In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why England were only a six out of 10 at Euro 2024, why big name players must be subbed if they’re not playing well, and why Lee Carsley will be the new England coach despite Emma Hayes and Sarina Wiegman both deserving to be in the conversation. 

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I’d give England a six out of 10… players such as Kane and Bellingham can’t be above being subbed

I’d give the overall England performance at Euro 2024 a six out of 10, because we got to a final which only two teams can ever do, but the performances to get there, and the side of the draw that we had… I think a six out of 10 is fair enough.

In terms of Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham’s individual performances, I’m not so worried about Jude because I think that this was his first tournament on the back of the elation of winning La Liga and the Champions League and being the best player for Real Madrid.

I think that he came flying out of the blocks in in the first half of the first game at the Euros, but then the drop off in the second half of the first game was was noticeable. He’s got to manage his minutes, his emotional state and his physical state much better.

Harry had an excuse of already playing year in and year out, whether it be for club or country, in the Premier League, Bundesliga, at World Cups, pre and post-season tournaments, and I think he was genuinely knackered.

We’ve had this sort of problem before of course, going right the way back to Jimmy Greaves. He got injured before the World Cup in 66, Geoff Hurst comes in and scores a hat-trick in the final, and then stays in the side forever. It happened with Gary Lineker too, and Alan Shearer.

We had at least 10 strikers waiting to step into Shearer’s shoes at international level, but no one could get a look in even when he went 12 England games without scoring, which would be unthinkable now for any striker.

From my perspective, I’d like to think that the next coach would look at Harry Kane and say, ‘ok, you’re the number nine, you’ve scored a load of goals over the last decade, but if you’re not doing the business, we’re going to take you off at 60 minutes’ etc.

Gareth Southgate, to his credit, has smashed the glass ceiling now, and although subbing Kane or leaving him out entirely could have been done sooner, the precedent has been set.

In future, no matter the name, if you’re playing poorly, the national team coach has to have the bravery to make those big calls for the good of everyone, including themselves.

England have a massive inferiority complex

English football has a massive inferiority complex.

It’s always been the same for England for over 50 years. I think that there is this feeling of inferiority at international level because of our record and because of the hype. “It’s coming home, 60 years of hurt….”

People say that English players play well at their clubs because they’ve got foreigners around. That’s boll**ks. Phil Foden’s performances and Jude Bellingham’s performances were because of Phil Foden and Jude Bellingham, not because they have foreigners around them. Likewise, Harry Kane.

I can certainly say, thanks to my own brief foray with England, that you feel that you have to play this mythical thing called international football that is more cerebral, that is more intelligent, so you end up doing things you normally wouldn’t, and that’s where the passing along the back comes from.

It’s like you watch the Spanish, you watch the Italians, you watch the great Germans and they all pass it along the back, but English football doesn’t realise that there’s method to the madness. Spain will pop it very quickly into midfield and then their players, already waiting on the half-turn, are off on the run.

The general feeling amongst the English is that international football is some higher form of the game, and it’s not. Georgia proved that. Turkey proved that. You can go out and play in a way that is on the fruitful and exciting side, utilising your assets and getting results beyond your your ranking.

So from that perspective, I think we’ve got to have a look at what are the hallmarks of English football. One is tempo, two is intensity, three is aggression, and four is attacking, and I think we actually need to have those as cornerstones.

A lot of the guys that play for England now, they have seen the Barcelona of 2011 and the Spanish sides of 2008-2012, and gone “we need to keep possession and slow the tempo,” but that’s the antithesis of what the very best of English football is about.

If you want proof, every time that we went behind in the Euros, we upped the tempo, upped the aggression and got back in the game.

There’s a lot of talk about winning tournaments with 60-70% possession, but you can win a tournament with 40% possession. You can win a tournament with equal possession.

Ideally, if you’re Pep Guardiola, you win a tournament with 70-80% possession, and with exciting attacking play, but don’t forget that when Pep gets to sign the players that he wants, they are specific players to do specific jobs in specific areas of the pitch. The England national team is a markedly different proposition.

England should consider a woman to replace Southgate but Carsley will be the FA’s man

Emma Hayes and Sarina Wiegman should definitely be in the conversation to be the new England men’s first-team manager because they’re successful football managers in their own right, they know the FA system and the inner workings of it.

The reasons that they won’t be are because I think there will be a feeling inside the Football Association that ‘we’ve got the best group of players ever, and we don’t need experiments.’

How will a group of men react to a woman manager? Would they subconsciously think ‘no she can’t do the job, she’s only managed Chelsea Women’ for example, and that’s the reality.

Only one step above that would be Lee Carsley and I’ve got a sneaky feeling it’s going to be him. Why?

The FA’s St George’s Park system was designed to produce players and coaches for the elite level, and with Lee Carsley, they’ve done that from scratch. They’ve invested a lot of money in him to get to this point, and his England U21 team is, pound for pound, the best England team that I’ve ever seen.

They’re solid at the back, they pop it around everywhere, and play front foot, attacking, inventive and creative football. So, the FA system is shown to be working.

As importantly, it’s the antithesis of spending £17m on somebody (Pep Guardiola?) to come in at the last minute, grab a group of players and try and get them over the line at a major tournament.

The reality for England fans is that they don’t care that St George’s Park creates players and managers but they should, because all of the other European nations had managers that came through their respective systems. It should matter if we want to be a self sustaining football association.

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Lee Carsley is a very good coach but the level of risk is that he’s never managed anybody significant and isn’t the big name – Steven Gerrard/Frank Lampard/Pep Guardiola – that people want to see. ’Lee who?’ some might say, as well as reminding everyone that he played for Ireland. Not very God save the King is it.

So, if the FA are going to appoint Lee Carsley, the England PR machine needs to get him out there. They need to put out an urgent, positively worded, press release, and get him on as many TV and radio shows, and in as many newspaper columns as possible in order to give him a fully rounded personality who England fans can get behind.

If England then spank Finland in their first Nations League game and then beat Greece away, all of a sudden we’re rocking and rolling and you create a personality that can start to walk alongside those aforementioned big names.

The post Collymore’s column: England – six out of 10 at Euro 2024, a massive inferiority complex and why Emma Hayes should be manager appeared first on CaughtOffside.

In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why England are now a squad to be proud of, why Crystal Palace and West Ham are moving forward, and why Man United have let down Jadon Sancho and Mason Greenwood.

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England finally have a squad and a manager to be proud of

I really enjoyed England’s performance against the Netherlands. It was a lot more assured, a lot more assertive, a lot more aggressive.

When the Dutch scored, there was always an element of ‘here we go again,’ but England got that slice of luck with the penalty. I’d be very disappointed if that was given against me as a player and I was very surprised that the referee’s original decision wasn’t upheld. Incredibly fortuitous.

After that I thought for pretty much the entirety of the match, 70 plus minutes, England were the better team.

It shows how far we’ve come that the expectation in this tournament to date hadn’t been met, and for an England team to dominate possession of the ball against the Dutch is quite remarkable – and that may not get commented on as much as it should.

It’s a massive vindication of the St George’s Park project, of English coaches and English coaching, and of the talent that we’re now producing.

England used to play the Dutch and you’d think to yourself ‘how are we going to get the ball back?’ and on Wednesday I watched an English team play a Dutch team where the Netherlands players were running around wondering when they were going to get the ball back. That could be a real watershed moment for English football in many ways.

I still think that Harry Kane is labouring a little bit, but the main positive is that we now know that another glass ceiling can be broken.

The captain of the national team can be taken off and there won’t be any sort of division amongst England fans because there are now players coming through – like Ollie Watkins – that can provide those golden moments. That’s massive. That’s absolutely massive.

Credit has to be given to Gareth Southgate because he said all the way through, judge him on results.

He’s obviously been wounded by some of the personal stuff, which I think is out of order. You can criticise somebody, and we have, rightly so, because of performances, without it being personal.

Guehi transfer won’t trouble Crystal Palace despite Olise switch

If Crystal Palace can bring in up to £100m in sales over the next two or three years, with a progressive coach and an academy that continues to produce good players, they’ll be very happy.

They’ll look at the situation and say that ideally they’d have liked to build like Brighton or other progressive clubs have, get some success and into Europe before having to start to shed our players.

But the reality is it doesn’t matter.

When you are seen as a mid-table ‘smaller’ club you are going to have other people look at your players, and to lose Marc Guehi, Michael Olise and Eberechi Eze in the same window would be concerning.

However, they’ve got a state of the art training facility and still have plenty of very good players. I mean, we haven’t even mentioned Adam Wharton and I don’t think they’d let him go.

