We wish this were an Alexander Isak-free Mailbox, but that’s simply impossible right now. Thankfully, Friday night’s reaction to Liverpool beating Bournemouth is enough to drown out the transfer nonsense.
Send your views on this weekend’s football to theeditor@football365.com…
Racist abuse
No matter the occasion, no matter the emotion. None of that matters.
If Semenyo has been racially abused, and i have absolutely no reason to doubt him, then those responsible should be banned and shamed.
Absolutely disgusting.
It looked like something happened before he took a throw in, I hope the pitchside microphone is conclusive.
Gareth (Liverpool fan in Glasgow)
Friday Night Lights
Appears a certain Signore Chiesa has grown out some fetching locks over the summer. Nice to see the barnet full flow (if not yet his Anfield career thus far). A dramatic late winner under Friday night lights, what an opener for the league.
Yet it took under 15 minutes into a new season to once again tiresomely bemoan the VAR; why must this be ? How could that blatant swipe be missed, and how woeful an “explanation” in its aftermath. Disappointingly poor sportsmanship from Senesi, whose face betrayed more guilt than Bryan Kohberger, facial likeness notwithstanding.
We might just be reconstructing a Brendan Rodgers-era tribute side, capable of scoring 100, equally capable conceding 50 or 60. As I’d said recently, this does not a title favorite make. There are gaps in this side. Let’s hope to stay top three places come turn of the year and try to push on. Honestly just grateful we didn’t go full Spursy on opening night and can now kick the feet up at the weekend.
Eric, Los Angeles CA(Not sure who devolved into a caveman for that Semenyo incident but clearly unacceptable and not cool. Stay home and shout your epithets at the wall you sand-pounding n*nce.)
Chiesa redemption
Gotta love Chiesa’s redemption moment.
He might be gone in weeks but at least he did THAT.
Aidan, Lfc (fearing for Wolves tomorrow)
Thank fu…
Thank. F*ck. For. That.
Nick Glover, Scouser in Brum
PS. Hope the vile racist that abused Semenyo has their head wobbled.
F365 SAYS: Liverpool chaos, Hugo Ekitike debut proves Alexander Isak would be luxury signing
Failed attempt at telepathy with Konate at 2-1
[Fingers on temples]
– Hey Konate, they might breakaway and equalize here. You need to be on it…
– Direct VVD to the decoy runner, take out Semenyo if necessary…
– Good pointing – VVD’s got the decoy – take Semenyo out…
– Take a yellow NOW…
– Channel Lucas Leiva and take the fking yellow…
– …aw bugger.
Aidan, Lfc (giving up on telepathy, best not to listen to me anyway)
We’re so back
15 minutes in and the referee and VAR have already f*cked it up.
How we missed it
Anon
Liverpool’s plastic bag
Frimpong better be good going forward because he was a plastic bag at the back today.
Aidan, Lfc (only kidding, with Salah covering he’ll be fine)
Carragher translator
Those of us of a certain vintage will remember the Neville diaries. Along that same vein, I bring you “The Carragher Translator”. You know, that annoying guy who commentates on every Liverpool game and hurts your head? I will attempt to translate some of his phrases into layman’s terms, phrases he used during the Liverpool v Bournemouth match.
“Look at how Frimpong overlaps, we spoke to Slot before the game he discussed this mystical tactic” – fullback does his job.
“Wirtz is pulling the strings in there” – midfielder plays simple balls and is otherwise toothless.
“Liverpool Still don’t look right defensively” liverpool – they need me in there, the own goal king.
“What a goal from Ekitike!” – lucky bobble and tap-in
“That would have been just onside (Salah)” – even a blind man could see that was a mile offside.
“Konate is all over the place” – does he not know how to put the ball in his own net?
“Strange substitution that (Wirtz). Very strange”. Penny lane?
“It’s not quite right” – it’s just not fair.
“He’s got the best song (Chiesa)” – I’m tone deaf, as well as blind.
“In some ways Liverpool may go on to be the most entertaining team in the league” – has anyone got a gimp ball i could borrow?
“………(silence)……” – bliss.
Welcome back real football!
Garey Vance, MUFC
VAR talk
Just to say, I’m glad VAR didn’t get involved in the handball decision. I think if the ref sees the second touch of the hand they’d probably give a foul, but it’s so high up the pitch it’d be a very harsh red card. And therefore I think it’s good VAR to decide that it’s not a howler, let’s just go with the on field ref.
The more they restrict VAR to obvious and consequential mistakes, and they more they let the on field ref get on with it, the happier I’ll be.
Dan, Plastic LFC
Biggest summer spenders?
You guys are risking the wrath of the net spend brigade by featuring Liverpool in your biggest summer spending article.
Don’t you know they’ve not really spent anything and are still funding signings with the Coutinho money?
