Man Utd hair boy and Arne Slot both defended as Premier League derided | OneFootball

Manchester United hair boy Frank Ilett is just a bit of fun, while Arne Slot is anything but as bad luck has struck.

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Lighten up and stop picking on Man Utd hair boy

Good lord, you lot need to crack a smile once in a while.

I’ve just read your Football365/PlanetFootball piece on Frank Ilett. Firstly, I’m not even sure where one site ends and the other begins, but I digress. Anyway the tone is wildly overcooked for what’s basically a bloke making a spectacle of himself for a laugh and quick buck.

The headline reads like someone’s died: ‘Man Utd fan’s viral haircut challenge is exposing modern society’s hollowness.’ Really?

The gist seems to be: Frank is an attention-grabbing shill who’s made a quick quid off Manchester United’s general ineptitude, and that this is some heinous crime that debases “proper” football fans. Then there’s the sneering bit about the people who enjoy it being the kind who “openly admit they haven’t read a book in years.” For what it’s worth, I think it’s harmless fun and I’ve just finished reading Ulysses.

And the “Big Business is ruining something that could have been spontaneous” handwringing doesn’t really hold up when the piece is published on sites owned by a major media group. If you’re happy to take their money, maybe ease off the moral panic about someone else cashing in on a viral gag.

Football is light entertainment. It’s pantomime. That’s why it’s fun. It’s a distraction from work, kids, and our partners complaining the washing isn’t done right. Who cares if a silly man made a silly buck off the silliest big club in the country being spectacularly rubbish?

Rant over. Oliver, London

(We don’t take money from a major media group so not quite sure what that means; we work for a medium-sized digital publishing company. And we reserve the right to be annoyed by hair boy just as you have the right to disagree – Ed)

How hard is it to win five in a row?

I’m so sick of haircut guy. But despite that, a feature I’d love to see: how long would the hair be of a haircut guy for each of the other teams in the prem? Like when did they last do five wins in a row? How much is this a Man U embarrassment or how much is in fact it really hard to win five in a row? R

(Well, 11 Premier League clubs have done this since Man Utd last did – Ed)

Maybe stop with the beleaguered managers

I’ve been doing a bit of research into Spurs and their issues over the past few years, and it seems to me that their problem is that they keep on hiring beleaguered managers.

Reckon if they get someone in who isn’t beleaguered then they should be OK. Matt

In defence of Arne Slot

Football fans don’t normally look through things with the clearest of eyes considering the primal nature it brings out in all of us, so the calls for Slot to be sacked are not surprising despite still being absolutely premature.

The wonder Slot performed last season was always heightened by the fact that he signed no one after taking the reins and won the league with the same squad as he inherited from Klopp (Chiesa doesn’t count, we know that).

Fast forward to this season after a huge summer outlay and people are using the reverse argument – tons spent and doing worse. Surely a sackable offense. But people are (conveniently when you’re an opposition supporter) forgetting he took in around 250m from player sales from Diaz, Nunez, Quansah, Kelleher etc and also lost another 100mil plus in market value in Trent and the tragic death of Jota.

Slot replaced each loss with the exception of Diaz so by my count they have a smaller core squad than they did at the start of last season. Add to that fact the injuries they’ve had:

Salah gone at AFCON.

Isak has played total 400 or so minutes and is on his 3rd spell out

Right-back slot is cursed for injuries by Trent leaving sort of like when Voldemort was refused the defence against the dark arts job at Hogwarts.

Then Macca, Ekitike, Gakpo and Allison have all had their spells on the sidelines.

Also I don’t believe in any conspiracies but Liverpool’s luck this season with decisions is something that makes me wonder about unseen forces like Jedi power. Look at some of the games they’ve dropped points in:

Palace – this is the game that started the rot after the great start. Palace score from a corner that was never a corner for their first. I get it, it was hard for the ref to see so let’s just chalk it off as bad luck. Palace then score the winner with the clock at 96:59 when there was 6 mins added time – how in **** was that possible. But yea OK just one of those days where both the opposition goals shouldn’t have stood.

Utd – second game after Palace and their opening goal should never have happened as Macca had a head injury and ended up needing 4 stitches but yea just bad luck the ref never blew like he’s meant to. Just one of those days. Liverpool proceed to be far better for the rest of the game missing sitters and slab head wins it against the run of play.

Brentford – very next game in the league and Brentford get given the most dubious penalty ive ever seen. The one where literally no Brentford player was looking for it and the VAR had to guess whether or not a foul by VVD was on the penalty box line, which of course they guessed it was. Brentford win by 1.

Guess what game comes two matches after? The loss to City. We all know pool were being out played but we all know VVD had a perfectly good goal disallowed to level it.

And sure let’s go straight to the game at the wknd against City where Guehi should have seen red….or at least very possibly could have.

Point is when it is ‘could’ and not absolutely ‘should’ – these have went the oppositions way 100% of the time this season and more often than not decided the outcome.

Lastly – individual errors. For all the rotten luck with ref calls and injuries, Liverpool have made some insane individual errors this season. Earlier it was Konate and Kerkez, both of whom have kind of cut that out (especially Kerkez who has been great lately). But VVD and Allison are weighing in with their own as well. Whats more, they get punished with a goal it seems on every single error. They get away with nothing

My point is – none of the above is Slot’s fault. Maybe the individual errors if an argument is to be made that his tactics are putting players in bad spots but I don’t personally buy it. The performances lately have deserved far more point than they have received. Slot can’t force Ekitike to stop missing headers, although he can stop playing Gakpo who is a level of useless I don’t think I’ve ever seen before in a red shirt.

