If Liverpool are getting little credit for this Premier League title win, then every season should come with an asterisk.
Send your thoughts to theeeditor@football365.com
Why do Liverpool need credit?
Seriously, who gives a flying fork if the usual suspects on here want to put an asterisk next to Liverpool winning the title this year (assuming that they do win it, lose against Everton in the next game and buttocks will start to get very squeaky)?
We could put three asterisks next to all three trophies won by United in 1999. Win the title with 79 points? It’s like no-one was trying. Win the CL with two late goals after being dominated by a clearly superior team? How lucky was that? And as for the FA Cup, dominated by Liverpool at home, winning with goals in the 88th and 90th minutes, and then being bailed out against a much better Arsenal by a worldie from Giggs. In nearly every other multiverse, United did well to squeeze out a single trophy, they were outrageously lucky and undeserving.
And, of course, that’s what everyone thinks of when they think of the treble.
Don’t even get me started on Arsenal winning in 1998 with 78 points. They’d be lucky to get a top four spot in this new era of excellence in football. I’d be embarrassed to even claim that one.
Mat (waiting for the irony to be lost)
Liverpool fans are really very happy, thank you
I’m sorry. Sixth?! Who the hell are these Liverpool fans giving the gloomies?! SIXTH!!
F*** me, sixth in the mood stakes and 12 points clear in the league with 9 games to go.
Maybe if we’re 15 points, we would break the top five.
I appreciate you have to generate these lists, put something controversial in, but SIXTH is tantamount to the list equivalent of click-bait, Mediawatch style.
I love you guys but please don’t go down the ‘Let’s say something just to generate controversy’ route.
David (Happy as the proverbial Larry being an LFC fan atm, thanks) Molby, Shrews
…Funny that your mood piece marks Liverpool out as very ordinary: not dominating like City or the old Klopp team – I’m pretty sure you went to huge lengths not to proclaim them as great at the time – but just good enough – nothing special.
A few paragraphs later you’re telling us Brighton are the third happiest team in England because on current form they’re only second to Liverpool… wait a minute… did you say Liverpool? Surely not boring old Liverpool?
So you mean to tell us that this team that really only has two players who are anything but ordinary (your words) is the form team in the country coming into the business end of the season- that doesn’t really fit your description now does it- and I suppose you’ll say I am protesting too loudly to mask my disappointment- well once again just in case you didn’t hear or listen- WE ARE HAPPY!!! WE ARE GRATEFUL!!! The league is everything to us. That is true. Make of it what you will.
Michael, Ireland
**Tindall? Really?**Did you have to include a picture of Jason Tindall as the literal face of your current mood rankings? The orange face and whiter than white teeth put me off my breakfast. He’s one of biggest narcissists in football.
He’s not even a number 1. Hes a failed number 1 desperate for the limelight. At least put Eddie Howe as the lead. He’s much more tolerable.
Strevs, AFC, Canada
It’s gone sort of okay for Ipswich
So it looks like my beloved Ipswich will slide back whence we came. Upset (yes), surprised (no), bright future (hopefully). Let’s unpack it.
Two years ago, Ipswich were in Div 1, the old 3rd Division. We had revenue of around £10m and were barely registering a pulse. A small US private equity firm had bought the club back from extinction for £40m and hired some kid from ManU to manage the team.
We got promoted to the Championship, but with a wage bill equivalent to 17th in the Championship, not much was expected. Shockingly, we got promoted with a guaranteed £265m payday, and a probable £180m on Day 1 as we made the promised land.
That’s when the fun started.
If you squinted, we had maybe one player of Premier League quality (Leif Davis) and a couple of guys with Championship pedigree…as for the rest, not so much.
We needed players…a lot of players. At least 10 starters and a bench, all hopefully of Premier League quality. We deployed 4 main strategies; the Plastic Paddies (apologies to Dara O’Shea); the Championship All Stars; as many loaners as we could get our hands on; and buying the England U21 attack.
£150m and 16 players later, only the England U21 strategy succeeded (Delap, Hutchinson, and belatedly Philogene – thanks Villa). The others, not so much.
As the stats show, we didn’t manage to get a) enough players (we regularly collapse after 60 mins when the B team come on), and b) enough quality players.
The numbers: £180m in, £150m out, £265m to play with.
We’ll lose Delap, our expensive loan stars, and maybe a few others, but we’ll go into next year with proven Championship All-Stars ™ and a far stronger squad. Given that McKenna is taking us down, he might not even get poached. Happy days.
A tough year, but on balance, we’d take it.
Matthew (ITFC)
A Chelsea Quadruple
I saw possibly the worst take from a pundit in a while recently when after the Arsenal game, Andy Reid said he thought Chelsea would be a force to be reckoned with next season. He made that statement after the most sterile Chelsea performance in recent memory.
Maybe if Chelsea finally bought a good, experienced goalkeeper, centerback, midfielder and striker they would be a force next year.
So it’s all good,they’ve just bought another child winger for £44 million and a 20 year old midfielder in a Las Palmas team that’s probably getting relegated.
Slap your bets on Chelsea winning the league next year!
Will
What makes a top-level manager?
Football365 doth protesteth too much, methinks. Andy’s email was not far off what a lot of people are probably thinking and the fact that ‘Ed’ thought it needed two interventions says a lot.
This was after I managed to play whack-a-mole with all the mobile ads that pop-up before I could even read the page. All waiting to be fed by awful click-baits columns that the brilliant MediaWatch would rip a new one of on a tabloid.
I had originally intended to raise the issue of what makes a good football manager – given so much is written about them – Pepball is over, is Arteta bottling it, is Slot good or bad or just leveraging Klopp’s team etc. A lot of speculative codswallop from columns, fans and pundits alike.
But seriously, when you look at Tuchel going from Bartender, Mourinho from Translator – Wenger, Eriksson, Vilas-Boas, Grant, Houllier, Sacchi, Parreira, Sarri, Nagelsman, Rodgers never played professional- at least at any level or for any length of time before being injured or cut. And now the March of very young managers coming on the scene too.
it is almost the rare case where a former professional ‘great’ becomes a manager and is successful at the highest level.
Even the best managers of the two winningest (?) teams in England – Liverpool and United – who all had professional careers (Busby, Ferguson, Shankly, Paisley and even Klopp) didn’t win a lot in their professional careers.
I suspect it’s more to do with having a different viewpoint on life and the game. When you don’t come in thinking you are the best, that they need to play like you ‘played’ as opposed to having a philosophy about how to play, perhaps your ideas translate better. Or even are honest about their own capabilities- as in Klopp saying he was never great but knowing what great is – versus perhaps the shouty Roy Keane types – expecting everyone to drop to their knees in adulation or just because they are rhe shouty types – not realizing it won’t get everyone running themselves into the ground for you?
But would love to either read some quality analysis from F365 columnists or some interesting letters on the subject.
Paul McDevitt