Carrick and Rashford (as striker) for United?

Carrick and Rashford (as striker) for United?

Keep those mails coming to theeditor@football365.com

You want entertainment? England want progress
Sorry, must take issue with Rob, London. Like many people, he seems to think that the point of an international friendly is to entertain the masses. It’s really not. It’s for managers to try new systems, fine-tune old systems, blood young players, do things a bit differently with no particular risk attached…That anyone thinks otherwise just goes to show how entitled we have become as supporters. I know Sky would have you think different but sport can’t always be breathlessly exciting. If you really want England to win something some day then you have to accept that the journey to that distant destination might occasionally be a little tedious.
Matt Pitt

Captain Lallana and other thoughts
Great, that’s all we need. An England performance to give us all hope, just before the next English manager is announced – inevitably as Southgate after that (has everyone forgotten the performance of an actual qualifier vs Scotland at the weekend – should have been 0-3…).

Anyhow, a few thoughts:

People say we have no Leaders out there, well for 27 mins, it looked like we had a leader. Give Lallana the armband. (it also means we don’t have to always pick Henderson)

I have never seen so many back passes since the day when a goalie can pick them up. (on a side note, where have all the indirect fre- kicks gone? have I missed something – are they not in the rules anymore? I used to love the free kicks seven yards out with everyone lined up on the goal line!)

Stones infuriates the living sh*t out of me. Even though he had one of his better games, (i.e. he defended well – lot’s of clearances/tackles etc) when in possession the only thing he seems to do is choose not to hoof it, do some turns and stepovers, then pass it back to the GK who, after Stone’s dallying has not option but to hoof it. His decision0making really needs to improve.

What’s happened to the referee’s foam, has it dried up?
Andrew, CPFC

No way Sturridge wants out
Whenever I see stories stating a player is keen for a move away from a club, I usually peg it on the agent being given a brief to get them out. However, I just don’t see it from Sturridge.

The lad has been nothing but committed since joining and has remained positive in the face of unwarranted and lazy (read: probably racist) criticism.

The fact is he’s probably going to get a significant run-out in the second half of the season with Mane’s absence in Jan and Feb, and I’m sure he’s well aware of that. Against Watford, when we were cruising, Klopp brought Mane off early. While I don’t claim to know what’s in someone’s head, you have to figure it was at least in part to see what a Mane-less side would look like.

That almost certainly involves Sturridge in a greater capacity than he has featured already. Again, I don’t claim to know better than anyone but you’d have to figure the loss of one of your best players would be bolstered by bringing in another one of your best players.

Sturridge’s long-term future is likely to be away from Anfield as I could honestly see Klopp replacing him with another forward who does a lot of the stuff he likes. Short term, though? There’s a league to be won and Sturridge will have a part to play in trying to do that.
Kris, LFC, Manchester

Horrible horrible Ander
Since reading Jake, Dundalk’s mail a few weeks back regarding the rather frustrating tendencies of Ander Herrera, I have felt a strong sense of belonging! After his latest incident with Eric Dier last night, my feelings have resurfaced.

I felt I was in a one-man band, seemingly the only person out of those around me who despised Herrera and his actions on a football pitch, while accepting his exceptional ability.

Alas, this mail is not about his ability, rather the manner in which he conducts himself on a football pitch. The constant over-reaction to being fouled and feigning injury is of course not uncommon in the modern game. This said, he is in a select group who also enjoy various snide assaults on players and yet will run towards the referee in a puerile manner.

The easiest way I can sum his behavior up is that he is akin to the weedy primary school child who spends the day flicking the ear of the individual in front of him, before crying and running directly to the teacher when that individual turns round and hits them in retaliation (See Gerrard’s red card).

Of course I am not overlooking his abilities as a midfielder as has been one of United’s most impressive performers thus far (damning with faint praise) but it would be lovely if you could cut the intolerable whining/snide behavior from your game.

Hopefully you’re reading this Ander, and we can begin to rebuild.
Alex, London

Will Rashford be unleashed?
After reading reports of various injuries accrued during the international break (Surprise!!!), something just hit my mind. Of all teams, United seem to be in particular trouble after their entire back line is injured, Zlatan suspended, Rooney has become <insert joke> plus may be carrying an injury.

Is this the ripe opportunity for Jose to identify his most potent XI? Alright, their defense is still a shambles however you see it without first-choice personnel, but I’m looking beyond that, far up front. One of the important reasons why United have struggled in my opinion, is lack of pace in their attack (and counter-attacks), something you never associated with any Man United team. This is predominantly due to an ageing Zlatan as the focus of their attack. Now with the crisis and suspensions, is it time to unleash Rashford as a striker? (hint: against Arsenal at OT last year, in a similar crisis LVG exactly did that, it didn’t go so wrong did it?). Playing Mata, Pogba and perhaps one of Lingard/Martial behind Rashford would definitely spice things up! Adds pace in attack, counter-attack and importantly diversity in the personnel (Mata the creative passer, Pogba with his athleticism and ridiculous shots, Rashford with raw pace and directness).