If Crystal Palace get some decent money in, Steve Parish can ask himself the question as to whether he has somebody that he would trust to spend it wisely, and in Oliver Glasner, yes, the manager has done very well so far. He looks like somebody that’s going to be there for the longer term.

So this isn’t Roy Hodgson that’s being given a war chest of £70m, they’ve got a young, vibrant manager with a very, very good style of play who, if you gave him the resources, will ensure Crystal Palace go from strength to strength.

West Ham finally moving towards big club status under Lopetegui

I think that we got it absolutely spot on in this column previously about West Ham having to make sure that Lopetegui’s ego, which is big, is assuaged and pandered to.

The fact that he wanted a player that he worked with at Wolves in Max Kilman, and West Ham got him straightaway, tells you that the club have effectively said ‘we’ll back you.’

So that’s a really positive sign and it’s one step forward and not two steps back, but another one forward for a change.

Like other clubs, they will get mentioned and linked with several players over the next few weeks, but I think that Lopetegui has his wish list, and they’ve got target number one.

The manager will already feel like he can walk into the office and start to put his plans for pre-season together, knowing that the West Ham board are going to put their money where their mouth is.

They did put in a lower bid for Kilman which was turned down, but the West Ham of old would’ve walked away. Not anymore.

They’ve got a very good, top 10 squad already, and on the back of the Euros if they want to tap into the whole ‘West Ham won the World Cup’ thing, they all of a sudden become a more attractive proposition for players.

Man United have let both Jadon Sancho and Mason Greenwood down

I think that both Jadon Sancho and Mason Greenwood were unfortunate to be at the madhouse over the past few years that is Manchester United.

Sancho being dug out by the manager in particular isn’t helpful at all, and his form back at Dortmund proved that.

In terms of Greenwood, it was and is a very serious situation. We all saw the videos, we all saw the pictures, and I’m a massive believer – I have to be because of my own mistakes in life – that you get an opportunity to learn and move forward, and Getafe allowed him to do that.

There was very toxic way in which his situation was talked about amongst Manchester United fans, men and women. I doubt that there’s a way back for him there, and I think that makes it very difficult for him to come back to an English club too.

For both of them to play abroad now is a is a good thing and I think they’ll get plenty of offers because of England being on the world stage at the moment after their win over the Netherlands. There’s a lot of positive connotations after that performance and result.

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They should go and enjoy a career outside of the English top flight, because yes, to a degree, Man United and English football has failed them.

I wish them both very well because they’re both extremely talented players, and in a year’s time, if Sancho is doing what we know he can do, there’s nothing to say that by that point, the next England manager doesn’t look to bring him back into the fold.

For Greenwood I think it’s more difficult because if he plays for England again, everybody – media, women’s groups and the general public – will say that he shouldn’t be.

Despite me thinking that anybody should have the ability to redeem themselves, I don’t think there is a way back to international duty for Mason Greenwood.

The post Collymore’s column: English pride, Palace and West Ham moving forward whilst Man United have let down Sancho and Greenwood appeared first on CaughtOffside.

In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why Jude Bellingham is right to be cocky, why tiredness is wrecking the Euros, why Archie Gray to Spurs is a great move and much more.

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Jude Bellingham is right to be cocky but it’s not all about him

Jude Bellingham’s still a baby and people will say he’s done very little in his career. He’s not, as the kids say, ‘the man’ yet.

But if you’re La Liga Player of the Year, you’ve won the Champions League and you’ve been a key part of that then, of course, you’re going to have cockiness and sureness in your own ability.

He’s not got a final body of work, but I love the attitude he displays. I think one of the big, big things about English football, when it comes to English players, is we’ve never celebrated players with talent until long after they’ve retired.

In Jude’s case, I think that it is both true that I want him to be cocky and confident and to have ultimate self belief, but I also want him to be a fully functioning member and part of the team. To remember that his success cannot come without the success of others.

There’s been a couple of times when he’s gone over to Gareth Southgate and taken instructions then gesticulated a little bit, but again, I think that he’s young and still learning. He probably watches, or has watched, lots of big name players take centre stage, not just with their performances but how they interact with the bench.

The media are saying how good he’s been since 16 years of age, so he’s probably thinking ‘how can I now play the part on and off the pitch?’

If he gets punished because of his crotch-grabbing antics it would be incredibly negative, and the reaction to him would be interesting. Let’s not forget Wayne Rooney and David Beckham have had the naughty little boy tabloid treatment, so he needs to be careful.

Maybe Kyle Walker or another senior pro just pulls him aside and says ‘I’ve worked with these big, big dogs. I’ve won everything there is to win with these big dogs. And in the case of a De Bruyne, you couldn’t get a more self deprecating, it’s not all about me kind of player.’

If Jude was reading this, all I’d say is keep being cocky, keep being confident, but remember that no player can get to where they need to be without the likes of Phil Foden, Kieran Trippier, Jordan Pickford etc.

You are just one piece of a cog, you’re not the cog on its own.

Too many games to blame for England’s woes, not Southgate

If you look at the teams that are starting to get to the pointy end of the Euros, tiredness has become a major factor. I saw France and Holland coming out at half-time of their games recently and they looked wasted. Everyone was like ‘here we go again.’

This is going to be a major problem and will be at the World Cup in only two years time.

When is the madness going to end, whereby we celebrate nations like Georgia and Turkey rightly for the freshness in their performances, but we castigate players like Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham, or maybe some of the Dutch guys for their performances.

The answer is the same and is very simple.

Some of the guys that have looked incredibly fresh, lively and on their toes whilst playing a super brand of football have been precisely that because the intensity, on and off the pitch, isn’t there for a lot of Georgian, Turkish and Austrian players.

For England players, French players, for some of the Germans and some of the Dutch etc. it is, so we’ve got to address it.

Whether it be Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappe or other high profile stars, we want to be seeing our very, very best players playing their very, very best football at the end of a tournament, not in September, October for their clubs.

We’ve got to stop flogging dead horses.

If you play in the Premier League and La Liga, and to a lesser degree, the Bundesliga, Ligue Un and Serie A, the intensity of the media interest as well as the intensity of the games means that you are just spent.

I’m a massive fan of players only playing 50 professional games a season. That’s it, across all tournaments. That would focus minds, but I think that in the short term, a player that gets knocked out at the Euros this coming weekend does not go back to their club team for six full weeks.

Georgia and Turkey are the shining stars of Euro 2024

For me, the teams that have impressed me the most have been Georgia and Turkey.

Georgia came into this tournament like ‘this is it, this is as good as it gets,’ and they’ve just gone for it. Turkey is a different animal because of the Turkish media.

You know it’s a big football in nation but they’ve always underachieved, just as England have underachieved.

When I look at the talent that they’ve got… Demiral, Ayhan, Guler, Kokcu, Yildiz and Yilmaz – they have been superb. Getting the ball, turning with it, running with it, creating chances, sitting on the counter.

Austria were very good overall and might have qualified on another day with a little bit more look. It was nice to see Marko Arnautovic back in the big time too.

If I’m looking at other nations that you’re expecting to be there or thereabouts, you can’t really look much beyond Spain. Obviously the young lads, Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams are exceeding all expectations.

The squad have stuck with the remit of the 2010/2012 Spanish team but with a bit more flair. A big shout out for Rodri too. When you look at players in the big leagues that are mentally and physically fatigued, this guy is managing his minutes extraordinarily well. He seems to play at 70% pace all the time, so you’ve never really seen him making long, bursting runs and his timing is great. He’s a very big man. He’s a very big, physically impressive athlete. And obviously he weighed in with a cracking goal against against Georgia.

Ah yes, Georgia. Mikautadze, Kvaratskhelia and their team-mates playing with so much joy, with so much happiness… unless someone wins the Euros by scoring a hat-trick in the final or something amazing, I think that a lot of people will be nodding in agreement that the attacking play of the Georgians at their very best has been great to watch.

It’s a festival, a celebration at the end of a European season, or at the end of a global season, where all of these amazing countries come together and entertain us in the sunshine.

So for me, Georgia have been the team to watch at this season’s tournament.

Archie Gray is the right player at the right time for Tottenham

Archie Gray is already nearing a half century of performances at just 18, so he will know what he’s about as a player. He’s a big lad as well, six foot two, and he’s only going to get bigger, stronger and more versatile in the next two or three years.

He can play as a centre mid or as a right-back and he’s got pedigree after turning out for England in the U15, U16, U17, U19, U20 and U21 age groups.

I think he will go on potentially and play for England, though he’s eligible for Scotland as well.

I imagine that whoever the next England manager is, he will be watching over the next season or two at Spurs, but they may well call him up for the England senior squad sooner rather than later.

