short-termism – they brought Rangnick in to appraise the squad and set up, he did so, shook his head and told the club it needed a root and branch rebuild, they ignored him, proceeded to apply a bunch of wildly expensive sticking-plasters and here we are three years later…even worse. You can’t do a root and branch rebuild in the few weeks between the end of one season and the start of the next – there will be an impact on a league season at some point, so why not start now?

That’s all speculation on my part. Maybe Amorim was brought in for tens of millions of pounds in a wildly misjudged attempt to give us the best chance of pipping Fulham to tenth place in the league this year… but I hope to god they have a longer term plan than that.

And no, I don’t think that longer term plan involves getting in one of the most well-regarded young managers in world football with the intention of being deliberately relegated…
Andy (MUFC)

MORE ON MAN UTD FROM F365…
👉 Man Utd urged to ‘be brave’ and sell their own ‘whinging’ version of Mesut Ozil
👉 Scholes tells Man Utd they must sell eight players in £372m transfer clearout
👉 Man Utd draw up four-man striker shortlist with January signing ‘expected’ if one of three stars are sold

Some Man Utd managers CAN be blamed…
I have to take issue with the multitude of United supporters who feel their managers are blameless when it comes to the on-field shambles they witness week in week out.

In no way am I suggesting the Glazers are blameless either. But two things can be true at the same time. You can have bad owners AND bad managers at the same time. United make this an art form actually. Letting managers off the hook because the owners are terrible is nonsense. For all their sins, giving managers loadsa money to spend was never the problem with the Glaziers. How it was spent was.

In this regard I believe Ten Hag to be the worst United manager of all time. Yep, that includes Moyes.

People like Keith B in the mailbox talk about Amorim overseeing “the beginning” of the much famed open heart surgery? The “beginning”??? Sorry Keith, but in case you weren’t watching Ten Hag performed this open heart surgery in plain sight. The problem as someone else pointed out, he did so in the manner of a certain Harold Shipman.

As bad as the Ole days were, his team sheet could call on the likes of Ronaldo, Greenwood, Rashford (when he was good), Cavani, Bruno (when he was good), Luke Shaw (when he was good), Matic, Pogba, De Gea among others. That’s pretty much an all time great list compared to the utter dross of the entire squad these days.

We live in an age of PSR, so that even if the owners wanted to spend big again and again, they can’t. You have to build squads sustainably over time and in this regard, Ten Hag was probably the worst thing to happen to United at the worst possible time. He spent ALL the money and they are orders or magnitude worse for it. His legacy will hang over the club like a bad smell for years to come.

The only possible way out is to find a generational manager like Ferguson or Klopp who (in spite of the owners) can somehow inspire a team, a club and a city and claw their way back to the top.

Time will tell if Amorim is that guy…
Sean

Selling Rashford and Garnacho? What?
I really hope it’s mostly just noise, but Man Utd flogging Garnacho and Rashford is an embarrassment. Over the weekend I stopped myself sending in a rambling missive about how Sir Jim can do one, only to be further confronted by his and his predecessors’ complete inability to run a football club – almost as if they had the idea it would be just like Football Manager.

Firstly, I appreciate it is not all Sir Jim’s fault, the idiots beforehand, Ed Woodward and the Glazers are more culpable, shelling out stupid money for dross like Antony, having pants pulled down over limited players like Fred and Fellaini and spending like they had an infinite money cheat going on.

That, combined with the club’s complete and utter inability to get value for our players is largely to blame for this situation. Sancho? Here Chelsea, have him for half a Fred/one third of an Antony. €5 million for Fernandez from Benfica? Fine, let us snap your arm off! Talk of Garnacho going to Napoli for €50 million (£42M) is absolutely abysmal business – really, why even bother turning up to the negotiations table to be bent over business. No doubt they’re so desperate to push Rashford out of the club they’ll accept even less for him.

Regardless of Man Utd fans’ opinions of Rashford or Garnacho, if you are a fan you should want the best for your club and very rarely is that “get them out of the club no matter what the cost”. The fact that Garnacho is one of our prized assets in a dog shit team where we had our pants pulled down over other attackers including Hojlund (who I don’t think is as bad as all that, just overpriced) should mean that if we were to let him go, we should be seeking to extract as much value from the deal as possible.

