Unai Emery ‘would be a perfect fit’ as England boss and Aston Villa should happily swap him for Gareth Southgate. Trent Alexander-Arnold is good or bad.
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English Clown Manager Syndrome
Once again the nation that has the biggest disparity in the world between player ability and coaching quality succumbs to the perils of ”England English Clown Manager Syndome’.
Whether its Carsley leaving a midfielder cruelly exposed at the Euros to hold the fort v Greece, thinking Trent is a defender and playing Cole Palmer out of his sweet spot, Gareth Southgate thinking Trent is a midfielder (Trent is like David Luiz: a brilliant footballer with no actual position he can play at the highest level), Roy Hodgson’s infamous boat ride down the seine instead of scouting Iceland, the Wally with the Brolly playing Beckham as a quarter back, Keegan miming a DD cup by the side of the pitch as Luis Figo repeatedly surged through the wide open spaces KKs tactics left him at the Euros or Turnip Taylor substituting England’s greatest ever tournament goalscorer when we needed: a goal to stay in a tournament!! They all have it.
How many world class English managers have there been in our entire history? Ramsey, Paisley who else? No wonder Southgate found the nation’s disdain for his achievements so hard to take. The entire media created and jumped on the Lee Carsley bandwagon after he beat Finland and Ireland. Just one match later ‘Demented English Media Syndrome’ has given way to ‘England English Clown Manager Syndrome’. Offer Pep whatever he wants and then double it.
Ben
MORE REACTION TO ENGLAND 1 GREECE 2 FROM F365
👉 False nines and false back fours – rating England’s players in that honking 2-1 defeat to Greece
👉 Carsley succumbs to England clamour in shambolic Greece defeat that ends managerial hopes
👉 Carsley ‘arrogance’ and ‘useless’ Foden blasted but outcast should tell England to ‘get f**ked’
Lee Carsley and the ‘Gentlemen’ of the Press
Dear Ed,
So that’s the end of that then. Didn’t take long and yet took far longer than I can believe. Why was Carsley ever being pushed forward as a candidate to take the England job? I didn’t understand it. He has no managerial experience beyond the Under-21s where he did ok. He isn’t even English enough to be considered a homegrown choice. At least Southgate had some ups and downs at Middlesbrough to supplement his Under 21 experience.
Yet the ‘Gentlemen’ of the Press seemed enamoured after wins against dreadful Finland and Ireland and acted like it was his job to lose. Well, he lost it. But how did he lose it? By doing exactly what those same ‘Gentlemen’ of the Press have been banging on about throughout Southgate’s tenure and what they eventually pushed him out for – ‘Going for it’.
Southgate was castigated for his cautious safety-first approach to football. We have so much attacking talent. So many stars. Bellingham, Foden, Saka, Palmer, Gordon, Kane, Watkins etc. Why are we so defensive? That must be the reason why we haven’t won a tournament. It’s Southgate’s fault for not letting them off the leash. How dare he only reach two finals and a quarter-final and narrowly lose all of them to the ultimate winners of the tournament!
Well, Carsley continued that approach in his first two games and did ok and then lost the run of himself by going balls-out against Greece with Palmer, Bellingham, Foden, Saka and Gordon all shoehorned into a starting XI that looked like a Fantasy Footballers dream. A Mr Henry Winter tweeted before the same ‘Bellingham false 9. Such a good player he can doubtless make it work. But be interesting to know the reaction of two centre-forwards, Watkins and Solanke, starting on the bench. Good balance with Gordon and Saka wide. Great platform for Palmer.’
That’s more like it! Look at all those talented attackers. Beautiful.
What’s that? Sorry, what just happened?
Queue this morning and a Mr Henry Winter is telling me that Carsley’s plan to cram so many creative players in was naïve. That England had no balance. They were trying to play free-form jazz with everyone on saxophone.
It was forever thus.
Glenn Hoddle was told to find a way to play Matt Le Tissier and eventually did so with a Christmas Tree formation to shoehorn him in promptly lost to Italy and never selected him again.