What do United fans think about the injury+suspension situation?
Aravind, Chelsea fan (the international break killed my football appetite to the extent I couldnt think of anything else other than write about a rival)

Yes to Carrick. Please.
Just a quick one on the suggestion that Carrick should be included against Arsenal.

I think Carrick is an excellent player and a perfect fit for our midfield. His ability to alter the tempo of a game as necessary is so valuable, and he’s arguably the best passer of a football in our team (maybe Pogba pips him?). I remember seeing him play a chipped though ball/early cross hybrid to Welbeck once…must have been 25-30 yards with Welbeck running between two players and he put it right at Danny’s feet. Beautiful.

More relevant to the game on Sunday, Carrick is so good at organising a midfield and we’re going to need it. In particular, the way he’s constantly talking to Pogba and telling him where to be is good to see. Sometimes we let the £89m price tag obscure the fact that this is still a young player who needs support and guidance to develop.

Can’t wait for this one. Arsenal have looked good this season so I don’t know whether we’ll win, but there’ll hopefully be some bloody good football on show.
Dave, MUFC, Manchester

Blaming Arsene for Ramsey form
In response to NC Gooner, maybe it’s not about ‘blind Welshmen’, but the fact that we have a manger who plays Ramsey in the position he is most suited for and so reaps the benefits? Aaron is obviously going to play every game for Wales as he is one of our only truly international class players (Bale, Ramsey, Allen and Ash Williams if you’re asking). He doesn’t always play well, looking rusty and short of match fitness against Serbia, but if you can watch his performances over the last year for Wales and truly believe he’s only a mediocre mid-table Prem player, then I would suggest your ability to judge football players is lacking.

He was part of a team over the summer that became far more than the sum of their parts, which I suppose is very different to Arsenal and their perennial underachievement. You mention Wenger shoehorning him into the Arsenal team and that is where your ire should be focused. No doubt that Ozil is a better player than Ramsey, so Aaron’s job should be as his backup. Didn’t he score at a rate of one every two games a couple of years ago when playing as a number 10? It’s not his fault Wenger plays him out of position and I don’t think anyone is questioning his work rate and effort.

Seeing as you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about the Welsh, could you please get in touch with your compatriot Bob Bradley and convince him to leave Swansea City? We’re circling the drain anyway thanks to our previous owners (not just another club my arse) and our new (American) owners, but having clueless Bob in charge is certainly not helping. Thanks in advance.
Neil, Swansea

Viva Leeds!
As you rub your eyes and stretch your arms, yawning groggily as you awaken yourself from the short hibernation that is International Football Week, dancing against a tree like those Grizzlies in Planet Earth II (don’t think I can’t see you), let me jolt you with an unexpected tidbit of information: Leeds are actually quite good right now.

As a Leeds fan, this truly is properly unexpected. For the first time in years there’s a sense of positivity around the club, and it’s all thanks to Garry Alan Monk. When Steve Evans was mutually consented in the summer, the sense of trepidation around Elland Road was palpable; what would it be this time? Foreign name with no suitability for the league, solid but unspectacular experienced Championship man or non-league no-hoper? Even when Monk, a stylish, sexy young Englishman was announced, it was only on a one-year contract and we fully expected (and still do, to be honest) for him to be the latest name taking a brief and unhappy jaunt on the Leeds United Managerial Carousel O’Doom.

And yet, of our last 12 matches in all competitions, we’ve won nine, drawn one and lost two. We’ve conceded just eight times in that period, and you have to go back to 27th August to find the last time we lost by more than one goal. Back to the first game of the season if you want to find the only other time we’ve done that this season. We’ve built a defence of experience and no little class, with Rob Green solid between the sticks, adventurous full-backs and rock solid centre-halves. Fluid attacking play is the order of the day – as it was at Swansea under Monk – built on a foundation of fearless young players learning their trade (the only player over the age of 25 near our first-choice attacking line-up is Pablo Hernandez). Watching our second goal against Norwich last weekend was certainly alien to a lot of Leeds fans; intricate wing play worked around the defence, quickly into the box and crisply finished.

However that’s not what’s engendering this feeling of positivity around a club that’s become a byword for farce and scandal over the past 15 years. Doggedly taking Norwich to extra time with ten men, coming from behind twice and winning on penalties in the EFL Cup. A 17-year-old who signed to the academy last year scoring the winning penalty. A tie with Liverpool at Anfield in the quarter finals. Pontus Jansson – our rock and the best defender in the Championship, don’t argue with me on this – sprinting full-pelt into the crowd to celebrate after scoring his first goal for the club. That same player saying he would rather retire than go back to Torino after his loan expires due to his love of the club. Ronaldo Vieira (said 17 year old penalty taker and the boy with the best name in football) scoring the winner from 35 yards against Norwich after we were pegged back to 2-2 in the 89th minute. These are the things which set Yorkshire hearts a-fluttering.

