We’re trying to move away from Arsenal referee chat and have landed on Man Utd, their mess and Marcus Rashford’s money.
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An evisceration of Man Utd
It’s genuinely fascinating to see how low the bar has fallen at Old Trafford. A 1-0 scrape past Fulham, courtesy of one shot on target, and suddenly some United fans think Ruben Amorim is the messiah. Lads, this is United, not Burnley’s greatest hits. The glory days are not just gone; they’re starting to feel like mythology.
Let’s not mince words here: Man Utd are bad. Proper bad. The sort of bad where you glance at the league table, see 12th place, and wonder if there’s a typo. Spoiler: there isn’t.
A Brief Recap of the Shambles
* Brighton 3-1 United. Completely outclassed by a team whose wage bill is less than Casemiro’s annual salary. Amorim’s side looked more lost than Sancho did under Ten Hag.
* Fulham 0-1 United. One shot on target. One. And let’s not pretend it was some tactical masterclass. Fulham gifted that game away, but hey, a win’s a win, right?
Speaking of Casemiro…He’s no longer starting, and frankly, it’s not a loss. The man plays like he’s running through wet cement. Remember when United fans called him “transformative”? Now he’s been benched so long he might as well be a pundit on Match of the Day.
Credit where it’s due – Harry Maguire looks decent in Amorim’s 3-4-3 setup. But let’s not get carried away. Decent Maguire is still Maguire, and the fact that he’s now considered a highlight speaks volumes about the state of the club.
Rashford? Who?
Frozen out for lack of effort in training. Amorim’s recent comment that he’d rather start a 61-year-old than someone who doesn’t apply themselves was clearly directed at Rashford. Fair play to Amorim for enforcing standards, but it’s damning when one of your supposed stars can’t even get on the bench.
The Departures
* Martial has swapped Manchester for AEK Athens, and somehow that feels like an upgrade – for him and United.
* McTominay is thriving at Napoli, challenging for the Serie A title. Imagine! Scott McTominay: Serie A champion. Feels like a Mad Lib, doesn’t it?
* Sancho is looking revitalized on loan at Chelsea. It’s almost poetic how players leave United and suddenly remember how to play football.
Ruud van Nistelrooy, in his interim stint, actually did well—winning 3 and drawing 1. He’s now at Leicester, fighting relegation, which somehow feels more dignified than this mess at Old Trafford.
Amorim’s philosophy is clear: discipline and structure over ego. Admirable, sure, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that the football is soul-crushingly dull. United’s games have become the sporting equivalent of ASMR for insomniacs. You’d struggle to find a single moment of excitement, save for the occasional misplaced backpass and Onana mistake.
What United fans should be asking is: where is this club actually headed? Amorim is a project manager with ideas, but does anyone honestly believe he’ll be given the time and resources to succeed? United’s recent history suggests he’s just the next name on a long list of scapegoats.
United are closer to the relegation zone than the Champions League spots. This is a club that’s spent billions and somehow managed to get worse. It’s no longer about “rebuilding”—it’s about survival. Meanwhile, Arsenal are flying, Newcastle are climbing, Bournemouth are having a ball and Liverpool are top of the league. United? They’re trudging along, hoping for scraps.
The chaos at the top continues. The Glazers haven’t sold, Ratcliffe’s minority stake is a glorified PR exercise, and the same old indecision and infighting still rule the roost.
So yes, enjoy your occasional 1-0 wins, United fans. Celebrate the rare clean sheet and the odd moment of Maguire competence. Just don’t delude yourselves into thinking this is progress.
In May, when United finish 14th and claim “green shoots of recovery,” I’ll be here to remind you: this isn’t recovery. This isn’t even stagnation with a shiny new coat of paint. This is Deterioration.
Charly Knickham (Man Utd Supporter who cannot take the lowering of standards and the way United fans just accept the mediocrity of this once-great football club)
MORE MAN UTD COVERAGE ON F365…
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Crossroads for Rashford
Over the last decade, I think we’ve really seen the impact of young English footballers accumulating generational wealth at a young age.
