Mails: No room for Pogba AND Herrera

Mails: No room for Pogba AND Herrera

We are limping through international week. If you want a mailbox on Thursday morning then you need to get mailing theeditor@football365.com

It’s the new Gerrard-Lampard thing
I think I know the answer to the Pogba problem. Thing is, many fans won’t like it.

You remember back to the England midfield of Gerrard and Lampard, and how it almost invariably failed to work in spite of both players being very capable?

The problem most people realised was that both players wanted to get forwards (and in fact were only good when they were). But you can’t have both doing it, and asking them to manage who stayed back themselves was a huge failure because Lampard never stayed back.

Well exchange Pogba for Gerrard (quite similar in almost all ways) and Herrera for Lampard (both entirely attack-minded).

Either the entire shape of the team needs to change to accommodate both with a babysitter (in the guise of Carrick, Scheiderlin, Blind or Fellaini at a push) – a solution that still means they can get in each other’s way – or one of them will have to drop to the bench. Neither of them are natural to any other position and asking Pogba to stay deep wastes about 60 of the £89m we spent on him.

Now for me it’s a Trump voter (a no-brainer), because Pogba is far superior to Herrera, but I imagine most fans (on here) would rather us move to 4-5-1 and dropping ‘him’.

They’d be wrong of course because the stats show we win more with Rooney…
Guy S

Clarification on Pogba
Just a quickie in response to Tunji, Lagos.

I wasn’t eulogising at all, far from it. For £90m jack, of all trades just isn’t good enough, I would be furious if I was a Utd fan. And by cog keeping United ticking I meant the only reason they aren’t towards the lower ends of the table right now.

It’s clearly not good enough but being a solid reliable player in a team playing rubbish isn’t the end of the world.
Rob A (hopefully Murdoch doesn’t follow Trump’s example…) AFC

Assist stats = Amazon reviews
As I’ve bumbled my way through life, I somehow managed to acquire a wife, who further compounded her initial mistake by allowing me to breed with her. This leaves her stuck with an idiot, and me with a bunch of children. I definitely got the better end of the deal, but there are some challenges with parenthood. One of those, is having to buy products you know bugger all about. Since the high street is slowly decaying away, most of these products need to be bought online. Mostly from Amazon.

Here’s the thing though, Amazon is a lottery. Some stuff is perfectly good, some of it falls apart as soon as a child looks at it. So if, for example, you want to purchase an indoor slide for a toddler and there are two options priced fairly evenly how do you choose one? “Use the average review numbers,” I hear you say (I’ve given you all voices. I’ve made Guy S sound like Brian Blessed, try it – it’s fun). And that’s what I did for a while, until I got a couple of shocking products…and then I started reading the 5* reviews, and discovered the worst thing in the world today. Grandparents who leave Amazon reviews.

Here’s what I want to know about a product: Did it break? Did the kid get bored after five mins? Did anyone lose any limbs? Here’s the average 5* Grandparent review: ‘I bought this for my Grandchild, and I’m sure he/she will love it’. It’s more self-congratulatory than my Twitter feed. And there’s loads of them, presumably because Grandparents actually have the time to leave Amazon reviews..who knows? But it’s enough to make the numbers on a piss-poor product look good.

Assist stats, are Grandparent Amazon reviews, and if you rely on those numbers, and those numbers alone, then it’s your own fault that you put Marc Albrighton in your fantasy football team.
Jeremy Aves

Mails on Rafa’s Newcastle
Kevin, Eire asks about Rafa’s Newcastle style this season so in the spirit of singing while your winning, here’s my two cents (CAD).

Before the start of the season Rafa gave a telling interview with a local radio station, after a fan questioned the club not signing Ross McCormack, Rafa explained that given the frantic and unpredictable nature of the Championship, it’s not the club with the top scorer who is usually promoted (as McCormack demonstrated with both Fulham and Leeds) but the club with the most clean sheets. A solid defence has followed with 10 shut-outs from 19 games so far this season.

Rafa is famed for his rotation policy and this year has been no different. After some line-up bingo to start he seems to have found his preferred system and team sheets are becoming more predictable, with a settled back five and a core group of 18 players all appearing in at least six games.

Substitutes before the 70th minute are very rare although we’ve only found ourselves behind at that stage of a match twice, so why change things? ‘Control’ and ‘game management’ have been key phrases with the team typically starting well and finding goals at the right time. I’d wager that Rafa’s ideal match would be a 3-0 with equispaced goals, as opposed to a 4-1 or 5-2 etc.