Newcastle come to Elland Road this weekend, then nine days later it’s Anfield. For the first time in a long time I don’t look at those fixtures and wonder what the damage will be to our morale and our goal difference, but wonder if, just maybe, we could be starting something special with Monk at the helm.

Here’s hoping.
Joe, LUFC, Telford (This got a bit out of hand, but it’s not often I can say nice things about Leeds)

Who would you have back at Colchester?
As I understand it, the rules for this one were that the returning player had to still be playing. Steve Finnan is 40, so is Patrick Vieira (bet he could still do a job as a sweeper mind).

Sticking to the rules, I’d go for Greg Halford. I’m a Colchester fan (might have mentioned it before), and for the last few seasons our defending has been somewhere between haphazard and hilarious. Having been relegated whilst conceding 99 goals last season, I had high hopes that a return to League 2 might see us actually winning some games. My limited dreams and ambitions saw us somewhere around the play off places/upper mid-table. Last Saturday we lost 3-0 at home to the side second bottom in the table, the opening goal a result of a pin-point ‘assist’ from one of our own midfielders. We are now 22nd.

Rewind 10 years, and we were good. We played some nice football, and got ourselves promoted to the Championship. Key to that success was local lad Greg Halford. At that point a gangly youth, he played over 100 games between 2004 and 2006. He was our best centre-back, best right-back, best centre midfielder, second-best right mid and third-best striker. The subsequent years have not been as good for either. Colchester have descended unnoticed back down the divisions, and Halford never quite made it in the Premier League. Rumours of a questionable attitude may not have helped, he seems to have gone round a cycle of playing well on loan, getting a move, going on loan, repeat until you hit rock bottom (Birmingham). The Adebayor of The Championship, as no-one has called him, but probably should.

Now 31, he seems to have settled at Rotherham and is playing well by all accounts. Colchester have a team full of nice, quick, technically good young players, but we can’t stop shipping soft goals. Halford would improve the team by a mile, and give the fans a lovely reminder of happier days. So there it is, the sum total of my ambitions for this exercise in dreaming of returning heroes is a Championship defender who didn’t reach his full potential. Not sure if that says more about me, or my team.
Jeremy Aves

Or Palace?
From a Crystal Palace perspective, the question of which former great players I’d like to see back at the club raises an interesting question. In some respects, the answer is easy: Attilio Lombardo, Tomas Brolin, Edgar Davids. However, I’d want to bend the rules and have the latter two when they were in their prime; despite being incredibly fat at Palace and at Leeds United, in the early 1990s Brolin was an incredible player for Sweden, scoring 27 goals in 47 appearances and being a key part of the team that finished third in the 1994 World Cup. Edgar Davids was for a time one of the best midfielders in the world, but was clearly past his prime when he came to Selhurst Park aged 37. If we could combine the Davids who reigned for Juventus with the chippy player-manager who insisted on wearing #1 as an outfielder at Barnet – it would annoy people who get a bee in their bonnet when players don’t stick to the traditional numbers (paging Steven Chicken).

Lombardo, on the other hand, was a cut above everyone else on the field, I’d love to have him back. He came to the club just before one of its worst periods, when the club nearly went out of business, and a player of his calibre deserves to play in a better team.

However, the best possible answer to this question is to sign a midfielder with a high opinion of himself and a penchant for rubbing people up the wrong way, who had a memorable moment in a cup run: Alan Pardew. That way, we could stick him in the reserves and someone else could take over as manager.
Ed Quoththeraven

Let’s talk about Jason…
Before exploring other football crushes can we resolve the Jason McAteer issue first please? Addressing an envelope to ‘somewhere in Liverpool’ is quite cute (not dissimilar to writing to the North Pole), but why would you send a floppy disk and a banana? Is it a reference only Ireland or Liverpool fans would understand or something much more bizarre? I’m struggling to understand and spending way too much time trying to do so.
CP, Cambridge

Oh Zidane…
My ultimate football crush was Zinedine Zidane post Euro 96.

While he was an amazing player – my desire for Arsenal to sign him during the days of Bruce Rioch, I may add, was due to his name.

I wanted to sing ‘Oh Zidane, Oh Zidane, Oh Zidane, Zinedine Zidane, Zidane, Zidane, Zidane, Zidane, Zidane, Zinedine’ – to the tune of James’ ‘Oh Sit down’ which was a popular song of the time.

I got all excited when there were those quotes about Arsenal being his favourite English club but we never did sign him and I never got to sing my chant at Highbury – to my eternal regret.
Graham Simons, Gooner, Norf London

Oh McBride…
RE Paul’s mail about football crushes.

Brian McBride. I had a bizarre fascination with him and had him as one of the best forwards in the league. He was good but I thought he was ‘claaaaaaaassss’.

Every transfer window I hoped Man Utd would bid for him.

To be honest, I’d probably be delighted if they bought him now at 44!
Cormac, Galway

Well done Daniel Storey
I think that’s the best piece of writing I’ve ever read on Paul Gascoigne.

Nothing else to say.
Matt (I’ll never forget Italia 90) Barlow