Mails: Every team needs a Lingard or Welbz

Mails: Every team needs a Lingard or Welbz

Better. We need to get to the weekend, people. Send your mails to theeditor@football365.com

Don’t diss Lingard…like Welbeck he’s essential
Much as his burgeoning bromance with Pogba and Rashford is heartwarming (and it really is, it’s glorious to see a group of United players that have an obvious personal friendship and engage with the crowd), Lingard’s far more complicated than simply being a ‘willing runner’ with limited output. In many respects he’s similar to Danny Welbeck (unsurprisingly given they’re a similar age and were trained at the same academy by the same coaches for over a decade). Technically capable, intelligent in possession and off the ball, hard-working, but a poor finisher and prone to giving easy passes rather than making assists. They look as though they’ve been trained to be reliable squad players at an elite club, who will fulfil defined tactical roles and improve the performance of the players around them.

In essence, they’re the modern equivalent of Deschamps as a water carrier (with central midfield having become a more specialised and important role since the late ‘90s), and there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this. Most elite teams have at least one, and generally more, players who, although lacking the natural talent and output of others, can perform specific tactical roles and enhance team performance. Understood for what they are rather than defined by what they aren’t, players like Lingard, Welbeck, Pedro et al. are vital for elite clubs to function, and they shouldn’t be expected to perform at the level of their team’s leading players. They allow the attackers around them, and full-backs behind them, to attack with more freedom, they keep the ball moving with pace and accuracy, and they allow better players to excel.
Chris MUFC

England (and the Netherlands): Unlucky
England have often demonstrated that they can play football very badly. You often massively overhype your own team and own players. But you also have a history of being very unlucky, particularly when it matters most. Between Euro 96 and World Cup 2006 England consistently brought one of the best group of players to a major tournament and rightly had expectations of challenging for the title. But this is your record:

Euro 96 – Lose on penalties in semi-finals.

World Cup 98 – Lose in round of 16 on penalties. Potential winning goal questionably disallowed in last 10 minutes.

Euro 2000 – Okay this was a bit poor. You didn’t get beyond the group but neither did Germany and the two teams that went through were Portugal and Romania both of whom were very good.

World Cup 2002 – Lose 2-1 in the quarter-finals to eventual winners Brazil.

Euro 2004 – Lose on penalties in quarter-finals after again having winning goal in disallowed in the last minute.

World Cup 2006 – Lose on penalties in the quarter-finals.

So in six tournaments you were beaten once by the eventual champions, played poorly in one and didn’t get out the group and in the other four you lost out in the lottery of penalties and had two match-deciding 50/50 refereeing decisions go against you. Of course penalties are not a total random lottery and you should probably practice them a bit more but they still contain an absolutely massive amount of luck. So what I am effectively saying is with a tiny shift in luck England could have easily had a number of potential finals and semi-finals over the last two decades.

If you don’t think luck is important in football, just think about your greatest domestic manager and how unbelievably lucky he got during the two biggest moments of his career with his team staring at defeat. The crazy last-minute comeback with Solskjaer’s winner against Bayern and then John Terry slipping with his penalty in the Moscow rain. Sir Alex Ferguson is two tiny shifts in luck away from never having won the European Cup. Just as England are a few tiny shifts in luck away from maybe winning but at least having a very impressive recent record at major tournaments.
Jo, Netherlands (Admittedly I am projecting my own idea of the Dutch facing the same bad luck when we had our own golden generation in the same peirod. But it helps to ease the pain when looking at how terrible the current selection is compared to that in the recent past.)

On England and saving penalties…
The general consensus in the comments section was that John, LA was talking utter nonsense with his ‘I save two out of three pens’ claim. Will Norris, the Cambridge Utd keeper, has saved five out of six penalties this season which by my reckoning is a better ratio than two out of three. Maybe he wasn’t lying, or he has only ever faced three pens and saved two of them?

Anyway, onto my main topic which is England. In domestic football team selection is generally based on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the opposition. Managers will often employ (deploy?) someone to counter a specific threat or to exploit a known deficiency.

