Trent Alexander-Arnold ‘amateur’ hour finally distracts from Man City FFP slug-fest

We don’t suppose it will stick but the Mailbox is leading on England while arguments about Man City and Everton rage below.

Send your mails on any subject to theeditor@football365.com

Oh Trent, that was bad
We have an amateur centre midfielder, with virtually no experience playing at that level, starting for his country. Once again playing woefully against an awful team.

That is the power of PR, and the power of stupid people who want to sound clever. It is only a thing because that selfish tw*t thinks he’s good enough to play there and sacrifice the play of the national team for his own ego. I wonder how much it costs to get your own place made for you in the England team?
Fat Man (he even got the same haircut as Jude)

READ: Trent Alexander-Arnold: ‘Highest-rated’ England player shrinks at first sign of midfield pressure

Great 10s
Just a thought literally off the top of my head sat here watching the boring England kick about……

Valderrama
Rivaldo
Kaka
Hagi
Riva
Lineker
Riquelme
Laudrup
Altobelli
Baggio
Zico
Totti
Bergkamp
De Stefano
Puskas
Rui Costa
Platini
Eusébio
Ronaldinho
Zidane
Rossi
Maradona
Pele
Messi

Alexander Armstrong, a ten ? Never in a million years…
Glen (RFC and glad the big boys are starting to get punished on FFP)

VAR from perfect
If that’s a penalty, we might as well pack up and go home.

Shambolic refereeing is killing football.
James. Gravesend. CFC

…Var was brought in to stop clear and obvious errors.

We wanted it to stop clear and obvious errors.

If you have to use slow motion, 8 camera angles and 6 minutes of three people’s time to make a decision.

It isn’t a clear and obvious error.

Thank you,
Paul, NUFC

Get me out of here
I turned it over at half time.

Decided I’d rather watch Nigel Farage eat crocodile penis.

I stand by that decision.
James. Gravesend. CFC

Man Utd should stop consulting Fergie
I read with laughter in the Telegraph that Sir Jim Radcliffe is going to lean on the wisdom of Sir Alex Ferguson to help sort out the footballing side of the club when get his 25%.

As a Liverpool fan, I for one am delighted. For over a decade Man U have sycophantically tried to replicate Sir Alex with no succusses. The level of reached crescendo when OGS refused to park in his space – I mean come on.

When will club realized they have “jumped the shark” with this level of deference? Man U were great, without question the best run club for well over a decade, Sir Alex was an undoubted genius. Both he and David Gill were the figure heads that lead Man U in an unparalleled period of success. However, things change. Ideas get old, practices change, and what was once, will not always be.

When Jurgen joined Liverpool, he stated that the club was walking round with the weight of history on their back. I can’t imagine how do the Man U players and managers feel when they are constantly being compared to the previous great teams?

Sir Alex deserves the level of respect he is getting. The stand, a statue, and the lifelong right to go to the club. However, should he be a constant presence with the spectre of his achievements always overshadowing the current incumbent? When the legendary Bill Shankly left Liverpool, after a period of time his presence around the club was seen as more of a hinderance than a help.

It may seem harsh but for the long-term viability of Man U, should the club fully cut ties where their most successful manager?
Ian H

How do you pick a good manager?
Although Everton getting a points deduction whilst Man City stroll to another league title is objectively funny, I’d like to ask a question to the fans of teams outside the Premier League. Namely:

Is your club any good at picking managers?

I support Colchester, and we’ve just appointed Matthew (Matty no longer) Etherington as something like our 6th manager since 2020. He’d been managing the under 23s with little success, but won 3 out of 4 as caretaker after we sacked Ben Garner in October. We lost his first game in charge as permanent manager on Saturday.

Our chairman has a preference for internal appointments. The fans hate it and complain on their socials that we need an experienced manager in charge. The last guy was exactly that and it didn’t work, so back to internal chaps we go. Looking at the last few years of managers it goes.

Average, eventually sacked after a decent stint.
Bad, sacked.
Bad, sacked.
Bad, sacked.
Brilliant, poached by a bigger club after just 5 months in charge.
Promising start, then bad, sacked.