Oh yea – opposition score with their first chance of the game pretty much 100% of the time.

God I hope the new manager bounce is now over for Chelsea and Utd. Patricio Del Toro (I’ve half typed out this ranty email about 3 times this season but I can’t bottle it up any longer, please God, Arsenal, beat City to the league)

…While I’m completely in agreement that Slot hasn’t done well enough this season I’m unsure if a lot of the recent criticism stacks up.

1. Playing your best midfielder as a defender shows you don’t care about results. Despite being a bit hyperbolic – I’m sure no manager doesn’t care about results – it’s not mad to see a CM playing at fullback. City and Arsenal have both done it to great effect in recent seasons. Trent was in many ways more of a midfielder for us than a pure defender and having someone with a similar range of passing and licence to drift infield makes a lot of sense tactically, especially when our first two choices at RB are out.

2. Moving away from focus on Salah is a mistake. He’s 33 and we have to move on from him some time. Surely now is the time to start putting that in place? Just waiting until he leaves and then hoping to somehow replace a top 5 PL player of all time isn’t exactly a better option, surely? That will have been agreed across the whole leadership group, not as Slot selling bullshit to the board.

3. Slot doesn’t trust youth. This is basically because he’s sold Morton, Quansah and Elliott and isn’t starting Rio despite Gakpo’s form. Morton is doing well for the team in 3rd in Ligue Un, but he’s not realistically going to start ahead of Grav or Macca and didn’t want to stay to be on the bench at his age Elliott isn’t going to be ahead of Sbo or Wirtz and also wanted the opportunity for game time and Quansah wasn’t going to be ahead of Ibou or VVD and also wanted game time – he was replaced by Leoni who looked great before doing his knee and would doubtless have played more this season had he been fit.

I get that everyone wants Rio to play more, with people saying he should be coming in when we’re leading comfortably – the issue is that has barely happened this season. When he’s started he’s been ok but he’s just turned 17 and isn’t going to be running games at that age.

4. He only won the league because of Klopp. The obvious question is why didn’t Klopp win the league the season he left then? Slot changed the tactics around the positioning of Grav and Salah which allowed them to both have their best seasons for us while also making us a lot more solid at the back than we had been for a while. Of the 41 goals we conceded (same as Klopp’s last season) 9 were in the final four games after we’d won the league. Before then we were on for our best season since 21/22.

We haven’t been good enough this season for a number of reasons (fitness, second balls, set pieces, integration of new players as a start) and I expect that Slot will go at the end of the season, but some of the statements have been more driven by dislike of him as a person (because results are bad) than anything else. Tom, Andover (watch us lose to Sunderland in the 95th minute this time)

Toffee time

Perhaps the most Everton game of the season.

Good grief. Aidan, EFC, Hoxton

I read with interest that one contributor wrote today that Casemiro’s offside was correct, even if it was just by the width of a kneecap. What people are perhaps missing is that even in this high tech modern world we might not be getting as accurate a picture as we have assumed we are.

A modern TV broadcasters camera will record at 50fps (frames per second) which means there 0.02 seconds between each image the camera catches. In that time a premier league player travelling at 8 or 9 metres per second could travel about 16cm. This means that if the camera is paused just one frame too late, (and remember there are 50 frames each second so this is probably preety likely) the resulting position of the player could be up to 16cm out of his true position when the ball was played. That is far more than the distance of one kneecap

I’m not suggesting we should expect perfection but rather that, if imperfection isnt actually guaranteed we ought to do away with VAR for offside decisions and go back to trusting/shouting at the linesman. There is just as much speculation about decisions as there was before but in the meantime, it ruins the flow of the game and we are objectively not getting a better spectacle. It isn’t producing more scientifically accurate decisions and it’s just shit. I do believe we should keep the hawkeye technology for goalline decisions and VAR can hang around too to check serious fouls and stuff but it hasn’t improved the enjoyment of the game in any way and at the end of the day, this is an entertainment industry. So please F365, start a serious campaign to remove this inaccurate stain from our game.

I believe in you F365, do you believe in yourself? Warren

Is the Premier League broken?

If I was the PL Chairman and board I’d be very, very concerned with the trajectory of the PL. It’s noticeable the number of empty seats at PL grounds. In an economy were fixed costs, rent, council tax, food, fuel keeps on rising against limited budgets; there is little bandwidth for fans to pay Club prices.

Many clubs openly reject the season ticket holder in favour of the tourist, people who will spend large sums in the club shop and in house food and beverages. It’s a model fraught with danger as they lose their hardcore support and a generation of youngsters who’s free time is fought for amongst a myriad of games platforms, social media sites and other activities.

The quality of football is turgid as corners, long throws are now weapon of choice against the 5-4-1 the defences. The rise in IPTV sticks shows there’s appetite at the value level but the game needs a shot in the arm.

We need more reward and jeopardy in the game if it’s to survive. We need reward for goals and attacking play. How we do that is up for discussion, but 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw is long overdue change.