[ad_1]
Send your thoughts to [email protected]
Fulham would benefit from Arsene Wenger appointment
I know Arsene is being linked to seemingly every job out there – from Real to most amusingly, given Gazidis is there – AC Milan, but surely a club much closer to home could benefit from him taking the reins there.
I’m talking about Fulham, who are sitting at the foot of the table.
Arsene proved adept at resurrecting the fortunes of London’s most successful club – adding title 11, 12 and 13, while also almost doubling our FA cup wins, so why can’t he take over at London’s oldest club?
The Fulham fans are largely a nice bunch and will afford Arsene the patience required but he will also get them playing lovely football at, for my money, the loveliest stadium in the league.
He won’t have to travel too far from his North London home and I’m sure few gooners would begrudge him the chance to take over this particular London club – and hopefully stuff local rivals Chelsea in their derby when they meet.
So Fulham fans – would you take Arsene? He could bring in Steed as his badistant.
Graham Simons, Gooner, Norf London
The Southampton way?
Who are we? We are Southampton, meat for the top 6 grinder, doomed to relegation in the next 3 years. We are what Sunderland, Villa, Swansea, WBA were in recent history. We don’t have a style and our prize academy graduate of the moment is sometimes substitute James Ward-Prowse, a good Championship level player. Our atmosphere is toxic. All this for the 5th highest season ticket price and around the 20th largest turnover in the world may I add.
Here’s who, despite the Koeman era and European nights, I would prefer to be…
We are Southampton. We are a team mainly constituted of academy players. Sometimes the players are exceptional (Shaw, Lallana, Oxlade-Chamberlain) and we are in the premier league or towards the top of the Championship. Sometimes the talent in the academy is lacking and we’re in League one or towards the bottom of the Championship. Nonetheless, we always field a healthy number of academy players. Because we give them a chance, talented youth from all over the country are attracted to come to us, age 14 or so.
We always aim to play attacking football, on the front foot. Even if it means we get beat 5-2 sometimes. Once again, this philosophy attracts talented young players who want to play in this way. The fans are OK with this, because the intent to attack is there and they are entertained. They also buy in to the club’s identity.
We accept that the best academy players will move on, but they will do so for a substantial profit. The money doesn’t need to be re-invested in transfer fees and high wages, so it is instead re-invested in making ticket prices affordable. It’s a full house every week, a place central to the community and city’s identity, rather than vehicle to further business interests in foreign markets.
The Premier League is nice. I enjoy watching the best players in the world every week and I loved 2014-2016, when we were the best of the rest. At the same time I loved 2010-2012 just as much with back-to-back promotions and a Johnstone’s Paint Trophy to boot. If it meant that we meant something, stood for something, WERE something, I’d take relegation over this flavourless gruel.
Others may not agree, and maybe I’m being short-sighted and idealistic, but right now, it’s how I feel. I long for the days when a visit to St.Mary’s was a joy and not a chore.
Jon Tucker, Southampton
Southampton, what were you thinking ?! I’ve got an idea…
City 6 Southampton 1 was no real surprise. Being 4-1 down at half time was disappointing. Getting it back to 3-1 then conceding with the last kick of the first half was unlucky. But seriously why did Hughes essentially play a 4-3-3 against the best team in the land !?!? City wandered through them like the proverbial knife through hot organic, reduced salt with a hint of olive oil buttery type substance……
There’s no point going over it again as they could have had 13 players on the pitch and still lost. If you look at the squad there are obvious deficiencies:-
6 goalkeepers (its true check for yourself !?!?) McCarthy has been decent in all fairness.
11 defenders – I scanned the possibilities like a drunk fat man at a dodgy Thai brothel desperately trying to find something acceptable, it’s mediocrity personified.
9 midfielders – no one really stands out as somebody you can build a team around. Ward Prowse seems the only candidate ? Good at free kicks, can bad in a corner, needs to be further up the pitch with license to roam and pick a pbad. Lemina seems atrocious no idea why Hughes keeps picking him ?!