So why is it when it comes to England, team selection is always based on the ‘best’ players in the League rather than the best players for the next match? I appreciate this may be tricky for tournaments but for Qualifiers where you typically have no more than two back-to-back matches with one squad surely it’s a sensible approach.

If I was being generous I’d say Malta are a limited team whose sole ambition was to try and keep the score line down. So pick a team that is just going to batter them instead of using skilful tricky players who can unlock a packed defence (of which we don’t actually have any).

Why not play Troy Deeney and Andy Caroll (or a.n.other lump of meat that isn’t permanently injured) up front against the minnows and bully the hell out of them. Sod the intricate ball-playing midfielders, get some unforgiving characters in there who are going to brutalise anyone that comes near them, include a couple of nippy wingers with a mandate to sling in crosses and you are sorted. You can wave goodbye to a back four as three will suffice so beef up your attacking or midfield options.

At the end of the day the result is important not how it was achieved and I’d rather an ugly, unforgiving drubbing of the opposition than 80% possession and a 2-0 win.
Matt (CUFC) Cambridge

On that Cantona quote
I’m impressed by Graham and how he ‘and [his] mates from school worked it out years ago’. Except for the fact that they got it wrong (and Nick Miller got it right).

Cantona wasn’t the sardine. The sardines symbolised the juicy morsels that journalists feast upon.

It was a meta and self-referencing gem of a quote. A quote about quotes for those after a quote.
Antoine (LFC) Paris

No characters? Behave…
Ah yes, the old ‘there’s no personalities left in the game’ line, today trotted out by Graham Simons, Gooner, Norf London. Youngsters today are too focused on being good at their job to be drinking and carousing around. This is not just a football thing, you get it in snooker (oh for the days of Hurricane Higgins and Jimmy White..ignoring Ronnie O’Sullivan) or tennis (oh for the likes of John McEnroe…ignoring Nick Kyrgios) and many other sports. Every generation looks back on the past as a golden age while ignoring their own.

But this is Football364 (Christmas Day is always a bit barren) so let’s look at that. The first point is what do we mean by ‘personalities’. In the case in point it was Eric ‘King Eric’ Cantona and personality meant common assault, stamping on opponents and calling your manager a sh*t. In years past personalities would have been George Best, Alan Hudson, Paul Merson etc all with a common thread. But, yes, for all of their personal faults they certainly bought something exciting and different to the game.

So, there are no personalities in the game today. There is no-one of the likes of Mario Balotelli disrupting things, no-one with the off-field issues of Wayne Rooney’s early career, no footballers knocking around with Miss World (is that still on or has Donald Trump finally put the nail in that coffin) except Gerard Pique married to Shakira or Peter Crouch married to a winner of Strictly Come Dancing. We live in an age of managers such as Jose, Pep, Klopp, Simeone etc but no personalities. David Beckham is only a couple of years into retirement but no personalities. Neymar, Hazard, Messi, Ronaldo and Bale doing incredible things on the pitch but no personalities.

Luis Suarez…LUIS SUAREZ but no personalities. Zlatan Ibrahimovic for the love of the lord. Karim Benzema. Jamie f-ing Vardy – a man powered by skittles vodka and Red Bull.

The ‘no personalities’ thing fits with other clichés.

· Each time a one-club man retires we hear we will never see the like of them again. Giggsy isn’t it, Scholes, Red Nev, Jamie Carragher…all last of their kind. Except John Terry obviously. And Francesco Totti, Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta and Tony Hibbert.

· Each time an old style manager leaves they are the last of their kind. Ron Atkinson, we won’t see their like again. Except Big Sam obviously. And Steve Bruce, Tony Pulis and Ian Holloway.

· There’s no magic of the cup anymore…except Hull City getting to the cup final. And Wigan winning it. And, I know it was the League Cup, but Bradford in the final. And Cardiff. And Portsmouth.

No personalities, no magic, no innovation? This is the golden age!
Micki Attridge

Cesc Fabregas: A nice boy
Graham Simons, Gooner, had a little dig at Cesc Fabregas and his personality. Fair enough, but I have an anecdote to counter that.