Despite cries for Gayle and Mitro to be partnered, Rafa plays with one striker in a 4-2-3-1 variation but I wouldn’t describe our play as dull or boring; full-backs push forward, Shelvey spreads play like Xabi and Gayle seems to score at will. Mitro is ever entertaining and increasingly effective while Matt Ritchie might be the most exciting and complete winger I’ve seen in a Newcastle shirt! We’re the division’s top scorers with goals coming from 12 different players, a statistic I’ve recently seen used as a metric for total football and speaking of total football, how about this goal from Newcastle’s now second favourite Spaniard, Ayoze Perez…

Thirty seconds after kick-off, not a single Ipswich player touches the ball, while every Newcastle is involved plus a lovely finish to boot.

¡Viva la Rafalución!
Nik (Shotgun Klopp after) NUFC

…In response to Kevin, Eire, yeah, pretty much what you said. We tend to have an overall strong defensive set-up, with hard working players getting the nod. We look for quick counter-attacks and for Shelvey to be quarterback-like in his passing to the wings or overlapping full-backs. Rafa likes a 4-3-3/-4-5-1. He still loves a late sub and is more than happy to bring on Big Grant Hanley for the closing stages. When Gayle is fit, we look to more balls to feet, having him run the channels or have the ball whipped into the six-yard box (with varying results). The last few games Mitrovic has started and he has proved to be quite adept at the ball to feet but also offers a combative approach from the long ball and looks for the wide players/full backs to overlap.

I sit in the Strawberry Corner (near the Gallowgate End) so my overall tactical view might be skewed and I’m probably talking total bollocks. I don’t really watch the highlights so my opinion is based on what I see ‘real time’ as it were.
Paul, Newcastle

…He’s broadly correct in what he said about Benitez’s style of play and relative reluctance to make substitutions. Typically, home performances have carried far more swagger than those on the road. We’ve scored plenty of goals at St James and this is partly due to the inclusion of Yedlin, Colback and Perez. Away from home it’s far more likely that Anita, Hayden and Diame will get the nod, presumably due to a greater defensive prowess.

Games at Derby, Barnsley and Rotherham stick out as being particularly cagey but at no point in any of these games did we look like conceding. The plan being to keep it tight and rely on moments of quality to win the game. Between Gouffran’s volley at Derby, Atsu’s curler at Rotherham and the finishing of Gayle at Barnsley this has worked out well. Rafa often seeks to close out a game by moving a full-back onto the wing and bringing on a defensive sub but due to the composition of the squad this makes a great deal of sense.

Defences win titles and this is no less true in the Championship, so Rafa’s attitude is commendable. There’s been the odd scare like the home game against Norwich and this weekend when Cardiff gave us a nervous final ten minutes, but these are very much the exception. For the first time in a while we have a likable squad and a manager who has really bought in to the ethos of the club and the city. He’s done an outstanding job so far and this has been the most enjoyable season for a long, long while.

Best,
The Big Twix (Ritchie’s Fu*kin Magic) NUFC

Perspective on Trump and football talk
Can I offer a few observations on overnight events?

1. This is a football website is it not?

2. The world is not going to end, people always think that when change happens. The reality is that everything chugs along pretty much the same for the average schmo. People are nice to each other in their day-to-day interactions even if they then make unexpected decisions collectively. At some point it might be a good idea to actually listen to them instead of dismissing them as idiots and maybe Trump the opportunist is better than an actual fascist (it might be good for the listening to start in France before their presidential election in the spring).

3. While on the subject of ‘unexpected’, it wasn’t actually that unexpected. The media in the UK has focused almost exclusively on negative aspects of Trump while very little on Clinton. This has left people in the UK scratching their heads as to why 59 million people have voted for Trump. Instead of dismissing them as stupid it might be worth at least considering why 59,000,000 people voted for Trump. More than half of the population of America earns less than they did in 1999 while the rich has got richer and richer. That alone should give people some idea. People wanted change and Clinton represented the epitome of continuity.

However, back to point 1. England are playing Scotland in a competitive international in two days’ time and no-one is mentioning it. This is the first since 1999 (when 50% of Americans earned…oh, wait, football right) and surely someone is interested? What about Steve Bruce at Villa, what a turnaround by a genuinely successful manager. He got Hull City promoted last year and could still do the same with Villa after taking over from a sacked Champions League winning manager. Steven Gerrard to Celtic to ‘win’ a league title. Mourinho has taken on another medical team (he does not like doctors eh?).

Anyhoo, I managed to persuade a friend to put money on Mike Pence being the next President at 79/1 and six weeks is a long time so things might not turn out so bad anyway.
Micki Attridge

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Wow! Exciting times!
Please can we have a USA election every time that there is a football ‘International Break’?

I haven’t even read the first Wednesday mailbox yet!

Kind regards
Al, Arsenal, Sydney

Before we go…
If you had put a bet on Brexit, Trump and Leicester winning the league on a treble you would have won £15million from £5. Would have loved to read a Cheeky Punt if Degsy had predicted this bats**t mental 2016!
Jordan Johnson