INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe have no money and Man Utd are in big trouble here. We also have views on Man City, Ange and more.
If you want Everton v Liverpool views, go here. And send opinions on all subjects to theeditor@football365.com
What the hell is going on at United?
Big Jim says he has to fire 200 people or the club will go under. But if he does, it will be profitable in two years? How much are you paying them?!? Do those 200 people include the entire first team squad?
Because if it’s the general staff, it’s surely in the order of £10m per year right? 200 people at £50k p.a? That’s what they’re paying de Ligt to mooch about the place.
Someone, somewhere must know what is happening at that clown car of an organisation, but you wouldn’t bet on it being the ownership, that’s for sure. Making Ed Woodward look like Warren Buffett right now.
Very funny though. Long may it continue.
Tom, Leyton
…Well, well. Another 200 redundancies – there will soon be nothing left but a bloated executive team all getting in each other’s way.
Manchester United dangerously close to running out of money. Surely not with Jim the ‘ savvy local businessman ‘ in charge? Things were supposed to improve weren’t they? I’m not a United supporter but an objective view shows that things have gone to total s***e from this perspective. As opposed to only 95% total s***e under the much-loathed Glazers.
Pulling money from the All Blacks, the America’s Cup team, the Tour De France team etc etc, makes it look like INEOS themselves are getting short of a penny or two.
And what have we here? INEOS are £12 *billion* in debt, 6 times the company’s annual earnings! Whoops. Looks like Jim has been robbing Peter to pay Paul and now resembles a man running a chemically soaked Ponzi scheme whose luck has run out.
He’s skint basically. Which is handy because he already looks like a hobo in a fancy suit. But he won’t be allowed to keep that in his new home in a box under the subway.
So in short, United are *screwed*.
As a Liverpool fan I feel I should be taking rather more joy in this. But I feel a surprising element of pity and ‘ there but for the Grace of God go I…’ musings. Which rather detracts from the fun. For me anyway.
But I strongly suspect not for everyone.
James, Liverpool
Man City’s three problems
Gundogan – there’s been a number of games where he’s come on, then the game has been lost.
That font on the back of their shirts – it’s not quite Comic Sans, but not far off. Can’t be taken seriously.
Goalkeepers – both been at fault for high-profile goals.
None of these have been addressed in the January window.
Mind you, I’m Newcastle, so I don’t really care.
Simon S, Cheshire
READ: Eleven Man City players Pep Guardiola should look to upgrade this summer
To buy or not to buyAll the chaos that surrounds transfer news/updates/BS and selling academy players for PSR got me thinking about which of the Big 6 clubs have historically leveraged their academy players to realize success on the pitch and which bought in talent more than others (Chelsea, cough). Using the top 20 most capped players in the premier league Era (1992 onwards) of each big 6 team (Man City, Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs) I analyzed which clubs achieved player longevity (and success) from their home grown talent versus which clubs relied more on player recruitment.
Man Utd:
Academy – 7
Purchased – 13
Most capped – Giggs
Liverpool:
Academy – 6
Purchased – 14
Most Capped – Carragher
Chelsea:
Academy – 1
Purchased – 19
Most Capped – Terry
Arsenal:
Academy – 4
Purchased – 16
Most Capped – Parlour
Man CIty:
Academy – 4
Purchased – 16
Most Capped – Silva
Spurs:
Academy – 5
Purchased – 15
Most Capped – lloris
These stats highlight that whilst home grown talent is important, getting external player recruitment right is key (with Utd 90’s and 00’s success being the outlier) to winning trophies. Additionally, when we look into where the externally recruited, most capped players come from the vast majority were purchased from other English clubs (31) followed by French clubs (14), Spanish clubs (10) and a smattering of other origins.
So what does this tell us? Academy players are important but if you look at Chelsea, they’re not the most important. Buying players from clubs based in England generally means those players irrespective of their own nationality (every club has a non UK born player in their top 3 most capped) will stay loyal for longer and based on the success of the big 6 (excluding spursy) help deliver more trophies.
Adam – Ireland
Here’s to a fun-packed Feb
Probably because there has been a lot of chat about Liverpool’s fixtures I hadn’t noticed that Arsenal are away at Forest on the 26th. That seems to be a key match and probably a tough one for the injury-hit Gunners. Looking forward to some top match ups for the rest of Feb .
The FA Cup has the delicious possibility of Forest, Bournemouth and Newcastle being the strongest teams left in it! mArne Slot has to say otherwise yet he clearly did the right thing and planned priorities.
Peter (Kylian getting the rub of the green again) Andalucia
READ: How Liverpool, Arsenal and Newcastle could suffer their own Spurs-style season implosion
Ange out
I have to agree with almost every word of Dave Tickner’s latest Ange Out article. The Spurs fanbase is fairly agreed that the ultimate problem at Spurs is Levy. But it is still oddly split on the merits of keeping Ange. There are plenty who think his struggles are due to the injury crisis and not being backed by Levy. Somehow ignoring that we were poor even when he had all the players available.
There is also an argument that there is no point in sacking him because no manager has been able to succeed under Levy. I would say that is because Levy keeps hiring the wrong managers. The one time he did appoint a manager with the right profile, Pochettino, it worked and could have been so much better if only Levy had the smarts to back him in the transfer market.
Then there is the argument that no top manager would come to Spurs at this point in the season. As much as we are not currently a very attractive proposition, we can still offer a squad and a budget that has a higher ceiling than say, Bournemouth or Brentford. With the greatest respect to those clubs and the fine job their managers have done, I’m sure if Spurs came calling, it would turn their manager’s heads.
