Mails: We will take arsey Sanchez at Liverpool…

Mails: We will take arsey Sanchez at Liverpool…

If you have anything to add, you know what to do: Mail theeditor@football365.com

Who can blame Sanchez?
Obviously no one who wasn’t there knows the full details, but based on a few known facts is it safe to assume that Alexis trains as hard as he plays, that some of teammates don’t (or rather, they do), that Alexis has called them out on this, that he’s frustrated and angered by the pitiful collapse of our season, that he feels he has carried them for much of the year, that he isn’t happy finishing fourth and getting treated like a wank sock every time we play a ‘rival’? If so, then good. I hope he went full Malcolm Tucker on them. About time somebody did, frankly.
Matt Hennessey

…So Alexis Sanchez was dropped because Arsene Wenger and ‘several’ teammates don’t like his attitude. He was stroppy during their (mis)match at Bayern, he threw his gloves to the floor at Bournemouth, he stormed out of training and had cross words with his teammates. By all accounts, Wenger is worried that his attitude is affecting the group. And quite right, too. How dare he demand maximum effort, mental strength and – gasp! – victories. Who the hell does he think he is? More to the point, WHERE does he think he is? Bayern? Juve? Real Madrid? Sanchez needs to be reminded he’s at Arsenal, the richest team in the world that is happy not winning.

After all, how can Arsenal stalwarts like Walcott, Ramsey, Coquelin etc possibly accept a teammate who makes demands of them? Their manager certainly doesn’t.

I’m laughing, but it’s not funny. Even as a Pool fan, I used to have huge respect for Arsenal. Now I just find it desperately sad that they have one of the most talented and driven players in Europe, and their players’ reaction is “boss, he’s being mean to us”, and worse, Wenger then says “we don’t want your sort around here, take your will-to-win somewhere else.”

Dear God, I wish he’d take it to Anfield!
Stew, Chicago

Sanchez to Liverpool please…
Bit of a cheeky one admittedly but if Sanchez is unhappy with his team-mates after being embarrassed by Liverpool, how about Klopp dropping in a £40million+1 quid offer for him. Sanchez works with a team that loves to attack and he can be a main man in that team, he also works with Klopp who loves hard working streetwise players and Liverpool get their world-class player! One year left on his contract, seems a no brainer to me! Thoughts?
Cowlick (Lallana, Coutinho, Firmino, Mane and Sanchez in one team…wet dream!)

The marriage should end…but divorce will be painful
I have enjoyed reading all the irate Arsenal fans going on about Wenger needing to go. I agree he should, but to listen to them he is solely responsible for the farce we are seeing and he isn’t.

There is plenty of blame at all levels for this mess. The owner, who thinks a football is shaped like a rugby ball, hasn’t a clue what football is about. The board only know how to line their pockets at the expense of fans. The same working-class fans that could go to Highbury and watch Arsenal who have now been out priced to tourists. The manager has his share of the blame also, his increasingly strange line-ups, and transfer policies. The couches, and also the players have a huge part to play in this fiasco.

What a lot of our fans don’t realize is this is the Arsenal I have supported for 48 years. Other than 10 glorious years we have always been a group of players who sort of have a chance to win a title but usually manage to screw it up somehow. Even the amazing last game of the 89 season only happened because we decided to give up the ghost in the tail end of the season. This is just Arsenal. Most of our younger fans seem to think we fight for the title every year, we just don’t and never really have. Since 1956 we have only won it six times, pretty sad for what we perceive ourselves to be.

Another thing our younger fans don’t seem to realize, is we are screwed no matter what happens. They seem to think replace Wenger and we are winning the treble, but this won’t be the case. Wenger has managed to become the center of the Arsenal universe, he does it all. No one in the organization knows the first thing about day to day running of a football club the size of Arsenal. I can just see Kronke working on transfers, let alone Ivan Gazidis, who seems clueless. Our board is incompetent for keeping Wenger way past his sell by date that is their fault not his. From all reports they are going to keep this going as a contract is on the table for Wenger IF he wants to sign it. This shows us all how utterly worthless our board is, not that I can blame them too much. Imagine the nightmare we will have when he does go. No team has managed to replace a manager with his longevity and importance to their club. The club who managed it the best was Liverpool when the replaced Shankley and his replacement, Bob Paisley was already at the club and they still struggled somewhat.

