Keep your mails coming to theeditor@football365.com.
City aren’t ‘bad for football’ they’re boring…
I don’t know who’s been saying that City’s current run of form is ‘bad for football’, I could have missed it but there were no quotes in Winty’s article. I’ve only seen blanket praise for Pep’s team and their current form, and rightly so. If you’re looking to argue against a particular view there will always be some ‘random knobhead spouting nonsense opinions’ to provide an easy opponent no matter the subject, and if this is who you’re arguing against then may I say “it wasn’t ‘bad for football’ when Manchester United won seven of then first ten Premier League titles” is a strange counterpoint considering there were plenty of knobheads back then saying exactly that.
Anyway, I agree with the main point. City are a better team than United or Chelsea, multiple title winning manager and champions league winner Pep is a better manager than Ole or Lampard, no shit. My problem with this City team isn’t that they’re ‘bad for football’ its that they’re mind numbingly boring.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying they’re bad in any way, in fact it’s the opposite, they’re too good. Pep has engineered a ruthlessly efficient footballing machine, the control and domination they posses have made winning games like ticking a box. Which is kind of the problem, it mechanical, almost automated. Have you seen that video of the Amazon warehouse where dozens of robots move pallets around weaving in between each other narrowly missing collisions? Its cool and impressive and a little hypnotic. But after a few minutes it gets boring because they’re just robots, there isn’t anything else there. That’s how City make me feel, there’s no emotion to them, no character or personality, they’re not even snide or underhanded anymore. The only exception I can grant to this is Foden, because he really is a delight to watch and manages to sneak in a few no look passes now and then, which probably riles Pep no end.
I am self aware enough to realise some of this is because I’m a United fan and I don’t like seeing City be this good, but really when comparing against other City teams and even other Pep City teams, this lot are bloody dull.
Dave, Manchester
Imagine this:
A group of friends grow up together, they’re all in to their cars, and modding them, with exhausts and alloys and turbos and whatnot. All are roughly the same age (let’s say early 20’s) and all have bought their little hot-hatches to drive. One friend buys a Nova, the other a Saxo, the other a Clio. All roughly the same engine, the same power, etc. You get the idea. All these friends have taken their first steps in to full time employment and, after they’ve paid their mum rent and paid off their monthly mobile bill, they spend whatever they can on their cars.
Once a month, this group of friends take their cars to Castle Combe and do a few laps of the track in a monthly event where they record the winner and that person gets a curry. This has been going on a for a few years. They are getting better at racing the cars around the track and their cars are looking better and sounding louder and going faster, little by little, each month.
Suddenly the kid with the Saxo wins the lottery and decides to treat himself to, I don’t know, to a McLaren. He buys a McLaren. He turns up at Castle Combe one day, his friends are there with their modded Fiestas and he turns up in a McLaren. Their jaws drop. They love the McLaren, how could they not? Any car enthusiast would love the McLaren. It’s one of the finest motors you can buy and they are so excited to see it in the flesh.
“Let’s race”, says McLaren.
The McLaren, of course, obliterates everyone else. McLaren gets the curry that month.
Now, a few years later, the same group of kids still have their passion for cars, and they still like modding cars. They’ve had promotions in work and their budgets increase too. One friend now has a Golf R, another has an S3, another treated themselves to an Impreza. The guy with the McLaren still has his McLaren, and he too has spent thousands modifying it, and not only that, he’s now hired Damon Hill to drive it around the track for him.
It’s not that racing the best McLaren in the world, against a professional racing driver, on one of the great tracks, isn’t one of the best things you can do if you are an automotive enthusiast… it’s just that you’ll never win, you can’t compete, and it gets boring. No matter how hard you work and how much you save, and how technically clever your little modifications are on your own car, you’ll never catch the McLaren.
And, if you actually do one month, (the McLaren’s had a serious off day), you know the money is there to just put a brand new engine in it.
Dale May, Swindon Wengerite
Morning all. Couple of views on recent mails if I may.
Dan Malin. Can I summarise your mail as follows? ‘Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda’. It doesn’t really matter how many chances the Hammers had. Ultimately, West Ham couldn’t and didn’t. Manchester City could and did. It’s the same reason that 4-1 against Wolves wasn’t necessarily a fair reflection of how well Wolves played but the result is the same. Three points for the victors and nothing for the losers. As you yourself said, that’s football. But City weren’t poor, they just didn’t need to get into top gear.
Oh, and congrats to West Ham btw. They’re not 4th in the league by accident and the race for the Top Four slots looks like being a cracker.