7 forwards – Ings has been good and surely Austin is still decent? Long seems a bit that in the tooth and Gabbiadini I think is in hiding somewhere and his twin brother is doing a terrible job filling in for him.
But all is not lost, I think the answer is to copy Conte when he got to Chelsea and go with 5-3-2. Before the change Chelsea were leaking goals, not creating enough chances and not looking particularly well drilled…. sound familiar Southampton fans !?!? So here goes:-
GK McCarthy
CB Vestergaard Yoshida Hoedt
WB Redmond Bertrand
CM Romeu Hojbjerg Ward-Prowse
CF Ings Austin
This gives solidity through the spine, license to attack and provide the crosses from Redmond and Bertrand, surely 2 decent players who can bang a few crosses in. I know Redmond is a winger but look what it did for Moses !? Soares has done okay but quality in the attacking third with pace is required.
Ings and Austin – 2 old school strikers who can be available for Ward-Prowse pbades and be there for the multitude of crosses from Redmond and Bertrand.
Watford and Fulham are the next 2 games and it’s important the get something as then it’s United and Spurs…..
It feels like Hughes is grumpily, fastidiously, melding his team into a grey gloop of low quality, just get over the line and stay up so I can collect my bonus which is something the Saints fans don’t deserve. As recently mentioned in another article there are some very poor teams fighting it out for relegation and Southampton shouldn’t be one of them.
Ian (trying to write mails about clubs outside the ungrateful whining (allegedly) top 6) LFC
Defending the criticism of the criticism of Liverpool
To Alex (Irishman in NY),
“…but TAA won’t get the same shit from fans cos he’s English. That’s a fact.”
Really? I wonder why Henderson, even as captain of LFC, is not given the same accord. This is triple mixed standards, it seems.
Seriously, bro, take a pill chill and enjoy each game as it comes. Its the best way to enjoy this season, even when Hodgson was in charge. Remember the saying, if you don’t love ’em at their worse, you don’t deserve ’em at their best….
DJ, Singapore but LFC forever….
To Alex, the Irishman in NY, I’m not trying to change yours or anyone elses opinion. I’m just calling for a little perspective.
You continue to throw around the word awful, but Liverpool are not awful. Southampton are awful (sorry saints, you’re the first ones that spring to mind after that shellacking at the weekend). Liverpool are pretty good, with a lot of room for improvement.
As for TAA, I think you’ll find that him being English is not the main reason for him not being criticized. See Raheem Sterling for media and fans alike being very capable of sending criticism the way of an Englishman. No, Trent is not heavily criticized because, even if you refuse to accept it or are perhaps suffering from some sort of Men in Black style memory wipe, he has been largely very good (yes, mostly last season) and reliable in what is the very early stage of his career. He may not be the next big thing. He could easily be the next Martin Kelly or Jon Flanagan (shock – also both English).
Believe it or not, I don’t think we’ll win the league. I would be happy to just be in the conversation by 6 or 7 points. But please, don’t continue to flood the mailbox with negativity about how ‘awful’ we are and how it could potentially all fall apart like it has before (you don’t believe it will apparently, but still chose to include an example of how it could?).
And please, do not continue to wax on about the attack of last season and disregard the difficulty involved in transitioning into a team that is BOTH defensively solid AND good in attack. It will take time, and being on the bumpy road in the meantime does not make us “awful”.
Have a little perspective man.
Ryan C, LFC
European Super League – an alternative take?
Having read, watched, listened to various takes on the European Super League it is very apparent that the attitude toward this is one of great negativity. With the Sunday Supplement Panel giving it, really, a right old pasting.
So, here is me giving me a retort to all of the negativity that surrounds it and we’ll see how I fair.
