Is Herrera actually better than N’Golo Kante?

Is Herrera actually better than N’Golo Kante?

We’re dragging ourselves through a week with no proper midweek football (sorry, Winty). Mails to theeditor@football365.com

Wenger to Barcelona please
Jose Enrique claims to be leaving in June.

Arsene Wenger claims he can/will continue to manage next season, even if it’s not at Arsenal.

If there’s is a God, especially one for football, I pray He can join these two pipes and have Arsene Wenger as the manager of Barcelona in June. With a squad as complete as Barcelona’s, a league as technique-based as the La Liga, I want to see once and for all if Wenger can win a UCL or if he will go up in flames. It’ll be the ultimate reward for Wenger; his reward for his (incredibly impressive but ultimately failed) effort to make Arsenal look like Barca for 20 years should be to manage Barcelona. I think most Arsenal fans also would like to figure out if their recent criticism of Wenger has been justified or if Arsene did, after all, in fact know.

Or Wenger should be recruited for the England hotseat, which could be great too.
Emad

Herrera > Kante
No Andrew. No single player makes or breaks a team. Chelsea have been an excellent TEAM. Solid defensively and always a threat going forward (just as Leicester were last season). Kante, while special (And I really do admire him), would not walk the league in any top-six team. Why you ask. Because statistically there’s a midfielder equally as good (if not better?) than him in the league. That man’s name is Ander Herrera. Shocking for rival fans I know, but here you go:

League apps
Herrera 22 (2 subbed on) – Kante 24

Goals
0-1

Assists
3-1

Chances created
24-16

Pass success rate
88% (1415 passes completed) – 88% (1282 passes completed)

Take ons
77% (24/31 successful attempts) – 77% (27/37 successful attempts)

Tackles
52 successful (136 attempted) – 54 successful (127 attempted)

Aerial Duels:
22 successful (37 attempted) – 17 successful (46 attempted)

Interceptions
70-56

Clearances
48-32

Now United aren’t exactly walking the league are we (we’re getting there. I hope. Please get us there Jose)? My point is that football is a team sport. Exceptional players make teams better, but they don’t define them.

* The above stats were published on Feb 15, 2017
James, Cape Town (Zlatan doesn’t count in my argument. He’s a statistical anomaly. He is Zlatan)

Hailing Fletch
Firstly I just want to second the opinion of Ben the Baggie, who states that a good manager will elevate his team beyond the sum of its parts.

I’m also really glad he bought up Darren Fletcher, a player I have a real soft spot for. I know someone has highlighted his importance to WBA in a previous mailbox – it might have been Ben, but I hope he isn’t the only Baggie to appreciate what a fantastic player Fletcher is. A serious engine, can score the odd goal, tactically intelligent, big game player, leads by example and a pretty underrated passer – all of these apply to Fletcher. He has also come back from a period of serious illness that might have forced other players to drop down the leagues or even retire.

However, by far his most impressive feat is how he changed the opinion of many United fans. I know I wasn’t alone in thinking he was absolute bobbins for his first season or so, but by displaying the qualities listed above, he managed to completely change my opinion of him, with his winning goal against Chelsea in ’06 (I think) a key turning point. I think this is one of the hardest things a player can do – completely change the fans’ opinion of him. Coming in under the radar and impressing is one thing, as is delivering on a big reputation. But having been dismissed as sub-standard by fans (and even some teammates), Fletcher went on to become a key player for a successful United side, and is still highly thought of. Obviously I’m only basing this on my own experiences, but I don’t think I’m alone in how I view Fletcher.

So, what player have you previously wanted rid of, but through hard work/moments of skill, won you over? I guess this ties in with the recent discussion on defenders who turned out to be a bit good (Adams and Rio to name but two), but let’s open it up to other positions.
Jack (Will take mails about the Football League over ones referring to Rafatollah any day of the week) Manchester

More on that captain/coach idea
Ross Jenkins (I know this is mad, but it does make you think) WHUFC. I think there might be a couple of basic issues with your idea, as well as your “mad, make you think” tag line.

The first issue is – it’s not a new idea. In fact it’s not only not a new idea, it’s been done before. Often, as it happens. At Chelsea, at Liverpool, at Rangers and many other places. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard the term ‘player/manager’, but it’s been around for quite a while. The reason why there aren’t many of them around anymore is because, well, it doesn’t work. For pretty obvious reasons – there’s too much going on for one person to read the whole game, motivate, shift tactics depending on circumstance, make substitutions and still have enough time to play your own game. So no, it’s not a mad idea, just a bad, and dis-proven one.

Secondly, if you think that players will rebel with their performance on the pitch if they don’t like the tactics or the approach of the coach, what possibly makes you think they wouldn’t do the same thing if the coach happened to be the captain? Do you think a player has undying loyalty to the skipper, but would be happy to derail the coach because he’s not on the pitch? Perhaps you’d like to have a “think” about that. The buck still isn’t going to stop with the players, because you can’t fire them all, just as is today. If anything, it would stop with one player, the captain. That’s not exactly spreading the blame around, plus when you fire your coach, you also fire your captain. You’ve just doubled your problem.