Garnacho is 20 and his contract with us expires in 2028, we literally hold all the cards in this deal, we should not part with him for anything less than £70 million. Unfortunately I have no faith in the board to actually manage to negotiate anything like good business and expect to see him sold for €50m plus add ons. So much for Sir Jim being a businessman with great acumen. And while, as aforementioned, Woodward and the Glazers hold much of the blame, Sir Jim is not blameless.

Sir Jim is of course a man whose golden insight gave us such wisdom as Brexit going to be great for Britain (it’s been shit), Brexit was going to be great for British industry (to the extent he opened a factory in France), that Dan Ashworth was the right man for Man Utd (and he was sacked after working here less time than he was on gardening leave) and Eric Ten Hag should stay beyond the summer (and he was let go in Autumn). His great ideas for cutting down expenses include not bringing staff to the FA Cup final and cancelling parties.

The man, in short, is an absolute tool and his opinion on footballing matters should be as useful as a broken clock – maybe right twice a day, and can probably act as a paperweight and that’s about it. Through Ashworth and Ten Hag, Sir Jim’s shitty decisions have cost us millions as well, much more than he’s saved by cancelling Christmas.

When the whole circus was in town over the takeover, I was very reluctantly in the Sheikh Jassim camp after Thomas Zilliacus dropped out after seeing what a clown show it was. If you’re going to sell your soul to the Devil, at least extract maximum value, right (a lesson the suits at Man Utd could take to heart)? Instead we got relative pauper in Sir Jim who seems to be unwilling to inject meaningful amounts of his own money to the club he part took over, at the same time as the Glazers probably skim their own cut off before anything else. The whole club is run as a shambles and its no surprise there is on field shambles to go along with it.
Daniel, Cambridge

MORE ON MAN UTD FROM F365…
👉 Man Utd urged to ‘be brave’ and sell their own ‘whinging’ version of Mesut Ozil
👉 Scholes tells Man Utd they must sell eight players in £372m transfer clearout
👉 Man Utd draw up four-man striker shortlist with January signing ‘expected’ if one of three stars are sold

I have a cunning plan…maybe
To quote Blackadder: “I’m sorry to put a little fly in your ointment”.

Whilst I appreciate the idea that Dale May is putting forward there are a few bits I’d like to add.

One would be the revelation published in the very fine institution of F365 last year; there is a clause in the deal which gives SJR first option to buy the Glazers shares should they wish to sell them, and also a clause which means the Glazers can within 18 months of the deal – roughly the end of this season – force Radcliffe’s Trawler (his holding co: registed in the Isle of Man – corporation tax 0%) to sell to a third party if they make a better offer. Therefore, even if the Glazers foolishly decided to sell while in the Championship, someone else could come in with a higher offer.

Man Utd plc (Glazers holding co: registed in Cayman Islands – corporation tax 0%) is listed on the New York stock exchange.

It has a pretty volatile share price: July ’22- $10.98, and six months later, in Jan ’23 – $22.92, for example.

The share price is clearly affected by team performance but also by things like intrinsic value, market expectations, new managers, take over talk etc.

Take Sept 2018, the crash and burn end of Jose’s reign, with the team in 8th and share price at roughly $23; a historic high.

Relegation might cause a blip but depending on other factors stock price might not nose dive in the way you expect.

Finally, Sky news reckon SJR paid $33 a pop when market price was roughly $18.5, which shows the Glazers can decide what price to sell at.
Other than that great point.

Big love.
Hartley MCFC Somerset (Share prices taken from Macrotrends)

…Dale, I’m sure you’re going to get a lot of these, but here goes anyway…

“Tell the world you don’t understand share shortening without telling the world that you don’t understand share shortening..”

First off, it’s short selling (or share shorting, or simply shorting), not “share shortening” (seriously, at least get the terminology right). More importantly, what you’ve described—buying a stock, deliberately tanking it, and profiting from the decline—is called market manipulation, and the SEC takes a very dim view of that kind of thing. It’s not some genius corporate play; it’s outright illegal and it’s been done…. loads… the SEC know what to look for now.

Also, maybe check exactly how many Manchester United shares are actually available for trading on the NYSE—spoiler: it’s a tiny percentage. The club’s valuation isn’t dictated purely by stock price movements, so your entire premise falls apart there.

And the biggest hole in your conspiracy theory? If Ratcliffe somehow managed to nuke United’s value by getting them relegated, why wouldn’t other investors swoop in and outbid him for the club? The idea that the Glazers would just sit there and hand it over at a discount is beyond naive.

Take off the tinfoil hat, mate. Let your hair breathe a bit.
The Flan, North London