Let’s see if you can guess who they are, according to one mail boxer. we also have lots on Raheem Sterling and some views on breaking down defenses and.
Stand Down. It’s FineSterling will be staying as he’s in the pictures for Liverpool’s new training kit. Phew.
Stu, Southampton
Dear Brendan…
With the complete misuse of the Suarez windfall, serious underperformance this season compared to objectives, and your star performer now clearly stating he wants to leave, please tell me more about how you definitely won’t ‘do a Spurs’.
Yours schadenfreudely,
Alex G, THFC (welcome to our world)
Liverpool Need To Accept Europa Status…
This whole Sterling affair has highlighted a few things but not the story of greed that the media is trying to push. Most rational onlookers will agree, I think, that this has nothing to do with Sterling being greedy, but simply being ambitious. Which is why the fans (and the loving media) are so up in arms. They still deny the truth.
People have compared Sterling’s attitude unfavourably with that of Hazard and Ronaldo at the same age, suggesting that Raheem thinks he’s all that already. But actually, again, they’re plain wrong. Ignoring that neither of the latter spent this point of their career being overplayed or played out of position, both of them started out at decent but not excellent clubs – Lille and Sporting respectively. These clubs are generally found in the Europa League, not amongst the challengers but there all the same. But eventually, both these players outgrew their surroundings and peers. They needed more. They wanted the Champions League and title tilts. Did they join Chelsea and United just for the money? No…they just wanted to step up to the next level to develop.
And this is the bit that the Liverpool loving media and their fans refuse to see. Liverpool are at the same level as Lille and Sporting. They are Europa-level teams. Big within their own country, but not a massive force outside it, unearthing players and selling them on, bringing in good players that didn’t quite make it elsewhere. Liverpool are just richer than most of those around them, and with more history. Like Benfica and Ajax.
It’s my view that the sooner their fans accept this, the easier they’ll find it.
Guy S (he would suit our right wing nicely)
Defending The Hate
While I agree with
John Nic that the Sterling backlash is over the top, especially since he moved to the club via ambition and by following it will follow it out, I can see where the anger comes from. Football and football fans are in their own wee bubble. Football as ‘just a business’ is too simplistic a description of the modern game, yes it has been monetised but I still don’t know too many CEOs or investors of firms (think fans who either own or have a vested interest in their club) who come in to an office everyday to be entertained by the employees at work. Football still retains that deep-seated tribalism and passion that is fundamental to its DNA. When positive it can be a glorious thing to behold but when it goes wrong it beggars belief.
Take for example the Ireland Euro 2012 performance, one of the most abject you will ever see, over three matches a cumulative 9-1 loss, one that in that world of business would have seen CEOs and investors looking to axe management and the poor performers, but instead the fans sung their heart out and supported their team to the end.
Of course this tribalism has however led to some reprehensible actions by football fans based solely on one player wearing another club’s colours. For example I do not think any of the horrid Chelsea fans who abuse Rio Ferdiand would have dared utter a word against him if it had been he and not John Terry who wore the blue for all those years. Fans grow connected to a player and a team, building them up as sporting idols, using them as a form of escapism from in the best of cases the pleasant but mundane modern everyday life or in other cases to escape from deeper darker problems and social divisions. Naturally any change to this will be met with a hyperbolic hysteria not seen when Coca Cola steals the stop salesmen from McDonalds.
Football is a business but it is an entertainment business, built off the backs of the thousands of fans who pay to attend matches, who buy next season’s top after top and who have the advertising slogans of huge club affiliated corporate behemoths rammed down their throat at every opportunity. They are mostly entitled to their views no matter if it is childish or over the top, because after all without them it would just be 22 men running round a field after a ball.
Kev (though De Gea on the other hand will go with United fans love…)
…John Nicholson is wrong on so many levels. If I wasn’t at work I would probably fill a book of how wrong he is. Does JN actually like football or support a team because his article suggests he prefers watching chess and only does this job because it pays better than anything else he can get.