To a myopic Colchester fan this is pretty terrible, and the fans are generally angry with the board. But, in the context of football outside the Barclays, are we any worse than the majority of the clubs? Seems to me, once you’re outside the Pep/Jurgen zone, every manager is a gamble to some extent. So, are there any clubs out there that get it consistently right over a 6 year + period? Especially at League 1 & 2 level where the good ones get poached pretty swiftly.
Jeremy (feels like we’ve been 17th in the table for about 3 years) Aves

Fanmail for Paul
Just wanted to respond succinctly to the guff that Paul has come up with for Man City.

His comment that the PL investigated “and came up with a bunch of easily dismissable stuff” followed by “(“paying people off the books”, etc)” is laughable.

Paul, do you know that the whole point of FFP is that everyone is open and honest about what their income is, what they spend and that the difference in terms of losses must not exceed a specific value over a period of time? So a) its not easily dismissible if City have not been open and honest about what they’re spending because this could impact that calculation and mean they have an unfair advantage over the rest of the league/the rest of Europe b) who have they been paying off the books? Do you know Paul? Is it agents in order to get first access to the best players that they sign to their agencies? Is it referees so that VAR decisions come down in Man City’s favour in every other game and particularly against Liverpool?

Given you know absolutely nothing Paul and have proven it through your own nonsense comments perhaps wait until the investigation is over before giving us your pearls of wisdom again.
Rojapy

…I think it’s fairly silly to be talking about what kind of punishment Man City should be getting for their 115 alleged breaches until it’s established what they’re being punished for. But what’s even sillier is Paul, Manchester arguing that he doesn’t think that Man City’s rivals are motivated by pure idealism in their desire to see the club punished for their alleged breaches of FFP rules.

Who cares? Either they broke the rules or they didn’t. If Man City are found to be in breach of these rules and are then punished, people might be pleased at their misfortune because they dislike the club, because Guardiola does their head in or maybe because they just want to make you, Paul from Manchester, unhappy. IT DOESN’T MATTER. IT’S IRRELEVANT TO WHETHER OR NOT THEY BROKE THE RULES. THE RULES THEY SIGNED UP AND AGREED TO.
Dara O’Reilly, London

…Paul definitely isn’t worried, the Premier League are just fishing and don’t have any real evidence. They’ve just wasted thousands of hours of investigating and made up 115 charges.

He’s so calm about all this that he used his valuable time (usually spent not worrying about 115 charges) to send in a essay telling us all how much he’s not worried and how none of us understand the thing he’s not worried about.

It’s okay everyone, Paul is definitely not worried.
Chris Stockdale

…With reference to Paul from Manchester’s missive re: City massively breaching FFP

I must admit I didn’t read it all but of course we all want City to fail. Who in their right mind would ever want a team they don’t support to succeed? That’s the whole point of football. I haven’t rooted for Man City since they got relegated with Kinkladze (what a player!) in their team, and even then when we played them last day of the season you best believe I wanted to win.

Anyway- it would be absolutely hilarious if City had everything stripped off them, i would love it, and will feel exactly the same when the Newcastle petro-state bandwagon gets going properly. See also the following historical cases – Chelsea, Utd, Blackburn when Kenny was in charge. PSG, Madrid/Barca, Bayern, if we’re taking in a wider remit.

As for “pretending you’re on some moral crusade,” I don’t think many people actually are? They just don’t like the league being bought by anyone- which City have, you can’t argue with it- and, more importantly, don’t like any team other than their own being successful.

Don’t take it so personally, everyone hates everyone.
Paul (Scouser on the road)

…The belligerence of the Mailbox’s MCFC fans’ defense of their club has long oscillated between “amusing” and “bizarre”, but the way they continuously insist that none of us (non-MCFC supporters) “understand how the time barring thing worked” without ever elaborating, clarifying or correcting is the absolute best.

Especially when it is in response to other Mailbox contributors sharing their understanding of “the thing”, only to be met with the “nah, ur wrong :)” retort. Very well played, MCFC fans, it is very impressive how you are successfully mimicking your club in terms of how it cooperates/interacts with others.

Despite supporting Liverpool I have always been fond of ADUG’s MCFC, fond of the players, fond of Mancini/Pellegrini/Guardiola, never felt any animosity, and feel strongly that LFC should not be given any retroactive titles etc. But when I read Paul, Manchester’s mail from Monday morning, I can’t help but point out:

1. If rival fans’ opinions on the case are biased against MCFC and therefore don’t count, surely MCFC fans’ opinions on the case are even-more-biased in favor of MCFC and therefore count even less.

