Get your answers in and keep the mails coming to theeditor@football365.com.
13 questions…
What is a football club for?
Winning things?
Representing a city/area?
Making money?
Entertaining?
Giving supporters something to dream about?
Producing ‘content’?
Providing a sense of community and common ground between people?
To be a force for good?
Is it all of those things? And, if so, which is most important?
Does a Rashford goal mean more than a Martial goal?
Is Jurgen Klopp more or less fulfilled by his job than Chris Wilder?
Does being knocked out in the semifinal of the Champions League (Man City) FA Cup (Spurs) or Championship playoffs (Derby) feel any different?
How will Arsene Wenger be judged by history?
Is it better for a chairman to indebt a club in pursuit of glory, or to aim only for the financial stability of premier league survival?
Is falling short with Pochettino any different from falling short with Mourinho?
In what circumstances is it okay for a team to move to a new stadium?
Does the team who ‘play the right way’ deserve to win?
Is Malcolm Glazer’s money better or worse than Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s?
Or Roman Abramovich’s?
Or Mike Ashley’s?
Does anyone still care about 3pm kickoffs?
No answers here, only questions.
Harry, at home.
MEDIAWATCH: Solskjaer’s ‘Ferguson-type moves’ and Hasenhuttl is Pardew
The Randomness of Jumping Fouls
We keep berating VAR but the reality is that it’s the refereeing that’s shit isn’t! When one player jumps for the ball and the other doesn’t referees randomly give fouls to either player, almost on the toss of a coin. The Tuanzebe goal being written off is a shocker and we see this inconsistency every week. In this case Lindelof jumps with his eye on the ball (it’s a Ronaldo-esque jump by the way), just misses the ball, the defender just doesn’t get off the ground and just lets Lindelof hit him. Yellow card? Don’t make me laugh. And what really gets my goat is ‘Gobby’ Savage going ‘it’s a foul Geoff’ ‘its a foul, Geoff’ with every replay.
Still a good night. Seeing Shoretire coming on to replace Greenwood was particularly satisfying. Not only continuing a tradition but also reminding Greenwood that there are others waiting to take his place.
Ved Sen, MUFC.
Watch learn English VAR
I really hope the English VAR decision makers had an open mind when watching how the Dutch handled the Arsenal Benfica game. I haven’t watched them again but I think it’s fair to say that all three Aubameyang ‘goals’ were marginal offsides. Two were given, one was disallowed, without any decision being overturned. That was all achieved without any delays. That’s because there were no OBVIOUS errors. Under the English interpretation of VAR, I’m guessing that a total of maybe 8 or 9 minutes would have been spent analysing horizontal and vertical lines to prove beyond all doubt that the final decisions were technically correct. Congratulations to the Dutch officials, you allowed us to enjoy the football uninterrupted even though one or more decisions could perhaps be proved afterwards to be technically incorrect. To those in charge of VAR in England, please look and learn. I’d like to repeat a previous suggestion, a time limit of 20 or 30 seconds should be enough to correct OBVIOUS errors.
Eagle in Exile near Athens in Greece
Away goals nonsense
Not to excuse Arsenal almost ejecting themselves from the Europa League with their ridiculous shoot-oneself-in-footitis, but it’s abysmal that it could have happened on away goals.
I’ve been opposed to away goals since forever anyway, but the idea that the top seeded team in a tie would play two games in neutral venues and have the disadvantage of the away goal in the second leg is simply madness.
There’s no justification even when you have genuine home games, but the idea you could go out for winning 2-1 in one leg and losing 1-0 in the other, entirely randomly, in entirely random stadiums, but progress if they happened in the other order is perverse. And if we’d gone through on a 0-0, it would have been embarrassing and I’d apologise to any Benfica fan I met probably until the end of time (still be psyched for progressing obviously).
UEFA allowing that shite is embarrassing.
Tom, Walthamstow
Brazil Brexit
Last night was the final match day of the Brazil Serie A Championship and Flamengo the team that recently Jorge Jesus left after guiding to the title and Copa Libertadores last season to return to Benfica, well they retained their title despite a 2-1 defeat at the hands of São Paulo, this was due to second place Internacional failing to beat Corinthians.
Why am I bringing this up? Well I’m sure many don’t watch or pay a lot of attention to the going’s on in Brazil’s football league nowadays, hopefully I’m wrong there, however with recent Brexit changes meaning U.K. sides will find it easier to purchase South American players it is worth keeping an eye on the upcoming or current crop of talent, plus I have a huge soft spot for Flamengo purely due to their gorgeous home kit.
Flamengo have the likes of Giorgian de Arrascaeta, Bruno Henrique and Gabriel Barbosa, other talents in the Serie A id love to give a mention to are Santos’ Yeferson Soteldo and Kaio Jorge, Palmeiras duo Gabriel Veron (no relation) and Gabriel Menino and finally Gremio’s Pepe
Mikey, CFC
Money, money, money, money… MONEY
Calvino thinks Liverpool, with only 20 league titles and 6 European Cups, are on a level below Chelsea because, for now, their billionaire oil sheikh owner sees fit to pump money in. Chelsea owe him that money so one day he might lose interest and start asking for it back at which point Chelsea will return to being an ordinary middling team.
