Arsenal Quad talk is ‘confusing’ as Gunners ‘set up to fail’ while Manchester City are ignored | OneFootball

Manchester City are only four points behind Arsenal and at the same stage in every other competition, so why don’t they get the media Quad treatment?

There is also plenty on VAR and a European Super League alternative.

Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com.

Quad goals

Hi Editor,

Why is only one team getting chatter about a “God Quad”. As far as I can tell there is two teams still very much in the running for that title. In fact Man City have the better recent history in all 4 competitions. Why no ludicrous headlines for City or are you putting all your eggs into the Arsenal banter basket?

No editorial guff for City cruising through this round of the FA Cup with minimal energy expended.

As an Arsenal fan I expect to be mocked by all those hoping for a glorious 4 failures. 2nd in the league, beaten in 3 cup finals would be mana from heaven to everyone and it would be truly the most Arsenal thing to do. All I ask is you set Man City up to fail just as much as you do with us.

Regards Brendan (Arsenal fan)

Can someone explain to me why all the talk of a quadruple is only applicable for Arsenal?  City are 4 points behind Arsenal.  That’s it.  For every other competition, the two clubs are in the same situation.  So why are we only talking about Arsenal on track for a quadruple?

It’s more confusing for me because surely the media would want to encourage some jeopardy?  Two clubs, neck and neck and all that jazz. Andrew

*Stewie warning*

Dear 365,

When Stewie continuously rails against the delusional nature of Arsenal fans, Jimmy B Irish Gooner, has provided a small glimpse of the breathtaking lack of self-awareness that pervades Arsenal fandom!

Pep Guardiola “unlikeable”? Aside from arguably being the greatest club football manager of all time, Guardiola has demonstrated a superb social awareness and a bravery to speak out for the destitute and the oppressed. Guardiola went where no other manager dared go, and used his enormous platform to speak out forcefully on the myriad war crimes taking place in Gaza. Pep didn’t bow to sponsors or social activist pressure – he spoke out for the people of Gaza.

And whereas in the PL we have tax-leeching foreign resident rogues – social parasites if you will – using their considerable wealth and power to piss on the downtrodden and demonise hardworking immigrants (who could I be talking about hmmm 🤔)….Again, Guardiola has spoken out publicly about the plight of asylum seekers and the importance of open, respectful societies.

What does Arteta represent and speak out for? Well, the one cause célèbre that springs to my mind is….ah, Thomas Partey. I’ve definitely heard Arteta publicly speak up for this individual! Speaks volumes.

For the good of football, the only right outcome in my view, would be for Citeh to win the league. From a footballing point of view but more crucially, from an ethical one. Stewie Griffin (El Pulizon rhymes with El Botellon)

Rooney, VAR and all that guff

After a couple of the great thinkers of our game, Wayne Rooney and Alan Shearer, have made their position on VAR known, it seems to have all kicked off again.

For the record, terrible decision on the Digne handball, I have no idea where the ref or lino was looking.  One of them should have seen it, but maybe the lino was looking for offside, and the ref unsighted?  Meh, it was woeful no matter what.

IMO, it’s just as possible to watch that horror show of a refereeing performance (there were some poor decisions) and be thankful we do have VAR – not say we should get rid of it because it makes refs bad.  They were always bad.  Digne twice was the benefit of no VAR.  With VAR that was 100% a nailed on red card before the penalty, but one that would admittedly be tough to be sure on in real time.

The theory is, the dependence on VAR has made refs worse.  Their solution is to remove VAR and it will make refs better. The first flaw I can see in that, is that VAR was brought in in the first place in a large part because of “pundits” (and the quotes are very much intentional) like this relentlessly going over in slow motion just how bad the refs were, and managers always blaming referees rather than, let’s say, signing a striker that couldn’t hit a barn door.

BTL, Jim made a couple of comments that actually made me think, when he used removing a crutch analogy, and how people become dependent on them.  He does have a point, for sure about creating a dependency on the technology, and maybe some refs will err that way. The question to carry on the analogy, is are the refs capable of walking competently without crutches, if we take them away?  I would suggest with the current lot (and most in the past), it would be like taking away crutches for someone with a badly broken leg.  They are just not capable.

To keep it (fairly) brief, I have no doubt that occasionally the ref will make the least controversial decision, and let VAR sort it out.  But then VAR does the same, right?  The hair pull in the Chelsea game not given, purely because they didn’t want the ref to get pelters.

But refs have always taken the least controversial option, well before VAR.

Let’s take good old Howard Webb, head of PMGOL.  Remember Nigel De Jong kicking Xabi Alonso in the top of his chest, with his studs, in a World Cup Final?  Yeah, yellow card Howard, nice work, good process mate.  The ultimate in cop out decisions.

How many “not ruining the game” decisions did we see in the past, where refs didn’t want to make the hard, but correct, decision?

To cut a rambling mail short, to me the most important thing is not are the individual refs getting better, but what is the goal of VAR?

Are we using VAR to make refs better when there is no VAR (which would be a very odd goal), or do we simply want to get as many decisions right as possible? Dixon “Pending Comment” Hunt

Thought I’d chime in with the VAR chatter as it was an absolute highlight of the game in involving my team Villa. even though it wasn’t even physically there it still haunted us in our dreams like Freddy Kreuger.

Abraham scored his first goal after returning for Villa and I didn’t celebrate for 10 seconds or so as I thought it was offside and VAR would pick it up. See? VAR is living in my head rent free nowadays.