It essentially means players no longer “need” to find clubs or play at the level of European football. They have “F-off money” from a young age, and as the saying goes, the problem with paying “F-off money” is that people can then tell you to “F-off.”
A few years ago, it was big news that the likes of youngish Jesse Lingard, Dele Alli, Ross Barkley, and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain were dropped from the England squad. Since then, for differing reasons, none of them have come anywhere near the England squad again.
In fact, only Barkley, now 31 and supposedly still in his prime, is still playing in the Premier League as a bit-part player for mid-table Aston Villa. However, after making a decisive impact at Luton last year and playing 27 league games in Nice the year before, he has shown consistent effort to get game time. This has probably meant he hasn’t made as much money as he could have. For me, this is an example of a player who genuinely wants to play.
Oxlade-Chamberlain, also 31, had injury problems at Liverpool, which restricted his appearances. He moved to Turkey to kick-start his career but currently seems to be frozen out of the squad. It will be interesting to see if he has the appetite to go in search of regular football or if he will take the easier path, collecting what I assume are high wages while enjoying the Turkish sunshine. I wouldn’t begrudge him the latter.
Where things have gone really wrong is with 28-year-old Alli. We know he’s had injuries and well-documented personal struggles, but he hasn’t achieved much football-wise in the last couple of years. Hopefully, his new challenge in Como will help him get back to impacting football matches.
Strangest of all is Lingard, who only turned 32 last month. Since his wonderfully successful loan spell at West Ham in 2021, he has done very little, to the extent that he didn’t even have a club between the end of the 2023 season and February 2024. Lingard then popped up in Korea, where he’s been inconsistent.
Lingard has mentioned that he was “dealing” with the passing of his grandmother, and as I mentioned, Alli has had his traumas from childhood. Neither of these struggles should be marginalised. However, I imagine that if these players hadn’t already accumulated generational wealth, they may not have been able to take so much time away from the game.
I’m not begrudging any of these players making money or the decisions they’ve made. Just don’t be surprised if Rashford or other players continue this trend of stepping away from top-flight European football, sometimes temporarily and sometimes for good.
Paul K, London
Spurs need open-heart surgery
Regarding the Ange or Levy in/out debate it seems to me that everyone is focusing on the wrong things.
The accusation seems to be that either Levy doesn’t spend money or that Ange is a bit rubbish. My personal view is that Ange is not a top-level coach. He produces brittle teams because of his all-out attack philosophy. If you throw enough people forwards without any care about defence (without or with the ball) then you will have some great successes where you overwhelm the opposition but you’re only ever a moment or two away from coming unstuck. But he’s not awful either. And Levy does spend money, just badly, which I’ll come to.
However, a lot is being said about the extreme nature of Spurs’ short-term injury issues. Firstly, it’s partly on the manager to do something about this. Your concept of playing football can’t be to make players sprint nonstop for 90 minutes on repeat twice a week without attention to their condition, proper medical care, or rotating the team.
As I understand it, he has a very ‘light’ staff and doesn’t focus much on individual player condition etc. He’s about motivation and commitment to attack. It seems to be costing him in a way it didn’t previous managers with a lot of the same players. The club should do something about it also. Don’t rely on a manager to have good medical staff – players are your assets – you should protect them at all costs.
But really, I want to address the narrative that ‘nothing can be done because of the injury crisis’. It’s always hard to say exactly due to agent fees etc, but rough numbers, the back five for Spurs against Leicester on the weekend cost 130 million. One of those players was signed ten years ago so, in real terms, it’s more but let’s stick to basic figures. One of those players is very young and out of position and that’s an issue for sure. But that’s it. And they capitulated to a Leicester team with an atrocious record and that, as a team, still costs far far less than the Spurs side.
To put it in context, the starting Arsenal back five against Wolves cost less than Spurs’. It was only once Mr. Oliver decided (again) to interfere with Arteta’s team selection and Calafiori came on that our back five cost a bit more than Spurs. But even then, Arsenal’s cost something like 160m. So 6m more per player. Not much in the PL scheme of things. It’s a back five that Spurs absolutely could afford and was, only a few seasons ago, in a much better position than Arsenal to sign.
