Date published: Wednesday 23rd February 2022 8:28 – Editor F365
Who holds the answer to the left-back conundrum for England? Plus, toxic Twitter, Manchester City bottlers, women’s football and lots more…
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England’s left-back conundrum
A bit of discussion going on about the potential England squad at the moment, which I am always up for. What strikes me is that, while we have more right backs than you could shake a stick at, we only have one currently available left back, apparently, and it’s Luke Shaw who’s been crap all season. So I have to wonder, what are our options there?
Gareth is obviously a fan of moving Trippier across to the other side, but now he’s injured too and it doesn’t work very well anyway. Saka is theoretically an option as a wing back, but he’s now establishing himself as a forward very effectively so maybe not any more.
So this leaves, to my mind, two currently unexplored options. The first is Ryan Sessegnon, who ticks all the England pathway boxes and is currently doing… okay, filling in for Reguilon. However, he’ll almost certainly be back on the bench once Reggie is available again and can’t really complain too much about that. He’s under possibly the best manager to develop into a quality wing back with Conte, so it might be worth taking a chance on integrating him into the England setup sooner rather than later. And we know Gareth loves a defender with a bit of pace.
Option number two, my preference, is West Ham’s Aaron Cresswell. Pros: he already has 3 England caps under Southgate, he’s brilliant at set pieces, he’s a pretty solid defender, he can play as part of a back 4 or 5, he’s part of a team performing extremely well. Cons: he’s 32, has some injury concerns and not a lot of pace. But as far as I can see, that’s about it.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about calling up Jarrod Bowen, and absolutely justifiably so, but is he maybe the wrong West Ham player to be talking about?
Harry (I feel dirty praising a West Ham player, but respect where it’s due), THFC.
‘Twitter fans’
Interesting piece from Johnny Nic about the negative, toxic twitterati fans.
What i’d add is that the rise of this behaviour has coincided with the rise in gambling on players values, either at the bookies or through sites where you actually earn/lose money if a players value changes.
I personally doubt the two are connected, but when you consider that twitter (and social media) is used for dark purposes, and that the anonymity provided allows anybody to pretend to be something they are not, just to invoke reactions it can’t be discounted out of hand.
Take the comments section on this site. It’s filled with trolls with fake names, some with multiple accounts having fake conversations with themselves, specifically targeting certain supporters of certain clubs because they know they’ll get a reaction. I can’t tell if this helps or hinders F365, but it always intrigues me that for a site which talks about toxicity of some segments of fans, that it enables it to happen anyway.
Given how murky this environment is when it comes to intentions, maybe it is just people who get their kicks from making someone angry, but it wouldn’t surprise me if money is lurking somewhere behind too (not in f365 comments, but on Twitter/insta/etc).
Rob, Worthing
I just don’t need any other league…
Some of you lot say the womens’ game is not as good as the quality is not as good as the mens game. And the same has just been said about the Italian league too. I’m living in South Africa where the quality of football is very poor in my opinion and I can’t bear to watch it despite trying on a few occasions. However, I’d like to add a different perspective that I feel is more understandable, will be relatable to some and at the very least more defensible against the woke police.
I don’t do twitter. I do the facebook. I don’t do Telegram or discord or any of these things, I do WhatsApp. I just don’t have the time or the need to have something else that essentially fills exactly the same need. Similarly, the football I watch fills an entertainment need and I don’t need a different form of it to add on top.
I have been watching football since before the premier league started. Yes, football really did exist pre -1992. And I used to watch a hell of a lot more games than I currently do. Now, I pretty much watch Utd games and England games and not much else. I just don’t have time for more than that unless I want to ignore my family most evenings and all weekend. I have “invested” a lot of time in the premier league. I know the history, I know the teams, I know the country, I know the players and I love the football for its entertainment (more often than not). That is not to say there are not other forms of entertaining football out there and I have tried to watch womens football, African football, Spanish football, Italian football, amongst others and it is not as entertaining to me in comparison to what I know and love. That doesn’t mean it’s crap. I just don’t need it. Are you going to convince an Italian that he/she must watch the premier league because it’s just better? Why would he/she bother to watch the Italian league when the quality just isn’t the same. Maybe being Italian, being brought up in Italy with a more successful footballing heritage than England and living in Italy might make them want to watch their own league. Each to their own…
Having said all that, being a cricket fan as well, I am the same about that sport. I didn’t need to watch county games as international one days and tests were enough. I didn’t need anything more. Until T20 came along and I realised I wanted that too. So until someone invents a version of football that is different enough and exciting enough to get me hooked such as 5 a side tournament or a version where yellow cards are replaced by an offended player getting one free punch or kick against the foluer then I’m happy to just occasionally watch a non-utd or non-england footy game to prove to myself that everything else is just not as good as what I love to watch.