Be warned what you ask for fans. I realize he has to go, but don’t think it wont be anything but a catastrophe for a few seasons. I just find it sad that this is what Wenger will be remembered for, not for all the utterly incredible things he has done for the club, not for the titles, not for the Invincibles, but for the last few seasons of excuses, insane line ups, and amazing mental weakness on all levels of an amazing club, there must be something in the water at the Emirates. If the pain has to happen, its better it happens quickly so we can get it over with. The problem is when Wenger goes, Football at Arsenal may very well go with him.
Wade (waiting for the Band Aid to get torn off) AFC

We don’t want Wenger ‘upstairs’
A very unscientific poll on Arseblog suggests that about 79.6% of Arsenal fans want Wenger gone at the end of the season (Twitter would add another 20% on that value). Most people outside the fan base divide us into two groups, namely the Wenger Out Brigade and the Arsene Knows Best but the reality is more complex than that.

Even inside the former camp, there are two factions. The first is those that want him to move upstairs and join the pensioners in a Director of Football role while the second are those that want him gone completely. The majority are found in the former camp but I am firmly in the latter.

They argue that while Wenger is not a tactician, he is a ‘visionary’ and a ‘strategist’. Qualities I presume would be invaluable for this role. I have an issue with that argument for a number of reasons.

1. Isn’t that what he has been doing for the last 12 years? He basically runs the club and what we are seeing now is the ‘vision’ in play. His vision is no more complex than a bunch of happy players expressing themselves playing nice football in a low pressure environment with freedom and little accountability.

2. This is a man that struggles in the transfer market annualy. He is a man that fails to take advantage of the winter window and refuses to see the benefits of it, choosing to call for its abolishment instead.

3. He is a man that has lost his knack for buying young cheap players and has reverted to overpriced dross. 15 years ago players like Dembele (both of them) and Coman would be at our club.

4. This is a man who has changed his mind on what the club is numerous times. It started with pace and power. A very successful style that he chose to discard after one respectable loss against Barcelona with 10 men playing. Next it was Project Youth followed by short players trying to recreate Barcelona. When those players deserted him it was time for the British Core (still the reason people think we have a good side despite all of them being overrated). Now, who the f*ck knows.

Director of Football, yeah, no thanks.
Yeabsra A Ali

City look good though, right?
I’ll keep it short as I’m sure there will be a lot of discussion about, stamps and elbows and not playing your best player. For my money both Mings and Zlatan should get a four or five-game ban. Mings was shocking with his stamp.
Zlatan while provoked should not have retaliated. Ban them both and move on.

So we beat Sunderland and didn’t concede! Ooohh progress. Hopefully West Ham can do us a favour tonight. Can’t see it happening but you never know.

My oh my! Leroy Sane is starting to look very settled. If that kid can stay injury free, he is going to be world class.
He has got it all. Pace, power, control and a lovely shot. Like Mr Redknapp said after the game, City fans should be buzzing with the team that’s being assembled.

The football we play is at times is fantastic. Now let’s just get that defence more disciplined.
DANNY B – MCR – MCFC

Statistical help needed
As a metric for a goalscorer, what I prefer (and is largely not measured) is the # of games scored in as a % of total number of games played in (either starts or substitute).

This is a far stricter metric than goals/game. It is also more reflective of the game of football where the objective is to score one goal more than your opponent. The striker that has the highest % games scored in is the best striker according to me. This is because, the metric captures the chance that the team can have a one-goal advantage in any game. What this also says is that someone who scores a brace every two games or a hat-trick every three games is (far) inferior to someone who scores just one goal every game.