Sven-Goran Eriksson just had to find a way to squeeze in Beckham, Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney, Owen and Scholes and England won nothing with arguably a much better team than currently available.
Even the arch pragmatist Roy Hodgson was ‘bullied’ by the press into going into a World Cup with Welbeck, Sturridge, Sterling and Rooney in attack and Gerrard as a sitting midfielder to disaster.
Spain won the Euros with two flair players and a team of workers.
France won the World Cup with three flair players and a team of workers.
Italy won the Euros with arguably no flair players.
Even one of the greatest ‘flair’ sides of recent memory the 2002 Brazil team knew if they were to leave Ronaldo, Rivaldo, and Ronaldinho up front they had to have Kleberson and Gilberto Silva not moving from in front of the defence!
England will never learn because the ‘Gentlemen’ of the Press will never let them.
Regards,
Lindsay, Dublin.
READ NEXT: Did you ‘spot’ England tactic? Or think they would ‘automatically win’ World Cup without Southgate?
Another masterplan
Across several matches, and last night all at once, we’ve now tried playing each of our bright young things out of position in a doomed attempt to squeeze everyone in. The only thing that has ever come close to working is to have Saka on the left side, Foden able to occupy that pocket on the right towards the edge of the box, and Bellingham in an eight to the left side. A slightly out of position but left footed Saka instead of Gordon, who just isn’t good enough yet, balances the whole team out.
Gomes for Mainoo and Palmer for Foden works, too. Grealish can come in for Jude or Saka.
Pickford
Trent Stones Guehi Lewis
Mainoo Rice Bellingham
Foden Kane Saka
Jonathan, Sheffield
Emery in
Well, that was awful wasn’t it.
Trying to squeeze in all the best players without a thought to the system they are playing in? We’ve never seen that before in the England team have we…
I know you guys love what he is doing at Villa but I think Emery would be a perfect fit for England.
Works with what he has, great in tournament football, sorted out the mess he picked up from Gerrard in a very short timescale without needing time to implement a “project” (I really don’t like that buzzword in modern football) rather than needing time to get them used to his system.
Unai > Pep > Klopp > Howe etc
For England I mean, not who is the best manager so not meaning to bait keyboard warriors.
Actually, wouldn’t Gareth Southgate be a nice fit for Villa? Sort of a job swap.
Ex player, looking to get back into club management, not top tier but knows the club etc etc
Brian (BRFC)
20 minutes
20 minutes, Lee? 20? That’s insane.
You thought you could pick a team almost entirely comprised of attacking players and set them up to play the modern equivalent of 1970s Netherlands, 1982 Brazil and 2011 Barcelona with 20 f***ing minutes practice?
Give that man the job. At Swindon Town.
Daniel, London
United agenda
No United players in squad for first time in ages.
Worst England home performance in ages.
It’s ten Hags fault!!
Steve (ex-Flixton red), waiting for a messiah…
Colwill not England standard and more thoughts
Come back Gareth, all is forgiven
Not really. Think that defence would have conceded those goals (all 5 of them!) even with Gareth in charge. Where the idea that Colwill represents anything like an international defender came from I do not know.
I was genuinely intrigued by the line up, I thought Carsley was going to come up with a tactical master class but the shape just wasn’t there. Greece were good but they had the freedom to drive a fleet of buses through that ‘press’ . When England press it looks chaotic and just pulls everyone out of position in one move. It still looks like we are doing it because it’s fashionable and we might get the ball back (we never do) rather than because we have a plan. We press too high up the pitch so it’s a pointless endeavour. We don’t seem to be able to do this everyone everywhere all at once football so can’t we just go back to keeping things simple?
A bit of comically bad defending and Carsley all of a sudden looks a bit out of his depth. He surely can’t get the job by finishing 2nd in tier two of the nations league, if he does then that would suggest it was his all along so what was the point in the interim stuff. I hope he is holding it for Pep but if he gets it I hope this doesn’t put him off pushing the envelope. On paper, that line up looked scary bad in defence and scary good going forward. There must be a way. If you can’t play your best players all the time, where are the shitter players that will make this team work? Maddison In for Foden? How does that solve anything? Our biggest problem is left back, closely followed by centre back. I know he has the propensity to drop a clanger but We haven’t looked solid or organised since we dropped Maguire.