Chris, NUFC
Season’s greetings
‘Twas the night before football,
And all through the house,
Not a creature is stirring,
As I click on my mouse,
Scouring the net for some last minute gossip,
Tales of ‘we might do’, ‘we won’t do’ and ‘what if?
The usual faces on telly we’ll see,
Keano and Shearer and guest number three,
Carra and Neville will fight live on sky,
‘150 for Isak!’ and why that’s too high.
Last minute tweaks to your fantasy team,
You probably won’t win…
But its still nice to dream,
Rummaging round for your replica kit,
Lost in the days when your team weren’t shit
Monday night football in pubs or at home,
Banter and phone-ins and having a moan,
Offside decisions your granny could make,
‘They’re diving!’, ‘they’re faking!’,
It’s too much to take!
So summer is ending, its days nearly spent,
And winter is promising dread discontent,
But…
Sit back, relax
‘Coz there’s no rhyme or reason,
And whoever you shout for
Have a bloody good season!
(except United….and Arsenal….and Spurs….and City….and…)
John Mac
Cork.
Ps yes I KNOW there’s a game tonight but the season starts on Saturday and the Military Industrial Entertainment Complex won’t convince me otherwise.
Transfer masterclass
The unequivocal best success of the transfer market this season is the sale of Darwen Nunez.
To recoup the money we have paid for a player who by pretty much every metric except work rate failed at the club is absolutely insane. Has there ever been a better piece of business?
I know people might point to coutinho or dembele but those were both good players sold on the back of excellent seasons. Nunez had two very below average seasons and was clearly not favoured by the manager and we got our money back?
The only mark against the amazingness of the transfer is the fact he was sold to Saudi and they throw money around.
Send in your suggestions for best piece of transfer business , I’m curious
Lee
Isak, a-f*ckin-gain
Newcastle are deluded, says Dave LFC. Well, let’s take a look at that.
Isak is on £120k/wk, not £100k, per Capology (I’ve seen 150, but don’t particularly believe it). That’s an offer he accepted, and he accepted it for six years, only half of which he’s served. The contract offers he has rejected have been north of 200k/wk. He wants £300k/wk, to be sure, but we only have to pay him £120 to keep him for three more years because he signed that contract. Dave might also be interested to know that the average EPL wage is £60,000/week, so Isak not playing for half the wages of the guy next to him, but for twice the wages. And Newcastle have been paying him that much since he was only 22.
Also — and this may come as a surprise to wor Dave — Transfermarkt is just a German website run by knowledgeable amateurs and does not actually set transfer values. Clubs that own players set transfer values. Dave might consider comparing the “value” of the players transferred between Premier League clubs this summer to the fees paid for them. How many have sold for their putative value? Newcastle supporters can tell you that Mbeumo’s Transfermarkt value was €55m, and his fee was north of €75m; that’s a 36% premium. Brentford got to set his price, see? Not Dave, not LFC, not Transfermarkt, and certainly not Newcastle United.
Noni Madueke cost Arsenal €56m, 40% over the €40 he’s supposed to be worth. Matheus Cunha’s price represented a 23% premium. City paid at least 50% over for Trafford. Meanwhile €150m for Isak represents only a 20% premium, for Newcastle’s least replaceable player. So, Dave, now that you understand the relevant facts a bit better, does it still sound like Newcastle are asking too much?
Dave may also be having trouble with the notion of dignity; NUFC’s dignity is surely best protected by making Isak report to the training ground every day to train alone until he fires his agent, eats the necessary crow, and returns to the squad. His value will be about the same in January. And here’s something to consider: NUFC can fine Isak 2 weeks’ wages for every match he refuses to play (more, really, after the first offense, but let’s keep it simple).
Considering only league matches, if Isak continues to refuse to play, his wages for this fiscal year will have been consumed by fines come the new year. Extending his strike to June would mean giving back last year’s wages, too. If he refuses to play again for Newcastle, at the end of three years, he’ll have had to pay back every pound Newcastle has paid him. The taxes he’s paid are not refundable, either.
So I’m starting to think it’s Dave that’s building straw men, not Newcastle United and its supporters. Perhaps it’s been attitudes from supporters like him that made people “smear Liverpool daily” all along?
Chris C, Toon Army DC (On the dubious principle that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, the column inches devoted to the Isak fiasco have been of extraordinary benefit in raising NUFC’s profile.)
…The irony of writing this:
‘Are there any Liverpool fans who actually watch and understand football?’
After writing this:
‘And as for giving him a wage increase, just because other clubs want to sign him now: if Isak wanted more money than he’s getting at the minute, the time to sort that out was in 2022, when he agreed to take these wages for the next 6 years.’
As if footballers don’t regularly renegotiate (and secure) a mid-contract deal for higher wages after impressing. It happens all the time, Neil, and to deny this is disingenuous.