Personally, I think it’s a great move. I’m a massive fan of Tottenham, the way that their Academy has done things etc…

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The facilities are arguably the best in the world at Spurs Lodge, they don’t necessarily just promote ex-players as coaches in the academy and they’ve got Ange Postecoglou, who’s a very minded open manager.

Archie Gray and his family are all Celtic fans and love Ange, so I’m really excited. I think it’s the right player, the right move, the right club at the right time and I think that he will get opportunities to play.

The world’s his oyster.

The post Collymore’s column: Bellingham right to be cocky, tiredness wrecking the Euros, Archie Gray’s great move and more appeared first on CaughtOffside.

In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why PSR must change, why Southgate should have led with a radically different message pre-Euros, why Liverpool won’t make a statement Euros signing and much more.

The players are mentally and physically knackered… Gareth should have led with that

The reality is that where you play in, for instance, the Premier League and La Liga, and you have 10 years of a cycle where it’s Premier League, Euros, Premier League, year off so we’ll go on an end-of-season tour, Premier League, World Cup, it’s going to tell. For Jude Bellingham, he hasn’t had that, so he doesn’t get the Harry Kane (who’s played a lot of football over a number of years) excuse. He’s 20 years of age. Phil Foden has played a lot of football. But, you can acknowledge that the players are mentally and physically fatigued and then acknowledge with equal legitimacy that it’s down to the manager to bring in fresh players that maybe haven’t played as many minutes, that are younger and haven’t been around the block like Harry Kane over a number of years… Cole Palmer, for example, looks fresh despite playing a lot of minutes last term. Anthony Gordon had injuries, played a lot of minutes but he should be fresh. It may well be that England moving forward, even if we bring in a Pep Guardiola or a Jose Mourinho to manage the side (and I’m sure they’ll be touted as names down the line), there’ll still be the challenge of mentally and physically fatigued players to handle.

I look at my own club, Aston Villa, and Unai Emery is one of the ones who comes out and says it as it is. Fullbacks, likely to bomb on, ‘Give me 60 minutes’. Then almost on 60 minutes, he will change one or both fullbacks. That means you’re playing two-thirds of the season effectively and should mean that as you get to the end of the season you remain fresher. It may be the case of saying, “Jude, Harry, Phil, Bukayo Saka – you’re our star men. Give me 60 minutes.” What does that say to the players? They’re not playing 90 and then after the hour mark, the cavalry will come. If Gareth had offered that message to the press before the tournament and acknowledged the fatigue hurdle, we might be sitting here viewing the situation very differently. We play at an intensity that other countries don’t. You see that Georgia performance? Wonderful! But they don’t play in the same arena that we do week in, week out with the same pressures and mental and physical load. It should have been about telling these key players to give it high intensity, give everything, for 60 minutes and if they’re dying at 60 minutes – the cavalry, in the form of Anthony Gordon, Cole Palmer, Kobbie Mainoo, whoever, comes on.

Gareth could have sold that as a reason. I think fans would have then bought that and thought, “Okay, it’s 0-0 against Slovenia, but the cavalry’s coming on at 60 minutes to change things.” At the minute, we don’t know who’s coming on or when, or the thought process behind it. Southgate’s already abandoned his great midfield experiment in Trent Alexander-Arnold, Conor Gallagher came in and Gareth took him off… all of a sudden Gareth has gone from a position where he could have said, “60 minutes, the top stars are out to keep them fresh”, to now looking like a reactive manager. That’s a problem. The narrative is a problem. We could have England move forward in the the tournament with a 1-0 here and a 0-0 there in our fourth tournament with Gareth where we’ve had the good side of the draw, all four tournaments, and not won something. Southgate is usually very good at messaging but he could have said, “Our stars have played more minutes, they’re definitely more fatigued, I’ve listened to what they’ve said and I’m gonna give them 60 minutes in the group games and we’ve got more than enough ability to come on.” If he’d done that, I think we may have got better results, scored more goals, given our big players a rest and reduced the hassle on his back.

The domestic leagues must help out the international sides

In the big leagues, take five or six leagues going down to the Portuguese and Dutch leagues, you should have one domestic league, one cup (so that would be the FA Cup or League Cup gone), no replays, you would ban post-season tournaments, you would have a FIFA or UEFA statute that limits European clubs to conducting their pre-season preparation in Europe. We have to get away from this nonsense that tours outside of Europe are good for branding; fans in America, Latin America, Africa and Asia have supported Premier League clubs way before they went visiting every other year. Those fans will come regardless from different parts of the world to watch their teams play.

I would scrap international friendlies completely and just have qualifying games for the Euros and World Cup. Players want more rest but they’re unfortunately woefully underrepresented by the PFA and their clubs who’ll happily keep their mouths shut and keep flogging a dead horse. Until we take the mental and physical load seriously, nothing will change. As a former player for big clubs, I’m fully aware of how you never get a chance to switch off. Ideally, there should be a rule in place that helps with this – perhaps something stipulating that an international footballer, like Harry Kane, can play a maximum of 50x 90 minutes a season. Done. It doesn’t matter how that’s spread over by Bayern Munich during the league season and German cup, for England, etc. It then gives players like Ollie Watkins a chance in the early qualifying rounds. It means more players getting more minutes and experience, enabling international managers to use them on a more regular basis and fully utilise the squad. It’s just fairness and common sense.

Included in that is friendlies. So if Liverpool or Aston Villa want to go to Thailand for a month. Darwin Nunez, for instance, on 50 games can’t go. They then have to play some young up-and-comers. The only solution to get teams playing like Georgia at European Championships and World Cups is by pursuing the mental and physical freshness that Georgian players have.

How do we help clubs outside of the Big Six be competitive?

I don’t like it. I don’t like what I’ve seen with clubs moving around the likes of Omari Kellyman, Lewis Dobbin, and Ian Maatsen to sidestep PSR regulations. I don’t like the fact clubs have to sit around a table and go, “Ah! This might work!”. I support one of the oldest clubs in world football. Aston Villa started the football league, so there’s a historical element of wanting the club to act in an appropriate manner and set the standard. Without PSR in the picture, Aston Villa could spend serious money on players. They wouldn’t be able to blow £1bn on a footballer, but you’d certainly see something in the range of £20-150m, if they so choose. However, the notion that we now breed players that have an affinity with the club, and might have been there for a long time, to give them to another club and we receive that club’s youngsters in return – it goes to show how broken the system is.

I get why clubs like Everton, Chelsea and Villa do it. I don’t like it. In Villa’s case, they can’t spend what Manchester City spent for years. So how can they compete? They had to sell Douglas Luiz to become PSR compliant. Now we’re looking at a situation where their top signing, as they go into the Champions League, could be Ross Barkley. That’s never happened with Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea or anyone else. But the reality is that all these other clubs have had the benefit of historic size and also being in the Champions League and Premier League long enough to get around any spending restrictions, until Manchester City and Chelsea came along and then the Premier League and UEFA went, “We need to stop this – it’s going mad!” So Villa have fallen foul of rule changes that were not of their making. I understand it, but I don’t like it.

What needs to happen is clubs need to get around a table and say, “How do we enable any club to be proactive enough in terms of their spending so they can get into the Champions League and win the league but not bankrupt themselves?” Whilst simultaneously trying to find a way for clubs already in the arbitrary 1992 club of the Champions League lock-in – where if you were there at the point, you’ve pretty much stayed there since – to not overspend. I think it’s going to take some sitting down and proper brainstorming because closing loopholes isn’t fair as it keeps those top four or five clubs in those top four or five positions as they’ve already got Erling Haaland or Kevin De Bruyne. Villa, I repeat, are in the Champions League on merit with a very good manager and their biggest signing may have to be Ross Barkley. That doesn’t seem fair. Let’s get around a table and push for a competitive Premier League again where all 20 clubs’ supporters at the start of the season at least have the belief that they could do something special. Closing every loophole as they come isn’t the way forward. If you’re swapping academy kids to get around Financial Fair Play – that’s ludicrous. It’s a bad system. It’s not working.

Accounting-driven transfers pose a serious threat to Premier League academies

If I’d been a youngster at Aston Villa from eight onwards, as a Villa fan, and I got into the first team and was doing well, but my manager and chairman came to me and said, “Effectively, we’ve got to sell you to Chelsea, Juventus or Bayern Munich” – that’s ridiculous! I should be able to have a say in the matter. The problem is, no one has looked at players like Omari Kellyman and gone, “But they could have stayed where they were.” Clubs would have made it fairly clear to them that the players would be doing them a massive favour by being sold. So it’s very unfair on young players to have someone turn round to them and go, “We wanted you here, we’ve had you here for however many years, but you know what? If you’d stuck around, you might have got in the first team. But as it turns out, the accountants need you to go.” There could be problems for academy recruitment in future if this is allowed to go on, as kids might go play lower down or, in some cases, may not play at all. They may not want to just be pushed around from club to club, five or six times, to adhere to an accountant’s set of rules and regulations. As a player, you don’t mind someone telling you you’re not good enough, but you do bloody mind if you’re 20 and good enough and someone tells you it’s down to a necessary financial transaction. Awful!