Oh and Bellingham, midfielder, no 8, play him from deep, he’s not a striker yadda yadda yadda.
Tom, back here again
Trent out of shape
Quite funny seeing the barrage of blame Trent-Alexander Arnold go in the mailbox. Only England fans could take a brilliant player and abuse him so much. Some seem to think he is incapable of defending. And yet:
Liverpool this season have conceded 2 goals in 7 games.
In the 21/22 season they had the joint best defence in the league
In 19/20 they had the best defence in the league
In 18/19 they had the best defence in the league
Trent was a mainstay of the defence in all those years. He is clearly a player that benefits from clear guidance. He is capable of performing as part of a tight defence, and can contribute more going forward than any other right back in the country. Yes he makes mistakes, but if you look at the team that was selected and think Trent was the issue, then you really don’t watch much football.
Mike, LFC, Dubai
Chelsea smile
I haven’t written in for a while but I can’t hold it back anymore after reading Radu Tomescu’s mail. He talked about how the average position of clubs Chelsea have won are a measly 10th.
Fair enough. But how about another way to look at those fixtures. Let’s compare them to the corresponding results last season.
We dropped points against Wolves, Bournemouth, Westham and Forest but did better in every game this season. The only games we regressed were against City (who expected any differently?) and Palace. Palace would have been an easy win if the ref sent off Will Hughes early in the second half like he should have. The fact that he was immediately subbed off after that decision tells you all you need to know.
I agree Fernández has been disappointing this season but his assertion that we can’t afford to keep playing Mudryk is very funny. Have you watched Chelsea this season? I don’t recall Mudryk starting a single league game this season. Also, Maresca has found multiple creative ways to say Mudryk is sh*te in multiple press conferences. If the board are directing his squad choices, I’m not sure that’s what they wanted.
Chilwell has been living off his excellent performance in the 2021 season for some time now. We’ve all been complaining about him for the last few seasons but he’s all of a sudden become a martyr (like Pocchetino for some reason). Let’s not forget his abhorrent injury woes either. Watch how Maresca uses his fullbacks and tell me if Chilwell is that type of player. At his best, he was an amazing wing back doing his best work in the opposition’s third of the pitch, not in midfield.
Chalobah is a player I like and would have preferred he stayed. He’s a homegrown player on low wages that can play multiple positions and will gladly stay as a rotation option without complaining. But let’s not forget that he’s been available for less than one-third the price of Marc Guehi for 2 seasons now and no other big or semi big club wants him. Newcastle had Disasi as their backup option for Guehi and not Chalobah. That should tell you something.
Maresca has done far better than any of us could have anticipated. We were told he’s a Guardiola type that’ll suck all joy away from the forwards and try to control their every move. The opposite has happened. Do we have some issues? Yes, but that’s expected with a new manager with the youngest squad in the league. Things are likely to improve over time.
We’re top 4 for the first time in 3 years and I’m loving every minute of it. Barring the Bournemouth game that we didn’t deserve to win, we’ve done much better than the opponents in every other game. We don’t talk about the City game cos it’s City.
The next 2 months will tell us a lot about this new Chelsea team under Maresca. If he’s shown anything so far, it’s that we can trust him and I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I hope you can too.
Abdulazeez (somewhere in the UK).
Let’s just destroy it
Thought I would respond to Steve, the old-school city fan.
Not being in advertising, I appreciate his input with regards to sponsorship valuations. He makes a good point that I hadn’t considered. I do wonder if in these sponsorship deals there is a calculation based on primary exposure and secondary exposure. I.e. tv viewers and direct exposure through club and media channels and the secondary exposure on websites like this. As I do believe that would impact the valuations. But even so, it’s somewhat missing the point that City can currently generate high sponsorship deals after the success they have had the past 5 years, it’s about the period before when they weren’t the behemoth they are now. Although I did still find it surprising that as recently as this year there were a couple of deals in the ruling that were considered “evidently above” FMV. But you could put that down to conformation bias if you want.
