‘Nice guy’ Jurgen Klopp’s mask slips yet again as Spurs are told to suck it…
The Mailbox seeks to stop the perception of Jurgen Klopp as a nice guy. Also: Ipswich Town; free tickets; stoning and the redevelopment of east Manchester; and VAR.
Get your views in to theeditor@football365.com…
Tractor Boys takeover
In amongst all the Premier League and Championship goings on, has anybody outside of Ipswich noticed the incredible run Town have been on?
13 wins out of 14 to clinch automatic promotion. If we can win the last game of the season 1:0, we’ll have 100 points and 100 goals and still may not win the league!
Crowds in the high 20,000’s all season.
Still buzzing from afar.
So, so proud of the boys, the manager and the ownership.
Let the good times roll!.
Oh, and Norwich City, we’re coming for you!
Lenny, Charlotte, NC.
Champions of relegation, you’ll never sing that
Only three teams have been relegated with 40 points or more since the Premier League was reduced to 20 teams. West Ham can claim to be champions for going down with 42 points in 2002/03. Two teams went down with 40 points, Sunderland in 1996/97 and Bolton in 1997/98. Those events were all a long time ago and since then the football world has since changed a lot with the top teams becoming far more dominant. It seems fair to say that 40 points is now effectively an absolute guarantee of safety.
Now for a couple of interesting relegation facts from the earlier days of the Premier League when there were 22 teams. In 1992/93, the first PL season, Crystal Palace somehow managed to get relegated with 49 points. Their record of 1.16 points per game is the best ever ratio for a relegated side in Premier League history. Palace finished just 35 points behind champions Man United and 14 points behind 5th place QPR. I was at Selhurst Park with my son Ian and daughter Karen to see our team pretty much guarantee safety by beating Ipswich 3-1. Oldham now needed to win their last three games including away at Manchester United. Somehow they did so and stayed up on goal difference.
Two years later, in 1994/95, one extra team had to go down as the league was reduced to 20 teams. Palace had bounced straight back up as Championship champions but then earned another claim to fame by being that fourth team to go down, relegated with 45 points.
There you have it, Crystal Palace, undisputed champions! Sadly only champions of relegation in the early days of the Premier league.
Eagle in exile by the sea near Athens in Greece
Free tickets for all
Interesting article by JN on Fortuna Dusseldorf and the potential of PL clubs using a free admission model. Whilst on the face of it this would be great for fans, there is a fly in this particular utopian ointment to consider.
JN uses club’s scale of income to suggest that they could afford to take the financial hit. However he is getting his wires crossed a bit when he says about United, “their total income is around £700m”. This is actually total revenue and not income, the difference being it does not account for costs and outgoings.
In fact, we only just recently returned to profit since covid during Q3 of the 22/23 FY. This quarterly profit was around £6m and is off the back of massive debt of around £970m, thanks to our lovely owners who continue to take huge dividends (albeit not that quarter). Over the last football year (21/22) we actually made a loss of about £116m.
Looking at match days, income per game is about £4m. No info on how much of that comes from ticket sales, but let’s say an average of about £30 per ticket (to allow for discounts for season tickets and age) and 74,000 average attendance. That’s revenue of about £2.2m and, after some adjustments for costs of ticket sales, is around half of the match day income figure (£2m). Even taking just league matches, that’s nearly a £40m hit on top of a loss of £116m. It’s just not financially viable for the club to take that sort of a hit.
It’s a nice idea and perhaps owners with deeper pockets could use it to get fans onside. But given the Glazer’s pockets are stitched up, and we’re struggling to turn a profit due to the massive debts they have saddled us with, I doubt it will be coming to fruition for my team anytime soon.
In conclusion, Glazers Out.
Garey Vance, MUFC
VAR review
Monday morning’s mailbox inspired me just to mentions the madness of yesterday and how rules are just not applied the same, not even in the same game.
I think it was Perisic defending against Salah, when Salah tried to run past him and Perisics’ wrist (not hand) was preventing Salah wrist(not worst over chest or obstruction) from moving forward: free kick. Perisic mad, nobody else cares. Nothing comes of it.
Later in the half, Konate is all of Richardlison in the box. Are clearly all over him and pulling him back. It would have been harsh, but definitely warranted a penalty by todays standards.
One is blatantly not and one blatantly was, add in the ankle breaker on Skipp and I call BS.
I’ve watched Casimiro miss 7 games for less. The rules just are not being applied evenly, and it’s impossible to say whether they are genuine mistakes of the PL overlords creating and controlling a narrative.
I’m pro VAR but not with this little accountability or no transparency. I’ve heard too many “well technically the rules say..” for some and “He’s got away with that one..” for others.
I’ve seen last minute blocks hit the arms and nothing, and others are penalties.
I’ve seen handballs in lead up to goals ignored and others stop the goal.
I’ve seen ankle breakers get away with red cards and “his hands are up..” nobody is harmed or upset, being technically get reds.
It appears if you’re near top of the league, got a rapturous home crowd and/or are flavor of the month, you’ll get the calls your way. VAR was meant to take away the mistakes, when all it really did was give more angles to the referees objectivity, or lack thereof.
