Nothing like an October international break in which England don’t even play a competitive game until the very last moment to leave you pondering choices. Your own, mainly, but also those of football clubs.
Relentlessly silly, frequently stupid football clubs. The regrets. The f*ck-ups. Call them what you will, but here’s just 10 things Premier League clubs might now wish worked out differently.
Some are entirely self-inflicted f*cktastrophes, some are unfortunate circumstance, and the rest some combination of the two.
And then there’s Nottingham Forest, who are currently just some kind of insane f*ck-around-and-f*nd-out machine to the extent we’re not even sure regret has taken hold yet.
Nottingham Forest’s hubris
There really is no other word for it. It’s the only word that adequately explains and conveys Nottingham Forest’s behaviour since about halfway through last season. This is a club that got dangerously high on the smell of their own farts and may now pay a ludicrously heavy price.
They were very, very good at what they did last season under Nuno Espirito Santo. There was perhaps no other team in the league with a more clear-headed gameplan, delivered to consistent effect by a squad of players perfectly suited to the task.
Even then, there were occasional glimpses. Occasional momentary lapses where Forest tried to be something different – something more? Something better? – than what had worked so well for them.
There was one particular game against Newcastle, in which Forest had played their usual counter-attacking game to fine effect to lead 1-0 at half-time. Yet in the second they tried to play front-foot football that was not and is not their way and were picked off with ease by a grateful Newcastle, who ran out comfy 3-1 winners.
That one match is now starting to look like a microcosm of these two seasons. The success in the first half has led them to a state of not-yet-earned giddiness and, yes, hubris.
There is an arrogance for any club outside the cosseted elite to assume that their hard-won Premier League status is now entirely secure. The casual manner in which Forest allowed the Nuno situation to develop into an irreparable rift was extremely careless and far more risky than anyone from excitable owner down appeared to accept or even realise.
And quite simply no Premier League team that is even dimly aware of the fact that relegation remains a theoretical possible fate would then bring Ange Postecoglou along into a season that has already begun, less still into a squad so unsuited to his wildly different methods.
And no Premier League team thinking about anything but relegation is even looking at the Dyche button a few weeks later. That sound you can hear is a penny dropping far too late.
A chaotic and potentially ruinous six-week misadventure that may now end with Forest right back with the sort of manager they had before, just a less good one. All while ensuring there is now absolutely no chance of Postecoglou’s undeniably entertaining nonsense ever featuring in Our League again. Cheers, lads.
Liverpool’s starry-eyed transfer priorities
We’re not saying it was a bad idea to sign Alexander Isak or that he is anything other than a brilliant player. Even if someone mischievously puts that in the headline, which they might, the pricks.
We’re just saying that signing Alexander Isak might not have been Liverpool’s best use of valuable time and resources as the final hours of the transfer window drained away.
It is still very funny that by the time Liverpool actually got round to completing that Isak move they had already long before that signed Newcastle’s preferred replacement in Hugo Ekitike. But as more time passes, the more it looks like that joke is on Liverpool every bit as much as it was on Newcastle.
Isak was the ultimate luxury signing. Not a player Liverpool needed, but one they could have. But by the time he came through the door Liverpool had already signed Ekitike and Florian Wirtz.
Sure, Liverpool’s attack is stronger with Isak than without and it’s a long season with deep squads needed and all the rest.
But by the time Liverpool were toing and froing to get that deal done it was far, far more necessary to perform some more prosaic but necessary remedial work in the defence.
Sure, the extent of Ibrahima Konate’s struggles might have been hard to predict, but relying entirely on him and Virgil van Dijk – who is older than new Luton manager Jack Wilshere – was always a risk that didn’t need taking.
Marc Guehi was right there. He was up for it, and so too were Palace until Liverpool turned such a fundamental transfer – Guehi wasn’t even a back-up, he’d have been straight in for Konate – into so much of an afterthought that Palace had no time left to get their own Guehi-less squad straight and thus pulled the plug.
It is, obviously, not a straightforward either/or situation. Clubs can and obviously do work on multiple deals at once. But it’s hard to shake the notion that completing the more ostentatious and headline-grabbing deal left Liverpool with their eyes off the less exciting but more necessary prize. It’s a rare mis-step, but a potentially costly one.
Guehi would be more useful and make more tangible positive difference to Liverpool right now than Isak is and does.
READ: Isak, Gyokeres make red-faced return to Liverpool and Arsenal to resume Premier League flop fight
Manchester United desperately backing Amorim over Rashford/Mainoo/everything/everyone
Sir Jim Ratcliffe continues to paint himself into a distinctly difficult corner over his at-all-costs backing of Ruben Amorim. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it will eventually all come good. But that looks a massive odds-against gamble right now.
