Arsenal are seemingly ‘lucky’ that they play in the Premier League and not in Portugal while Sir Jim Ratcliffe is a victim of Man Utd.
You flirty Rat
When you have not just pinned but superglued your colours to the mast as steadfastly as The Sun’s Chief Sports Writer Dave Kidd on Sir Jim Ratcliffe in October, you cannot possibly be shifted in May.
‘SIR JIM RATCLIFFE has assembled one hell of a brains trust at Manchester United,’ wrote Kidd in October under a headline proclaiming that Ratcliffe ‘is making Man Utd sensible again’.
And this is after they had allowed Erik ten Hag to spend almost £200m in the summer despite being a dead man walking. Real sensible, fellas.
‘In the summer, when Ratcliffe made the expensive mistake of handing Ten Hag a new contract after the shock FA Cup final victory over Manchester City, his cabinet hadn’t been fully constructed.
‘But now that the delusional Erik ten Hag is gone – ranting on about media ‘fairytales’ over his imminent sacking and denying results he didn’t like – they are taking a shot at sanity.’
Ah, there we get to the nub of Kidd’s argument back in October; there is nothing guaranteed to wind up an old school newspaper man more than a manager criticising the ‘media’. From that moment on, Ten Hag was a sworn enemy. And Ratcliffe was a hero for (eventually) canning him thanks to his ‘one hell of a brains trust’.
‘Ashworth, who has led the process of replacing ETH, has a very decent track record for appointing managers.
‘Gareth Southgate for England, Graham Potter for Brighton and Eddie Howe at Newcastle, where his first choice was Unai Emery – now, pound-for-pound, the best manager in the Premier League at Aston Villa.
‘That is what United paid £10m in compensation to Newcastle for. This is why they waited while he pruned his roses on gardening leave for four months. So he could get this decision right.’
Ashworth was out again within six weeks – breaking up that impressive ‘brains trust – amid reports that he never actually wanted Amorim (so much for ‘that is what United paid £10m in compensation to Newcastle for’) but instead favoured Southgate, Thomas Frank or Ruud van Nistelrooy.
But we can now fast-forward to mid-May with Manchester United in 16th place in the Premier League and Ratcliffe threatening to celebrate a potential Europa League win with a barbecue.
And Kidd is not for shifting from his narrative that ‘ruthlessly brilliant businessman’ Ratcliffe is one the victims here.
‘This rotten, stinking football club minces the reputations of the best of men.’
Yes that’s the ‘best of men’ Ratcliffe, of job cuts, ticket prices and so very much more.
Can we all take a minute to think of poor billionaire Ratcliffe, swallowed up by this mess of a club and given no choice but to make a series of terrible decisions that have landed United in the worst Premier League season in their history?
As the headline in The Sun says: ‘Who’d blame them for walking away?’
Pretty sure a few million Manchester United fans would gladly give him a lift.
Lucky, lucky, lucky ArsenalWe missed this on Monday, but Martin Samuel’s theory in The Times that ‘This is the Kylie season: a lot of clubs just got lucky, lucky, lucky’ is curiously illustrated with an image of Declan Rice.
Try telling an Arsenal fan they got ‘lucky’ this season with a series of injuries and curious VAR calls, but Samuel – a West Ham fan – is leaning into the theme.
‘As for the self-styled best club in Europe, Arsenal have now won 50 per cent of their league matches this season, a win ratio that would not put them in the top three in Spain, Italy and France – and certainly not near Paris Saint-Germain – or the top four in Portugal.
‘Yet there they sit, still second, and a draw away to Southampton on the final day of the season away from pretty much being guaranteed Champions League football whatever happens elsewhere. Take it away, Kylie: they should be so lucky — lucky, lucky, lucky…’
It’s the argument of a lunatic. It doesn’t matter where Arsenal’s 50% win rate would put them in any other league because they play in the Premier League, and in a season when they were understandably latterly distracted by a Champions League run that took them to the semi-finals, they have only needed 69 points to qualify for the Champions League. Oh and it would have been enough last season too.
Are Arsenal really supposed to feel ‘lucky’ that they play in a very competitive Premier League?
At least they have company. It turns out that pretty much every club barring Liverpool, Aston Villa, Newcastle, Nottingham Forest and the clutch of clubs between eighth and 12th have been ‘lucky’.
‘David Moyes and Vítor Pereira have made excellent positive impacts at Everton and Wolverhampton Wanderers. Yet it very much helps when there is no pack in pursuit. Once those clubs pulled clear of the bottom three – Wolves were in 19th place when Pereira took over, but immediately beat Leicester, while Moyes inherited Everton in 16th place, a point off the relegation zone – the pressure rapidly eased.’
What magical force allowed them to ‘pull clear of the bottom three’? Could it have been something, anything at all, to do with Moyes and Pereira? After all, Wolves were still below Leicester even after beating them in December.
The calendar Premier League table sees Wolves and Everton both on the same points as Forest in 2025, and yet two of those clubs have been ‘lucky’ while Forest (‘a club who came up and had a go being rewarded for that ambition’, which is a curious way of saying they broke the spending rules) have not.
But obviously nobody has been as ‘lucky’ as Arsenal, merrily grabbing a Champions League place just for *checks notes* probably finishing second.