Jon, Cape Town (And can we now all admit that Utd selling Lukaku, the man with the touch of a baby elephant, for roughly the same fee we bought him for is actually one of our only ever good bits of transfer business? And if you have to ask what would constitue bottling then you’ll never really understand. Now get back to work)
Lovely…
Morning All,
Ok, Jon, yes, thank you, I’m fine now, thanks for that consoling arm…
To Manjo, if you think that was a minor meltdown, maybe you should get to more places than your settee watching old LFC videos because your foamer mates do love an epic meltdown. Plus, if you’re going to accuse City of cheating, (something to be *proven* to be incorrect, much to your chagrin, I’m sure. You probably really wanted us to be found guilty, even though the facts were shown to be otherwise) looking back at your clubs’ list of misdemeanors is genuinely disturbing. Without going into lengthy details, I’ll just summerise as…”transfer database hacking, tapping up senior and youth players and having to publicly apologise for it, defending Luis Suarez, allowing the district of Anfield to go to shit so you can pick up the surrounding houses on the cheap, Fenway sanctioned for cheating in the NFL, taking money from sponsors convicted of breaking international sanctions against Iran, declaring a world record transfer profit and then asking the Taxpayer to pay for your furloughed staff, trying to trademark the word “Liverpool” (WTF??) so the city in which you’re based (well, probably not YOU, Manjo) couldn’t use its’ own name, sneer at the Liverpool mayor for having the balls to worry that crowds would gather after a title win…which is exactly what happened, of course (trying to set fire to the Liver Buildings??? What?) and, at the very least, complicity in the bottling of the opposition coach on the way to the ground.
I could go on but I’d be accused of having a meltdown.
Good luck against Leeds (hopefully, the breeze will ease for you)
To Mark, exactly. Imagine the noise if City had adopted those tactics?
Just trying to help
Levenshulme Blue, Manchester19
PS. Is that the sound of a James Outram I can hear, scrabbling for his laptop…?
Manchester City bottlers?
Of course they’ll be called bottlers.
Liverpool fans will think of any excuse to feel hard done by.
Rob
Lee asks today whether City will be labelled ‘bottlers’ if they don’t win the league. God, I hope not. If the incredibly unlikely happens, and City don’t win the league, then I’d ask everyone not to use the word.
I hate the word bottler. It’s become largely meaningless. If you lose a game, or a title, or a cup final you ‘bottled’ it. Teams can’t lose a game anymore without the b-word being thrown out, especially on Twitter. It’s almost as bad as people who use ‘fraud’, which is seemingly just applied to any manager who isn’t doing very well (or sometimes bizarrely those that are).
Guess what. Teams lose games. It doesn’t mean they bottled it. The 13/14 season is a prime example, because to say Liverpool bottled it is completely inaccurate. After 24 games, Liverpool were 4th and 8 points off 1st. No one considered them title contenders. They then won 12 of their next 14 games, picking up 47 points out of a possible 52. In what world is that bottling it?
The one game they lost was to a classic Mourinho Chelsea performance, largely caused by one mistake from one player. Even if they had won the Palace game, they still wouldn’t have won the league. Liverpool needed to win 13 out of 14 games, and draw the other to win the title that year. To say they bottled it for failing to achieve that is ludicrous. If you are 10 points clear with 5 games to go and fail to win any games, that might be called bottling it. But losing a single game, or a number of games over the course of a season is just what teams do.
So please can we stop with the bottle talk (and PLEASE stop fraud). It’s juvenile and completely inaccurate in the vast majority of cases.
Mike, LFC, London
Women’s football
In response to BT.
I think as soon as people stop comparing ALL of the characteristics of Men’s football to the Women’s game they can start to enjoy it for what it is. And that is a technically and tactically entertaining style of football(mostly). Watch it if you like it, don’t if you don’t, it’s that simple. I don’t watch my son play and turn my back because they were unable to execute the same gameplan as Man City do, I watch because I enjoy it, completely on its own merits.
It’s not necessarily misogynist, it’s more likely an aversion to change. It happens in all walks of life, anything different happens and the barriers come up and strange criticisms emerge. It’s an odd facet of human nature.
Steve (THFC)
Wading carefully into piranha infested waters with this one, but while BT makes a fair case for the amount of time a sport has been embedded in a country being a factor, they do make one miss-step.
Let’s look at another sport, to start with – Tennis. Men’s matches are 5 sets, women’s 3. Why is that, if not an acceptance of some physical / stamina differences? (That’s a question, not a statement – if i’m wrong I truly want to know.)
