Liverpool win but ‘mini cracks showing’ as Isak rinsed for 90 minutes
Liverpool beat Atletico Madrid but there are still grounds for concern, while the debate about football nostalgia continues.
Liverpool already stretched This version of Atletico might not be the same as a decade ago but they’re still a formidable side and particularly gnarly to cope with if they’ve got their noses ahead. Huge credit to Liverpool tonight for keeping their heads and focus and finding a way through.
Kerkez was definitely having one of his more sleepy evenings which was frustrating because he’s been much more solid in general the past 6 months. Other than that the team looked good. Wirtz and Szoboslai can both misplace a pass but at least they’re typically looking forward and trying to create when it happens. Offensively we looked unpredictable in a good way and engines creative. That bodes really well.
MacAllister was so good he needs his own paragraph. And he will have one. The hit was a thing of purity and beauty. It was struck so well you kind of imagine the world stopping for about 2 seconds before it ripples in the back of the net and all hell breaks loose in the stands. But his defensive work in the 6 was so good. He seems to get that occupying the center of the pitch is not the true mark of a Volanté so I loved when he came out to the wings and won the balls there too. He read the game well and kept cool even after getting a yellow. He made fouls still but they were calculated and he kept himself right on the line.
If I’m criticising Iraola for anything it’s that he left Isak out there for 90 minutes. Unless he’s not playing against Fulham I really don’t like the idea of him playing twice a week. Seeing Barcola limp off was sub optimal, even if it was just cramp, and we need to wrap these guys in cotton wool until Ekitike is also fit again. Gakpo already injured too so already mini-cracks showing. Minty, LFC
READ: Tim Sherwood reacts to Bradley Barcola display for Liverpool – ‘He’s not a fantastic finisher’
A late mail about Tuesday night May I postulate as to why there was little interest in Tuesday’s Champions League games in the Wednesday Mailbox?
No… Not the format!!!
Most obviously, Man Utd, Arsenal, and Liverpool are yet to play. Their fans tend to be a bit more engaged than Man City’s and Villa’s. I do believe though that the 5 week hiatus until the next round of games sort of dilutes things somewhat. Hard to get into it when there’s then going to be a mammoth break. There were also two solid wins that don’t illicit much discussion/reaction.
Good to see Villa seemingly improve game-by-game, but they could easily revert on Saturday versus Forest. Given I will be there, I’m hoping not. A win, a decent viewing of Mbaye, and a little 20 minute cameo from Manzambi would be just lovely. Gary AVFC, Oxford (trying to figure out whether fewer but longer international breaks are good or not)
READ: Ranking £454.32m worth of summer signings by how excited we are for their debuts
A wholesome mail I bloody love Danny Welbeck.
That’s all. Will
More old men shout at clouds about football I’d like to follow on from Kentona’s mail. Firstly, I completely agree, it is worse now; it’s just less fun. So pompous and self serious.
Secondly, I think you can point to the period where it peaked. I fell in love with football as a 7 year old watching Italia 90. Back then, the pitches were still often quagmires, you’d get genuinely fat players and it’s was more physical to the point of violence. Over the 90s, thanks to rule changes like the back pass, innovators like Fergie and Wenger, and general scientific improvements around things like pitches, the game got steadily better.
This then culminated in the golden era of the 00s, which to me was the sweet spot on the graph. The perfect balance between professionalism and amateurism. Gone was the Harry Ramsden’s with a few cabs on the bus, but it hadn’t yet been replaced with a cryochamber ice bath and mung bean smoothie. There was money in the game, but it wasn’t yet grotesque.
Over the 2010s, the scale started slowly tipping and everything started to get more and more Jake Humphreys, high performance w**kness, culminating in the hammer blow of VA-f**king-R. It’s only gone downhill since then.
The endless stats, the abysmal social media discourse, the personality free players, the marginal gains, Mikel Arteta’s stupid face… Even FIFA. Their corruption used to be amateurish, jobs for the boys, brown envelopes for votes stuff, not what Gianni gets up to with presidents and despots.