Could Liverpool make a statement Euros signing?

I don’t think there are any Euros players at the moment, at the price points Liverpool are working with, that they’d sign as statement transfers. Clubs are, of course, waiting until July 1 because of the new football selling year regulations. With Arne Slot coming in as the head coach, they’re not going to give him anything Jurgen Klopp didn’t have – so there’s not going to be a £100m signing coming in. As long as he gets numbers in areas where Liverpool are short, I think supporters of the club will be happy. For me, they’ve got enough up top, they’ve got enough midfielders, right-back is well covered in Trent Alexander-Arnold and Conor Bradley. Maybe some left-back cover?

I don’t know if there are any names in the Euros that have popped up where you think, “Oh, bloody hell! He’s been absolutely outstanding – he’s gonna cost £80m and Liverpool are definitely going to put in a bid for him!” I think it could be a very understated first window with Arne Slot saying, “We’ve got a great dressing room, it’s an evolution rather than a revolution.” Some Liverpool fans may be expecting five or six signings as is happening at Chelsea and Manchester United. But Liverpool are probably better served looking at City’s model and just bringing in one or two little tweaks in little areas that may need improvement. That’s also a massive thumbs-up to what Jurgen Klopp left Liverpool Football Club with – which is still a very capable squad. There’ll be a lot of chat with Liverpool being a big club. But there’s no one at the Euros where I think clubs will be thinking, “He’s been the top man at the tournament, let’s bring him in.”

I just don’t see some of the names that have been touted at Liverpool, unless one’s a left-back or burgeoning central defender. I don’t think that Liverpool need very much at all.

The post Collymore’s column: Southgate got Euros message wrong, accountants will kill academies, Slot transfer reality and more appeared first on CaughtOffside.

In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why it’s time to stop criticising Trent Alexander-Arnold in midfield, why Michael Olise makes perfect sense for Liverpool, why Premier League clubs need to look at Georgia for transfers and much more.

Let Trent Alexander-Arnold get on with it in midfield

We either all shut up and let him, Gareth Southgate, and perhaps Arne Slot, play in that position. The only way to learn how to play in that position is to play it! Or we say we’ll give him two games and, unless he’s bloody Michel Platini, Steven Gerrard and Paul Scholes rolled into one, in 90 minutes we’ll get rid of the experiment.

For me, if you’re going to convert a player from a right fullback into a central midfielder, that’s fine. But now you have to play him in the amount of games that allows him to learn the role. In other words, learning as you go! There was a big clamour for Trent to sit in front of the back four; his passing is great, his free-kicks are great… but to walk into an international tournament, or even the Premier League, and convert on day one isn’t going to happen. So we need to be patient with him.

It’s kind of the same really when Phil Foden played the last friendly against Iceland; he played as a No.10 and didn’t play well. I remember writing a few months back that you either have to give someone the whole tournament in that position or don’t play them at all. Because really, what you’re saying is, ‘We believe Trent can play in midfield, so we’ve got to play him there’. But the problem is he didn’t grow up as a midfielder, so it’s a different role he’s learning. I think he’ll play tonight. If he plays anything above a five or a six out of 10 – he keeps his place! Unless he backpasses in the 90th minute and that guy goes around the ‘keeper and scores and all of a sudden we’re in trouble – even then Gareth Southgate has decided to pick Trent as a midfielder, so you’ve got to continue with it. It’s that simple for me.

People can be as critical as they like and you can be critical and say he didn’t have a great game. I don’t think he did have a great game, I think that sometimes his passing was a little bit off, but I can expand my mind enough to say that the benefits we’re going to potentially get are worthwhile. If Arne Slot plays him there for club, and Gareth Southgate for his country, he’s only two years away from the World Cup in the States, Mexico and Canada. At that point, Trent may have had two or three years as a central midfielder. So it’s got to start somewhere.

You can’t just say to somebody, ‘We’re going to throw you in and expect Steven Gerrard’ because Trent is learning a job. Also, I would say, for me, if we continue with Trent through the tournament, hopefully he plays every game, then we’ve got the Nations League in Autumn. So that’s going to be eight, maybe 10 games over time, then he can confidently start as a central midfielder alongside Jude Bellingham. So we shouldn’t be judging Trent until midway, or towards the end of the Nations League games. Not the European Championship. We’ve all decided he’s good enough to play there, we’ve all had the debate. Let him play there.

Why Trent’s case is different to other England teammates

I think there are question marks at the moment about Bukayo Saka. I don’t know whether he’s fully fit. He didn’t really give much down the right-hand side [against Serbia]. There’s a few potential people, like Jarrod Bowen and Cole Palmer, knocking on the door – that’s a relevant thing to ask! Bukayo Saka is a specialist down the right. By comparison, the thing you have to look at with Trent is his qualities: his passing and his ability to break down the right, overlap and get crosses in the box like a fullback (like he did leading up to the tournament). For me, the glass is half-full with Trent. If you stick with him in the way I would like us to stick with Phil Foden as a No.10 (he’s not at the minute, as that’s Jude Bellingham), then you’re going to reap the rewards. Those rewards don’t come until six, eight, 10, 12, or 15 games down the line, because that process is a conversion process in real time. You have to let it pan out.

Arda Güler, Jamal Musiala and Georgia’s impressive XI

I think Premier League clubs should be taking a serious look at Turkey and Real Madrid’s Arda Güler – he was exceptional against Georgia. The fact he picks the ball up 10 yards outside the 18-yard box and wants to drive directly at people (and he backs himself to beat people) is impressive. He, for me, has been really outstanding. Jamal Musiala has been really good as well for Germany.

The future of European football, young European football, is very good. In terms of if you’re looking for value in the market, you’ve got to be looking at Georgia. I had a look at their squad the other day and I think they’ve got one very well-known player in Khvicha Kvaratskhelia of Napoli, but apart from that the rest are playing for second and third tier teams around Europe. I thought they were on the front-foot, they showed energy and passion, which was exceptional. Technically very good on the ball; they got it and kept it whilst moving forward. So, for me, if you’re a Premier League club or aspirational top-end of the Championship outfit and you’re in a position to prise some of those Georgian lads for €3-6m – you should!

Look at what Brighton did in terms of the Japanese market with Kaoru Mitoma. There’s Celtic in recent seasons under Ange Postecoglou before the Spurs move; he’s previously worked in Japan and took two or three up to Scotland. There are markets out there that undoubtedly have a lot of value.

The one to 11 of Georgia players that featured – as an Aston Villa fan, I would have taken any one of them! They were excellent, they genuinely had a never-say-die attitude. Technically they were brilliant! A lot of teams keep the ball and build through in a very slow, pedestrian manner, before coming alive in the final third. The thing I liked about Georgia is they could fizz the ball in to a teammate which was exceptional, but they also had five or six players that could run with the ball as well. One of the big reasons why Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo shared out Ballon d’Ors over the last decade and a half is because they have the ability to run with the ball. All the great players can pass the ball and all the great players can score great goals in great moments but the ability to run well with the ball is really rare.

Georgia run with the ball extremely well and took the game to their opponents. Georgia will now be watched by lots of people. If you’re looking for bargains – look no further than the Georgian national team!

Leicester shouldn’t regret missing out on Graham Potter

I think Leicester fans will take to Steve Cooper very quickly. I’ve talked football with both Steve and Graham Potter. It’ll be a weird one for Forest fans because they idolise Steve. He took them back into the Premier League for the first time in 20-odd years. So, he holds a very special place in everyone’s hearts at Nottingham Forest Football Club.

In terms of the two clubs moving forward in the Premier League (and under a bit of pressure because of Financial Fair Play), I would take Steve Cooper all day long at Leicester. He’s got the passion, the character and a bit more personality than Graham. Graham, I think, will be looking for a job with a club like Leicester but a year or two further down the line when they’re comfortably mid-table and there aren’t any points deductions looming or fires to fight and he can impose his style of play.

I think with Steve, he inspires a lot of loyalty from his players – that was obvious at Forest. Even the owner, Evangelos Marinakis, if you remember in the first season when Forest came up, Steve was under a lot of pressure because of how many games they were losing. Marinakis gave him a new contract because the Forest fans were calling for Steve to stay. Leicester City fans will like that. They’ll like the passion Steve brings and I think in a season that may potentially start with some kind of punishment, Steve Cooper is a better choice in this moment (not necessarily overall compared to Graham Potter), whereas Graham will probably be looking to go to a stable club and take them from the middle of the table into European positions. I think that’s what Graham Potter’s holding out for.

