Mails: The difference between Liverpool and Man United

Mails: The difference between Liverpool and Man United

If you have anything to add, you know what to do – mail us at theeditor@football365.com

A good day for Man United
There was plenty to moan about on Wednesday but this was much better:

* We rested Pogba/Zlatan/Herrera (to an extent) and several other key players.
* Schweinsteiger and Martial came back into the fold.
* We did not use Rojo as a left full-back
* The Mop scored
* We scored on a counter-attack
* We handed out two counter-attacks
* Unlike some others who lack depth we showed you can make changes and still give a toss.

On a side note should Sutton and Lincoln be allowed to choose who and where they want to play in the draw as a prize for getting to the fifth round?
Timi, MUFC

A dream draw
Well that was a pretty good FA Cup weekend, although so cruel on Wycombe. And not good for me personally of course (others will no doubt have sent in plenty of abusive or schadenfreude messages, so I’ll just simply say Liverpool are just obviously not good enough at the moment, and well played Wolves).

Still interested in the competition though and would love it if the draw brings up something like

Man City v Man Utd – just to narrow the big teams down.
Spurs v Arsenal – similar.
Sutton Utd v Lincoln City – obviously they want big teams and money, but let that happen for one of them in the quarter-final.
Leicester/Derby v Chelsea – potentially best other chance for ‘them/Conte’s boys’ to get knocked out.
Blackburn v Burnley – local derby.
Fulham v Millwall – ‘local’ derby.
Huddersfield v Middlesbrough – tricky to call.
Oxford Utd v Wolves – all that was left!

But we all know that the common bigger club luck of the draw/the law of sod means it will probably turn out to include say

Man United v Sutton United
Chelsea v Lincoln
Man City v Oxford
Arsenal v Millwall
Spurs v Blackburn

Yes the above would be big money days for the smaller teams who are never going to win it, but I just want a better chance of a new winner/finalists, though the FA Cup football betting suggests more of the usual.
Mike Woolrich, LFC (I predict Spurs will win it. After all the year has a 1 in it!)

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No panic needed at Liverpool
Statistics. You can make them say basically anything you want can’t you? A lot has been said about Liverpool’s downturn in form, a lot of which (particularly if you look at a the comments of a Liverpool Facebook page) lead me to basically hate the fans of the very club I love more than any others. We’ve been having a relatively excellent season, and now we’ve had one very bad month. Cue knee-jerks and finger pointing. I think the more measured among football fans think this is a blip, a tough schedule, key players missing, a mixture of factors.

But back to stats, particular the win percentage with Mane (71%) which has been bandied about quite a bit. Yes he appears key to Liverpool (overall 58%, 2.1 Goals Scored), he stretches defences and creates space, where Lallana/Sturridge in that position occupy the space. But there are other issues, Lallana is better in midfield where his harrying and quick movement on the half turn create opportunities (67%, 2.57 GS), Henderson and Gini are key to midfield where their quicker passing, urgency, and ball-retention make us less static and vulnerable against counters (67% 2.5 GS), while having Can in the middle makes us slower and less likely to penetrate organised defences (58%, 1.7 GS). Actually just having close to our best side on the pitch featuring the aforementioned players plus Coutinho, Firmino, Lovren and either Matip or Klavan is not surprisingly, fairly important (83.3% 3.0 GS).

I guess my point is fairly banal stats like win% and goals scored can be used to say a lot of things, particularly if you ignore other parts of the dataset. Liverpool will be OK, this downturn in form is about not having the best team together, squad depth, teams putting in excellent performances playing on the counter effectively (funny how the narrative is always about how bad Liverpool have been, not how good Wolves were), and a string of poor results arresting hard earned momentum. But there is nobody I’d rather have right now to turn a brief run of bad form than Klopp. There really is far less issue than is being made out, actually far less than warrants then length of this email or how long I just spent in Excel.
Rowan ‘lets all just take a deep breath’ Hansberry

…Obviously losing to Wolves was not ideal and of course the team were appalling. Yes the same stodgy tactics were employed, where a ‘proper’ number 9 was used in a formation designed to work better without one and yes Lucas is reverting back to his level of ability when he first signed for Liverpool (he was awful if you didn’t remember/notice).

That said, things have to be looking up; Mane is on a plane back to Liverpool, January is nearly over (whilst this is merely a curiosity of the Gregorian Calendar it can also serve to provide a psychological lift to the players to leave the month behind…) and the fixture congestion will inevitably ease now we only have one competition to focus on.

Before a ball was kicked this season, most fans would’ve been delighted with fifth place. Ultimately Liverpool are only a big club in terms of their tradition and their fanbase, but our recent league finishes/trophies don’t point towards this at all right now. Not since Rafa have we really been any kind of force to be reckoned with, and Klopp is still finding his way and building a team. And this is a team of long-term low confidence. There isn’t strictly a natural leader in the dressing room and it is still quite a remarkably young team on average. The team pushed up our expectations by dazzling us in the first half of the season and there’s no reason why it can’t improve as we go down to having one game a week until May now. More preparation and recovery time will lead to better performances.