Newcastle have apparently valued Isak at £150m (but refuse to pay him commensurate wages). Liverpool are negotiating for a player they would like to sign and have made an opening bid, behaviour that is no different from any other football club’s transfer procedures. For example, Aston Villa:
Villa agreed an initial £14m fee for Cash on Wednesday after seeing three previous bids for the player rejected by Forest. (https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11677/12062227/matty-cash-aston-villa-sign-full-back-from-nottingham-forest)
There’s been a tsunami of articles about Isak and Liverpool because a) we have a large fanbase and b) an even larger hatebase. Engagement pays, ragebait pays and there’s loads of clicks to be mined. How many official statements have you read? How do you know that what’s been put out there has been dropped by LFC, NUFC, Isak’s agent or simply made up by engagement farmers? You don’t.
It’s just weird to treat this saga (urgh) as some dramatic break from the norm…
James Outram
…Too much of the current mailbox is being skewed towards the Isak transfer debate and that has led to some aggravating statements made by both sides regarding their perception of the other.
It would be great if we could have an ‘Isak-lite’ mailbox for the next 10 days as one thing you can say with relative certainty is that nothing will happen (if it will happen at all) until after our fixture on the 25th.
I do not believe Newcastle fans to be delusional. They are understandably sore / frustrated that a valued asset has had his head turned by a team that the player perceives to be a step up at the current time. They have every right to be.
In parallel with this are understandable questions about how such transfers arise in the first place (tapping up etc) – who of us really knows what protocols have been followed here in terms of establishing the basis for any potential transfer.
What we can say with a level of confidence is that players have a club hierarchy in mind when thinking about their careers. Both Coutinho and Suarez felt that Barcelona was a step up from Liverpool (as they likely were at the time in terms of any world club league ranking) before their moves. Although Liverpool would have wanted to keep both players at the time, they accepted the situation, moved on, and in the case of the Coutinho sale, used it as a springboard to take the club forward. That is not to say that Newcastle have to do the same – they have a player under contract, but one who is currently on a path to being a decreasing asset value unless he can be effectively re-integrated.
Let’s have a bit of a breather from all this folks – thank god there’s some prem football taking place this weekend that we can aim our keyboard at.
Sparky, LFC
(let’s have more mails from fans of clubs away from the bigger prem teams please – great to better understand their thoughts and how they feel about the clubs that mean everything to them)
Reeled in
I know I’m biting but seriously how is Will Ford getting paid for saying “Liverpool’s squad isn’t fit for purpose”. It’s just embarrassing. Is his next article going to be about Chelsea being really short staffed in wide areas or Mikel Arteta has massively over achieved.
Dave
West London
More Ford love…
Will Ford has written a contradictory article: that Slot faces pressure for managing heavy favorites but his squad has gaps and holes and the purchases did consist lots of replacements for departing / aging/ and failing players.
In the first place, i highly suspect that the folks that matter – Slot’s bosses. They will look at the enforced nature of the spending, the holes that were plugged and those that remain, and recognize that the squad has just undergone a compressed few cycles of natural evolution. Pure luxury buy was wirtz; the rest were pretty much replacements. The low net spend of £100-150 mil, pretty much reflects and confirms that story.
Slot isnt some Erik ten Haag who spent £200-400 mil, net, over 2 seasons, on new players, then still bombed. Or Jose Moany who outspent everyone (net) for 1-2 seasons right after his predecessor the Tinkerman managed a squad who had outspent everyone (net). Or a Pep who has quietly spent a net amount of £280-300 just this calendar year, across 2 transfer windows, but happens to avoid limelight becos that spending was split in half across two windows, and his squad was still cr*p after the first tranche was spent lol. Or how about Arteta who has spent close to 1bil (net 50-75% that), with maybe 2 cups and a prize silver frisbee to show for. I would think all these other managerial peers would be under way more pressure than Slot.
As i had previously mentioned, disruption, lack of continuity, loss of depth, remaining gaps, would warrant an assessment of “jury is out”/ “sounds exciting but could be flawed and thin” for the lfc squad. They may take a while to gel while having hiccups ( giving their supporters that) and nasty road bumps as they play whilst finding their way.
But this squad is probably also brimming with potential once they have acclimated to each other and to the league. The ceiling is so much higher! This transfer window could potentially be similar to the 1987 window when lfc sold rush and upgraded with barnes, beardsley and also. Just such a potentially scintillating attack. And after initial speed bumps, the defense arent slouches either once we get all our targeted players in and work with them.
I’ll just enjoy the ride along the way, make sure to pad my head and body to cushion those speed bumps, have some camomile tea to calm those hiccups… and by Jan, i’d expect this lfc squad to fire on all cylinders.
Gab YNWA
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