Mails: Great to see Leicester get dumped out of Europe

Mails: Great to see Leicester get dumped out of Europe

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No love for John
Sorry but John Terry’s unsavoury characteristics won’t be forgotten.

Captain, leader and all that guff he may have been but thinking he’s going to be remembered fondly by non Chelsea fans is like thinking all boxing fans only regard Mike Tyson as the most devastating boxer of the 1980s. There are even books about Gandhi being a bit of a knob so I can’t see Terry getting away with it.

He’ll be lauded by Chelsea fans but for the rest of us – he’s captain, leader and a bit of a tit.

Nice letter from the Brighton fan but I think you’ll find people actually really love your club far more than you realise. It’s going to be the best away day, providing the game’s early in the season. And I’ve been to the Withdean and I have to say it was one of my most fun days out ever.
Graham Simons, Gooner, Norf London

Even Steve H’s farewell email about John Terry can’t disguise how much of a dislikeable turd he really is.

I think the opposite of Steve though, I think a man who is best known for being a terrible human being will be forgotten as a player because of his actions. They will always overshadow him which is a shame as adultery and money-grabbing aside, he was a great player.
Matt

Best left back performances you remember?
A couple of interesting things that emerged from the aftermath of the Madrid-Bayern game:

1. 45 shots, 45! What a spectacle that was. Neuer was immense, tactics were ‘dead’ (at least the concept of a midfield pretty much disappeared), and the two teams went at it like two drunk boxers in a street brawl. All power, relentless ‘he’s an iron bar’ rocky moments, and plenty of excitement for the spectator. I’m a madrid fan, but would not have been that sad were bayern to go through.

2. Credit to Ancelotti. Yes, he lost at home, but had it not been for Javi Martinez’s two brain freezes he could have taken this swashbuckling bayern to the semis. The fact that madrid went through instead is a testament to their efficiency (take a bow CR) rather than bayern’s lack of guts and spirit.

3. Yes the ref made a few mistakes, but the most interesting thing about the post mortem of the match is that a lot of people seem to be reacting just like the most fanatical of madrid or barsa fans. Ankur Ghosh (great name!) comments on the Vidal decision (boner is spandex, love it), and whilst I agree with him, the truth is that the Chilean should have been sent off at the start of the second half. His first yellow, 4 minutes in, was a brutal challenge and indeed he was clearly too aggressive all game. Casemiro was his madrid equivalent, and should also have been sent off too.

Aside from that there were 2 offside goals (one per side), possibly three if we look closely at CR’s last goal (why did they not show that replay???). Too many mistakes for a game of this calibre. I don’t consider, like the guardian and others nonchalantly did, that this was a robbery because Madrid deserved to go through – they applied more pressure, had more shots in the tie (by quite some distance) and were far more clinical. The fact that Neuer was not far from two MoM performances is telling. A shame though this felt like a final ahead of time, and it is most definitely a harsh reality for bayern.

4. Forget the ref, and whether this was ‘the worse refereeing of all time’ (that’s your own title mc…. you should know better), obviously it wasn’t. Ask Drogba, for one. However, was this the best left back performance of all time? Marcelo was a BEAST, and for once defended as well as he attacked. Unshackled, that man is a number 10 with the skills of a Coutinho, but playing as a 3. God I love him and his goofy hair, what a player!

My football knowledge is obviously limited, so I ask the mailbox, best left back performances you remember? There must be some crackers I haven’t heard about!
André (All for video refs and end-to-end football) London

Referees deserve respect
So are people just going to forget that Vidal was lucky to still be on the pitch in the first place, or that Bayern’s second goal was clearly offside? No matter what, the attitude of some of the Bayern players was reprehensible. They went into the referee’s room and had to be forced out by police. We should expect the players to afford referees respect and not act like imbeciles. How many games did Drogba get for saying “a f**king disgrace” and is that worst than barging in the ref’s room ?
Guillaume, Paris

Nomination for worst-ever refereeing performance
I’d like to nominate a dual performance: the referees of South Korea – Italy and South Korea – Spain in the last 16 and Q/F of the 2002 World Cup. The referees in question did everything possible to make sure the hosts went through.

Italy had a good golden goal disallowed for inexistent offside and a clear penalty on Totti not just denied but turned into a second yellow to Totti for “diving”.Spain had 2 perfectly good goals ruled out, one in normal time and one ‘golden goal’ and to this day I’m not even sure what the justification was for disallowing them.Beyond that, in both games there was a repeated pattern of niggling Korean fouls going unpunished while every robust challenge by the opposition resulted in a foul, and Italian / Spanish forwards consistently called offside even when they weren’t.