Digne might have been sent off if VAR was there. Might not have too. I’ve seen them given/not given Clive.

Bizot should have been sent off for his silliness. Silly boy. And he was. But who’s to say VAR, after a 10 minute review would have decided that players would have got back or there was a foul in the build up or some other trifling oddity we all missed so doesn’t matter?

I don’t have the answer to the VAR debacle (as some people, especially up the top, are addicted to it) but a the suggestion in todays mailbox of 20 second timer or something seems a good idea from the moment the incident occurs.

What I will give you are incidents in the last two games for Villa. One involving VAR and one not.

Villa vs Brighton (VAR): Tammy Abraham is shoved down in the box but the defender using two hands in the chest just as he tries to shoot on goal from 5 yards out. VAR decides….. Nah even though it’s as clear a penalty as you are likely to see. We score from the resulting corner so no-one cares.

Villa vs Newcastle (No VAR): Luca Digne handballs in the box, no doubt. As clear a penalty as you are likely to see. Referee gives a free kick outside the box. They score from the the free kick so no-one cares (Apart from clicky content people and commentators who bizarrely find it more interesting to talk about rather than the thing they are supposed to be experts in, you know, football).

VAR? No VAR? What’s the difference there?

In conclusion, VAR is not going away but its impact on the game needs to be cut right down. Whether this is by the use of better technology (Fully automated offsides which take 1 second to register) or a conscious decision to remove it from areas the balance between ‘getting things right’ and ‘is this even enjoyable anymore?’ needs to be addressed.

I fully understand the relatively low level of emotional intelligence of the average football fan and the need for decisions to be correct so that referees are not subject to targeting by conspiracy theorist Arsenal fans and violent, knuckle draggers everywhere. I wish we could live in a world where mistakes happen in a game and we all get on with our lives, I am not naive enough to think this is the age in which we live.

However, it was bloody entertaining to see the referee make mistakes, the Newcastle players get pissy about it and the Villa players with a guilty look on their faces. Lovely, lovely chaos. And isn’t entertainment the point of football? Funstar (Villa’s injuries are killing us) Andy

The strength of the Premier League

Some interesting stats from JB on declining ‘quality’ in the Premier League this season. I think it’s fair to say that it’s not been the most exciting goalfest of a season that we’ve had in recent times, which is reflected in some of those numbers.

But the conclusion about the top teams being worse seems off to me. Surely better midtable teams means fewer points for the top teams on average, even if the top teams stay exactly as good as they were before?

I think this is borne out in the European competitions, where we can see 5 Premier League teams in the top 8 of the Champions League table, and 6 in the top 12. That includes the Mourinho-esque Arsenal side with 23 goals in 8 games, more than any other side, and plenty from open play.

How much better do the top Premier League teams need to be if they are already taking up the majority of automatic qualifying spots in Europe’s top competition?

For me, what is actually exciting about this league at the moment is that practically any team can take points from any other team on their day, meaning almost every game has some jeopardy to it. S B

Dead Super League

Even though the saga entitled superleague is over that does not mean that something new may now be allowed to grow.

The facts are that clubs like Barcelona and Juventus cannot hope to challenge the financial behemoth of the EPL when more than half of their league fixtures are against minnows in low quality stadiums and most package paying footie fans don’t have a clue where these clubs are. ( Possibly half the players don’t either).

Despite the many legal entanglements and the carbon footprint nightmare,  I wouldn’t be surprised if an Italo-Hispanic 18 team league gets mooted or perhaps with some of those places extended to other big Euro clubs in Athens & Lisbon for example.

Something that would throw up eye-catching league fixtures almost every matchday for the likes of Inter, Barca , Juve , Atleti , Madrid and Milan , sometimes in their own country with way larger away ticket allocations,  sometimes in the other . Then the whole shabang aggressively marketed in the lingua franca  as well as native languages .

Then world wide audiences would’t be scratching their heads at Sassuolo or Leganes played in stadiums smaller than those in League Two in England .

That type of product would also appeal to the players who always want to raise their profiles.

The alternative is the trajectory of the premier league extending away from the top tiers in Italy and Spain exponentially. Peter (Internazionale v Juventus this evening ) Andalucia

COVID BS

Firstly Andy’s analogy. If you run 3/4 of a marathon, then finish it 3 months later, you haven’t run a marathon. That is correct. But the Premier League isn’t a marathon, it’s a league. Where teams play 38 games. That happened. This was not like Scotland where they worked out the title on PPG, the matches in England happened. Liverpool were not ‘awarded’ the title as Andy suggests, they won it, fair and square. You won’t find a single pundit, manager or player of note who would argue otherwise. The only people that ever make the claim are rival fans with an axe to grind.

No one with half a brain actually believes that Liverpool didn’t deserve the title or that it is any way tarnished by Covid. If anything, the opposite is true and Liverpool were denied once of the all time historic seasons. Before Covid they were averaging 2.82 PPG, on track for an all time record season. After Covid that slipped to 2 PPG, therefore finishing with ‘only’ 99 points.

Liverpool clearly won the league fairly in 2019/20. It’s incredibly boring to say otherwise. Mike, LFC, Dubai

All’s hair in love and war

Just wondering if Frank Ilett can actually get a haircut as Manchester United Women have won 5 games in a row – did he specify it was the men’s team?

If he didn’t stipulate it then he should be made to get a haircut.