Kai Havertz transfer gets ‘green light’ as Arne Slot reaction ‘speaks volumes’ on a mixed weekend | OneFootball

A rare Monday morning where everyone can’t just take the p*ss out of Spurs, leaving the media little choice but to instead pretend that champions-elect Arsenal are about to sell Kai Havertz or that Bruno Fernandes > Cristiano Ronaldo.

It’s not all nonsense, though.

Arne Slot has been speaking volumes, which is always welcome, and it was a mixed weekend for Mediawatch debutant Michael B Jordan.

Kai and mighty

Lovely bit of mischief from the Mirror this bright Monday morning, with a headline that both suggests Kai Havertz is about to be sold while also getting Max Dowman a mention at this most clickable of times for the youngling.

The other clever little bit of work in the ‘as’ that links two entirely unrelated things here is that mention of Arteta. Which links him to the Havertz ‘green light’ despite no such link existing and absolutely no indication anywhere from anyone that any actual Havertz transfer has been green-lit. Because that would, obviously, be mental.

The metaphorical green light here is also an entirely hypothetical one, and comes not from Arsenal but from Bayer Leverkusen who – shock, horror – would be quite open to one day signing their very good former player Kai Havertz.

But not now, as their managing director Simon Rolfes makes entirely clear:

He also mentioned Florian Wirtz as a very good former Leverkusen player he would quite like to re-sign, so look forward to that having a green light sometime tomorrow when low tide hits Liverpool Content Bay.

Still, nice headline. And what of Arteta’s grand ‘Dowman plan’?

Verily, he’s got the 16-year-old’s entire career mapped out in intricate detail there.

Point of order

Apologies for this, but you find Mediawatch in a grumpy mood this morning with absolutely no tolerance for this kind of utter guff from The Sun.

Let’s unpack that mess of a headline first. They’re comparing Bruno Fernandes’ undeniably impressive current campaign to Cristiano Ronaldo’s 2008/09 season, during which he won the Ballon d’Or (and also the Premier League, if we’re being picky). We’re going to be generous and say they’re not actually suggesting Bruno Fernandes should win the Ballon d’Or. Or the Premier League.

But we have no such generosity of spirit for the actual concept.

So straight away, he hasn’t ‘officially overtaken the great Cristiano Ronaldo’. He’s moved level with him.

But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that this entire idea is just… bollocks. It is simply not how football works. It’s bad enough when this is deployed as Player X’s goals have earned Team Y a total of Z points. Even then it relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of – or unwillingness to acknowledge – how football is actually played.

One player’s goals can no more be said to have ‘earned’ a team points on their own than a goalkeeper’s saves or a defender’s blocks or any of the other myriad events and moments that blend together to form a football match.

You also can’t just isolate those massive game events like goals or saves or whatever and then just pretend the rest of the match otherwise proceeds in entirely the same way without them. That’s just obviously not how any of this works.

But the metric The Sun have adopted here is particularly egregious for combining goals and assists. Because that manages to work even less than the other stuff, which already didn’t work at all.

It’s clear where this falls down. Assists, by definition, expose the folly of this explicitly individualistic approach. Fernandes here is given full game-changing, point-winning credit for every goal he’s scored, but also every goal he’s created. Begging the question, what about the team-mates who created the goals he scored? Or scored the ones he created?

It’s almost – almost – like football is a team game and at this level one player, even one as good or impactful as Bruno or Ronaldo, is not in fact individually personally responsible for almost half his team’s points.

Volume control

Far be it from humble Mediawatch to tell Reach publications how to sh*thouse a headline, but we’re sorry, the Mirror, we’re just really not sure this is a volume-speaking event.

What did poor old beleaguered Slotters do? Smash the place to bits? Kick a water bottle into the sun? Call Andy Robertson a traitor secretly working for January suitors Tottenham all along?

He shook his head? After conceding a very annoying late equaliser to a very sh*t team? That is damning.

But – hear us out – is the thing that really spoke volumes here Arne Slot shaking his head because his team conceded a very annoying late equaliser to a very sh*t team, or is it just that Liverpool conceded a very annoying late equaliser to a very sh*t team?

Foxtrot Oscar

How was your weekend, Michael? Up and down.