2. From a commercial perspective, I sincerely doubt that rival clubs have any interest in MCFC’s confidential sponsorship contracts, any more than rival clubs would have been interested in Mike Ashley’s NUFC’s confidential sponsorship contract with Sports Direct. Regardless of whether the sponsorships between MCFC and [companies owned by ADUG] were OK according to FFP, the information contained in those contracts was surely not interesting, controversial or commercially relevant to the people who negotiate deals at LFC/MUFC/AFC/etc. At most they probably would have found MCFC’s contracts amusing (“look what they’re trying to get away with”).

3. UEFA/ECA/PL being dubious/incompetent/”corrupt” in some cases/many cases, is not the same as UEFA/ECA/PL being dubious/incompetent/”corrupt” in all cases. Paul claims that Mailboxers “rant on and on” about corruption, but I’m not even sure this is true. These organisations are accused of being self-serving, incompetent, outdated, poorly represented, etc – many failings have been identified. But I don’t think most (serious) Mailbox regulars accuse UEFA/ECA/PL of outright corruption, certainly not enough to charge an innocent club with 115 charges of FFP breaches.

4. Occam’s razor does not support Paul’s claim that the PL have charged 115 times “because they’re fishing”. The simpler explanation is that they identified 115 breaches and therefore issued 115 charges.

5. How is “paying people off the books” easily dismissable? (Other than the fact that Paul seems to have just tried to easily dismiss it lol)

6. Again, if rival fans have already judged City guilty and should stop pretending they’re on some moral crusade for truth, haven’t MCFC fans already judged City innocent and also stop pretending they’re on some moral crusade for truth? Does Paul have extensive legal, accounting marketing AND football business experience, and/or know better than every court in the land? If he does, he should by all means cite his credentials. Otherwise this is all very pot-kettle-black. (Paul might want to also disqualify himself from jury service, because jurors who blindly insist that the prosecutor is “corrupt” and that the defendants are innocent would also be a danger to society?)
Oliver (wishing he understood how the time barring thing worked) Dziggel, Geneva Switzerland

To the Everton whingers…
Just a few points regarding PL cheats Everton getting a 10 point deduction.

1. City’s case had no bearing on your cheating, concentrate on your own club’s rule-breaking.

2. To the idiots who think “City could well get a points deduction so large they’ll be playing Sunday League football for a few years”. You don’t know how point deductions work.

3. Hopefully Leeds, Leicester and Burnley take Everton to the cleaners and finally relegate them. They’ve brought nothing to the PL for years now except whinging from their fans and turgid football from their team. The very definition of a nothing team.

4. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
Weldoninhio, BAC

Another Liverpool fan with plenty to say…
City fans are getting very defensive. Which is odd because they rarely send any mails in, they’re very quiet.

I guess when something is threatening your success you get afraid and react.

I’ll be one of the few who says I have grown an admiration for how City play and what Pep achieves, but if the verdict is guilty then that respect evaporates. If it’s not guilty then it’ll stay. Most people aren’t ‘picking’ on City and that kind of childish mentality and language just makes City fans look bad. BUT every football fan does that when they perceive a slight against their club.

Don’t try to justify your club’s behaviour, not cooperating with an investigation is something guilty people do in the hope they can prevent evidence from being used, there is no other reason to do it. The mail laughably claiming it was because UEFA leaked the papers is forgetting something – they didn’t.

Those documents were leaked by an individual who hacked in and then gave those documents to Der Spiegel the hacker’s name was Rui Pinto if you want to fact check me. Uefa had no part in it. So stop with the uefa and FA are secretly against our poor sweet innocent City routine.

Don’t justify it. If it were Liverpool I’d be disgusted, I’m pretty sure other Liverpool fans would be the same, know how I know? Because when FSG do things Liverpool fans disagree with we let them know there’s quite a few examples. United fans are the same.

Know which fans I’ve seen defending their club’s questionable behaviour? City and Chelsea. Shocker it’s the two teams who couldn’t win without bending ffp rules.