What’s more to the point is why you need a captain at all, other than be the go-to person for the referee when a match situation is getting out of hand. You don’t need an armband to be a leader on or off the field, after all, and it would stop all the hand-wringing you get when your “loyal club captain” is benched because he’s getting too old, too slow or too much of a liability. Great teams have leaders all over the pitch, not a lot of stooges looking at the skipper for inspiration.
Steve, Los Angeles

Jenkins is back…
I am glad my email had the desired effect. It was a ridiculous idea and that is kind of the point of it. I was thinking outside of the box, which I wanted to do to get some opinion and thoughts on player power. I hate how much power players have in football now hence it would be good to beat them with the same stick that managers seem to get beaten with.

You don’t see a manager going ‘Oh I am going to lump long balls to my 5ft 3 striker to challenge a 6ft defender to make him look bad because I don’t like him, because that would get him the sack. So why should a player have enough power to make a manager look bad by ignoring instructions for his own selfish needs?

I am not saying this happened at Leicester and I am sure Ranieri made mistakes but as a player you shouldn’t just down tools which it seems like a lot of his players did, and players from other teams seem to do on a regular basis if they don’t get their way. If I decided that I didn’t like the way my boss did things at work and then took five-hour lunch breaks in protest, who would be sacked? I doubt it would be my manager.

Note to Ben the Baggie. I actually quite like Tony Pulis. My WBA supporting friend thinks he is the worst thing that has ever happened to his club and will not budge on that opinion despite mine and others constant praise for what a good job he is doing this season with what he has. Saying he wears a tracksuit is fact, unless since the last time I watched a Baggies game he has quickly popped down Saville Row for a fitting.

Graham Simons, although a nice idea in part I cant see it happening. The way that Barry Hearn conducted himself and the amount of vitriol directed towards WHUFC around us getting the London stadium sadly means that we would probably never help Orient out in that way. Hope I am wrong though. I agree bigger clubs should be doing more to help smaller teams survive especially when they are as fortunate as ours.
Ross (Jumpers for goalposts next?) Jenkins WHUFC

Even after all that…
So my social media feeds yesterday were full of messages to the tune of ‘oh no, not Woy!”.

Have we learnt nothing at all?
Jamie, LCFC

Hailing Las Palmas
When you see the big two in Spain with Wednesday night home games against tiny clubs who often don´t even play in La Primera division, you pretty much expect to see lambs to the slaughter or the smaller teams robbed by poor refereeing decisions if the home team are struggling or having an off night (usually leading to Ronaldo sticking in a contentious pen´) which then breaks the resolve of the underdog. Although that is what happened in the earlier game where Barcelona beasted Sporting Gijon 6-1, the game of the week saw RC Deportivo Las Palmas, play properly excellent football up until about the 80 minute mark when they started to get tired and make shedloads of mistakes.

Incredibly from 1-1 and Madrid down to 10 after Bale got sent off Las Palmas must´ve created over eight really good chances. They, amazingly, went ahead 3-1 and still Keylor Navas made four excellent saves to stop Las Palmas getting the fourth. Meanwhile, Benzema and James Rodriguez came on and also had chances. It was enthralling, joyous stuff, with a tiny team of, let’s say one twentieth of the wage bill and perhaps one onehundreth of transfer fees to build the 11 + subs who were playing, as much as Las Palmas pushed forward for the fourth I felt that one Madrid goal could see a 4-3 remontada.

On 85 minutes Ronnie got his pen´, It did hit the defender´s arm yet it seemed tucked tightly into his rib cage. He scored and the “library”, AKA Bernabeu, started to make some noise whereas for the previous 30 minutes we had only been hearing the tiny numbers of away fans singing with ecstatic disbelief. A good header and poor keeping saw Ronaldo get Madrid´s third and still Las Palmas were going forward trying to get the (first ever) win! But Navas saved them again.

All in all a brilliant night for the underdog, and it also sees Barcelona go ahead of Zidane´s team in the table, which in January looked wholly unexpected. All I wish for now is a Chelsea implosion to match that of Madrid´s, though that sadly seems much, much less likely.
Peter, Andalucia

Zambian pride is alive
Long-time reader not first-time writer, I am sure this might have passed most of you due to the PL euphoria and all, but I would like to enlighten you on a show piece that’s currently going on in Africa in Zambia to be more precise.

We are currently having the AFCON under 20 tournament which is an 8 team tournament with all the semi-finalists qualifying for the upcoming Korea 2017 World Cup. Am sure most of you don’t really mind because it is under 20 blah blah blah, but not here in Zambia after senior Zambia team won the Afcon in 2012 we have been terrible from being booted out of the competition in the qroup stages of the preceding tournament to failing to qualify from the just previous tournament, the under-20 are giving us a bit of a new platform to cheer on our Mother Land and did I mention we won 6-1 last evening without scoring a penalty?
Lubingu From Zambia (The teams I support Last night won 6-1, 6-1, and 5-1) I think I just broke a record as a football fan…

And finally…
From the lad who suggested Harry Winks should wear number 40. How could Chelsea recallee Nathan Ake resist the vacant number 47 shirt?
Guellzy (NUFC)

Actually…
So, considering that you’ve been short on emails I thought I could chip in.

In what I shall refer to as a ‘celebratory mishap’ following Perez 89th minute winner for Newcastle against Brighton on Tuesday evening, I ended up accidentally setting fire to my front door.

Can anyone top that?
Name withheld to protect the innocent (mainly me).