Only 12 year olds and the utterly deluded would make this argument. Even Liverpool fans know there’s only one real big club in Manchester and we aren’t silly enough to claim it’s the blue lot; that’s why we’ll be happy enough to see them win the league this year and it’s why Man Utd fans would’ve preferred them to win it last year.
It’s incredible how crazy people are getting because Liverpool aren’t winning the league this year. The way some are going on you would think we have a god given right to win it every season. They’ve all forgotten that every Liverpool fan last season was too afraid to even say that we believed the league was won until we were 20 points clear. I can only assume that these people haven’t supported the club through Souness, Evans and the shite years that Houllier, Rafa, Brendan and Hodgson all had. The thing to remember is that we have won it once in the past thirty years. So if we improve on that average and win it one more time in the next 3 to 5 I’ll be delighted.
The ride isn’t always smooth but there’s still lots to enjoy this season; the emergence of Curtis Jones, the end of empty stadiums and Mbappe coming to take the league cup seriously in 2022 because we haven’t got any European games to distract us.
Minty, LFC
Trent pen
In response to all the Liverpool fans asking ‘how was that a penalty?’…
Let’s put aside the fact that Mane and Salah are two of the worst divers the Premier League’s seen in years and Liverpool’s the last club that should ever be moaning about soft or unjust penalties (except maybe Man U). Even ignoring that, the idea that anybody at all thinks that penalty against Alexander-Arnold in the derby was even slightly debatable makes me shudder. Did he bring down Calvert-Lewin? Yes. Did he get anywhere near the ball? Did he bollocks. Was it intentional? By the looks of his kick-out at Dom afterwards, yes, but still irrelevant. The only injustice surrounding that incident was that ‘Trent’ stayed on the pitch.
At the end of the day though, it doesn’t matter because we finally won at Anfield and Liverpool fans can all get to f**k.
Tristan, Bogota, Colombia.
Strong against Midtjylland?!
Fred, Spurs thinks Klopp played a ridiculously stong team against Midtjylland?
Really??
Ridiculously strong
Lets have a closer look shall we.
Kelleher
Rhys Williams
Tsimikas
Leighton Clarkson
Keita
Minamino
Origi.
They all started that game.
That’s a ridiculously strong team?
The other 4:
(1)TAA started but he was just back from a month out with injury.
(2)Fabinho also played 45 minutes but went off at ht and Klopp gave a debut to 18 year old Koumetio.
(3)Tsimikas had hardly up to then this season so he started ahead of Robertson.
(4)Salah started upfront and scored so that’s 1/3rd of the strongest front 3.
Of that remaining starting 11 their appearances in the PL in 19/20 for Liverpool were:
Kelleher(0)
Williams(0)
Minamino(8)
Clarkson(0)
Keita(18)
Origi(28).
You claim Gomez playing 16 times doesn’t make him a major player so explain how Klopp fielding the above players was him playing a ridiculously strong team?
3 of the 11 didnt play 1 minute the previous season.
2 more of them weren’t even at the club last season.
2 of the 3 midfielders haven’t played since and the other is out on loan.
Origi is Origi.
Genuinely hope you respond as your “ridiculously stong team” proclamation is up there with Jose talking up his coaches/coaching methods.
Ferg,Cork.
Jordan the ticking time bomb
I don’t wish injury on anybody, so I wish Jordan Henderson a speedy recovery.
But he was a ticking time bomb given the way he runs… Sir Alex called it again. Only took 9 years!
Time to give Phil Jones a new contract, it’s just a matter of time until he comes good on the highest level of natural talent Sir Alex has ever seen!
Andy (MUFC)
Crystal Meth v Fentanylham
To reflect the fact that whoever designs City’s away kits HAS to be on drugs here are this weekends Premier fixtures:-
Mushroomcester City v WeHighUnited
West Barbiturate Opium v Brownie and Hash Amsterdam
Leedsdocane v Arsed on Valium
Novacane United v Wickedweed Wanderers
Crystal Meth v Fentanylham
LSDster City v Asparinal
Totallynumb Hempspur v Feel The Burnley
Chillpillsea v Mogadon United
Shitfaced United v Triperpool
Ecstacyton v Souhallucination
Gary Barnes
Manufactured derbies
James Collins may have a point about Sky manufacturing derbies, but Portsmouth V Southampton is certainly no Sky creation- there is an enormous amount of animosity there, even if they aren’t in the same city (cheers ‘Arry Redknapp.) Something like Bournemouth versus a South Coast side would be more appropriate- does anyone really care much about Bournemouth?
Thomas Bennett (not a Southampton fan), Somerset
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