Perhaps Graham was holding out for a promise that he would get money to spend this summer. With Steve, he wants to get back into the game and the Premier League very quickly. I think he’s the right man for Leicester City and they’ll enjoy having him there. Whether or not he keeps them up is another thing because they may be subject to hostile bids from other clubs for talents like Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall. Some of their younger talents have also caught the eye. Everyone has talked the talk at Leicester that they want to stay, but you might get a situation where, if they’re struggling and facing a points deduction, they might be having to balance the books by losing one or two players.

So, for me, Steve Cooper is the right man at the right time for the right club.

Michael Olise would make ‘perfect sense’ for Liverpool

He’s going to end up at another Premier League club this summer. I think it would make perfect sense for Liverpool. You’d think Arne Slot will be given a ‘welcome to Liverpool gift’, which would, of course, be a player. When a new manager comes in they often want young and hungry talent – someone who, when they leave several years down the line and they’re on the TV doing punditry, can say they were the person who brought in a certain player, like Michael Olise.

If I’m Olise and I’ve got a choice of Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs, what have you – I’m going for Liverpool all day long. Why Liverpool? They’ve got some great attacking options, they’ve also got some very good young players who can help him along. Trent Alexander-Arnold is still very young, there’s Harvey Elliott and Curtis Jones too, plus Stefan Bajcetic… a good cohort of youngsters to help him along. What better ‘welcome to Anfield gift’? Arne Slot will want a player who he can say, ‘This is mine. Not Jurgen Klopp’s. Mine.’

Chelsea will argue the same given they’ve got a new manager. What better way to welcome their manager than by handing him a shiny new signing. Olise may also wish to stay in London having been at Crystal Palace for years; he knows the area very well, wouldn’t have to move, etc. It depends on his ambition. I think Chelsea will have a good season next season. They’ve got lots of good young players. But, for me, if you’re looking at two clubs whereby one could still go horribly wrong (the Chelsea experiment) as well it could go right, whereas Liverpool are back in the Champions League and still have world-class players doing world-class things like Mohamed Salah, Alisson Becker and Virgil van Dijk  – then I think he would better-served and thrown to the wolves less by going for the latter. Look at Mykhailo Mudryk and Enzo Fernadez who have been hammered left, right and centre. Liverpool would be a better option for him. I can see him as an absolute perfect fit! Get the job done, Michael Edwards and Richard Hughes!

Arne Slot has the ingredients to be a success at Liverpool

I’ve gone over to Holland a few times and a good friend of mine, Brian Roy, was involved with Ajax a lot. I’ve asked him and a couple of other Dutch guys I know about Slot. Listen, pretty much every coach in Europe wants to play the Pep Guardiola way; they want to get the ball down, secure lots of possession and play through the lines. What I like about Slot is that you can see he has a personality and believes he belongs at Liverpool. The difference between getting a very good coach at Liverpool or Manchester United and Tottenham, Arsenal and some of the other clubs is the personality. In reality, Pep Guardiola has personality and is an exceptional coach, which is why he’s successful at Manchester City. But to manage Liverpool or Manchester United – you’ve got to take a hell of a lot of people with you, a global supporter base. I think that’s been the problem with Erik ten Hag; he’s a bit geeky and there’s still that question of whether or not follow him. At the minute, they’re following him.

I think Arne Slot seems to be the man who relishes the opportunity of doing the talking. Not just the coaching. What made Jurgen Klopp so special was that his coaching philosophy was sound, but I think you’ve got to almost got to be like a head of state – that’s simply the case with the bigger clubs. It bodes well that Slot has the personality and oozes the kind of confidence where if he gets a good run and things start going well, he’ll get emboldened and talks the talk as well as walks the walk. Look, it can spin on its head, it’s a results-driven business. From that perspective, any manager that comes in cocky and confident who doesn’t get the results they desire suddenly ends up shrinking and then people question whether he’s too quiet or not. For me, what I saw from the Feyenoord dressing room is that he’s very much one who can get people to follow him. That’s very important at Liverpool Football Club, regardless of whether you’re a player or head coach – people have to follow you.

So, for me, Liverpool have a very good head coach but potentially also a man who can grow with the role and become a big personality. If you haven’t got that at Liverpool or Manchester United – you’re a dead man walking. The early signs are very good.

The post Collymore’s column: Give Trent time, Palace danger man perfect for Liverpool, Georgia transfer opportunity and more appeared first on CaughtOffside.

In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why Luke Shaw is bang out of order, why Brighton deserve a pat on the back, why English authorities need to follow Spain’s lead and much more.

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England’s poor form could mean a slow burn to glory… or glorious failure again

England’s poor performance against Iceland could be a perfect storm in terms of a tournament where the best teams always start slow and then move through the gears.

I watched Holland beat Iceland comfortably 3-0, they absolutely battered them by putting a lot of crosses in the box, but in terms of England at the moment, there are several players – John Stones and Kyle Walker to name just two – that obviously need minutes in their legs and aren’t going to get them until they go into games.

Jude Bellingham would have had a week or two off after the Champions League final to have a bit of party… Unfortunately, we don’t have six friendlies to play to give them and others the time they need.

I think that if we get to the semi-finals, for this group of players, that’s where they should be with a decent effort. Nine times out of 10 they should be semi finalists but if we have a good tournament, we should be looking to win it.

I don’t get involved in bookies odds and stuff quite simply because we’re in Britain and more people are going to vote for their own country than they are for others, but I do think there’s a very nice healthy dose of scepticism around the country which the Iceland result has only added to.

The weather is a bit flat still, we haven’t started the tournament yet… the expectation isn’t really there because people haven’t got used to the three games in a day which football fans love and which sets the tone.

I watched Portugal against Ireland and they look very, very good. I watched the Dutch, they look good. I watched the French, they look good. If we get to the semi-finals, we’ve got to be at our very, very best to win it.

At the moment, for me, it boils down to a few things. Several players are undercooked, one or two players are visibly ageing in front of our eyes, and we’ve had a mini experiment about who’s going to play number 10.

I fully expect by the end of the Denmark game on match day two, that we will be in a really good position to know whether this England team are struggling or whether we are slowly going through the gears on a march towards the latter stages and victory in the final.

Fair play to Brighton who’ve taken a risk with Fabian Hurzeler

Graham Potter effectively took a Swedish club into European competition, whilst Roberto De Zerbi was in charge at Sassuolo and Shakhtar Donetsk before heading to Brighton.

I think what Brighton have is quite an incredible ecosystem whereby the structure is very good, their recruitment is very good and their style of play is nailed on. You know that Brighton are going to get the ball down and they’re going to be productive.

Both of those seemingly left-field appointments worked, but the hire of Fabian Hurzeler, however, is a gamble.

Mitoma was a gamble at £2m, but you’d be looking at £50m-£60m to sign him this summer, injuries notwithstanding. That was risky, but we accept gambles and risks are part of the game where players are concerned, and weirdly not with managers.

A lot will be made that he’s seven or eight years younger than James Milner, but players know who the manager is. Players know who the head coach is and with that kind of youth and enthusiasm comes a lot of training ground minutes, and a relaxing experience in the structure around him.

I think it’s a really, really positive move. A massive appointment but for me it’s only the same risk and gamble as any player if it doesn’t work.

If it does work, it will break the mould for clubs hanging on to 50 to 70 year olds like Roy Hodgson. Clubs will say why do we need that experience when we’ve got a 31 year old here whose still got 20 to 30 years left in management.

He could break two glass ceilings in that there will be less reverse ageism in football in terms of management, and he can dictate that if you are American, you’re no longer seen as a Ted Lasso type who can’t be successful in English football. Good luck to him.

Luke Shaw is bang out of order

I’m a big fan of criticising managers because they ultimately make the decisions and it’s not unheard of, but I think that Luke Shaw criticising the medical stuff is bang out of order.

The reason why that is, is that the medical staff work their absolute nuts off for one aim; to try and get a player fit and healthy, and ready to play football.

I’ve never ever come across a medical person that says ‘you will play more often than not.’ They are a conduit between the player and the manager and they’ll say to the player, ‘look, you’re not ready for another couple of weeks yet, but the gaffer wants you back in a week. I’ll smooth it over and get it all sorted out.’

So I think that Luke Shaw’s making excuses if I’m being honest, and I hope that this isn’t going to blow up in England’s faces when he inevitably comes into the team on match day two.