When Cesc first came to London, Arsenal put him in a house with a landlady who looked after him, made his meals, washed his clothes and stuff. When he started playing for the Arsenal team, my mate was a season ticket and sat in the seat next to the landlady. Every game the first thing that Cesc would do when he ran on to the pitch was wave to this lady. She told my mate that he really was a lovely boy.

The guy sitting on the other side of my mate, who didn’t know the landlady, wondered out loud why Cesc was waving towards their section. My mate told him they were best mates and it was him he was waving at. He never let on, and who knows if that guy still tells the story of how he used to sit next to Cesc’s best buddy.

Anyway, the point of this story is to show that, even if Fabregas is not the most interesting personality, but he was at least a thoroughly nice teenager.
Simon, LFC (hence no allegiance to Cesc at all)

More goalkeeping talk
Nice email from John, Los Angeles. One of my pet hates in commentary is when a shot flies wide and it’s said the keeper was “beaten”…in fact I sent this into the mailbox about a year ago:

As far as my knowledge of goalkeeping goes, I’m pretty sure they are trying to prevent shots going into their goal, so how they have been ‘beaten’ by a shot that doesn’t go in the goal completely baffles me.

Furthermore, in the scenario where a striker has missed/hit the post and failed to score, I would say that it is the striker that’s been ‘beaten’, and yes this applies even if the keeper wouldn’t have saved the shot if ‘it was two inches to the right’ meaning it would have gone in given a hypothetical scenario…the striker has failed and the keeper’s goal remains intact.
Kevin G

Basically, keepers look good when they’re slow…
All these emails about goalkeepers remind me of my playing ‘career’ many moons ago (I’m restricted to the odd 5-a-side stint now – sob).

I was always the ‘reserve’ goalkeeper for the teams I played for, eg – I was the only outfield player willing to step in if our regular keeper was injured or too hungover. One year I shared the duties on a regular basis and I soon found myself wondering why our proper keeper kept making loads of outstanding saves every match and winning the MOTM awards. Whilst little old me never seemed to have the opportunity to make those saves and consequently never won any plaudits. Despite this, I think I let in fewer goals on average than he did. This reached a peak in a cup final that season where we won 1-0 and the keeper played a blinder, tipping everything round the post, over the bar and cumulating in a MOTM award. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t jealous or envious – I much preferred playing on the pitch and I had a winner’s medal at the end of it so I really didn’t care how it was achieved.

But then I finally twigged why this was the case. Put simply, I had the foot movement and could also reasonably read the game to enable me to reach any shots from the opposition with minimum fuss. So it usually looked like I was simply catching or parrying the shot standing up. Our keeper, meanwhile had the agility of a hippo stranded in a pool of mud, and yet once the shot came towards him, he miraculously managed to turn a shot over the bar with full length dive and an outstretched palm. Put simply, his lack of movement and agility BEFORE the shot meant he made the mundane look spectacular.

I’m not suggesting Joe Hart’s save was a result of a similar lack of reading, but it does make me appreciate good goalkeeping in a different light since my ‘epiphany’ that may not usually make it on the highlights reel after the match. I suppose this has parallels with a defender making a spectacular sliding tackle. It looks great and draws a cheer from the crowd, but then you sometimes wonder why they needed to make that tackle in the first place if they were out of position, too slow to react, not reading the game properly, etc. So I suppose I am basically saying I am the keeping equivalent of Paolo Maldini…
Rob (‘Two-thirds of penalties saved’ my arse) Leicester

Let’s not be snooty about casual ‘fans’
I enjoyed Steven Chicken’s article about half-and-half scarves this morning, in particular the dissection of self-perceived Real Fans.