Ratcliffe has doubled-down harder than ever with his ‘three years’ daftness, a quote that has a small chance of becoming his ‘I always win something in my second season’ and a very, very high chance of either becoming yet another point of United ridicule or further hindrance to taking a necessary step.
Almost impossible now to believe that anything more than the stubborn refusal of Ratcliffe and INEOS to accept the embarrassing fact of their own error is keeping Amorim in the job, and that really is just a double victory for silliness.
Just own it. Face up to it. It’s not like Forest appointing Postecoglou, is it? It’s not like sacking Erik Ten Hag and appointing Amorim was an obvious mistake literally the world could see from a mile away. Really, the only quibble people could reasonably have with appointing Amorim when United appointed one of the most impressive young coaches in Europe was why had they dallied in the summer rather than make the change then?
Nobody seriously imagined the Amorim Era would be this bad. Lots of people, and we’ll put ourselves in this camp, thought it might be really quite good.
But it isn’t. It’s really sh*t. And the damage in sticking with Amorim is already being done. United have already lost Marcus Rashford for what will ultimately prove to be a pittance, so in thrall are they to Amorim and not wanting to be embarrassed. They might well lose Kobbie Mainoo next.
And nothing in his record at the club suggests he’s worth it. And the comparisons with Mikel Arteta’s early years at Arsenal just don’t hold water. Arteta came under serious pressure and rightly so; he could very easily have been sacked. But he never had Arsenal in anything like the dire straits that have become the new normal at too-big-to-succeed Man United.
West Ham’s stagnant summer
Nottingham Forest’s loss may now prove West Ham’s gain, and at the very least you’d expect Nuno Espirito Santo to get the Hammers playing halfway competent and broadly effective football that keeps them away from relegation unpleasantness.
But they had that. With David Moyes. And they didn’t want that anymore, because they wanted to aim higher and dream bigger. Which is absolutely fine. For what it’s worth, we once again thought similarly. It probably was time for Moyes to move on and West Ham to see what they might be able to do with a more progressive front-foot manager.
But then they appointed Julen Lopetegui, who is the Spanish David Moyes.
When that didn’t work they finally took a more West Ham approach and went for Graham Potter. And then gave him absolutely nothing of what he needed in the summer.
Throughout the struggles in the final weeks and months of last season, it was clear that Potter could not be fairly judged until he’d had a pre-season to get his ideas across, and ideally a few players to help make that transition.
Potter himself is far from blameless. He may well not have succeeded even if given the conditions to do so. But now we’ll never know, because West Ham didn’t just fail to do what was needed during the summer; for large parts of it they didn’t even particularly seem to be trying.
Leeds’ fruitless final days of the window
It may only be slightly exaggerating things to say that Leeds’ entire season on their return to the Premier League may come to be defined by the period between Daniel Farke responding to a creditable 0-0 draw against Newcastle on August 30 by asking for two new attacking players, and the window closing with Leeds bringing in no new attacking players.
The frustration is two-fold. First, because Farke’s request was not unreasonable. This was not a moon-on-a-stick request. He was asking for Harry Wilson and Manor Solomon, not Lamine Yamal and Vini Jr.
Two, Farke’s Leeds had already by then shown proof of concept. They had shown against both Everton and Newcastle that they were capable enough defensively of mounting a serious bid for survival, but were hampered by attacking inadequacies that had seen them manage just one goal in three games – and that a penalty.
While there have been more goals since the closing of the window, with six in their most four Premier League games, three of those came at Wolves. And right now we’re inclined to consider those as roughly as irrelevant to any assessment of Leeds’ long-term survival prospects as conceding five goals at Arsenal.
Leeds definitely still have a decent shot at staying up in a league that offers more opportunity to do so for a competent promoted team than at any other time in the last few years. But it really wouldn’t have taken a lot of activity in those last few days to make that decent shot a truly compelling one.
Wolves’ final four ‘meaningless’ games of 24/25
We’ve already stretched the concept of ‘this season’ right back to include the entirety of the transfer window that precedes it, and that feels like it’s absolutely fair enough. The transfer window is surely part of the season that follows it far more than it is part of the season that preceded it.
It is upon that following season that its influence is felt. But can we really claim things that happened in May during last season as being this season’s regrets and/or f*ck-ups.
When it comes to Wolves, we’re saying yes. Yes we can. Our reasons are these.
First of all, May is very much a month when cricket is played and is therefore summer. That’s just basic. Second, that very deliberate phrase we used just now about the transfer window: it is upon that following season that its influence is felt.
And that’s exactly how we feel about the last four matches of Wolves’ 24/25 season. They meant absolutely nothing to 2024/25, Wolves having already secured survival with something to spare by winning six games in a row through March and April.
But their influence on 25/26 already feels far more significant. Because this is very familiar Wolves territory: a bad end to one season bleeding into a bad start to the next.