A fan goes through the wringer good and bad and pays a significant wad of cash for the pleasure. Why is it a surprise that a fan’s base emotions emerge when someone doesn’t feel the same. The gilted lover analogy is used and I think the emotions are similar. At the start the emotions are raw and fans are hurt and harsh words are said. It is not nice to see one of your best players flirting with other clubs. It’s makes your club appear inferior and that is not a nice feeling.
The business analogy fails because no fan is just a unemotional consumer of footballing products. You don’t move to another club because the quality has dropped. It’s not like buying an ipad one year and a Microsoft surface the next.
I consider myself a fairly unemotional man but the screams I let out when the equaliser went in in Istanbul were not of a consumer (or possible a sane man!)
Back in your box JN.
Hus (next year will be our year)
…I agree with the overall point the of Johnny Nic’s article on Raheem Sterling. Hatred has no place in football and there is something deeply sad about players receiving death threats, physical and emotional abuse.
Hatred comes with the territory of football. It has to because of the pure emotional ties between the game and the fan. Once you become emotionally attached (as we all are) the swings of the game are akin to craps. The highs are so high and the lows are so low. If you watch the emotion of the fans, let’s say the reaction to Mario Gotze’s World Cup winning goal, that emotion is pure ecstasy. Unfortunately when something elicits an emotion as strong as ecstasy the opposite end of the spectrum, anger, is also somewhere right around the corner.
The Liverpool hierarchy has to look long and hard at themselves in the aftermath of the Sterling situation. This is not the first time this has happened since the new owners took over and I doubt it will be the last. With that said Raheem Sterling is not blameless. As Johnny Nic pointed out, football is a business. Raheem Sterling and his agent taking the contract situation out of house and conducting unsanctioned interviews is costing Liverpool money and puts them in a weaker negotiation situation. I feel that is where the ire is stemming from. Though you’ll always have your super fan that is angry because ‘how could he possibly leave the biggest team in the world Liverpool Football Club’.
At the end of the day Raheem Sterling is under contract. He should be respectful to the company he is working for as he is under contract. The club didn’t chain him to the floor and force his hand he was ill advised to sign a five-year contract at 35,000 pounds a week. Holding out on signing a new contract is one thing but not playing up to your ability because you are unhappy should not be tolerated. And it isn’t being tolerated which is why you are seeing hate. Death threats are never acceptable but the abuse I have heard (booing at the awards dinner and kit reveal) are justified in my opinion because it is the customer not being happy with the product, which if we are talking business, Raheem is part of.
If Raheem Sterling wants respect he should respect the club and those who pay his salary, the fans. Keep things in house and quietly force a move like the rest of us who have gone from one company to a competitor.
Brian (What a mess this situation is turning into) LFC
What If Sterling Was Your Mate…
After reading everything that has been said on the Sterling debate I would like to propose the following scenario that should, but probably if we’re being honest won’t, end the debate.
Imagine you’re in the pub with a mate who is talking about his job, his contract is up for renewal and he has been offered a really good pay rise however he has doubts. He’s not sure that the prospects for the company are not great, in fact they have gone backwards from a good year the previous year and there doesn’t seem to be any room for progression under the current structure.
Your mate knows there are other companies that could offer him the same deal, maybe even a bit more money and where the potential for progression is a lot higher, the recent record of the company is a lot better and as long as he gets his head down and works hard he has the chance of being successful –
according to the football odds at titanbet and elsewhere, anyway.
Do you lambast him for lack of loyalty to his current company and accuse him of being a money-grabber or would you encourage him to look at the new jobs and challenge himself and maybe get some more money for another pint. I think most people if they are being honest would do the latter.
Now someone tell me how this is different to the situation Raheem finds himself in?
On a different note how quality a bloke does Advocaat seem?