It seems to me that Spurs is just badly run from a football perspective. The squad building is appalling. How you go into a long season with only three senior CBs is a mystery. It’s Russian roulette. The player analysis is clearly poor due to repeated purchases of quite average players for large sums. Meanwhile other clubs with much smaller resources consistently get it right. When was the last time the Spurs academy produced anyone of real note? Harry Kane? That’s just dysfunctional. Even by luck they should have produced one or two decent players in over a decade.
My point is this. For all the fancy new stadium, gigs, go karts or whatever, it’s not changing until they do a Man U style re-birth. It’s open-heart surgery time. But Levy makes money, like Ed Woodward, so nothing will alter.
Josh, AFC, Dubai
READ: Spurs’ ridiculous 24/25 season in astonishing numbers: Third-most goals scored, most points dropped
It’s VAR from consistent; fans need to grow up
What entitled cry-baby world do Arsenal fans live in? Well, Trump’s is the answer, same for all of us – can’t you just close your eyes, put your fingers in your ears and go “wah wah wah” until it’s all over along with the rest of us? To be fair it’s not only Arsenal fans so I will address the rest of this missive to all fans of all persuasions.
“All we want is consistency” – well you can’t have it, and you will never be able to have it, not until football is played by robots doing only what they are programmed to do, or what AI tells them to do. Same with refs and VARs – they will always, necessarily, be inconsistent while humans are involved.
Football is not a sport practiced and policed by angels with perfection to rival Arteta’s lego haircut, precision-plucked eyebrows, and excuses. Football is glorious, beautiful chaos created by flawed human beings with all the scope for success and failure this engenders. Same for referees and VARs.
Many moons ago Johnny Nic articulated this way better than I can in a diatribe against VAR, how it was fundamentally at odds with what football is and the joy it brings. He was right of course; all VAR has done is introduce an additional spectrum for human fallibility to corrupt the beautiful game into more and more content for those born, raised and existing only to whinge and whine about the injustice of it all. All Whinginho Whinealdums as I christened my youngest daughter.
Fans created this monster by complaining incessantly about referee mistakes, stoked by an outrage-hungry media. VAR and social media have turned this ire and fire into an echo chamber and poured petrol into it, and stood back watching it burn with all the male energy of a craven milquetoast eunuch. Fans are now moaning about precisely the problem they created to fix the previous problem they created, because they are incapable of accepting imperfection in an imperfect world.
Why can’t fans just enjoy football instead of corrupting it further into the abyss along with everything else? You are in control of what you care about and how you feel about it – grow up!
Gofezo (Liverpool had a goal scored against them by an actual balloon FFS!)
Some stats on fouls and red cards
I realised my mail actually said that there is a conspiracy despite suggesting there wasn’t one. No doubt you will get mails along those lines.
So I spent a really boring 1 hour meeting running the stats. I picked the Top 6 and Aston Villa and Newcastle to try and add to the data/playstyles. All the data is on a per game basis so it’s consistent. I took from 2021 season until now and the numbers for tackles, fouls, yellows and red. What I expected was Arsenal to get a lot more yellows and reds per tackle/foul than the rest of the teams looked at:
What does the data show:
-Chelsea have a foul for 78% of their tackle this season. Arsenal, Villa and Liverpool all are around 68%. City and United are clear outliers with 55 and 52 respectively.
-Of these fouls, around 25% of Chelseas and 27% of Citys result in yellow cards. Next is United (21%) with everyone else around 17-20%)
-An Arsenal foul results in a red in 0.15% of the time. This is the important one so here comes all the data:
City: 0.005
United: 0.003
Tottenham: 0.003
Villa: 0.004
Liverpool: 0.003
Chelsea: 0.003
An Arsenal foul is 2.7x more likely to result in a red than City this season. This is what I expected to see. Conspiracy, still no. Statistically important, yes, very.
Arsenals tackles per game have gone up since 2021 (14-17) but have remained consistently low. Fouls per game for Arsenal have gone up by 20%, same as Liverpool but by far they are the most. Arsenal yellow per game, up 25%, again same as Liverpool over the same period. Arsenals reds per game have gone up 120% this season, Villa take the lead though with a 230% increase amazingly. City and Liverpool have gone up as well (around 70%) just not as much.