That winning run – albeit against three terrible relegated sides and the other three most ridiculous and feeble Premier League teams at that time in West Ham, Spurs and Man United – offered Wolves the chance to avoid that familiar end-of-season sinking feeling.
They weren’t easy games in that final four, but we’re not asking for them to make that winning run 10 games or anything. Lose to Man City by all means if you really must, but even just a home win against either Brighton or Brentford would have taken Wolves into summer with some wind in their sails.
It might not have been enough. The loss of key players would still have been keenly felt, but the bleak nature of their start, one that leaves them now as the only Premier League team still without a win having declined a Dr Tottenham prescription at the last moment, would have felt far less inevitably self-fulfilling.
Chelsea selling Noni Madueke
Breaking our own rules a bit here by treating Chelsea as a club where regrets and f*ck-ups are measured in the same way by the same metrics as football clubs, rather than what Chelsea now are.
When correctly treated as a football player trading company, selling Noni Madueke made a fair chunk of sense. He was far from indispensable and even Arsenal’s fans didn’t particularly want him at the time.
But Chelsea have often looked a weary side since their Club World Cup win and, with several attacking players currently underperforming and relying more and more on the increased goal contributions of Moises Caicedo, it might have been nice to keep Madueke around the place.
And that’s before even considering the whole ‘strengthening a direct rival’ angle, one that allowed Arsenal to achieve what was previously thought impossible: suffer a minor Bukayo Saka injury setback without doom-laden proclamations about the sky falling in from long-suffering fans of the only club to ever suffer injuries.
Tottenham’s timing
Not going badly for Spurs at all, really, all things considered, and this one is definitely far more in the ‘slightly irritating’ category than a lot of others on the list.
They did some tidy transfer work in the end this summer, albeit with a couple of cartoonish bits of Spursy slapstick along the way, and so far the idea of replacing Ange Postecoglou’s ludicrous football with Thomas Frank’s not ludicrous football is proving an effective if not always necessarily exhilarating decision.
Where Tottenham might have slightly missed the boat is behind the scenes. In hindsight, we perhaps should have seen Daniel Levy’s departure coming. There was a clear sense this summer of a man attempting to cement his legacy, most notably when even agreeing to sit down for a chat with dangerous far-left Commie firebrand Gary Neville.
But he didn’t actually leave until after the transfer window. And the Lewis Family’s new-found interest in the day-to-day running of Spurs and injection of £100m of fresh capital has also come now specifically at a time when it cannot actually be used to better the on-field situation.
And this is suddenly a season ripe with opportunities for Spurs. Arsenal look too good but are still Arsenal; Chelsea, Liverpool and Man City all look more vulnerable to some extent or other than had been expected, Manchester United are still in full clown-car more, Nottingham Forest have collapsed in on themselves, while neither Aston Villa nor Newcastle appear in quite as good a position to challenge as in the recent past.
The margins between success (i.e. getting back in the Champions League) and failure (not doing that) are likely to be very tight again this season. A chairman who hadn’t actively antagonised every other club in the division and an extra £100m to throw around really might have meant more in August than it does in October. Or even January when it may be too late and, of course, Value Is Hard To Come By.
READ: Five reasons we should all be scared of a post-Daniel Levy Tottenham
Aston Villa’s Champions League sliding door
Guess in a way the real one here would be ‘having an entirely unsustainable wages-to-turnover ratio’ but that’s all a bit heavy really.
It feels like Villa spent the entire summer in something of a funk on the back of missing out on Champions League football in the manner that they did and the knock-on effect that had on what they could do and who they could bring in during the summer.
The good news is that there really is a very good chance that, like with Spurs last season, it all ends up working out for the best and they get back in the Champions League anyway with a lovely shiny European trophy ending an uncomfortably long drought.
But right now, despite a four-game winning run that has lifted the gloom and funk to a decent extent, it does look rather more likely that something is ending rather than beginning at Villa, that they will now slink back having so nearly but not quite muscled their way right in to England and thus Europe’s top table.
Newcastle’s unwanted distractions
Not entirely or even mainly their fault, but Newcastle’s summer was an awkward, distracting and distracted one. In a league where standing still is rarely good enough, theirs was a summer spent inevitably and uncomfortably trying to avoid tumbling backwards.
The uncertainty – or perhaps the long, painfully drawn-out certainty – around Alexander Isak’s departure didn’t help make it any easier for Newcastle to identify and secure a replacement, with those potentially coming in understandably keen to know exactly where they might stand before committing to the club.
They do seem to have just about got there in the end with Nick Woltemade, even if it they had to pay a hefty premium to avoid the catastrophe of bringing in no replacement striker whatsoever. The big German absolutely screams cult hero, but it’s an awful lot to ask for him to come anywhere close to replacing what Isak gave them, and Newcastle weren’t able to even attempt the always entertaining if not perhaps reliably successful ‘Sell Elvis and buy The Beatles’ approach.