It’s really bad to see a football match ruined by refereeing incompetence, but when there is a strong suspicion of not only incompetence but malice it really leaves a bad taste. Even more so when these are showcase games in a World Cup knockout stage.
James, Zug

Farewell, Xabi
So Europe says farewell to Xabi Alonso – one of the all time greats of his generation. A truly elegant player who always looked so natural on the ball, its a shame in the manner in which he has been denied the chance to go on and attempt to lift the European Cup with 3 different clubs. There isn’t too many around like him – a class act.
Dickie

Great to see Leicester get dumped out of Europe
First of all congrats to Leicester for giving it everything against Atletico Madrid but honestly I’m glad they got dumped out. Granted they won the premiership last season which was remarkable and everyone was delighted for them but they way they just downed tools when things weren’t going their way this season under Ranieri is something that the fans these days don’t understand. So all of sudden they start to play well under Shakepeare is something I can’t get my head around.

I don’t care what the Danny Simpson’s, Jamie Vardy’s and Kasper Schmeichel’s of this world come out with, saying they weren’t responsible for the manager’s sacking etc. The bottom line is the players were responsible so yes I’m glad they got dumped out of it and I’m glad also not having to listen to Vardy and his stupid party or seeing Simpson gloat how great he is.

At least Danny Simspon can go back to eating his chicken burgers with his pals now that Ranieri is gone. Not going to mention anything about Leicester fans in Madrid last week because every club has a small minority that ruin it for everyone else. So yeah was great seeing them dumped out, not for the fans but for the players. I hope they enjoyed the ride in champs league as they won’t be back in it again.
Darragh (Good job Leicester didn’t have the ref from the Madrid match last night ) Ireland

Huge transfer fee makes Sissoko appear worse than he is
Now, I’m not sure the headline matched what Ben was trying to get across, but let me answer the question anyway;

Is Sissoko the worst signing in Tottenham’s history?  No, No, No, not even close.

From the last 10 years Adel Taarabt, Ryan Nelsen, Paulinho, Chris Gunter, Nourredine Naybet, Mbulelo Mabizela, Stephane Dalmat *sad face*

I would go back further into the premier league years but it’s depressing…Kazuyuki Toda kinds of depressing.

In terms of the Sissoko signing, it was a strange one, but I think it was needed.  Son wasn’t happy at the time so it wasn’t clear which way this season would’ve gone for him.  I think they knew Lamella wasn’t fully fit but were hoping he’d fix without the need for an operation.  There was a gap to fill, and Sissoko was the one they had to plump for.

He hasn’t been terrible, it’s just that there are a group of players in front of him who have been on fire all season.  He’s not going to get starts ahead of Dele, Eriksen, Son, Dembele.  He’s not had many chances and can see it’s hard for him getting 10 mins here & there and the very odd start.  When he comes on, he doesn’t do a bad job, he’s just not as thrilling as the others.  The fee is the killer for him, but I don’t think Newcastle will get £30 million from Spurs for him in the end.

Sissoko’s an average player is a squad that’s exceling, but he’s definitely not the worst signing in Spur’s history.
Martyn (Andy Booth ☹ ) THFC

Mediawatch
Dear F365,

I know this isn’t a view you will want to air and it doesn’t fit with the narrative on this site but it’s simply an opposing view made relevant by another reference of it in mediawatch today.

Personally I don’t have a major issue with what they said about the Hull appointment of Silva based upon what I heard and the assumptions I made versus the assumptions you made.

It was an odd choice of manager in a relegation threatened team and one that isn’t often sought by clubs at that stage, I always saw what they said as though it was an attack on the club rather than Silva for approaching a man who has no experience of a premiership relegation fight, they may be wrong but if it was me running Hull I would have tried to get some very relative experience of the situation, Pardew, Allardyce, Bruce, Warnock etc etc, not that they are better but just that they have some of the requisite skills I would have deemed important at the time. Whatever way you look at it, it was an odd/bold/foolish choice at the time.

Personally I have seen nothing from either of them that they are against foreign managers and their track records would definitely show a different and far more logical reason for what they said, the simply favour relevant premier league experience as a very high qualification for a job here, then they rate winning and competing experience, again, it makes sense although others may not rate those skills as highly. They were vocal about Pochettino when he joined Saints, but not when he joined Spurs, he didn’t suddenly lose his ‘foreigness’, they were the same about Koeman, they had no issue with Klopp or Benitez, or Ranieri, Murinho or a whole raft of others established managers joining British clubs, Merson even said the same at the time.

The crux of their argument was that lower league managers have to progress through their coaching badges and great expense and were overlooked in favour of a manager who has never been involved in the league that he is due to manage in and neither has relative (Greek League vs Prem etc) success. It’s a fair point, not one I necessarily agree with but it has some merit and doesn’t paint them as some xenophobic dinosaur as words in isolation would seem.

Now, my assumption for all of this is that they are using the term ‘foreign’ as a way to describe foreign to the league, nothing they have done would suggest anything else though really. However if you do ignore the acceptance of a whole host of experienced or success managers they have welcomed then fair enough, carry on, label away.

I know you dislike them and that’s ok, but it would have been at least fair to have looked a bit deeper at their words before you labelled them and referenced your labels in any article for x months.
Steve