Mark (Probably will get battered for this), used to be Gloucester, now in Somerset
Sell, Sell, Sell
I think Liverpool should definitely sell Sterling. He is young and English and will end up attracting far more money than he is truly worth. He had a fine season this year and he does look like he could potentially develop into a very good player in the future but I really do not see what it is about him that makes him all that much more special than guys like Theo Walcott, Ibrahim Affelay, Ricardo Quaresma and Ryan Babel were at similar ages (to name but a few). None of those guys fulfilled on their initial promise. Banking on him becoming what you hope he will become is a huge risk. Selling him for a huge fee and letting someone else assume that risk makes a lot more sense to me, especially if he is unsettled.
People are talking insane numbers for him – anywhere from 35 million to 50 million (!) for a 20-year-old with a history of maturity issues who’s had one pretty good season on an average team. If he gets 100,000 a week, would anyone be surprised if he just fell off the face of the earth now he had been paid? And even if that is harsh on him and he does put in the work, he’s a player that relies on blinding pace. What happens if he hurts himself?
What’s he worth to Liverpool then? (Obviously I don’t wish this on the kid at all, but from a selling perspective it is a legitimate concern.) Maybe I’m being a cynic, but I see big flashing warning signs all over him. If Liverpool can get that kind of cash for him, they would be fools to say no. I say let him go to some team that has more money than sense and is willing to take a flyer on an exciting but still basically unproven guy in a position where the amount of failed prospects is staggering. I will not be at all surprised if he is to be found a year from now languishing on a top-four bench collecting a massive cheque and adding little past 10-minute substitute cameos.
For once Liverpool could be the ones who benefit from the overpriced nature of English players. That is at least until they spunk it all away on the next influx of useless prats.
Eamonn (Istanbul)
Insanity Is…
After watching Arsenal vs Sunderland, having sat in with the Swansea fans (fun times) at home the previous week, I was reminded of that famous quote:
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
While Wilshare was an interesting addition, the game plan did not change. The tactics did not change. And we all knew what the result was going to be. Fair play to Pantilimon though, great performance. Walcott also looked quite sharp if we are looking for positives
Rob A (maybe it doesn’t translate into French…) AFC
How To Beat A Packed Defence
I would have to disagree with
Peter, London’s assertion that teams facing a packed defence you can’t pass into the centre, after all that’s where the goal is. The idea of packing the centre is precisely to force teams wide so they have to resort to hitting crosses into the packed middle!
In response to how to do teams cope with this, I would say it’s a mixture of tactics and individual brilliance. For example, my own team Utd have faced this scenario quite a bit this year. Utd try work the ball constantly from side to side to get the defenders moving, they then try to exploit any gaps that appear. It’s a sound strategy but requires a lot of patience and both a very clever passer and smart finisher. The finisher part has let Utd down this year. They simply have not converted enough chances in the second half of the season. Arsenal have that clever passer in Ozil but may lack an absolutely clinical finisher.
It’s worth noting that when teams decide that one point is a good result, they have very little reason to vacate their defensive positions. If they are well drilled and committed to the plan it can be extremely difficult to create many chances. An early goal helps draw them out but otherwise they are usually happy to camp in their own half.
There is nothing wrong with this type of strategy, it’s most likely to get you a point. It just makes the games very dull affairs.
Dan, Ireland MUFC
…I like the question from Peter, London and thought I’d have a stab at answering it.
This season, our (United’s) approach to breaking down a stubborn back four has been one of two:
* Fellaini
* Not doing it (basically what you saw last night)
But, under the best Ferguson teams, the last of which was ’08, the approach to games like this was simple – relentless attacking. No messing around, just go for the jugular. This, combined with the fear factor we used to possess, meant we could normally score early enough that the opposition would have to come out of their box a little bit. Plus we had a team full of individual brilliance (much like the current Arsenal side) who could pull something out of the bag. I think this tactic worked as well because other teams were under the impression that United would score, whereas keep Arsenal quiet and the opposition grows in confidence from 60 minutes (tired old clichés and probably not true, but I think a fair number of players probably believed it).