Moving away from City and to Everton fans, I’d say the same. Stop trying to justify it, your club breached the rules. Why do fans keep talking about stadium spending pushing them over? Stadium and infrastructure spending are exempt from ffp. Spend 50 billion it will never be included. Ffp covers expenditure on player transfers, wages, agent fees, manager salaries and all other staff expenditures. Someone in comments suggested there should just be a cap on wages and agent fees –

There is already. You can’t spend more than 70% of your revenue on staff or agent fees. That’s why City were pretending their injections of cash were sponsorship deals – they needed to push up the income to fall below that 70% figure.

So Everton fans also need to stop trying to justify it, it was non infrastructure spending that cost you.

But but but it was only ten million over! Even if it were 50p it’s still against rules. The line has to be drawn somewhere. Don’t cross it or face whatever consequence there is.

Finally I saw someone make the argument that it was unfair on City because uefa changed their rules – and? It’s their game they can change the rules however they like. Do you just carry on playing by 90s offside rules because you don’t like the current one while claiming ‘yeah but we’ve been sticking to the OLD rule’

And before anyone says they changed it mid period. It wasn’t too long ago the FA changed its rules on handball mid season after some high profile clearly accidental handballs were classed as penalties, I remember it because one of them was in a city Vs Liverpool game and handed city a draw which they otherwise wouldn’t have had…don’t see them arguing that was unfair? (2020 Joe Gomez in case you’re wondering)

If the rules change you adapt to it. In City’s case they could simply have cut spending by 33% by selling players, not renewing contracts etc when the rules changed in that third year. So what action did City take? They increased spending. Bravo. You can’t complain when you completely ignore the rules at least make an effort to look like you’re trying.

Finally is the Everton punishment harsh? No. The harsh part is they didn’t know in advance. Had the league made it absolutely clear the punishment would definitely be points deduction per offence I imagine at least three teams would have done things different. As it was all those teams believed the worst they’d get would be a small fine which even the smallest clubs can easily afford.

But then I suppose if you get 9 points for going into administration – which is essentially accidentally breaching ffp then only getting an additional point for intentionally breaking the rules is incredibly light.
Lee Baron

To the barrack-room lawyers
Since the Everton penalty for breaching F and S rules have been announced the frothing at the mouth of people wanting City punished has reached epidemic proportions. Comments like “we all know City are cheating”, “city have refused to cooperate” “ run the clock down at UEFA”, have been spouted ad nausem.

May I try and clarify a few things for people…City at UEFA they got fined for non-cooperation not for any financial breaches. The reason for non-cooperation was that initially City were fully cooperating with the committee until confidential information submitted to the committee started finding its way on a regular basis to the New York Times via reporter Tariq Panja. Now if we have a look at who was on the committee at that time there was a certain Rick Parry ex CEO of Liverpool now I’m not saying anything other than those are facts. And CAS stated that they understood why City stopped cooperating but nevertheless they fined City anyway

As for the current situation and the PL and City Bird and Bird the PL solicitors who also happen to be Arsenal’s solicitors have undertaken a 4 year investigation and have accused City of financial breaches and non-cooperation. City have said that they have co-operated and have a body of irrefutable proof to back up that claim. So an independent commission has been/or is being set up, none of us know, to determine the guilt or otherwise of City and until they report then City are completely innocent.

It should be pointed out re the 115 charges that there are just 6 main areas of breaches but that due to the multiple years that then has led to the large number of charges. However the accusations are NOT that City have overspent the charges are far more serious than that. They are accused of falsifying and misrepresenting audited accounts a very serious criminal charge in this country as effectively the Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE and the CEO of Mubadala a £200bn investment company are being accused of fraud and misrepresentation and it is incumbent upon the PL to prove these allegations.

City are abiding by the process that is laid out by the Premier League so I would suggest fans keep their powder dry until the independent commission reports because when it does no doubt the gloves will truly be off.
Dave Haycocks

…You’re wasting your time, mate, the professional legal eagles and professional accountancy boffins who all come to read the Football365 mailbox have ALREADY decided that City are guilty. Our evidence is just wasting everyone‘s time and our belief that this is a prejudicial enquiry, held for the benefit of our rivals, is an obstinate refusal to accept the multiple kicks to the bollocks that rival fans have already decided we deserve.