People can’t criticise him for not buying five new first team players before the season. He spoke openly about how hard it is to integrate that many new faces in the first eleven long before the summer began. For evidence of how true that is look at how the Gareth Bale money was “wasted” by Tottenham (until it turned out most of those players were pretty good but not well acquainted to the new league or to each other). Liverpool also don’t have the money to buy top end talent to compete; we don’t have a sugar daddy owner, we don’t have a big enough stadium, we haven’t won huge sums of prize money from the league and Champions League in the past decade and we don’t sell enough Noodles.

People keep saying that the walls are falling down, but the league was always the most important thing at the start of the season. Winning cups is great and gives good memories, but without a regular Champions League berth, we can’t build the kind of squad that will have the quality to compete on multiple fronts. You’ve got to build the house before you can weather the storm effectively.

We are still in the top four, and even if we lose to Chelsea on Tuesday, that won’t be the end of the season. That will simply mean that, at worst, we will be one point off the top four, with a better goal difference than fourth place and 15 games to make up that difference. And have we all managed to forget that other teams will have bad days at the office too? Chelsea started off the season awfully, Tottenham weren’t looking as good as they do now when they were juggling European and league football, Man City haven’t really looked great at all but they did grind out a lot of wins initially and Man Utd are a bit of a basket case too at the moment. So frankly there’s no point predicting the end of the season in January, because nobody is going to win every game from now until May and most of the teams around us are going to have a number of tough fixtures still to play.

It’s okay to moan about the poor performance, and it was poor, but for people to think WE MUST BEAT Chelsea is honestly f**king stupid. They’re the form team in the league and whilst beating them would be lovely, it’s by no stretch of the imagination something I’d want to pin my season on. Even when we were second I still would’ve taken a draw against Chelsea on Tuesday night. People seem to have forgotten that Klopp took a few years to build that team at Dortmund. This season was not meant to be about Liverpool challenging for the title. The fact it was, even for a little while, is a huge bonus and an indication of what the manager might achieve in time. For now a bit of patience and the acceptance that there will be good days and bad days is needed. Klopp isn’t just trying to train a squad of 22; he’s also having major influence on the youth setup, how different age groups integrate and where they train. He’s shaping the club to make it more competitive long term and this is no overnight task.
Minty, LFC

Stop picking on Klopp for cup choices
January 2017 has seen the most questionable decisions I’ve seen Jurgen Klopp make since he took over at Liverpool.

Ludicrous team selection against Sunderland.
Decision to move Lallana out of midfield.
Not using a diamond more after it worked well against United.
Poor in game management (especially vs Soton first leg and Swansea).

As we come towards the end of the month (where we’ve played nine times in 30 days), Alan Shearer and Gary Lineker (who is usually better than this) come at him for his team selection against Wolves being apparently disrespectful.

I’ll start with Shearer, he agrees with “giving young English players a chance” (why not just young? Maybe I’m getting nitpicky), but only a few not “7 or 8”. Our kids were Woodburn, Randall and Ejaria, (arguably Gomez) so not the team of kids he is portraying.

He states that it’s only one extra game a month which is entirely true but does not change that Chelsea are coming on Tuesday and we played Southampton in midweek.

Lineker claims that it betrays a lack of respect for the depth in English football and the competition. (I don’t believe it was Lineker’s intention but we’re getting into Merson and Thompson territory a bit here. Look at that foreigner coming here thinking he can make nine changes and beat lower league teams. We are in ENGLAND now pal it’s not Germany or some shite.) As well as giving German football weirdly short shrift, if we are going to accuse Klopp of this, at least be consistent. 80% of the teams made significant changes including good old Brits like Allardyce, Hughton, Monk. (Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth are already out). If Klopp is disrespecting the FA Cup he is in the majority, and maybe when we get there maybe it’s time to look at the FA Cup.

The League Cup used to be two-legged all the way up to the final and the FA Cup used to have replays until someone won. This isn’t feasible any longer. (Sadly, the chaos of endless FA Cup replays would amuse me a lot and have fun implications for FPL). Both have been diluted down to where we are now. (League Cup two-legged semis and one replay up until the 5th round in the FA Cup.) Instead of further diluting the competitions why not scrap the EFL Cup?

I know I’ve also got a point to make about Europa League and players being rested and how Klopp reversed that immediately when he arrived and actually rotated in the league. And how that plays into foreign manager narrative we have in the media.

It’s also laughable that Jurgen is being criticised for making nine changes from a different cup game, not a league game, a cup game which he treated with respect and went full strength in.

We’ve now got a week between games again and I’m sure we will pick up again. The more pertinent question is whether with the fixture list as crowded as it is can Klopp’s philosophy be effective in English football? The jury is out there but criticising him for resting players doesn’t hold water.

Maybe this message has been overly long or stressed the ‘othering’ of Klopp due to his Germanness a bit hard. What Trump is doing in the States at the moment I may be slightly conflating with football. But I really do think that fairly open xeneophobia we see from football pundits (Merson and Thompson not Lineker) has a tangible impact on the political landscape, if only to normalise bigoted opinions.
Oli, Brighton

Loving these Liverpool woes
After this weekend’s result I want to take all the pleasure I had at LFC losing to Swansea at home and dump it for all the pleasure I had at them losing to Southampton at home. I then want to cheat on all the pleasure I had at them losing to Southampton at home with all the pleasure I had at them losing to Wolves at home, and have its babies.