Jack (I can only think of Tottenham at home this season where we have done this lately) Manchester
False Memory Syndrome
Memory is a funny old thing, Tim Coyler remembers Chelsea sweeping aside Bayern with an ‘awesome display of attacking football’. I remember a siege-like bore fest with a missed Bayern penalty and nicked set-piece equaliser in dying regular minutes?
Still had a few lagers that night so I thought I’d check the stats…
Bayern
Attempts on target: 8
Off target: 18
Corners: 20
Chelsea
AOT: 4
Off target: 3
Corners: 1
Certainly proved his point. Who says you can use statistics to prove anything?
Dom, London
How To Save The Europa League…
Long time reader, first time writer, etc., etc.
Stu (the original TK421), Chiswick’s mail this morning was one of the best that I’ve read in some time, and is partly what inspired me to write in.
I’ve also thought for ages that the Europa League has been appallingly marketed in the UK, but I have to disagree with Stu in relation to tapping into the hipster psyche to make it work. Frankly, and I’ll fully admit this could be a large bone of contention, I don’t think there are enough footballing hipsters around to succeed in this. It would become nothing more than a competition with a cult following which isn’t really very good, but appeals to a small market; think Big Trouble in Little China, boomboxes and curly moustaches.
UEFA would never be happy with a limited market. Instead, why not sandwich Europa games in between Champions League games, i.e. play them on Wednesday, with the Champions League on Tuesdays and Thursdays. By the time Thursday arrives, the big names have played in the Champions League, and most fans just don’t care about football until Saturday afternoon. With Real and Bayern still to come on Thursday, people would be far more excited about the prospect of more European action on Wednesday.
I’m obviously essentially advocating piggybacking off the success of the Champions League. And the obvious downside to this is that the bigger teams – who have huge sway – would probably throw hissy fits at the prospect of playing so close to the weekend.
But I think the problem is that Europa games are played in the void between the Champions League and the Premiership/La Liga/Bundesliga, etc; Thursdays and Fridays, as it stands, are black holes for football interest.
If you can’t beat them, join them.
John, Cambridge
England Squad: Cr*p
As an Irishman, I know I probably shouldn’t throw stones given the glass house of mediocrity that is the Irish national team. But looking at the England squad today, I couldn’t help but think it is well plain cr*p.
Green, Heaton, Gibbs, Jagielka, Mason, Townsend, Austin, Welbeck and Vardy (!) aren’t international standard.
Even Wilshere, Walcott, Lallana, Barkley, and Sterling are coming off poor or average seasons.
There are four top players (Hart, Cahill, Rooney, Sterling) in the squad. The rest aren’t much.
Welcome to our world, English fans. Mediocrity is easier to take with a pint in hand I assure you.
Dave P, MUFC
Shame For Ashley
I never, ever thought I’d be disappointed and annoyed on Ashley Young’s behalf.
Seriously – Theo f*cking Walcott?
Jonny, MUFC
On The P***
Nick Miller’s piece on the funny side of football’s relationship with alcohol was a very nice way to start the working day.
I’m sure I won’t be the only one to write in with their particular favourite story, but any excuse to mention Arsenal’s 1986 sojourn to Portugal should not be passed up.
Long story short: Arsenal players walk into a bar; get into a fight over a group of girls – with some US Marines; fight escalates to a car chase which only ends when Charlie Nicholas launches a bottle of vodka through the Marines’ windscreen, causing them to crash; George Graham is awoken with the immortal line: “Mr Graham, your team has been arrested for attempted murder.”
And on the theme of broken glass, am I right in thinking that the at some point during the running feud between Niall Quinn and Steve McMahon, Quinnie put his ‘rugged’ team mate through a shop window?
Will O’Doherty
England Have Four Proper Good Players...
