Keane ‘bitterness’ clear with Neville ‘nodding along’ at fellow failed manager who is ‘furious by default’ | OneFootball

Roy Keane having a pop at Michael Carrick’s wife only exposed his ‘bitterness’ and laziness, with fellow failed manager Gary Neville just ‘nodding along’.

There are also thoughts on Chelsea and Greenland.

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When anger replaces insight

Personal comments about a manager’s wife aren’t honesty or elite standards. They’re what you reach for when there’s nothing left to say about football but you still want the attention. When tactics, structure, and insight dry up, go personal and call it telling it like it is.

It’s hard not to see bitterness underneath it. Keane had his chance in management and was exposed — Sunderland, Ipswich, end of story. The snarling, the shouting, the talk of standards never translated into building a team or managing people. Once that door closed, the managerial career ended and the pundit persona took over.

Now he’s permanently angry for a living. Furious by default. Disappointed on cue. Whether it’s on Sky Sports or on a show on YouTube with Gary Neville, it’s the same routine every time. Neville nodding along, Keane sneering, both presenting themselves as authorities despite neither having anything resembling a credible managerial legacy.

Between them, they confuse volume with insight and contempt with intelligence. Lecturing from a safe distance is easy when you’re no longer accountable for results, selections, or decisions that actually matter.

Dragging families into it isn’t “telling it like it is”. It’s lazy, snide, and beneath anyone who wants to be taken seriously. It’s what happens when the football content runs out and resentment fills the gap.

If this is what football media is happy to platform — cheap shots, performative anger, and recycled bitterness — then it says far more about punditry than it does about Manchester United or Michael Carrick. Ant (watching content I dislike, as is tradition)

I have a cunning plan

Having watched the Chelsae game, Blueco’s strategy reminds me of Baldrick in Black Adder. He always had a ‘Cunning plan’ but when he talked it through it was met with laughter and incredulity.

Watching Arsenal toy with Chelsea under 15’s joined by their PE teachers Cucurella and Sanchez laments a new ownership who has spent the best part of £1.3 billion (Netto as Ruud would say). The absentees of James, Colwill, Caicedo, Palmer and De lap focused the attention to the bench.

It included a Brighton loan, 2 academy players, a free agent, a player who has been injured for 4 months and a goal keeper, £1.3 billion???? It’s a Private Equity business so the reality we are being driven on a model similar to Dortmund. Identify and purchase the best young talent, develop and sell. Next year we should see the arrival of Penders, Sarr, Quenda, Emegha, Barco, average age 20.7!!! The injury to Palmer may buy us an extra year with him, but Cucurella and Fernandez possibly off to City and PSG respectively.

One other observation, although I’m banging on about Chelsea it looks like the majority of the PL is adopting this model. Look at the managers, apart from Guardiola, there is no super managers here. You may make a case for Emery and Arteta if he wins this year. But the rest are definitely potential only.

Thanks for letting me rant P Didi (not)

Daylight rule would just create new problems

Interesting to see Garey Vance bring up Wenger’s “daylight” offside proposal this morning. I’d coincidentally read a reference to it a couple of hours previously so it was fresh in the mind.

So far as I can tell, the arguments for a (big) revision to the offside rule are that it will help to clarify the current VAR mess, and that there will be more goals if attackers have more leeway. In theory I suppose they’re both correct, but in practice would it really be the case?

Taking the VAR angle first – the lines don’t go away if the point of intersection between onside/offside is moved. Instead of a toe ahead of the defensive line being the determinant as it is now, we’ll just see a toe intersecting with the last defender’s silhouette. We’ll still be at the mercy of the competence or otherwise of the same set of minions at the PGMOL.

Maybe more important though is the knock-on effect of allowing attackers a generous margin for error when making their runs. Taken in isolation, it sounds great and should allow them to unpick defences with far higher regularity. More chances = more goals, better game to watch, everybody wins.

But how will defenders react to having their margin of error narrowed dramatically? I can only think of one natural response, and that’s to close off the spaces in behind. Start with a line 10-15 yards deeper so they’re in a more secure position when possession turns over, and adopt a low block as a necessity when the opposition has sustained possession.

Of course players will still manage to get in behind when an attack is quick enough or imaginative enough to pull that defence apart, but I’m not convinced that we’d necessarily have a flood of high-scoring games as a result of such a dramatic change to the rule.

No issue with seeing this trialled at some level of the game, it would still be an interesting experiment. But does anyone else think that there should always be a place in the game for defending to be preserved as an art and an appropriate challenge to the attackers?

Football is a low-scoring sport by nature, and that has never prevented it from becoming the most popular game in the world. It can definitely be improved, and VAR reform is definitely part of that. But there has to be a way to align it with the spirit of the game instead of looking to rewrite one of the core laws of the game, doesn’t there? Keith Reilly

The VAR mission creep

I know I talk about VAR way too much, and F365 didn’t post my last mail on this topic probably because I was furious, and ranting.

But following the PGMOL review of the Wirtz goal against Fulham, I wanted to try and write in again and see if I can get this published. I really don’t think it’s been covered enough. This is a big deal.

Wirtz was offside. It was obviously offside. He himself didn’t celebrate as he knew he was offside. The commentary team described it as offside. And both the ref, and the lino, flagged it as offside. Everyone in the ground was on the same page.

However, after a delay, the goal was given.

Not because VAR could prove the ref was wrong, but because they have declared that the technology is not good enough to accurately determine when exactly a ball is kicked, and so to that end being ‘forensic’ about lines on a screen is a faux science. There are therefore ‘thickening the lines’ of offside players to give the benefit of the doubt to the attacking side.

So-as to be consistent with potential future cases which may require the benefit of the doubt, they granted an offside goal.

It is, as far as I am aware, the first instance of VAR over-ruling a correct decision. Or at the very least, of VAR over-ruling an on field decision because the person in a booth could not confirm if the ref was correct.

This breaks the game.

And beyond that, the dangerous loon in a suit who created this law has said it should be ‘good news’ to fans as it rewards attacking play. We are deemed so thick and imbecilic that apparently giving us offside goals that a ref has correctly flagged offside, removes debate and makes the game better.

The VAR mission-creep is endless and dangerous. Tom G

Green party

I realise this is a bit not football but if the USA does annex Greenland why wouldn’t all of Europe (or NATO?) refuse to take part in the World Cup?

It makes him look a prat, ruins the spectacle, and is a nice bit of soft power that Europe can exercise given most of the national powerhouses are from the continent.

Infantino can also do one in the process which seems a nice bonus. Minty, LFC

The Israeli correction reaction

Unfortunately hasbara does not work in the digital age. The angelic support of Maccabi Tel Aviv are seen for what they are. They are not a vulnerable minority, they are scumbag football hooligans.

German police are investigating them over Nazi salutes and chants of “No schools in Gaza because there are no children left” against Stuttgart. UEFA responded pathetically by giving a one game away fan ban.

They caused huge trouble in Amsterdam, attacking taxi drivers, tearing down flags and chanting more of their sick drivel.

Their own FA suspended the Tel Aviv derby due to more crowd trouble from the animals.

No one believes the fake narrative of victimhood any more, no matter how many try to push it. The internet has ruined hasbara for you. People can see, in real time, what happened in Stuttgart, what happened in Amsterdam and what’s happening in Gaza.