I understand his position regarding the 115 and the complete lack of potential for a less successful, rich club to have success without an excessive influx of money. It’s something that, even as a Liverpool supporter, I find frustrating. Even though I’m not a local supporter, I’m linked to the club through my dad, who used to go to matches with his dad about 50 years ago and has been a supporter ever since. I started supporting LFC in the mid-nineties, so definitely not on the back of success. They were mostly the nearly men with a cup win here or there, often against the odds as well. Although obviously it’s relative. So I really don’t begrudge the City fans’ enjoyment of the success they are having.
But that brings me to the next point about not caring if the City owners probably broke the rules to break up the monopoly. They didn’t though, they created a new one of only themselves. And at the level the club is at, with the amazing setup they have, clubs like Liverpool and Arsenal have had to be essentially perfect to even be able to compete let alone win. The less said about Utd the better, for a change. And yet City just keep on rolling on, winning and winning. Having created a monopoly of their own, they continue to try to break the obviously flawed system to do what? Enable them to be even more powerful and unbeatable? Or to fight it out with other Arab states as PR vehicles to attract tourism to their country? They’ve been doing it in other sports, they are building amazing, or ridiculous structures. The highest building in the world, the biggest shopping mall, the largest manmade island and if you haven’t seen it, check out the NEOM project and the crazy stuff being planned in Saudi Arabia. City, and now Newcastle is just part of this strategy of “excellence”.
But I want to watch football as a sport and have the best team based on skill and strategy and often enough luck win. I don’t want to watch an inevitable procession of state-owned clubs fighting it out based on who could spend the most money. It’s in no one’s interest for the league to become like the Bundesliga with Bayern or La Liga with Barca and Real. To be honest, if this whole situation resolves to the point that there will be strict financial limits on all clubs to even the playing field and that it comes down to smart management, training, player development I will be grateful to City for pushing the limit on this and essentially breaking the current system. But probably not as there are too many vested interests so it will be managed to somewhat keep the status quo and slowly the league will become even more pointless to watch and removed from the essential act of sport.
Dean, LFC
Regarding Steve’s Sensible Mail….
‘The global reach of city is now vast’ as a reason for why 8 or 9 Mubadala companies invest £250-£300m a year in Manchester City is an intersting viewpoint. Mubadala being the investment vehicle of the UAE state, City’s chariman is on the board of all Mubadala companies. They’ve never thought to invest in other football clubs for ‘global reach’.
‘Keep talking about City and your contribution is gratefully received.’ That’s kind of the point, Steve. City are by a long distance the least talked about ‘elite’ club yet earn the highest revenues in global football (despite which they recently went to court because they wanted the state airline to increase their sponsorship well above market rates, again).
But, as Steve explains, this financial chicanery is immaterial because City are Robin Hood or something.
Obviously we get a continuation of FFP conspiracy theories, perhaps Steve (or anyone) can expand. Who was it meant to ‘solidify’? Name the teams. How did they make UEFA do it? How did they get 14 PL clubs to vote against their interests to implement the rule changes? Why does League 2 have Financial Fair Play rules in place if the aim is to ‘solidify a monopoly of clubs’?
James Outram, Wirral
FAO: Garey Vance, MUFC
“What did you do with yourself today?”
“Well, I trawled back through four years of a football website to vindicate myself by proving the hypocrisy of a man I’ve never met…”
“Well it’s good to see you’re not frittering away your finite time in this glorious life.”
Lewis, Busby Way
MORE REACTION TO ENGLAND 1 GREECE 2 FROM F365
👉 False nines and false back fours – rating England’s players in that honking 2-1 defeat to Greece
👉 Carsley succumbs to England clamour in shambolic Greece defeat that ends managerial hopes
👉 Carsley ‘arrogance’ and ‘useless’ Foden blasted but outcast should tell England to ‘get f**ked’