Calvino
Cuddly Klopp?
After his latest outburst and picking fights with officials, can fans of every other club just agree that Jurgen Klopp is a massive arsehole and a bully and not a “good loser”? But no worry, Liverpool win and he’s all happy again. So that’s nice.
Fourth officials must dread being stood next to him, knowing they will be shouted at for decisions they mostly have zero control over.
Tom
If it was Kane…
Just in response to Birkenshaw Spurs flight of imagination. What I don’t need to imagine is how last season at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Harry Kane went studs up straight into the shin / knee of Jordan Henderson after 20 minutes of the first half and got away with it scot free, then the same ref as yesterday, Jurgen’s bezzie Paul Tierney, also denied a clear penalty on yesterday’s Jota the Rotter. We ended up drawing that game 2-2 – in the long run it arguably cost us the title and domestic treble. But I don’t recall Kane or Spurs being castigated in the ways you bizarrely described.
And yesterday cost Spurs what? Maybe another shot at the Conference League? My heart bleeds.
Cheers, Bobby.
City defence
First time mailer, love your work etc. Apologies all if I’m a little late to the Man City debate, but it appears their supporter’s defence can be split into two camps, often with a blurring between the two:
Firstly – FFP is bullshit and only in place to serve the existing elite, so that’s why our owners overspent/cheated. As you can’t cheat an unfair system.
Or, secondly: we’ve not been found guilty of any offences or breaches (except the Mancini thing) and innocent before proven guilty etc etc
So which is it? You overspent breaking laws that are unjust or you haven’t as you’ve not been found guilty?
Look in your hearts, lads/laddettes. It’s sad what happened to your excellent club – you know it, I know it, everyone does. You’re now just the flagship store of a leading franchise, like the JD Sports at Westfield.
You don’t have to piss on our faces and tell us it’s raining.
Kind regards,
Dan, AFC Wimbledon
City, stoning, and redevelopment
To the seriously windy, self aggrandising and serially obsessed Paul McDevitt. According to Wiki, “The United Arab Emirates has sentenced several people to death by stoning. In 2010, stoning to death was prescribed as the default method of execution for adultery,[5] and it remained a legal punishment under the UAE’s interpretation of Sharia in 2021.[6]
In general, the sentence is not carried out. Although Karteen Karikender was sentenced thus in 2000,[7] she was released before January 2001 and allowed to return home to her family in Indonesia.[8] Shahin Abdul Rahman was also sentenced to death by stoning in 2006 in Fujairah[9] for adultery[10] by a Sharia court.[11] This sentence was commuted to one year’s imprisonment and deportation.[12] Sentences of stoning are rare in the UAE and there is no evidence of any that have been carried out.”
OK, so, the fact that someone can be sentenced to death for stoning, in this day and age, is horrific. I agree. I can’t understand that any country in the world could contemplate it, Sharia Law not withstanding, but it appears that this is a law that’s been left on the statute book because it isn’t applied any more. However, you infer that it’s used every other day, etc. Perhaps yet another case of wild eyed bias and repressed fury that isn’t justified but we’re used to seeing this in your frequent bothering of the Mailbox editor. Wild claims like these sound very authoritative when you’re being shouted at but a simple Net search shoots them down. Windbags R Us, etc.
You go on to verbiose that being clever is actually a sin and shouldn’t be allowed in our game citing the charges laid at our door. What’s wrong with being clever? With being bloody good at what you do? You can settle for mediocrity if you’re happy with that.
As in the case with Uefa, all those desperate to see us punished have already deemed us guilty and have the date barred charges as the evidence. Yet again, I have to state that City were pissed off about this because they didn’t have the chance to prove those wrong, too. How many times does this bear repeating? As many times as guff like yours is repeated, I suppose.
I note that Steve from Huyton was shot down, too. Again, the theory and opinion overtakes the reality. The reality is that East Manchester is one of the poorest parts of the country and, around 30 years ago, was referred to as “bandit country” by the boss of a house builder as the reason he wouldn’t build there. The Abu Dhabi lads HAVE built there helping to transform the area into a place that people now want to move to. Our own government hasn’t done that. They abandoned the area. I recall a quote in the Daily Mail that was uttered by on old lady from the area saying that “it took a man from the desert to do this for us, our own people ignore us”. Now, people might say that SHE has been sportswashed but the plain fact us, she’s not arsed about that, what she cares about is the fact that her area is now a place that people want to move to.
City aren’t perfect (despite P McD inferring so), no club is but John from Shropshire had it right, pipe down because if they were YOUR owners, you’d be defending them.
Anyway, despite the fact that I could say much, much more, I’m signing off.
I’m not Paul McDevitt, you know.
Helpful as ever.
Levenshulme Blue, Manchester 19
Missed celebration
So I finally finished sulking about Arsenal’s failed title bid and thought to myself that at least now I get to go online and figure out when I get to celebrate St. Totteringham’s Day…only to discover that it had apparently already happened? Wtf! Did anyone even mention this?
There is no shame in losing a title race to City, but great expectations blinding us to life’s smaller joys is a true tragedy.
Lucy, Lost Coast AFC