Did Man Utd do due diligence on Matheus Cunha? One fan is seething and expects Ruben Amorim to pay. Plus, Newcastle, Liverpool, Arsenal and more…
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Do Man Utd need another knob-end?
First mail in for a while, I felt compelled to email in as something is really nagging at me.
Cunha is in. He of the massive strop and subsequent suspension for being an enormous flog last season, ripping glasses off a steward and generally acting like a petulant brat. Red carded in another game too. Spent more time than anyone in the league walking last season, look it up its legit! 72 or more percent off memory.
I’m nailing my flag to mast right now – this isn’t going to work out for either party.
Geezer has had one good season, has an ego bigger than Pogba’s and just looks to be a complete knob-end.
Our changing room needs good honest pros, hard workers who will lead by example on and off the pitch. We are literally swapping players out that don’t seem like knobs, maybe Garnacho but it’s nothing a decent manager couldn’t sort out.
Something doesn’t sit right with the me on this one. I don’t think we’ve done proper due diligence on this transfer. We haven’t considered what impact this character has on the dressing room and whether he has any sort of leadership qualities.
Rashford will probably be gone. Is he that bad mentally and physically we don’t want him anymore? Is it beyond repair? I wonder what Amorim has done since coming in. Their relationship is a strange one.
I’m also nailing that flag to the same mast – just a bit lower down it, Amorim is gone before Jan transfer window.
I’ve seen nothing that suggests he can turn us into anything different just because he’s had a 6 week pre season with the same squad minus those that have already left, + Mr Walky McWalkface added to it.
You can probably tell I have not very high hopes whatsoever for the upcoming season.
Gibbo (MUFC – down under)
READ: Every £50m+ transfer between Premier League clubs with Isak primed to shatter record
Why are Arsenal playing chicken?
It’s Sesko?… no, now it’s Gyokeres?. In the end we all know Arsenal will wait until the last minute, haggling over the high valuation of the respective clubs so as to get the cheapest price and then finally panic when they realize the time is up, make a 50 million big for Watkins who will not have any desire in joining them.
Mikel Arteta will then make passive aggressive,thinly veiled insults at Berta blaming him as the culprit for not signing an elite striker.I still don’t understand how they let Delap slip through their fingers (Arsenal needed a striker more than Chelsea), he would offered a different approach but maybe it was just what they needed to be whole.
Sesko is younger, has apparently great potential but has low stats while Gyokeres seems to be the proven product coupled with a desire to join Arsenal–this should be a done deal. As for the other options, the suggestions of Osimhen, Nunez are just comedian jokes made at the end of his performance that suck.
Jamo, Nairobi (didn’t realize there were so many Jims out there)
PSR is the enemy of ambition
The email about Newcastle selling Isak was a really good mailbox contribution – and it highlighted exactly the challenge that my club faces. PSR has put a huge glass ceiling above a lot of teams, but only Newcastle and Villa have bumped up against it in recent years.
Essentially, because your revenues can’t catch up as quickly to the ‘big 6’, you always need to be on the look out for sales or managing your wage bill to be able to stay active in the market at all.
Over the past couple of seasons Newcastle haven’t signed a first team player (Lloyd Kelly was a squad player for 6 months) and have lost Anderson (who’s great) and Minteh (who might be) as well as having to sell some of our depth (Kelly, Almiron) in January just to make ends meet. Yes, we technically paid money for Vlachidimos but that was very much a technicality with our backs against the wall in the Anderson deal.
So, fast forward to this summer and finally we can buy. But we face two massive problems – 1. Everyone we want to buy, seemingly someone bigger does, and 2. We can’t (due to PSR) offer them as much in wages.
This cost us last summer with Tosin going to Chelsea, or Mbeumo to Man U (now maybe Spurs) this one. As the Isak article pointed out, we could lose our best player because he can get paid triple at Liverpool (yes, there may be other reasons but this matters).
We therefore have to tread a very narrow path of players who are both good enough to play for a team with grand ambitions and playing in the Champions League but don’t have huge wage demands/transfer fees or wanted by Chelsea.