First, I’ll start with the only drawback I can see of the plans…..11 sides who are unable to be relegated and 5 guests. This to me is manufactured and deteriorates the jeopardy of a league system. However, given these were preliminary talks I presume the ideas men wanted to get the big clubs on board. Ways around this would be to have a split of 4/5 NFL style conferences and finish last in your conference and you are relegated back into the league system of your respective nation. But given how the respective Big 5 European leagues will be taking a huge hit you’re in a political minefield and is obviously an area which needs work, but I’m sure can be resolved.
So that aside, wouldn’t it genuinely be incredible? Let’s be fair, watching a lower table clash between Roma vs Man United is going to be a hell of a lot more interesting to most casual fans/tv audiences than last night’s game between Fulham and Huddersfield. Having high profile games between the biggest clubs and the best players on a weekly basis, wouldn’t this improve the standard of the game beyond what we see today, even in the champions league? Given this would be by far and away the most difficult club prize to win the prestige would almost guarantee you would gather all of the world’s best talent in 16 sides.
It also doesn’t mean that the rest of the footballing world comes to a halt. And with a promotion relegation system eventually put in place you can get domestic football champions into the league and allow them to go further and thus the romance still exists.
Opposing views say that the fans are be taken for a ride with this scenario, but are they really? Wouldn’t this actually be a better product than we are subjected to already? You’d still be able to go to most games, even season ticket holders will be able to go to every home game still, as there is no mention of round the world games. Which, by the way if you look at the success of the NFL in England is nothing to fear. The attitude seems to be that we should be able to go to EVERY game, again the view appears, to me, to be littered with entitlement. And if you can’t go it doesn’t make the game any worse for anyone else and there are a plethora of fans who would love to go in your place.
During some of the discussions a question was asked as to whether the clubs should be ashamed in undertaking these talks. That is utterly ludicrous, I’d be more ashamed if the club rejected the chance to potentially talk about furthering its revenue and hearing what ideas are out there to further the game. Even if they are just talks. As a business you’d be silly not to at least talk to someone who is suggesting you could boost your revenues with some changes.
It’s almost as if people are reticent to change. Shock. The outrage seems stemmed in the idea that we shouldn’t break from tradition and personally I’m glad that these journalists and pundits don’t run the game. As the majority I have seen have an attitude which is in keeping with stemming the flow and almost an immediate negative reaction to any change. Look at the similar amount of derision surrounding the nations league, which is actually one of the best initiatives from a fan’s perspective in the entirety of my life time.
Gary
Missing two up top
My 11 year old son (centre mid creator) told me last night that his school coach had him play sweeper against the toughest team in their league at the weekend as they knew they would be under tonnes of pressure and my boy would be needed more to defend than usual (in other words, they parked the bus…). That got me thinking of Mark Wright at Italia 90 where dear old Sir Sobby Bobson pulled the sweeper formation out of the hat to redefine our World Cup fortunes. That got me thinking (bear with me here….) about why that formation is dead as the proverbial dodo these days. Which got me thinking (seriously, just wait) to current formations and how isn’t it funny that these days almost every team in the EPL plays with only one out and out striker, with wingers or attacking midfielders buzzing around that one striker. Kane, Aguero, Arnautovic, Richarlison, Lukaku etc.
Which (here it is!) got me thinking about the good old days of a solid no nonsense 4-4-2 formation with 2 strikers up top. For me (aged 44) those were the glory days of football. Rush and Aldridge, Cottee and McAvennie, Hughes and McClair, Durie and Dixon, Klinsmann and Voller, Bright and Wright, Henry and Bergkamp, Rooney and Van Nistelrooy, Shearer and Sutton, Gullit and Van Basten. The days when it was virtually unthinkable not to play 2 strikers. Anyhow, I miss those days. As a Hammers supporter I have a big soft spot for Jimmy Quinn and Trevor Morley, though I couldn’t tell you why if I had a thousand lifetimes. Anyone else got a favourite iconic strike duos?
Mike, Cayman
[ad_2]
Source link
