RIVAL ROUND-UP
Don’t come here looking for trouble, not today my friend, we won’t be mentioning the G word. Oh no, we’ll be looking around the league at some of the things going on so we can move on from that conversation.
Manchester City
Pep Guardiola is having an absolute nightmare over at City. He has four injuries to his defenders, there are kids on his bench, and he’s going to deal with things the way he deals with every problem... throw a bunch of cash at it.
Yes, yes, I understand, the man is the best in the world with a choice of first team players to choose from. But can you still be classed as the best when you’re in the latter phase of your career and you’ve been warmed by the comfort blanket of infinite cash so you never have to deal with the friction of normal football wear and tear?
£206m in the summer. €218m last January. Now he’s upset, so he’s getting Semenyo for €80m and possibly Marc Guehi for €60m. Mikel Arteta had no strikers last January after spending sub €100m the prior summer. Things were so bad, he had to play Mikel Merino in a Champions League semi-final against Paris.
The answer to any City problem is just to spend a monstrous amount of cash to solve it... and he’s never criticised for it. People just laud his winnertivity. The man isn’t playing the same game as everyone else. No other club behaves that way. They are not tethered to reality.
Even when he’s complaining about the academy kids. City have made that a business model for themselves. They have a transfer budget and a compensation approach that lands them the cream of world football that they harvest for the best, then spit out the rest for astonishing fees. Over £200m every 5 years. The model is so good, Arsenal are trying to replicate it right now with the innovation of giving Per Mertesacker a transfer budget so he can bring in the best kids. This goes underreported, but it’s another example of what you can do when you have unlimited funds.
You can attack the very top of the game by buying best in class (Haaland).
You can attack the best 17 to 22 year olds (Vitor Reis).
And you can buy mid-career players that are the best at their clubs and just not play them (Kalvin Phillips).
Your mistakes never matter (Savinho & Marmoush) because you can just replace them if they don’t work within a year
My broader point here is that Pep, whining he only has academy kids when those academy kids will get shipped this summer for between €15-35m, is really amusing.
This is your annual reminder that what Arsenal are doing right now is astonishing considering what he’s up against - City have been doing this exact same thing for 15 years. Arteta took Arsenal from 8th to 2nd in 4 years, now we’re chasing down a Premier League title. We can’t add this January, but City will blow through €200m if they have to. That is not a fair playing field... but we could do it.
Manchester United
What an incredible mess they continue to be. They took away sandwiches from the canteen, halved the Christmas WH Smith Voucher bonus, and made people recharge their laptops at bus stops... so they could give Amorim £200m last summer. Now he’s out after throwing a hissy fit after the draw against Leeds at the weekend.
How can a club that naturally generates so much money spend it to mediocrity with such precision and consistency?
The talking heads from the Class of 92 don’t help, but we can’t blame them this time. This looks like a spectacular fail of new leadership that they’ll try to solve by ruining another manager with a pristine reputation. The person they’re looking towards, according to rumors, is Oliver Glasner. The man is a brilliant, brilliant thinker. You would imagine he’d fit the mission. He doesn’t believe in a single system, he believes in making things work based on the qualities of the players. He’s a winner, he’s extremely good with the media, and the job he’s done with Palace despite them losing some MONSTER players has been nothing short of a miracle.
But they’ll break him, by god, they’ll find a way to pick holes in ideas, denigrate his history, and demand that he reverts back to a 4-4-2 like they played in the glory years. But the deal is good. Sign up for 5 years. Get fired in 18 months. Get a fat payoff and never have to work again.
Oh, you want me to talk about the S word? Ok. I’ll go there. Dreadful, so far. But if Glasner goes there, then you’d best be holding your slander. The man made Mateta one of the best in the world. You think he’s going to struggle to get Mbuemo, Cunha, and Sesko doing some damage? Have my doubts. Sesko is a training project, a freak of nature, I suspect an Iraola or a Glasner will have fun getting that mess working.
But yeah, I mean, I am not a professional scout, and I’ll eat the L with a little more grace than those of you clapping Gyokeres’ basics harder than I do when my daughter drops a ‘watch this’ and shows me something extremely average that clearly, she has not worked on (though she did show me a roll the other day that was, without doubt, a really good move).
Crazy how much we struggled away in the first game of the season against them, right? That said, remember when Antony rolled up on us for his debut and looked like a king? Garnacho having his way with us? I mean, there’s a history of some very bland United players looking good against us.
Liverpool
Oh, it ain’t looking good for Arne Slot, is it? The man who could do no wrong last season seems to be really struggling this season. The fans say they don’t know what the system is and they feel like the identity has gone. Liverpool spent a fortune assembling the next generation of generational talents and so far, it looks like a miss. My view 2 seasons ago was they’d collapse and struggle to repeat the magic. I was one season early... but I honestly had no idea that names as grand as Isak and Wirtz would be so bad. So much has to go right with transfers, but I would say even more has to go right for you to see a return on £100m+ players. They don’t often work and so far that mad summer is looking quite glum.
The Liverpool fan blogs are also running stories that the Sporting hierarchy is at odds with the manager because he refuses to give minutes to teenage talents Rio Ngumoha and Trey Nyoni. The reports say that the club organized an u21 game for the manager to see the best and brightest and he didn’t show up. Bad form, if true... also the sort of form that loses you friends and your job if you’re not careful.
Chelsea
Maresca, quite an uninspiring manager, is being replaced by Liam Rosenior... another name that doesn’t really make the heart skip a beat. It’s another move from a club that plays with luxury threads money but always ends up with a suit from M&S. Come on, I know the Reiss Creative Director went there, but I’m not buying my suit from the same place I get my Colin the Caterpillar cakes. Point being, Chelsea seem to be going through a phase where they’re spending a lot of cash, and not extracting much value from it.
So in short, a lot of drama. The only club without it? Arsenal. That’s a good thing, wouldn’t you say?
Before the Whistle will be recorded a little later this evening! See you in the comments. x
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