The season isn’t over. Spurs are on the edge of a relegation fight and in the last 16 of a winnable Europa League competition. We won’t win it with kamikaze football. It is time to let Ange go. But what we absolutely know from Daniel Levy’s long stint in charge, if there is a football decision to be made, he will make the wrong choice.
Jim (THFC)
Ange InI read the piece yesterday debunking some of the #angein myths, and quite honestly as a staunch #angein person myself, it was the best piece I have read in terms of making considered arguments for his dismissal. I do want to add some thoughts though, not to try and answer this piece, but to add some context to Spurs’ season: what has happened to lead us to this point?
Backtrack to mid-November. Spurs have just beaten Man City in the league and are in 6th place in the table. They are ahead of Forest and just 3 points behind Arsenal. The narrative is that they have been inconsistent and had some poor results, particularly after Europa games (Brighton, Palace, Ipswich), but are also playing good football and controlling games; they were the top scorers in the league.
The injuries are starting to mount up. Romero got hurt with a foot injury playing for Argentina, Vicario broke his ankle in that game, Bentancur has started a 7-game suspension for an idiotic comment made in the summer, Mikey Moore has a virus that ended up keeping him out for 2 months, and then the soft tissue injuries for Richarlison, Van De Venn, and Odebert have left the squad pretty short.
What then happened is that Spurs embarked on a quite ridiculous schedule where they have played 22 games in 79 days, basically 2 games a week for 2.5 months. To put that into context, Forest, Bournemouth, and Brighton, teams that Spurs consistently get compared to this season, have played 14 or 15 games in that same time. Whilst other teams have had easier cup draws where they can rest players (thinking of Liverpool with Accrington Stanley and Plymouth in the FA, and Southampton in the EFL or Man City with Leyton Orient and Salford in the FA and going out to Spurs in the last 16 of the EFL), Spurs have just had the Tamworth game and been handed an EFL draw of City, United, Liverpool, and Villa away in the FA, meaning that they really had to either go all out with a full-strength team or accept they were going out playing a bunch of youngsters.
At this time, I also think it’s probably contextually important to point out the impact of the expanded European schedule and the extra 2 games in January that brought. Of the teams that qualified for Europe, only Liverpool and possibly Arsenal (although I think they have dropped off) have handled it well. City have dropped from 1st to 5th, Villa from 4th to 8th, and United from 6th to 13th. Chelsea have essentially played a completely different squad in the Conference League.
Within that schedule, I am not sure there has been much, if any, “Angeball” in training, merely recovery between games, and I would argue the schedule and thin squad, made thinner by the initial injuries, coupled with waiting till the last week of January to sign players, is what caused the subsequent soft tissue injuries to Maddison, Udogie, Johnson, Werner, etc.
At this point I do think its inevitable that Ange is fired. Even in the best case scenario of the players come back and stay fit, we still have an exhausted squad, and confidence is low. However, I write this more to say that as much as he has made mistakes, and could have definitely handled the situation better, he has been a victim of circumstance and the ridiculous demands of modern football.
Stephen, New York
Chapter and Merse
I don’t have any objection in principle to Rob, Bristol Gooner’s railing against punditry as a class and profession, but the hill I will die on, and possibly my most controversial football opinion, is this: Paul Merson is a good and insightful football pundit, and people are letting his general air of gormlessness, the bin-fire that is his personal life, and the vibe that Jeff Stelling is basically his carer distract them from the fact that he is genuinely knowledgeable about football, and regularly comes up with a novel perspective on a piece of play or a manager’s decision.
I would MUCH rather have Paul Merson on co-comms than, say, his erstwhile teammate Lee Dixon, or even self-parody’s Gary Neville at this point.
Dara O’Reilly, London
It’s not news, it’s silly fellas talkingI agree wholeheartedly with Rob, Bristol Gooner about word vomits from pundits not being news. It means I have to filter the articles on the home page, between the ads, more ads and pop ups to find the articles that are worth clicking on. If I do click on a news article its basically “Gabby Agbonlahor said” I think less of the site and leave the page, possibly even the whole site.
It’s not so much that you’ve published content based on it, it’s just that its labelled news. If it was labelled “Silly twat corner” or “Can you believe that they get paid for this” I am probably more like likely to click on it and read it pumping up that lovely advertiser revenue than I am when I am tricked into thinking that there is something newsworthy in there. Time and attention is limited.
You tell me its news and its not, I think your site is trash and put it down. Tell me here is some nonsense that pundits have said for me to have a chuckle at, when I fancy that, I’ll do it.
Mailbox is still the star of the site. Maybe some other readers can come up with better names for tagging that type of content.
Alex, South London
Eff off to FA
Eddie Q touched on it in Wednesday morning’s Mailbox, but are the FA really that subservient to the TV companies that they’re fine with sending Palace to Doncaster on a Monday night and Forest to Exeter on a Tuesday? (I know the answer is yes). It’s utter madness and a huge f*&k you to the fans. Wildly assuming some Forest fans that went last night live in Nottingham they’d have got home just before 4am. Straight to work after a Spoon’s brekkie? That’s not me casting aspersions on Forest fans. Just pointing out how ridiculous the scheduling is.
I believe the Palace fans had a banner slating the FA for it, but they were still there. Surely boycotting these games is the only way to make the point? I can’t even get a train back (after the game has finished) to Oxford from Birmingham for a midweek Villa game. I like to pretend that’s me boycotting said games. It’s just all so… well, shit.
Gary AVFC, Oxford (Not feeling overly eloquent today)