There’s not many players out there in that Venn diagram and it must be tough. The club could clearly do better here, and it’s not helped by the changes at board level, but many targets who are deemed good enough may get gobbled up by the bigger fish offering an extra £50-100k a week or £15m in transfer fees (Liverpool taking Szboszlai when we were negotiating, same happened with Ekitike and PSG).
So you can build the depth even younger, which they’re doing – signing 16-18 year olds and hoping they come good. Or you have to start taking gambles. And gambles can be spectacularly good (Isak) or bad (see various). And gambling on players is easier if you’re midtable and looking up (Brighton, Brentford) but much harder if you’ve got Champions League football.
It’s going to be a rough summer for Newcastle – people want our star players and we desperately need 5-6 players to flesh out the squad – but that narrow path to success feels out of reach at the moment.
And then the problems multiply. A bad season, no Champions League and then Isak goes (if not before), and the vultures circle for the rest.
PSR is solely to blame here – it’s ruining the opportunities to catch up to the big boys.
James, NUFC
Liverpool: Not all thatThere’s much excitement about Liverpool’s new signings and how they’ve already wrapped up the league for next season. I’m a Newcastle fan, here’s my thoughts.
Liverpool didn’t look close to winning against us in the Carabao Cup final. Both teams had pretty much full strength teams out, so no injury excuses. Are you telling me that this Liverpool team, plus a couple of new signings are so good, they’ve already won the league next season?
Salah and Van Dijk are 33, you’ve extended their contracts. They both struggled in the 2nd half of the season. Can you win the league with olds? Most clubs are looking to sell their old players, but Liverpool have kept them on. They had the most Premier League penalties last season (9) and conceded the 2nd least (2). Salah’s figures are boosted by these pens. Van Dijk was lucky with many decisions, where he could’ve had straight reds.
So, well done for last season Liverpool, truly well deserved. But next season? I wouldn’t be so sure.
Simon S, Cheshire
Drop it already
Victor on the need to talk about football finance and never actually talking about it brought to mind the Beastie Boys. Constantly singing about dropping it, but did they ever actually do the dropping of said beat? I won’t get any sleep until I get to Staten Island or somewhere similarly close.
Niall, Annapolis
We all dream of a team of Lees
Still doing the “names” teams? Mine is such a common mailbox name, I feel it only fair I should contribute my very own team of Lees.
Some caveats: Lee as a given Christian name, NO Lee surnames. On yer bike Sammy Lee, Franny Lee, Rob Lee, Jason Lee, etc!
No Oriental spelling variations on the name. Sling yer hook, Li Tie!
And absolutely no blatant cheating to shoehorn in Leonardos, Leos, ie Lee-o Messi.
The end result is rather ’90s-tastic and attack-heavy. I really struggled for centre-backs. A cursory Google returned a Scottish utility man who turned out for Wigan and a 20 year-old Liverpool academy prospect I’ve never even seen play, but needs must!
Classic Four-Four-Fackin’-Two:
GK: Lee Camp
RB: Lee Dixon
CB: Lee McCulloch
CB: Lee Jonas
LB: Lee Martin
RM: Lee Hendrie
CM: Lee Clark
CM: Lee Carsley
LM: Lee Sharpe
#10: Lee Trundle
CF: Lee Chapman
Subs: Lee Grant, Lee Mills, Lee Bradbury, Lee Miller
Manager: Lee Carsley – bring back player-managers, I say!
Team anthem: ‘Lee’ by Tenacious D
Would probably lose to just about any other “Name” XI, but at least with Sharpey’s celebrations and Tekkers-meister Trundle they’d be entertaining if nothing else!
Lee Goodman, naming myself as an impact sub
War? What is it good for? Well…Reading James’ (NUFC) email reminded me of a rather interesting FIFA rule, and its potential application. If Iran wants full revenge on the USA it should bide its time and declare war next May.
Teams at war cannot compete in the World Cup. It would be worth Iran forfeiting its place for.
Rob