Universally, medical staff in my opinion are not only a great buffer, but they would never ever, ever tell a player ‘you’ve got to be out there on Monday… You’ve got to train today…’

Those old school physios that came on with the magic sponges and gave you a kick up the backside… that’s changed now. I’ve known medical staff treating players with hamstring injuries, broken legs, calf problems, hernia operations, you name it, and despite them wanting to get back as quickly as they could, the medical team will have told them that the best time for them to come back is when their injury has healed completely and they’re ready to properly play football.

Ultimately, a player has a choice to be able to say ‘I’m not ready yet.’ The flip side of that is that there is the generation of players that won’t go on the training ground unless they are absolutely 100% fit.

I hope it’s not a warning sign for England. Luke Shaw saying he’s nearly there only for him to break down on match day two. It’s up to a player to say he isn’t ready and to talk to the physios and medical staff about getting him sorted.

Time could be up for Luis Diaz at Liverpool

I think Luis Diaz is obviously a talented player but Liverpool are not particularly short in attacking positions. If you look at Salah, Gakpo, Jota, Nunez and Diaz… they can afford to lose one, and if the choice was mine, it would be Cody Gakpo.

There is the argument that he gives Liverpool flexibility and can play as a number nine, and there haven’t been lots of rumours about him going which would suggest that he’s staying put for a season or two.

Diaz is an odd one because of his injuries, the situation with his father’s kidnap which was obviously very traumatic during the season… at times he looks world class but at others he struggles to get a foothold in the game.

It really does depend on whether Barcelona are prepared to pay £50m-£60m for him, in which case I’ll drive him to Barcelona. If it wasn’t a derisory offer and they offered a player in return aswell, for the new manager it might simply depend on what kind of player that they’re offering.

In the pecking order of strikers at the club, you’re looking at Salah then Nunez, then Jota, then Diaz and finally Gakpo, so the Colombian is in the bottom two. Man for man, I don’t think you’ll find any Liverpool fan will put Diaz in between Salah and Nunez, for example in terms of importance to the club.

So I have no problem with him going because he’s been okay, but I don’t think he’s been stunning. At Liverpool, if you’re going to win titles, you’ve got to be stunning. You’ve got to hit your marks, you got to hit your stats.

If Barcelona come along with a good offer and it allows Arne Slot to have the kind of funds to be able to bring in a player that he likes in a position that he wants, it makes sense for me.

English authorities must follow Spanish football’s lead on racism

On Twitter, I remember the Premier League asking everyone to put black squares on their bio to show solidarity with their campaign against racism. It means nothing. Well respected broadcasters and journalists not tweeting for 24 hours with a black square. Oh, great. That’s gonna stop a racist from from being a racist.

I remember getting emails from the Premier League saying ‘I see you’re very critical of our stance on racism,’ and then being bombarded with a pie chart with how much interaction they had. It doesn’t work until the deterrent stops people from doing it.

I know what it’s like to be racially abused on social media, in a football environment from football fans who then get punished. One of them was a trainee lawyer at the time, one was a 15-year-old boy that told his parents and broke down crying and one was a Derby fan.

They were all taken to court, one had to wear a tag, one was fined and the other had to pay something like £100 in victim surcharge, money that they may not have had at that time. So from my perspective, it’s really simple.

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If you take the next step and even give racists just a week in jail, it will make a difference. Nobody wants to go to jail. Anybody, pretty much most people, can pay a £50 fine and then become the guy that abused [insert black player here].

So, absolutely fantastic from the Spanish authorities. The punishment for those who racially abused Vini Jr. is 10 times more important than what the English authorities would do about it, because we have a background of virtue signalling in this country.

You look back when England played in Seville many moons ago and there was blackface etc., and I think that Spain has had a problem with acknowledging it. So this is big. It’s saying, you go to a football match and you start doing this, you’re gonna get a proper punishment.

Eastern Europe, which has a problem in football traditionally with racially abusing players, need to do the same and if we do, we then have serious tools to be able to eradicate it from the grounds.

Well done the Spanish Federation, well done the Spanish judicial system. England – time to follow.

The post Collymore’s column: Luke Shaw is bang out of order, Liverpool should sell Luis Diaz and much more appeared first on CaughtOffside.

In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why Man City’s owners must be taken on, why Jose Mourinho loves a pound note more than himself, why Jack Grealish must be picked for England and much more. 

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Man City owners must be taken on for the good of the game

Let’s detach Man City as an old historic football club, with supporters that support a team they would all support, whether they’re in the National League or wherever, from the ownership, who have acted disgracefully to work within rules that they’ve been wildly successful under.

They’ve won trophies including four out of the last five Premier Leagues, so by NO measure whatsoever, have the ownership of Manchester City Football Club, in their attempt to make Manchester City successful, had their job hampered by the rules and regulations.

That’s the first thing.

Other clubs such as Aston Villa, Liverpool and Newcastle all agree to operate within the rules, despite, in the Magpies case, they could spend as much as City or arguably more.

You don’t then turn around and go, ‘we’re going to blow the doors off the whole place, and we’re going to sue you.’ The inference from Man City was that they would have to spend less on the academy and less on youth teams and less on youth development but that’s what every other club has to do.

I think that we’re at the time and the place where the red button, the nuclear button may well need to be pressed. And I would say this if it related to any club, such as Aston Villa, Liverpool, Nottingham Forest, Manchester United, Bournemouth…

If any club is trying to change the material structure of the Premier League to be able to make it a space race ‘free for all,’ then they should be expelled from the league and not come back until they accept the rules as they are.

It’s called a meritocracy and what we all hope and pray for is that when our teams line up on match day one, that we’ve just got a chance of doing something. And this would take away any single remote, lingering hope of any club being able to do what Leicester City did, any club being able to win an FA Cup, any club being able to win a League Cup.

We would have a situation with 40/50 man squads of the best players in the world, whereby one squad plays in the FA Cup, one squad plays in the League Cup, one squad plays in the Premier League, one plays in the Champions League, and you would get quadruples every year.

The reason why these records are breaking is not because these teams are better. It’s because the teams are deeper and better.

And so from my perspective, it’s really simple, the ownership of Manchester City Football Club has to be taken on.

If this was the club I support, Aston Villa, doing what Man City had done over the last 10/12 years, and were now arguing that they will sue the Premier League, I would genuinely, and it’s important to say this, advocate for my own football club to be temporarily kicked out the league until they saw sense.

That’s how serious the situation is.

Grealish brings something different for England and needs to make the cut

After cutting James Maddison from the England squad this week, Gareth Southgate has a few more decisions to make with the next few days.

There’s rumours that Liverpool duo Jarell Quansah and Curtis Jones will be next to be given the bad news.

In terms of Jack Grealish, he doesn’t now have the bells and the whistles to drive past people in the box, but what he does have is he keeps the ball very well in that left position.

He’s not as incisive but as we saw with Trent’s goal, he picked his head up and dinked the ball over.

Everybody was getting very excited about Eberechi Eze against Bosnia and Herzegovina, but I didn’t think had a good game. I think he ran into roadblocks time after time. Yes, he got the ball, showed pace, dropped his shoulder and did a couple of step overs, but then he lost the ball and we were counter attacked. Against better teams that’s going to hurt.

Therefore, I’ll probably say that those who won’t make the final cut are Maddison, Quansah, Jones, Eze, James Trafford, Adam Wharton and Luke Shaw. That would be my seven.

If player welfare is important, scrap the ‘breaking new markets’ nonsense

Darwin Nunez scored a hat trick on Wednesday and we’re only less than two weeks after the Premier League finished.

Other than for international tournaments, which tend to start mid June – as we’ve seen with the Euros and their equivalent – I think that we need to have a serious look at post-season friendlies and almost ban teams from going because for the amount of money they get (£2m-£5m a pop) I don’t think it’s financially worthwhile.

When people say ‘Oh, we’re breaking new markets,’ no you’re not. You’re just going for a little greedy couple of million pounds payout, which which will go into the coffers.

I think that any games in the domestic leagues, the Champions League and all European football should be done by the end of May. That can be done. The FA Cup could be in the middle or towards the end of May, and then, like what used to happen with teams winning the European Cup, they’d literally get on a flight and go the next Wednesday or the next Saturday.

There should be a moratorium for end of season friendlies and pre-season friendlies. The calendar should stop at a certain point and proper breaks put in.

When there is no mandated European Championship or World Cup tournament, or if you are not included in those squads for those tournaments, you get four to six weeks off. No exceptions, no tours, no nothing.

All of the superfluous tournaments, lucrative games and the Nations League would be scrapped.

Mourinho loves a pound note more than he loves himself

Jose Mourinho is very clever. What he does is that as his managerial abilities wane, his mouth works over time. We know from the ‘Special One’ thing that he’s having himself, but he was winning major trophies with major clubs at the time.