So there are more tackles in the game, more fouls in the game. Certain teams get more yellow cards per foul, which I would suggest is based on the style of play with City, Liverpool and Arsenal as outliers giving up higher risk chances in their styles of play. The only statistic where there is a significant deviation is on the red cards where Arsenal and Aston Villa appear to be on the receiving end more regularly than expected. The next closest in the data is Liverpool in 23/24 with 0.13 reds per game.
Of Arsenals 4 red cards, we have MLS against Wolves for serious foul play, Saliba for trying to clear a ball with his head and hitting an opponent, Trossard for 2 yellows which were both deserved and Rice for 2 yellow cards which were both deserved (although how the Brighton player wasn’t also punished i’m not sure).
Of the 30 red cards this season so far, 24 have been straight red cards. Of the 6 for double yellow cards, Arsenal make up 33% of all the double yellows handed out this season.
So was it worth pulling this data? Probably not. Each incident has to be taken on their own merit so this kind of data isn’t great to use. However, to be 33% of all the double yellow cards handed out this season, for each foul to be 2.7x more likely to be a red for Arsenal than City, for Arsenal to actually be pretty low/average for yellows but wildly out of place for reds despite not statistically tackling or fouling much more than their peers, something is up. I don’t know what but if the COVID jab has statistical variations for death like this, they would be investigated/we would still be wearing masks. Something for Arteta and the PGMOL to both look into separately I think
Oh and don’t send death threats to officials, managers, players or their families, it’s just a game.
Rob A (the more tackles and fouls per game is really interesting, there’s an article on that somewhere) AFC
Not for us, Clive
I’ll bite. I’ll even go as far as to say I can understand why MLS was sent off. I watched the game and at the time it happened, I thought to myself ‘he could be in trouble here’. 50/50 red card? Fair enough.
But, as for your take on not dragging a 17-year old online troll over the coals for sending a death threat, then no, I disagree. 17 is old enough to know better. I held a semi-responsible role in the City of London at that age. Clearly, I was considered mature enough to be treated as an adult.
If we constantly let this sort of stuff go, where does it stop? I’m not saying the lad needs to go to prison, but he certainly needs to be punished for his actions. Maybe given a Spurs season ticket perhaps?
Or, maybe put him in a room with Kai Havertz for a couple of minutes? I know Havertz would probably miss with his first couple of punches, but he’d get him in the end…
He’s clearly not an Arsenal fan. Just a pr*ck who hides behind a keyboard.
You can seemingly say whatever you like these days on social media. OK, so be it. But, you have to accept that your words may have consequences.
Stu – Gooner in France, looking forward to another 2nd place finish
…Craig asks whether it is really worth dragging the seventeen-year-old who sent a pregnant woman messages threatening to ‘slaughter’ her as-yet unborn baby over the coals and possibly giving him a criminal record?
Yes it is, Craig. Yes it really is.
Iain, Sunderland
…In response to Craig’s question – yes, it probably is worth ensuring that people who send death threats are strongly discouraged from doing so again.
I took a look at what you described as a “moment of stupidity”. He wrote “I’m going to come to your house and slaughter your baby”. He took time out of his day to directly contact someone to tell them that he intended to kill their child. Perhaps it was just a very poorly judged joke you might think…this moment of stupidity. Well thankfully he then added “I’m not joking just wait” to remove any doubt. He wasn’t caught scrumping for apples or doing 35mph in a 30 zone – he wrote and sent a message stating a very clear intent to kill someone.
Did he mean it? Who knows. In the UK we’ve seen MPs, journalists, footballers and musicians attacked and, in some cases, killed by strangers who simply didn’t like them. How would you know if the threat was real or not.
I don’t really understand why anyone would bother to take the time to directly tell a stranger that they don’t like them for whatever reason, but there’s a line between “I think you’re a xxxxx” and “I’m going to kill you.” You can argue the merits of making the first one a police matter all you like, but the second one? He deserves the minor punishment that’s probably coming his way.
Jeremy
