INEOS ‘unfathomable’ error means Man Utd ‘will never win anything’ until they copy Klopp, Liverpool
Manchester United messed up when they made an ‘unfathomable’ error with Dan Ashworth, and they must now copy Liverpool and Jurgen Klopp.
Also, Arsenal supporters are told to grow up, and PSR is defended after Manchester City’s guilty FFP verdict.
Man Utd’s biggest mistake was binning off Dan Ashworth
Dear Sir,
Apologies for not writing for so long; it has been a very busy start to the academic year, and only this week do I find myself with time to put some thoughts on paper. Only two points, if I may.
Despite Man City being found guilty of 114/115 charges, I do believe that Man U have been the worst-run club over the last 13 years. After Sir Alex left in May 2013, they have spent over £1.5 billion, with a B, on players, to win two FA Cups, two League Cups and the Europa League. The next biggest spend is Chelsea, but they returned two Premier League titles, one Champions League and five other respectable trophies.
What is laughable about Man U is that they still want to find that Sir Alex elixir. It is not out there, but they binned the one person who could have steered them away from repeating the same mistakes, that being Dan Ashworth. Paying £4.1m to get him and then, less than six months later, giving him £2.5m in goodbye money is unfathomable.
He has been the only person in recent times who deserved to be at a club the size of Man U. Jason Wilcox, Omar Berrada and now Michael Carrick are just repeating the OGS mistake. Ashworth didn’t want Ruben Amorim, which turned out to be correct. Even if he had stayed after sacking, he might have appointed Carrick as a caretaker, but he would have had the good sense to say thanks for the temporary role and then looked to hire a world-class manager to move them forward.
As a Liverpool fan, I love it, as they will never win anything or be a truly big club again until they find that person or executive team that, as Klopp said in his first interview 11 years ago, “takes the weight of history off their back”. Carrick is still referencing Sir Alex even now. Klopp respected history, but he never tried to relive it.
Despite Man City being found guilty of 114/115 charges, I still find Arsenal to be the most objectionable club in the league. The crowing North London Forever mob are talking as though they are peak Barca and that the Lego-haired Sith Lord should be heralded in the same breath as Klopp.
Mini Vader has spent a billion for one Premier League title and one FA Cup. Klopp had less than half Arteta’s net spend and won it all. Klopp also brought together arguably the best front three the Premier League has seen, as well as achieving an astonishing 110 out of a possible 114 points over a 38-game run.
I think three second-place finishes and one win have gone to their heads. Best regards, Ian H
Enzo Maresca ‘massively’ wrong on Manchester City
Interesting to see that Enzo Maresca believes Manchester City’s guilty verdict “does not” taint their success.
Of course not, Enzo. Apart from the fact that it does.
Massively.
Some of City’s players and fans, presumably led by Liam Gallagher and that guy who played Curly in Coronation Street, might agree, but the rest of football will forever associate their most successful period with cheating on a scale never before seen in English football. Possibly the world.
Still, perhaps City’s appeal will reveal just how irrefutable that “irrefutable evidence” really is. Ant MUFC
PSR sucks, but it is the best thing we have…
I had decided to give the whole Man City, FFP/PSR stuff a rest for a bit, to concentrate on my injury-ravaged fantasy football team, following the interlull. But then read about the LIV Chapter 11 and the golfers moving back, or trying to move back, to the PGA/DP Tours. Disregarding the egg on the faces of the (now even wealthier) golfers who threw a lot of shit the way of the PGA, the fact that LIV is in Chapter 11 is because the Saudi Arabian PIF withdrew future funding, and the lessons for all sports relying on these state funds for survival.
While letters saying that Simon Jordan is right that we need to blow up the current version, he at least acknowledged in one session that teams would go bankrupt if no controls were in place. It’s fair to say that PSR addressed some of the complaints about FFP, but not all. I would also say the balloon payments to clubs being relegated to the Championship are an even bigger issue – imagine 3 ‘financially doped’ clubs dropping into your division, that you have to spend inordinate amounts to compete against, to gain promotion to the even bigger opportunity of the Premier League? And then there is how European competitions are juicing teams from countries with less financially wealthy leagues.
It is also clear that the Premier League’s ‘spreading the wealth’ through broadcast deals has made Premier League clubs at every level far wealthier than those in most other leagues, apart from the top 2 or 3 in each. There are 6 English clubs in the top 10, 9 in the top 20 and a staggering 15 in the top 30 – 50%. This is why teams like Brighton, Bournemouth and Brentford can compete for talent on a global scale. (Its interesting that La Liga and Serie A both use a form of measurement of the ‘pull’ of clubs to distribute those revenues, which means the top teams still scoop up a much bigger percentage than the top EPL teams do, but if the EPL followed a similar calculation, would Man City come out so high?)
But the fact clubs do have to compete internationally for talent and to access desirable tournaments both competitively and financially does complicate things. Any system adopted from North America’s closed leagues won’t work. Any free-for-all won’t work as it would negate playing in Europe, unless a breakaway league was created.
Lets face it, Arsenal were more hampered by FFP than City (or West Ham) as they had access to large, new stadia at favourable lease rates, versus Arsenal servicing their debt and reducing ability to spend on players. Spurs and Everton doubly benefit in gaining a great new asset while under PSR which ring fences infrastructure from squad-cost calculations. So is PSR better? Probably. Could it be even better? Sure, but what is it that other clubs want – other than let me spend whatever I want?