In a niche reference, a few years ago I wrote a piece in the Streatham Ice Hockey Club programme about what I referred to as ‘shopping bag supporters’. Growing up in Kent and watching Invicta, the games were at 5.15pm on a Sunday. For the majority of fans, the whole day would have been planned around getting to the dingy, cold, dirty repurposed aircraft hangar with its temperamental lighting, atrocious sound system and uncomfortable seats. We were, in Steven’s definitions, the hockey equivalents of Real Fans, enjoying our team’s success but suffering at the same time. Then, in 2003 I moved to Nottingham, and started occasionally going to Panthers games in the Nottingham Arena. It was a world away from the Gillingham Ice Bowl – the seats were comfortable, you could see and hear everything properly, and it was warm enough to sit in a t-shirt. One thing I noticed was the number of Panthers supporters who would come in laden with shopping bags. They tended to be people who just sat and watched, rather than joining in with songs or chants. It was easy to sneer at them, and suggest they weren’t proper fans, they were people who’d had a day out in town, got something to eat, and then gone to the hockey because there wasn’t anything on at the cinema or theatre they fancied. There was even a theory that hockey fans and Panthers fans were totally separate entities. This may have been based on something about Manchester United.

The awkward reality is, much like ‘plastic fans’, ‘football tourists’ or the infamous ‘prawn sandwich brigade’ (no brigade can ever be a force for good, that’s why they renamed it the Fire Service), these’“shopping bag supporters’ are people we really need to be nice to. There are more of this sort of casual fan in football than in hockey, but they do still play a part in keeping clubs going, especially outside of the top few clubs. They’re the ones who spend comparatively more on refreshments, or souvenirs/merchandise (from the official shop or street vendors); making more of an event of going to a match than simply going to a match and going home again afterwards. It’s natural to want everyone to be as dedicated and passionate as your most loyal supporters, but it simply isn’t possible. Ultimately, it makes for a much easier life if you just let people get on with their lives while you get on with yours.

A final point on Rupert the Bear – it’s okay to hate him if your hatred is based on him first appearing in the Daily Express.
Ed Quoththeraven (still maintain that if they were really hockey fans they’d watch the Lions)

…Completely agree with Mr Chicken.

Let me enjoy my football as I want. I don’t give two s***s about your ‘give the clubs your money’ nonsense; for lower-league regulars, sure, but I could only afford to go to a couple of Premier League games if I wanted to (except for Arsenal of course, tickets are nigh-on impossible for good games anyway) and they’re bloody rolling in it.

£7 for a rough book of inane musings from footballers on why playing Sunderland on Wednesday is important, or £10 on something that’ll keep your neck warm. I’ll go with the latter. Even so, fair respect to the former as well, if that’s what reminds them of why they love football.
Tom (First scarf I ever owned was an Arsenal-Chelsea quality game, I could swear these scarves have been going as long as I have) West Hampstead

Half-and-half scarves: Evil
I’m sure this one of many mails on this subject.

Mr Chicken just doesn’t get it.

Half-and-half scarves are little to do with ‘the over-commercialisation and gentrification of football’. It’s simply that is has a rival’s badge on it!

I think a lot of people don’t mind if it’s a half-and-half scarf from a Champions League semi final against Bayern/Dortmund/Milan et al, but a Liverpool/Manchester United half-and-half scarf has the badge of your biggest rivals on! Why on earth would you want one?

There also seems to be the undertones of a man who, and I’ve read it on your site before, doesn’t actually get why people are ’empassioned’ when it comes to football.

Maybe when hes figured that out he’ll understand the contempt for half-and-half scarf wearers.
Graham, LFC

Football haikus
Nice job at a haiku by Sean, Coventry in the morning mailbox – took me a second read to note the 2nd line only had 6 syllables, but certainly to the point and punchy. Top work.

How about these…

Man United fans
Be careful what you wish for:
Jose Mourinho

To Liverpool fans
26 years is too long
Next year is your year

The Premier League?
No, I’d rather be watching
Exeter City
Terry Hall, Switzerland

Some days you are the pigeon and some days you are the statue
I must say, The Office references in the article on how Koeman has improved Everton, and then seeing ‘the real quiz’ mentioned in the mailbox, great work!

I can now imagine Bill Kenwright demanding that Everton must do better and being met with a response of “What is ‘better’? On a graph of people versus task, where does the line go?”, resulting in his dismissal.
Andy Wilson