If they lose at home to Chelsea I’ll be reaching Jeremy Kyle levels of voyeuristic glee.
Israel, MUFC (Yes. I’m enjoying it. We’re rivals. Deal with it)

Ed’s weekend thoughts
* I knew Palace would be rubbish so I decided to ignore the fact we had a game until after it had finished. By the time I did discover what had happened, I’d spent the morning looking at Lego models of famous landmarks at a gallery near Worksop, and went to an Angeleena Presley concert in the evening. I’d recommend both of those generally, not just as an alternative to watching Crystal Palace.

* Manchester City showed up looking to put recent underwhelming form behind them, and did so in some style. Sterling’s goal was the result of a fantastic pass from Gabriel Jesus, although in true Palace fashion it came just moments after Manchester City could have been reduced to ten men, had the referee deemed a foul by Yaya Toure worthy of a second yellow card. On such fine margins do games turn, but Manchester City’s win was borne of superior quality rather than superior luck.

* As an indicator of how untroubled Manchester City’s backline were, Vincent Kompany played 90 minutes. From a neutral perspective, I’m very pleased for him.

On the other hand, Jeffrey Schlupp has now played two games for Palace and left both early with injuries. As a reminder, they paid £12m for him, and are about to pay a similar amount for Patrick van Aanholt.

* Sam Allardyce was quoted by the BBC as saying his team have “lost that habit of winning”. Can anyone remember when we had that particular habit? I think it was 2015, with the three in a row in September 2016 looking like an anomaly.

Allardyce also said he’d “got more to worry about with the goals we’re conceding rather than moan about referees”. On the one hand this is admirable, but on the other, it’s eerily reminiscent of when Paul Jewell took over at Derby County, and after every defeat complained about the poor quality of players at his disposal; like Jewell, it seems Allardyce has conveniently forgotten what those players were like before he joined the club, and whose job it is to make them play better.

* Palace have a trip to Bournemouth tomorrow night, and then in February play Sunderland (h), Stoke City (a), and Middlesbrough (h). This is the ideal opportunity to kickstart the season, although all evidence points to them not doing that.

* Raheem Sterling is my new hero after his Instagram posts taking shots at the papers’ obsession with the mundane details of his trips to Greggs and Poundworld. It’s almost as though a) his weekly wage is not f###ing important, and b) he’s a real and actual f###ing person.

* It was a standing joke among Palace fans that we were all Lincoln City fans on Saturday, as they were facing Brighton & Hove Albion, but childish banter aside, only the most stony-hearted Seagulls fan would begrudge the Imps their first trip to the fifth round of the FA Cup since 1887, a full 105 years before football was actually invented.

* As much as some people will give the TV networks grief for showing the Manchester United games every time (I think we’re up to 56 now), it does feel like they’re between a rock and a hard place. If the BBC show the top teams, people will complain they should be giving a showcase to lesser teams instead of chasing ratings, yet if they do that, and get lower viewing figures, they will be criticised by the same people for spending millions on something that fewer people are interested in watching, because for these people, constantly attacking the BBC is more important than maintaining a consistent moral standpoint. Yes, that is a Stewart Lee reference, and yes, those people are tw@ts.
Ed Quoththeraven

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A 17th Conclusion
Despite what some may say, the magic of the FA cup is very much alive. I enjoyed watching all the televised games and was mightily impressed by the passion exhibited by the teams, especially the underdogs. Tottenham’s 4-3 win over Wycombe was a classic. Liverpool’s elimination by Wolves gave me something to cheer. Lower-league teams took the game to teams above them and the result was quite a number of shock results. And the Mighty Man United, bestest team on the face of the earth reminded everyone that needs reminding that they are back. The 4-0 thrashing of Wigan reminded me of the good ol’ days when Sir Alex sat in the dugout, regularly masterminding 4-0 wins, home and away, over Wigan. We’re back beaches!
Keg Bardi (Mailer to watch) Nairobi, Kenya

Big-ups to the Cowleys
Just wanted to write in quickly to say how proud I am being an ex-pupil of FitzWimarc in Rayleigh and having had Danny as my P.E. teacher over 10 years ago. I am sure that there are now many people in Rayleigh aged 11–30 who are now following Lincoln City – and rightly so. Well done, boys!

People bemoaning the F.A. Cup can do one. I’m hoping this little fairytale doesn’t end.
James. Fitz. Rayleigh. Proud.

And to Sutton…
1989 was the year I fell truly in love with football. As an eleven-year-old, watching my home town knock Coventry out of the cup made me think anything was possible. Football may have changed a lot in the last thirty odd years, but what hasn’t changed is that there will be kids who will never forget yesterday’s game at Gander Green Lane. That, for me, is the magic of the cup.
Giles, delighted of Japan

We told you so…
You guys did tell us to watch the Leeds game. I reason you’ll be smug for a week now. FA Cup kicking and screaming past the fourth round.
Mark Awachie