The recent LIV example shows that when a club spends beyond its natural means to support that spending, it is at risk if that support is pulled. In the case of Man City, one imagines the current sponsorships would be legally binding and have to be paid; you can imagine them being drastically reduced upon expiry. So regardless of any other punishment, if ADUG walks, which it’s likely they will, Man City would be in all sorts of financial hurt. Be interesting to see, as it would prove the claims against Man City. No? Paul McDevitt (PS Apologies to Simon and Bad Hamser. The current age of social media memes sucks, damaging people’s ability to read anything longer. With OECD showing current teen reading scores at their lowest level this century, perhaps the mailbox is trying to offset those issues.)
Errrrm so FFP(/SCR etc) is a terrible rule but if they don’t change it (as they should) and then they just give City a fine and a survivable points deduction where does that leave us in terms of toothless rules?
If they go gentle but then say that any ‘future breaches’ (Newcastle, Villa & Everton breaches) will result in relegation to non-league I’m going to flip a table. Tarqs NUFC
Creating a world Premier League
This is my idea as a grand solution for some/most of the problems surrounding club football.
Create a World Premier League (WPL) system with 3 divisions of consisting of 24 teams each.
When WPL starts the teams will be divide so all continents are represented.
Africa 8 teams
Asia/Oceania 8 teams
Europe 32 teams
North America 8 teams
South America 16 teams
Three or four teams are relegated/promoted each season.
The teams in WPL do not participate in their national leagues but will still participate in the national cup tournaments.
Teams from outside the WPL qualify through a their regional competitions like ECL. I haven’t decided if the teams in the regional competitions also should be pulled from their national leagues.
The WPL will have some kind of CAP and it will be the same in all 3 divisions.
The WPL should be run by the teams in cooperation with the regional FA’s like UEFA. FIFA should absolutely not be involved.
If teams cheat with the cap they will be relegated for small offenses and will be banished entirely from the WPL for grave infractions and banned for at least 10 seasons.
If a team in any way does something which could imply corruption like paying the VP of refs for consultancy (or to be “fair”) Barcelona style or fx. Paying refs exorbitant amounts of money for a friendly game Manchester City style, the team will be banished for eternity.
The refs should be full time professionals with a high salary at least 1 million euros.
Football is probably the only sport where something like this makes sense. I would love to see a team full of some of the best Brazilians play for a Brazilian club and maybe a team of players of Nigerian decent play for a Nigerian team.
TV Money would be distributed fairly among all the teams in the WPL also across the divisions with only a small percentages tied to performance. Gud
Get a grip, Arsenal fans…
Dear, esteemed Editor, and Dearest, steaming Gooners,
Will Ford wrote a piece yesterday. He took the piss out the latest ridiculous behaviour from the ridiculous, Lego Manchegoman, Mikel Arteta. The comments pop up of course, I had a bit of craic responding to them and calling out some of the usual merchants who constantly try and miserably fail to defend the indefensible, and who are devoid of basic humour, perspective or backbone. Downvotes came raining in, gloriously. As predictable as Man City being a load of cheating b*stards, except fun!
Stewie Griffin had your fanbase so incredibly bang to rights. So, so many of you are so far beyond delicate it baffles me as to how you even like football in the first place. Where’s your sense of give and take? Of silly, no-stakes pugilism? The incel energy I detect off so many of you in real life and online is absolutely palpable.
Why do so many of you defend Arteta and his ultracringe, make-yer-knob-fall-off behaviour as if he’s your da or your brother or your best friend….Or as if he is…You yourself? That lad who writes thrilling essays in the comments – Adsaw – even called out Ford’s ability to be a good father! ON A FOOTBALL WEBSITE!!! On what planet is this acceptable or remotely decent? Truly shameful.
Lads…. Get. A. F*cking. Grip. Your manager is hated, your fanbase is incredibly unpopular/is also hated and all you to is cry, whinge, gaslight and desperately demand that you be loved for it! It’s Grade A, textbook Cult behaviour. Football fans can be tribal – breaking news. You lot are a different breed though. Maybe worth examining that?
Here’s a novel idea…Why not try and stop being in the saddest, most pathetic cult in football and just grow up and own it? Lean into the role. Enjoy it? Be the villains, be the heels. It’s f*cking football, it’s not serious.
The true answer is beyond obvious. I’ll leave it to your spectacular hivemind to figure out. Good luck!
You’ve even managed to achieve what was unthinkable and made the Scousers seem sound and sane…Let that sink in…
Much love and kisses, Gooners! Kentona, Manchester
All-time Premier League XI
Dear F365,
I briefly caught Jody Morris’ all time Prem XI on Sky Sports News yesterday evening (not sure what sure the context was, as it was on the big tele in my local boozer and the sound was off so they could play Taylor f*ckin Swift on loop…….. again) and this got me thinking about mine. That, in turn made me realise that whilst these players did indeed make up my “best” XI, they’re far from my “favourite” XI.
Well, thinking is done, and for what it’s worth here’s both XI’s;
Best XI:
GK: Peter Schmeichel
RB: Gary Neville
CB: Nemanja Vidic
CB: John Terry
LB: Ashley Cole
CDM: Stephen Gerrard
CDM: Patrick Vieira
LW: Ryan Giggs
CAM: Paul Scholes
RW: Christiano Ronaldo
ST: Theirry Henry
Favourite XI:
GK: Lionel Perez
RB: Dan Petrescu
CB: Tony Adams
CB: David Luiz
LB: Michael Gray
CDM: Kevin Ball
CDM: Roy Keane
LW: David Ginola
CAM: Gianfranco Zola
RW: Arjen Robben
ST: Tony Yeboah Andy FTM (All clear from the heart doctor yesterday = Greggs bacon, sausage and omelette baguette today!)