I abhor the idea of being the old man shouting at clouds, and misty eyed nostalgia is a blight on so many people’s psyches, but in this instance, the middle aged and older are right. It was just better because we were young, it’s was just objectively better. There was enough of what is good about the game now, but less of what is awful about it. Lewis, Busby Way (and Arteta was just a middling midfielder, not a grating thunderc**t whirling his arms round on the touchline in trousers too small for him)
…Kentona, spot bloody on. Exactly what I was referring to in my last published mail when I mentioned Peter Dreary trying to tell me that Arsenal v Chelsea was an exciting game, in conflict with what my (slowly closing) eyes were telling me.
Arteta is undoubtedly incredibly effective when given the thick end of a decade and a billion quid, but but his team are a reflection of the man, boring, risk averse control freakery, crying like a baby at perceived injustices, yet happy to instruct blatant cheating if it benefits him. Also, I thought Gooners didn’t care that they play hateball because their heroes are big and tough these days and winning is the only thing that matters? The fanmail I have been garnering tells a slightly different story though.
Seriously lads, if you’re trying to project not arsed vibes, then getting your knickers in a twist with little old me probably isn’t the way to go. Just be happy that you’ve finally won something of note for the first time since 2004. You might ascend to the actual elite once Arteta is replaced with an actual elite manager, you might not, but today you are reigning champions of England, so enjoy it. RHT/TS x
(Souness, in a rare moment of clarity, is dead right about Rice too btw – elite defensive mid, but his threat/nous going forward is non-existent)
These middle-aged men resist the nostalgia Enjoyed Ketona’s response but they have incorrectly assumed I am not of their generation. Sadly enough I am 40 myself (well near enough you start rounding at some point). This fact rather pulls the rug from under the feet of their intergenerational argument.
My email was calling for people of our generation to have some humility. Football, like all things, changes. You have 3 options… you can get on board with what it is now, you can do something else you actually enjoy or you can watch increasingly pixelated compilations on YouTube and moan about it. I know which two people I’d rather spend my time with.
Nice one. James
…As Kentona says, each to their own. My view – beyond the insane amount of money in the modern game (£80m bid and rejected for Gakpo?!) his mail is chock full of illogical, nostalgic nonsense. Arsenal today would absolutely thump my beloved 97-98 Arsenal. It would be double figures. What Kentona refers to as the golden age of football was, at the time, dismissed by older fans as a sad and depraved imitation of what used to be the beautiful game. He’s talking about the era in which the PL was formed and the CL included more than just champions for goodness’ sake.
I’m afraid Kentona you’re just another old man ranting down the pub about how everything was better in the old days when objectively it was not.
Much love Simon Cochrane (I’m 44 btw, not all old men are nostalgic bores)
Referee realisation I realise I may be dragging things out on this topic, but I think it is a really important one and should not be allowed to simply fall off the radar. Both Badwolf and Dale May are entirely correct in suggesting Mike Dean be punished for treating various top level football matches like kick-abouts in his back garden.
It seems unlikely that Mike Dean was the only referee of that time playing silly games in his head. In fact, it could explain some of the egregious examples of dreadful refereeing performances we can all call-to-mind.
Mike Riley, for example, in the Arsenal Invincibles 50th game at Old Trafford. Jose Antonio Reyes was kicked within an inch of his life. Rio Ferdinand, as the last defender, should have been sent off for his foul on Freddie Ljungberg. Ruud van Nistelrooy raked his studs down Ashley Cole’s leg in front of the linesman with not even a yellow being brandished. It was such a terrible performance that Keith Hackett, former head of the PGMOL and Riley’s boss, said it had to be “sheer incompetence and perhaps a lack of on-field courage”.
But, thanks to Mike Dean’s inability to rein in his own ego, maybe we now know differently. Carolyn, (I just received an email from Arsenal.com that spelled the venue for tonight’s’ game “Napels”), South London Gooner
