Belgium balls up will do Lammens good, Liverpool chief’s true colours | OneFootball

The Mailbox reacts to Belgium’s exit after Senne Lammens’ slip up, while Spurs attempt to distance themselves from The Cartel…

We also have a scientific explanation for Jarell Quansah’s extended ban.

Lammens will be fine

That’s rough on Senne Lammens. It won’t feel like it now but it will do him good in the long run. Man Utd will probably get a better keeper this season because of it.

The cutaway to Courtois on the bench immediately after Spain’s winner was brutal. The arrogance is probably part of what makes him a great keeper but he comes across as a tit.

Anyway, seeing Courtois in tears is nice boost for Jordan Pickford before Saturday night.

How to tarnish your image

When I read the news that Michael Edwards had left Liverpool, I wasn’t totally surprised based on his ambition but it doesn’t say much for his reputation and standing when you consider his management of transfers and player contracts has been less than stellar over the last two years – something he was supposed to excel.

Building this aura around one key trade – bringing in Salah – supposedly over Klopp’s desire for Brandt – and his ability to check out players after data showed they might be worthwhile (according to Ian Graham in his book on ‘How to win the Premier League.’

While Slot didn’t do himself any favours in Season 2, the player trade fiasco was largely in Edward’s and Hughes domain. I was never happy over the fact neither faced the public over it. Never came out with any explanation of strategy – short or long term. Meanwhile it really handcuffed Slot, the guy they hung out to dry.

Then he replaces Slot with Iraola, a decent change, but jumps ship because FSG didn’t buy another club, right in the middle of probably Liverpool’s most important transfer window for a long while.

I’m sure he’ll get a decent well paid job – and likely already has something in the hopper – but the timing sucks.

Or is it that FSG were not enamoured with how the transfer business has been going and have him a nudge? Paul McDevitt

Hold fire on Spurs

As much as the hurricane of pissing and wailing from Villa and Newcastle fans has been about our spending has been in the past weeks, it really does show the complete and utter lack of clear guidance and information from journalists and those who set the rules.

FFP, PSR, and whatever the latest incarnation is, has been around now for the best part of a decade or more. They were never going away, and were always going to continue long into the future

All this talk of a “top 6 cartel” may be true to an extent, and as much as I place my club Tottenham as a ‘top 6 club” on average based on the last 20 years (not the last two alone lads) I don’t think we’re part of any sort of “cartel”.

Chelsea and Manchester City were bought by billionaires and have had unlimited money poured in. These two clubs are legitimate targets for your crying. Arsenal and Liverpool have bought and sold well and had sustained champions league money coming in. Arsenal built a new stadium in 2006 and Liverpool extended theirs, and Man Utd already had a huge one and a massive global following due to sustained success over decades. These three clubs invest a lot of money on making their club’s more self sustainable longer term:

Both Villa and Newcastle were bought out by billionaires and wouldn’t have given a shit about the ‘integrity of the game’ if there were no financial rules. Neither would care about the negative impact on clubs like Brighton, Bournemouth, Brentford who spend well on data and sustainability, scout well and buy and sell well. These two clubs would nick their players and pay them top dollar. So let’s not get too upset on their behalf

Spurs have been derided for a long time, both internally by our fan base and externally by others, and experts, for not spending money or showing ambition. We’ve taken the long term approach of concentrating on increasing our revenues, building a state of the art stadium, building partnerships with global brands, and now we’re able to spend more money. If we continued how we had in the 2000’s, we’d be in the same spot now as Newcastle and Aston Villa, but without owners able to spend.

If you want a whinge, aim it at Chelsea and City. Spurs are a massive club in a blip, finally waking up to the fact we need to invest in football: our current finishes are a result of years of underinvestment, not the potential of the club. We’ve built our position without a billionaire benefactor. We are owned by a billionaire, but what we have has been done with borrowing from banks and investing clumps of our revenue, often only having wages at 40% or turnover

By all means carry on crying but at least moan about the right clubs Ross H THFC

Spending isn’t wrong but spending badly is

Tarqs is well within his rights to be annoyed about Newcastle selling players, but the issue isn’t that smaller clubs aren’t allowed compete, it’s that they can’t make mistakes.

Newcastle signed plenty of players after the takeover and several were very good and they got into the CL. From there though, they have to stay in the CL to keep competing and, most importantly, can’t make mistakes in the transfer market. Last summer they sold Isak for record money and profit and got into the CL, which is all great and put them on a great trajectory. The problem was that they then spent all of that and more on Woltemade, Wissa and Elanga, all of who were dropped (or playing CM) by the end of the season and you missed out on Europe. That’s an expensive mistake you cannot afford to make, and players are going to subsequently have to leave and want to leave for bigger clubs (we couldn’t keep Konate – there’s always a bigger fish). City or Chelsea, on the other hand, can spend 60m on a midfielder and stop playing him for half a season and then buy a replacement for twice as much. That’s the issue – you have to make no mistakes and the historic clubs can afford to.

The aim with PSR (which isn’t as onerous as the UEFA regs, so if you’re going to be in Europe you need that anyway) is that it stops clubs doing a Leeds and mortgaging (quite literally) their future. You can spend as much as you like on training and youth facilities but if you spend big money you have to deliver and that is extremely difficult. Tom, Andover

Enjoy the ride

It’s like guessing the gender of a baby. Let’s just play the game and see what happens. Yes, beating Croatia (fair dos) Panama, DR Congo and Mexico and getting to the quarter finals is good, but does it make us a shoe in? Why do we go through this every time? 50 minutes of Dan Burn putting his head in dangerous situations and we are suddenly world beaters? We basically proved that we can make lots of last ditch tackles and headers, we gave up chances that better teams would make more of. But here we are, the Mexico performance is apparently proof that not only will we breeze past Norway and Argentina, but once we have done that we can keep Doue, Dembele, mmmmbop, Barcola, Olisse et al quiet. Taking Norway and Argentina for granted and looking ahead to the final is mental, and piles on the pressure for the players.

And who is to say Spain won’t beat France?

History tells us anything can and will happen, christ, look at what the so called minnows have achieved this World Cup, look at the FA cup! I imagine the boys from Brazil probably thought they’d win, but here we are. Norway are a proper team and we are in for a hell of a game.

Supporting the team is not the same as gaslighting ourselves into believing we have already won. It’s cheering the wins and applauding the losses. Unless Tuchel f*cks it, in which case he can leave the door open for Pep as he leaves the building. Tom

The first law of Red Card Dynamics

Nice to see FIFA’s commitment to The First Law of Thermodynamics – namely that matter cannot be either created or destroyed in relation to Balogun’s red card.

The suspension couldn’t just vanish, it had to go somewhere so they gave Quansah a two-match ban instead.

Problem solved. Good work. Probably prevented the entire World Cup from collapsing in on itself in some kind of disciplinary black hole. Conor Malone, Donegal.

Anthony McGordon

Don’t know if anyone else experiences this, but whenever I see Anthony Gordon or hear his name mentioned, all I can think about is that he is definitely Scottish. He’s got a Scottish name, he looks totally Scottish and somehow even plays a bit Scottish. I find it weird that he’s allowed to play for England. Because he’s Scottish.

That’s my contribution to the big talking points of today.

England’s three-point plan