I mean, it’s all very heated at the moment, isn’t it? Everyone is getting very excited, speculating as to whether we’ll be in the Northern Premier League rather than the Premier League, it’s great fun but you know, we should just be punished, really, shouldn’t we? Why wait? Doesn’t matter if we’re guilty or not, the burden of proof is there in what everyone is saying, isn’t it? No smoke without fire, etc. Well, here’s a question for them. If they’re all so keen to see that FFP is maintained, then why weren’t they outraged about the multiple cases that go on in the lower leagues? Could it possibly be because their own team might benefit from punishment? Isn’t that corrupt in itself?

Also, riddle me this. Can they name the one club that actually voted for an independent financial regulator and was comprehensively outvoted? Yes, you cheeky chappies, you, it was horrible old Manchester City. If none of the other clubs have anything to hide, then why didn’t they vote for it? Especially, the saintly Americans who own the clubs that stand to benefit from City being knifed in the back? I mean, if they’re routinely horrified by the practices that Premier League clubs are supposed to follow, vote for change! Vote for the independent financial regulator!

If your club didn’t vote for it, well, let’s see the cheeky chappies on here, explain why they didn’t. Come on, what with all your personal experience and deep depth of knowledge about City’s finances, you self-declared experts, please explain why YOUR club actively voted against installing an independent financial regulator to oversee the Premier League and why that’s a Good Thing.

I’ve said, since the start, that this process is going to take years to sort out (as irritating as that is, for everyone) and what happened to Everton is nothing to do with our case.

Chill out everyone and stop eating those cheap sweets, the E numbers are addling your brains.

Chilled out.
Levenshulme Blue, Manchester 19
PS. Of course, as I’ve said previously, it doesn’t matter if we’re found innocent again. We’ll always be guilty because we just are. Remember Klopp and Mourhinho stating that they didn’t believe it when the CAS judgement rolled in? So, if we’re guilty, throw away the key. If we’re innocent, you’re just not having it, are you? If someone could explain why that’s an acceptable stance to take, I really would appreciate it.

FFP rules are BS
I honestly think people supporting FFP rules are completely deluded for several, easy to put in a clickbait like list, reasons.

1. The horse has already bolted. The game is already awash with money, the continental nature of it means any kind of league wide cap is doomed to failure without buy in from absolutely everyone.

2. None of the clubs/owners care about financial fair play (whatever that means). This is about pulling up the drawbridge to make it harder and harder for anyone else to come in and buy their way to success. Its the elite trying to protect the status quo and preserve their advantage.

3. Why should you care of an owner or someone wants to come in and drop a stupid amount of money into the team? Was It bad for football when Chelsea broke Arsenal and Man Utds duopoly? Or that Man City got big?

4. Any limits to losses etc… allowed will be entirely arbitrary. Why 100mil. Why not 200. Why not 1 mil. Why does accounting need to be a part of the game?

5. If clubs go busy let them hit the wall. Gone from the league. I don’t care. If you’re really worried about a loss of some badges/a name pass a law saying if they go broke those elements go to a fans trust or something but honestly, things come and go. Just deal with it.

6. I’m a Southampton fan so factor that in however you want if you want to talk about bias or whatever. I’m sure I have some. Everyone does.
Jon

In defence of Endo (again)
Seems like any negative list these days features poor Endo. Biggest transfer mistake? Endo. Worst signings XI Endo. Worst players in the history of the Premier League? Yup, Endo would probably end up featuring on there.

I know you were clutching at straws for worst Liverpool transfer mistake, but I’m not having Endo. I get the argument that we signed Gravenberch, but they play slightly different positions. More importantly, Liverpool had the following players leave in the summer:

Fabinho, Jordan Henderson, Keïta Naby Keïta, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, James Milner.

That’s 5 players out. They may not have been getting loads of minutes between them but its still a lot of bodies to replace. Endo has made 8 starts so far with a further 5 appearances off the bench so far this season. Who is playing those games if he’s not? He’s very much a Europa League/deep squad player but I think Liverpool would have been worse off having not signed him. Especially when the fee was minimal.

Liverpool’s biggest mistake was not getting their business done early, or getting involved in silly bidding contests with Chelsea over players that had already agreed a move.
Mike, LFC, London