Levenshulme Blue’s mail. My apologies to him but it did come across as the written equivalent of ‘the Lady doth protest too much’. At the same time, I do wonder at the motivation of some, but not all, that wish to beat City supporters with, if I may call it this, the ‘Human Rights’ stick. My contention, which I’ve written about before, is merely that it is relatively easy for a non-City fan to take the moral high ground without ever having to examine their own conscience had the same dilemma presented itself to them instead.
This is my proposition. If Sheikh Mansour had bought Everton instead of City and the Toffees had enjoyed the same amount of success we’ve had, do you seriously mean to suggest that Goodison Park (pre-Covid) on a matchday would be a desolate wasteland? Or the same for St James’ Park (I refuse to call it the other thing) if the Saudis had bought Newcastle? That the supporters of those clubs, in their tens of thousands, would turn their back in protest as to their new owners (rightly) rotten Human Rights record?
I do not for one second defend, or even attempt to defend the, frankly, indefensible HR history of Man City’s owners. How can I? But if your inference, or outright assertion, is that I should stop supporting the club I first watched in 1972 then I respectfully suggest you have to ‘walk a mile in my shoes’ first before passing judgement. Let ‘he who is without sin’ and all that.
Of course, all that being said, if you’ve never been unfaithful to any of your partners, or never ever truly lied to either your children or your parents. If you don’t eat meat, bacon, chicken or eggs or if you don’t own anything made of leather or, God Forbid, snakeskin and if you know for a fact that every item of clothing or footwear you own wasn’t made in some horrible child labour sweat shop in some poverty-stricken corner of the world, whilst riding the most environmentally friendly bike but simultaneously NEVER using a bus, cab, car, train or tube and, of course, never EVER using plastic, in any form, have never smoked, don’t drink alcohol or use drugs, are not homophobic, racist or utterly intolerant of any other culture you have no experience of, but nonetheless fear, at the same time, well;
Mark (You get to throw the first stone). MCFC.
I am born and bred a United supporter. As a true supporter of said clan, I wanted to feel the real plight of the supporters of my club. The obvious, and only, choice I could see was to ultimately move from Middleton to Philadelphia, so I, like the majority of us, could support the team from over 1000 miles away!
This all being said, the answer is yes. Citeh not only deserve 1* nest to this run, but 2 or 3 of them. In a bizarre season, where disturbed are immensely thick and fast, Ceteh have faced adversity and, like coal in immense pressure, produced a diamond of a season!!
Credit where credit is due…many slagged us and Ferguson off for different things, primarily over jealousy. Hats off to Pep and his men!! Hats off as well to Ole learning to pragmatic (boring as it may be and terrible to watch v Chelsea) but playing it safe and grinding out wins can and does win us leagues!
The Barnesbarian
Sorry F365, but the current circumstances and the season as a whole does affect how we should look at and ultimately judge this Man City side. They have the best resources in the world (PSG aside), the deepest squad in the league (lest we forget £100m+ on two centre backs this summer alone), the advantage of playing in a half empty stadium for years before Covid.
This season really should have an asterisk next to it, because the congested fixture list suits a club that realistically could put out two teams and expect them to finish in the top 3 in the league. That’s before we mention the unusual circumstances around their Christmas ‘covid’ break – Everton still waiting for an explanation.
Sure winning 21 in all competitions is a terrific achievement, but let’s not pretend that this club should be doing anything other than winning every game. When the run ends I’m sure they will take a measure approach and only spend £150m+ on new players.
They are the perfect club for these times: miserable and souless.
James, London
Is this how fans of German and French football have felt all these years? A juggernaut of a football club bankrolled to the tune of hundreds of millions bulldozes their way through the field setting record after record? It’s just dull, and boring.
The Premier League built its popularity on the 90’s and 00’s where there would be a ding dong almost every year between a minimum of two clubs. The last three years have been, frankly, ridiculous. Teams should not be winning that much.
I really hope this is a temporary thing and not the ‘new normal’, but with Man City able to fix their £40-£50m mistakes with more £50m players the next year I fear for the PL.
Calum, MUFC (this isn’t sour grapes, it’d be this boring if it was Fulham or Nottingham Forest winning 30+ games a season), Wokingham
The Klopp predicament
My mail today is to not focus on our current predicaments, but in the future of Liverpool F.C. and Jürgen Klopp.
I have been reading a lot about Klopp and his next move being to manage Germany on a national level after the euros. If that is so, i hope that the euros get cancelled. Losing him next year (after the world cup) would hurt less I presume. I want him to have his Dortmund goodbye at Liverpool. I want the Kop to be there in full swing when he goes. It will be incredible.