Let’s not beat about the bush, he likes a pound note. He’s getting paid €21m over two years by Fenerbahce, so he’s not going anywhere for other than top, top, top dollar. You have a look at the deals that he signed with Roma and Fenerbahce and with the greatest respect, neither are getting anywhere near the Champions League. They’re not getting anywhere near the Europa League either.

If you’re a chairman and you see Mourinho popping up on Sky Sports or any television channel around Europe to tell you how great he is, you go ‘Brilliant. We’re going to get him,’ and fans will be lining the streets.

The way to judge him though is when he leaves your club and he left Manchester United and Tottenham much worse off, in my opinion. Of course, the revisionists are now saying he was right about United but Mourinho left the dressing room fractured. At Tottenham, he did nothing. The football was turgid.

So watch this space Fenerbahce fans. You’re all getting very giddy and very excited, but let’s see, in two years time, if your thoughts and memories of Jose Mourinho are the same as when he waved the shirt and kissed the badge.

Pardew chase is a surprise because ‘old school’ managers don’t have a place in a modern Premier League

Old school managers have no place in the modern game, although they should because the Premier League should be about different styles and different systems.

Whether it be longer ball versus Pep ball or 4-4-2 versus 4-3-3, most clubs, on the back of a three plus goals per game Premier League season, want a manager now with all the bells and whistles and whose team defend on the halfway line. Who are a guarantee of three or four goals a game, so the clubs can get punters In.

It’s somewhat of a surprise that Alan Pardew would be considered for the Burnley job because I don’t see his of play being conducive to anything exceptional for Burnley as they’re trying to get back into the Premier League.

You look at the clubs that they’re going to be competing with, pretty much most of them are going to be those that can finish at the top. They’re going to be footballing teams.

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Maybe Burnley have identified something and said ‘We’re going to be a bit more industrial. We’re going to be a bit more pragmatic. We’re going to have use old school management to get into them a little bit more,’ and maybe they see something of a Sean Dyche in him, but I just think that what got Burnley out of the championship into the Premier League in the first place was quality on the deck football.

The Sam Allardyce’s, the Neil Warnock’s, the Harry Redknapp’s and the Alan Pardew’s are great at going on podcasts and telling the great tales of yesteryear, but I don’t think in reality, they have the attention to detail or the energy levels that a modern coach has.

The post Collymore’s column: EPL must head off Man City threat, Mourinho loves a pound note and more appeared first on CaughtOffside.

In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why he got it wrong about the FA Cup Final, why Enzo Maresca isn’t the right man for Chelsea, why Jadon Sancho should steer clear of Man United and much more. 

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Man United players did the club proud… and I got it completely wrong

I genuinly couldn’t see how Man United could win that FA Cup final. It was fertile ground for Man City. Premier League Champions, no Champions League final to worry about, nice and relaxed and ready to go out and play a team that was fractured and not playing well.

I should’ve known better really.

Whatever vintage it is, Man United (or Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Barcelona for that matter) manage to compete.

I was genuinely shocked because I thought that they would play within within themselves. I didn’t expect them to come out and be like ‘okay, we’ll have a really good go at this’ because I haven’t seen enough big characters or enough personalities in the dressing room throughout the season to suggest that this would be the case. Secondly, obviously with it being a derby game, they showed up to that as well.

I’m more than happy to hold my hand up and say that I got it completely wrong and I thought that they did the club proud.

The performance was a massive positive for Erik ten Hag too so what does that mean for him? He was obviously very bullish and said ‘if United don’t want me then I’ll go and win trophies elsewhere,’ but that’s a bit rich really because he’s only been in Holland before United so he’s not exactly won the Champions League.

I think that if you asked me who would do a better job with the youngsters and the seniors at Manchester United, Mauricio Pochettino or Erik ten Hag, I’d go for Pochettino every day of the week and twice on a Sunday.

It’s great that ten Hag managed to get the players to go out and play for the shirts because that’s always important for Manchester United fans, but I think that there will be an element of dropping the ball if Sir Jim Ratcliffe, INEOS and Sir Dave Brailsford all of a sudden now thought that one performance meant ten Hag was the right man to lead the charge towards a title tilt.

There was nothing in Manchester United’s league season to suggest that Erik ten Hag had control of the dressing room in the way that he did for 90 minutes in a one-off final.

Real Madrid’s final to lose and Sancho must steer clear of Man United

The Champions League is Real Madrid’s competition and it’s theirs to lose. That’s nothing against Borussia Dortmund, it’s just that Madrid have got more match winners; Bellingham, Vini Jr… the list goes on, and I think Real will win it comfortably 2-0.

In terms of Jadon Sancho, even if he has a brilliant final, I wouldn’t go anywhere near Man United – even if Sir Alex Ferguson had come back. I think that if you go to a club, and you have a bad experience at that football club, then if you go back, it’s still a bad experience.

He’s been playing great at Dortmund, it’s clear that he feels good and looks at home, so if his agent isn’t trying to put to deal together right now with Dortmund then he’s crazy. If Sancho honestly thinks that he’s got the chutzpah to be able to go back into Manchester United with a new manager, good luck to him.

The expectation is much greater there, with the greatest respect to Dortmund who are club where you bring your waifs and strays, young and promising players, and they’ll turn them into a team that play in this amazing 80,000 capacity arena. Whereas at Manchester United, you have to be the finished product. You’ve got to produce immediately.

Sancho’s dug himself out of a hole and is enjoying his football again, and England have got big Nations League games coming up. There’s nothing to say that he couldn’t get back into an England squad but I’d say to him ‘don’t walk back into that familiar dressing room at Old Trafford and put that shirt on that drags you down. Move on even if that’s to somewhere else.’

Even if United say that they’re not going to allow him to be loaned out again and he can only be sold, that’s fine. If Dortmund can’t afford him, he should go somewhere else in Germany or to Italy – but under no circumstances should he be going back to Manchester United.

Enzo Maresca to Chelsea is a very underwhelming appointment

Enzo Maresca worked with the Man City development squad before going to Parma and then onto Leicester, and with the greatest respect to Parma and Leicester, it’s a very, very, very different beast to Chelsea.

He knows England – let’s not forget as a player he actually started his professional career at West Bromwich Albion – and he’s played at Sevilla, Fiorentina, Bologna, Juventus, Malaga, Sampdoria and Olympiacos so he’s got a really good CV, but Chelsea is a beast that will eat great managers up.

It ate Mourinho up twice, Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter, Frank Lampard…

Although there are some seasoned winners in that Chelsea dressing room, it’s very much a young squad, and that’s what Todd Boehly will be hoping to tap into. That there isn’t a John Terry or a Didier Drogba to question things, but a group of young players that will marvel at Maresca’s work on the training pitch with all his Pep-type driills.

Unfortunately for him, Chelsea had a poor season in the Premier League and it’s a results-based business. He’ll need to get wins on the board without, perhaps, some of his senior players because they’ll be sold as the club are close to falling foul of FFP despite selling hotels in London and doing all sorts of creative accounting.

The Blues need to get lots of very good results very early if they want to get into Europe, and by that I mean the Europa League.

I would be absolutely astounded if, when we get to Christmas, there aren’t rumblings about Maresca’s position already being under threat because it’s a young, fickle, rookie group.

For me, it’s an underwhelming appointment, the club should have stuck with Poch, and I get the feeling that come November/December time, we’ll be having another conversation about Chelsea changing their manager again.

Lopetegui will play exciting football at West Ham… but for how long?

Julen Lopetegui is a confident man, he’s had some of the biggest jobs that it’s possible to get, and I think that West Ham are obviously looking for somebody that can take them consistently into Europe over the next three or four years.

If you’re David Sullivan, you’re probably looking at clubs like Aston Villa and Newcastle and saying that’s where we should be. That’s where we want to be. We want to be in the Champions League. So we need a manager that can pretty much get us there.

So Lopetegui’s experience at Real Madrid, at Sevilla, with the Spanish National team, at Porto and with Spanish under age groups… he ticks all the boxes. I’m just not convinced about him as a person.

If you look at Wolves he was there for a year, if you look at Seville – three years, Real Madrid – he barely walked into the club before he was out again, Spain – a couple of years, Porto – a couple of years… if West Ham are looking to get into the Champions League, it’s a three, four or five year project, and he hasn’t stayed at a club for anywhere near that.

So the question is, what’s in it for him? A massive payday.

Is he particularly loyal? Wolves fans will say no. If he has a good season and let’s say do what Villa did last season, does anybody honestly think that if Barcelona, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich came in for him that he’d still be at West Ham?