BT talks about the suggestion that “women are less capable of doing something physical than men”, and says it isn’t true. Outside sport, it fundamentally is. Doesn’t mean women can’t work in building, but it does mean they can’t carry as much. That’s perfectly fine. Not all men are stronger than all women, many women are far more gifted in other areas and likewise so are many men in others – we all have our own strengths and weakness. But as a base average, men are physically stronger than women. That’s a scientific fact. Look at any discipline in athletics – gymnastics may be the appropriate exception. However, strength and fitness aren’t the only factors in football.
I would suggest that while time a sport is played is definitely a factor, so is investment. Women footballers can be perfectly capable of playing excellent football. What has definitely lacked has been investment, coaching, facilities and as these have been increased here in the UK so has the overall standard. Next it will be that women can see a serious future as footballers, so the sheer numbers of women playing the sport – from kick arounds in the park or at 5-a-sides to professional level – increase. That will see far more players of higher standards in the sport (presumably less in others). As my partner always says, she could have been a professional skiier but she’s never had the chance to find out, having never had the chance when younger. I want to see greater investment in women’s sport, they are just as deserving of the opportunities it gives.
But will we see a day where the women’s game and the men’s is equal if we put the best of the best on each side against each other? I don’t think so. Would Serena Williams beat Djokovic? That’s not misogynism, that’s realism.
But then can’t we just appreciate that they are different? That we are different? One doesn’t have to be better than the other.
FWIW, my foot-eye coordination is pretty average at best – never really developed it as a kid – but my hand-eye coordination is much better. So I gave up playing as much football and played more hockey because they’re similar games but worked better to my skillset.
It’s ok that men and women aren’t the same. Or maybe I’m just a dinosaur, and Johnny Nic / thayden will do another piece about my outdated attitudes.
Badwolf
Man Utd points…
* A little late, but is Yusuf Kampala really saying ,that profilgacy and our defense giving up late goal’s ,when we look in control are progress?? If anything these performances have been like bad Ole games from the 2 full years (the games that ended up being draws ) …I’m with Jon the true test is March …Ole’interim numbers at this point we’re better ( 29 to 22 in 11 games ) and he had to play the likes of Spurs early .
* can Liverpool fans stop pointing out what manager ,we need next by making comparisons to their journey , truth is we could be anywhere , we could as someone said be at the Daglish period (I find that disparaging as we have made less horrible signings ) ,the Evans Era (Strange as his predecessors have won a few 2nd rate trophies ,or we could be one summer from the whole picture becoming clearer and being contenders ( or in other words next year could be our year lolz)…..
*Speaking of next year here’s a scary thought what of if the plan is not to buy a central midfielder , instead we just let Garner come up from the loan route and Make him Matic’s replacement …any thoughts ?
Timi, Mufc
Proof that Rio reads F365?
Rio mocks ‘Liverpool are flying’ comments with bizarre Rangnick claim. Date published: Wednesday 23rd February 2022 11:40 – Joe Williams
And Ferdinand has claimed that “only Man City have picked up more points since he has come”
Ferdinand mocks ‘Liverpool are flying’ comments with bizarre Rangnick stat (football365.com)
Mediawatch Date published: Wednesday 9th February 2022 7:24 – Editor F365
It remains the case that Manchester City are the only team to earn more Premier League points than Manchester United since Rangnick’s first match on December 5.
Manchester United might as well have stuck with Solskjaer – and here is the damning proof (football365.com)
This is the second time that I have written in about that nonsense Mediawatch article with its selective use of stats. I expect this tripe from Rio but F365 should be better at counting games.
Maybe The Editor owes Joe Williams a drink.
Alex, South London
Time to beat my drum (again)
I always enjoy reading the massive cross thread of” conspiracy theories” (Arsenal) …” Dark Arts” ( tactical fouls)and of course my own favourite recurring nightmare ” time wasting”. Having read a couple of Man City fans views on the ( apparently) extremely exaggerated time wasting tactics …I am afraid to say it is time for me to dust down my faithful ” Let’s do away with subjective injury time” drum again. Briefly it would mean EVERY game would last exactly the same length as only the ball in play time would count towards the total( 60 minutes?) …Just think of it…no real point to time wasting other than to slightly disrupt flow of games, remove the art of ridiculous ” bring off the guy furthest away” substitutions…… make pointless .deliberate arguments with referees about the most trivial of matters……All these things would be pretty much redundant.
Now ….either I am a genius( which for the record I am not) OR this must have been discussed and dismissed by the powers that be for reasons way beyond the comprehension of this non genius brain.
I promise this is the last time I shall write in on this subject( I think)
my time is up
Phil( can’t think of what to put in here) Liasides
Players that left England and achieved?
In response to the question “Is there other players out there that left England and achieved as much?” from Paul (MUFC) Dublin.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Gerard Pique did okay after leaving England.
Hakim, Sri Lanka