Gerrard is being touted as the next coach after Klopp but to me this is too early. I started watching football properly in 2001, first game i remember was Bayern beating Valencia on pens in the CL final. I felt so bad for Canizares that it actually turned me off Bayern for a long time. And having grown up in Malaysia, there was only one league to watch at the time, the EPL. Half the country seemed to be Manchester United fans and the other half Liverpool (incuding my family members) so there was no choice for me. I also therefore remember much of Lampard and some of Solskjaer. Their returns to their playing clubs was interesting, because it gave me hope that Gerrard would at some point lift that EPL trophy he and us so craves and we would love to see it happen. However, Lampard being sacked and Solskjaer looking out of his depth, has me worried that experience at Ranges is not enough to bring him back to the EPL. Give it time, he’s young enough.
Furthermore, while I, being half German as well, would love Klopp to take over Germany at some point, I do not want to lose him at Liverpool for now. I hope he stays until at least 2024 and would love for him to be there for longer. I dont watch Germany much and care nothing for the Uefa Nations league so Klopp being a weekly part of my life has been quite nice.
Its not the time and I sincerely hope that these are just false rumours.
Nik, Munich
Swearing and football
I enjoyed the article on swearing and football, but found myself wondering how severe the problem actually is. Not the frequency or volume, for both are high, but the direct impact on the children we apparently need to protect from foil language. Is it really that bad if a child hears Harry Kane shouting ‘fuck’ all game long (for, as we all know, it is undoubtedly his favourite word)? Let me guess, it’s because they are role models and therefore neuter the parent’s ability to take responsibility for raising their child?
Did either of the angry Mary Whitehouse impersonators make it through their formative years without hearing a naughty word? Was it all bum and poo until they turned 18? I’m guessing not. I would venture that most of us have heard all the best curses (cruciatus included) long before our brains have finished forming, but I am not aware of this being linked to any damaging effects.
Also, there’s a mute button. TV programming is not specifically designed to suit your personal needs above all others. If you don’t want your kids to hear bad language then don’t leave them in front of the TV, phone, computer, or console. Take personal responsibility for your child’s wellbeing instead of outsourcing it to Rupert Murdoch.
A bellowed swear word is not automatically hateful and hurtful. There are more than enough real issues in this world that require real change and that currently hurt the lives of billions. Let’s not waste time and energy on 1950s campaigning against those rotters with their four letter vocabulary. It’s absolutely fucking pointless. And God bless those delicate souls who think this shit matters.
thayden
After reading the “Profanity and the Pandemic” article, i took a step back and shook my head, i think many can agree profanity as the proper term to call swearing is, is not learnt on the TV or the football ground, but within the school playground or more likely from a parent swearing as their team concedes yet another set piece goal.
Maybe i am of the modern era, but i just fail to see the issue here, swearing is common in all walks of life, everyone learns these swear words at some point in their life, if people are concerned about hearing a football drop an f-bomb in a match, then they are going to be truly shocked when they find out that the language that their children hear and likely speak on Fortnite, Call Of Duty or FIFA is not something you would hear at a dinner party at Buckingham Palace.
Mikey, CFC
I once heard a presumably 12 year old (they all look about 12) tell his mate to, “fuck off you great spunk bubble.”
I think the the horse has already bolted with regards to protecting our kids from swearing.
Jon (The children, Won’t someone please think of the children!), Lincoln
Inessential signings
Brilliant stuff from Andrew, Banbury…..the mailbox has been heavy these past few days.
As a United fan, I will admit to: Charlie Adams before he went to Liverpool from Blackpool
Also……Joey Barton!! Although I can’t remember when exactly, either when he was at Newcastle, or possibly the older “wiser” version after leaving Marseille. I think it was the later version as we struggled badly post Ferguson.
Does Harry Maguire qualify?
Plato – MUFC
Andrew, Banbury Asked if anyone wanted to admit to the signings they thought were essential but turned out to be anything but?
I will add my 2 pence by saying that maybe Jenas & Gardner could have done a job at United much like Valencia did for so many years so maybe if given the chance some players can make a step up but to answer his question back in the day as a Chelsea fan I wanted Phil Jones to Replace JT and then even worse I wanted Junior Hoilett to replace Arjen Robben when he left us!
I still can’t believe we’ve signed players like Steve Sidwell and his exact ‘playalike’ Danny Drinkwater!
Greg, Herts, Casiraghi doesn’t count as he’s a hero.
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