Anyone have any handy numbers for this metric?
David Moyes (United vs Pool vs *Arsenal* for 4th) MUFC

Harry Kane: Quite good
Just reading your Harry Kane statistics and have to express my sheer amazement. In 136 games less, Kane is only 30 goals from becoming Spurs top PL scorer. 30! He’ll surely break it before the year is out at this rate.

And on a side note, Dele Alli scoring 13 league goals this season, and 23 in the PL altogether is bloody brilliant!
Néill, (I told you (Conor) that he was the real McCoy!), Ireland

I won’t pay more for Champions League
I’d like to say ‘what a shame BT have won the rights to extended CL football coverage and now there won’t even be a terrestrial highlights package for us to watch’.

However Champions League football has been dead to me since it involved paying even for another platform to watch sport on the TV. Straw that broke the camel’s back and all that. Enough was enough and I refused to pay anymore.

I’ve not watched a live CL game on TV for two years and I don’t miss it. It’s just like its fallen off the radar, which really is a shame.
Matthew (nothing to add) Barlow

We’ve got our Leicester back
I didn’t want to see Ranieri go, and it may be too early to say things have changed after two games, but we were good on Saturday. There was a recent game under Ranieri where there was space for Vardy in behind and Drinkwater was on the ball and it seemed like Vardy didn’t know whether to come short for it or run into the space. I’ve heard the senior players went to Ranieri to talk to him about the tactics, and he didn’t listen to them. This may not be true, but if you consider a large part of the success last season was not changing too much, and listening to the players, it seems a bit obtuse.

Whatever the reason, we looked like we weren’t going to lose. Even losing the first goal. It was the same last season and has been something absent this season for whatever reason.

I think it just goes to show how team spirit and confidence can have such an impact on performances. I don’t think the players consciously decided to stop playing for the manager, but the margins at this level are so fine between success and failure that maybe they couldn’t understand the justification for the tactics or team selection, and so couldn’t apply it properly.

I would also like to say that I think Kante is a top player, but to suggest he was the difference between Leicester winning the league and being in a relegation battle is total sh*te, and pretty offensive to the other players. He was an important player, but he didn’t go on a record scoring streak, nor did he turn in performances that earned him the player of the year.

We don’t have the best players, but we do have very good players, and very good players playing in a way they know and believe in, and with confidence and team-spirit, can achieve great things.
Alex (LCFC – Champions of England, for a little while longer anyway)

Peter G’s weekend thoughts
* A spectre is haunting Wales…the spectre of Joe Jordan. Either that or Antony Taylor was feeling postmodern enough to reenact the infamous wrong-team handball from the 1978 WC qualifiers. It also overshadowed how thoroughly dominant Swansea City were over Burnley. The Swans have only Spurs and Man United left from the top six. Looks good.

* It’s a shame that Zlatan son of Ibrahim takes up so much media attention, because Marko son of Arnaut is an even better showman, and a pretty good player too. He dominated George Friend, scored a brace, and celebrated his first by giving the linesman a little poke in the chest and pantomiming that defenders had been grabbing his shirt. Not even Zlatan would have done that.

* You wonder where Watford would be if Isaac Success and Stefano Okaka had been healthy all year, but then you watch the team defend and you don’t wonder anymore. It’s also time to face the fact that the Yoshida-Stephens pairing for Southampton is as ordinary as Manolo Gabbiadini is marvellous.

* Sunderland – Manchester City sort of encapsulated modern football. Sunderland played bravely, going with a back four and attacking where possible. But they couldn’t convert their half-chances, and eventually the quality won out. Jermain Defoe has now hit the woodwork two straight weeks, and Sunderland’s margins are too fine to be able to get away with that.

* Given that Crystal Palace deservedly won and Andros Townsend scored a solo goal at the end, this will seem churlish, but Townsend had 18 more touches than Wilfried Zaha, and Palace would be much better off if those figures were reversed.

* Harry Kane is so good he should be named Harry Kané.
Peter G, Pennsylvania, USA