Saudi Pro League is nothing but a gimmick

I’m 53 and I can’t ever see in my lifetime that the Saudi Pro League will be thought of as a top five global league and the reasons are really quite simple. England, Spain, Italy, France, Germany… 100 plus year-old leagues, legacy leagues that really mean something.

Secondly, all those leagues are very rich in their own right. Companies aren’t bailing on the Premier League or La Liga to go and sponsor the Saudi League, which will be propped up by Saudi money from Saudi companies.

And thirdly, dare I say the culture that you’ve seen. Muslim players go out there because obviously it’s something they know, but you’ve also seen players that go out there, dip their toe in and are back in no time at all. Likewise, managers. Nuno Espirito Santo, Jordan Henderson…. So for me, I just think it’s going to continue being a gimmick.

Boxing will be there for the next 20 years, but people aren’t going to go there and watch boxing in the same way that they would if they were at Madison Square Garden or some of the great venues.

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The Saudi’s will continue to build it up, but I just think it’s all about location and the cultural aspect. They will always get tournaments – like Qatar had the World Cup and Dubai gets the tennis – but people still want to go to Wimbledon, people still want to go to an Olympics in Paris, people still want to go to Wembley Stadium for that footballl experience or to watch Madrid in the Bernabeu.

It’s like the MLS was and like the A League in Australia was for two or three years, and it’s a bit of a top up for the pension.

No disrespect to Cristiano Ronaldo, whose 35 goals is a remarkable achievement even if he was doing that at his age in Sunday league football, but I can’t cannot see a time where European footballers head to Saudi Arabia to give the best years of their life.

Kylian Mbappe was effectively offered billions to go and he didn’t choose it because he knew that he could get paid very handsomely in Europe and be relevant. When you go to Saudi you’re seen as two things; a mercenary and irrelevant.

The post Collymore’s column: Man United players did club proud, Real Madrid’s UCL final to lose, Enzo Maresca is another Chelsea mistake and more appeared first on CaughtOffside.

In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why the FA Cup Final will be the most one-sided ever, the shambolic way Mauricio Pochettino has been treated, why the Premier League needs a salary cap and how Gareth Southgate has got his England selection spot on. 

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Pochettino leaving is the poorest of decisions from Todd Boehly

It’s a bit weird isn’t it, after the bizarre season that Chelsea have had, spending millions of pounds, the kids not working out… and then they start to get results towards the end of the season, everything’s looking good and Mauricio Pochettino goes and has dinner with Todd Boehly and you think it’s all going to be alright, but before you know it the manager’s gone.

My understanding is – from a couple of people I know at Chelsea – that Pochettino basically wanted more control over things but the Chelsea hierarchy were like ‘the structure is the structure. This is the way that we want to do it. We’re more than happy with you having your input, but ultimately there’s other people at the club that we’ve employed who we want to do their jobs and be empowered to do their job.’

So my opinion is really simple.

Chelsea had a coach that’s really good with youngsters and who was starting to develop a style of play to be honed and refined. Putting things into perspective, Villa would appear to have had a 10 out of 10 season on the face of it, and finished only five points ahead of Chelsea who apparently had an awful season. I think it just goes to show how much potential there is in that Chelsea team.

It should be the least the least shocking news in football when a Chelsea manager gets the sack, but on this occasion it is, and it’s a real shame. I’m a big fan of Poch and I genuinely thought he would go on and get some success at Chelsea, over the next two or three years.

What it means for some of these younger players, I don’t know, but I think that if they get in a benign dictator as a coach, one or two might fall by the wayside.

It’s another incredibly poor decision from Todd Boehly.

Southgate has got it spot on with the England squad

I think that the England squad overall is basically good.

I think that probably over the last 12 months the narrative is that Jordan Henderson is a great person to have in the dressing room, a great tourist with fantastic experience, but you’ve got to have players that can go out there and do the business. When you go to Saudi Arabia, that tells you something about where the player’s form is at.

I would much rather miss out on the experienced head around the dressing room, which is a little bit of a myth anyway. They’re all senior players, they will all add something and there’s plenty of experience in the squad anyway with the likes of Phil Foden, Jude Bellingham and Declan Rice, despite their relative youth.

That’s without likes of Harry Maguire, Jordan Pickford, Kyle Walker and Kieran Trippier. So the good tourist thing that I didn’t buy really. I went with it for the last year because Henderson has been a good servant to the country.

In terms of Marcus Rashford, I think that we are so blessed in forward positions with an embarrassment of riches; Jack Grealish, Cole Palmer, Jarrod Bowen…

Depending on whether Gareth Southgate plays a 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3, it’s going to throw up an interesting conundrum.

Does he play Rice and Bellingham technically as holders with either having the ability to then move forward into the number 10 position, or does he put Phil Foden as the 10? Against Croatia, Foden played on the right of an attacking three, but he could also play centrally or to the left because he’s that versatile.

Rashford has the ability to be able to score goals and go on runs, but I just think on this occasion, it was quite refreshing to see Gareth say ‘there are players in this position that are playing better’ rather than the old chestnut of being ‘a valued member of the squad and he was unlucky on this occasion.’

Ultimately when you’re a player, if you’re getting dropped from squads, that’s what you want to hear – either that you’re good enough to get in or you haven’t had a great season and we’re going to let you down gently. I like that ruthlessness.

Overall with regards to the squad, I like the fact that Wharton, Eze and Ezri Konsa are coming in, whether or not they go to Germany or are just part of an extended squad.

The constant evolution is important as it puts players under pressure and keeps them hungry.

The most one-side FA Cup Final ever in prospect

Manchester United cannot win this season’s FA Cup Final.

Back in 19777, United stopped Liverpool doing a treble thanks to having hardened professionals in the team, but I don’t see anything in this United squad to trouble Manchester City.

People throw up statistics about Bruno’s creativity but there aren’t enough United players in form, whether it be their front three, midfield or central defensive pairing or the goalkeeper.

City would have had a bit of a break, they’ll have had their parties as we saw the other night and they’ll have got their head down. As derby games go, and I’m talking Liverpool v Everton, Arsenal v Tottenham or Man City v Man United in a cup final environment… this will be the easiest FA Cup final derby victory ever.

Last season City were still chasing a treble because they had the Champions League final to come after it. This season they haven’t so they can go out on a high. They’ve won the league, are in form and have got more options to score goals across the board than United.

Unless City have a spectacularly bad day at the office, and we take the view that anything can happen – as it did when United beat Liverpool earlier in the competition – then this is going to be a straightforward derby victory.

I can’t see anything other than a 3-0 win at least for City.

A salary cap would stop English football from dying

I think from my perspective the problem is that where English clubs will push back is when somebody will turn around and say ‘there’s no salary cap in La Liga, no salary cap in Serie A, no salary cap in Saudi… these are our competitors and we want to maintain a competitive advantage…’

The best league in the world wants the best players in the world but I think that common sense is coming to the fore in terms of how rapacious many clubs have been over the last 20 years – in particular Chelsea and Manchester City.

The Saudi ownership of Newcastle United has been the first club which has been stopped in its tracks from doing what it what it wants to do, because of Financial Fair Play, making their squad weaker going into a first Champions League campaign for years.

I think that a salary cap has been mooted four or five times but as you’ve already seen, 10 clubs including Villa, Forest and Bournemouth voted against it.

I can see the point of clubs saying ‘hold on, we want to be upwardly mobile,’ and that was Manchester City’s original argument. We’ve had a Champions League lock in from 1992, so by and large, if you were doing well around 92/93/94 and you were competitive, then it meant you were going to be in those top positions as the Champions League developed.

Fifteen years ago, Manchester City blew the doors off and said ‘we should be able to spend what the hell we like. We will spend what the hell we like and there’s nothing you can do to stop it,’ and the Premier League has been putting a finger in the dike ever since.

I do feel sorry for clubs with a vested interest such as Aston Villa as the greed and overspending of other clubs will punish them and the likes of Newcastle, West Ham and Brighton.

I do think that we’ve got to have some sort of wage cap, but one which does allow upward mobility.

If you look further down the pyramid it’s in a mess. Clubs are in a mess, finances are in a mess. We’re now getting so used to the sugar daddy coming in to haul clubs out of trouble, but what people are missing out on is the difficulty for all those other clubs that work on a relatively tight budget and cut their cloth accordingly.

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So, from my perspective, the answer would be really simple.

Yes to a salary cap that allows for upward mobility, and when the independent football regulator firmly comes out of the shadows, we see who is fronting it, whether it has teeth and we make sure that the English football pyramid is sacred as an institution.

It’s not just of national importance, but global. The flow of players that get produced further down then get their opportunities to go up and play in the Premier League, and the flow of money made by the top trickles down as the Premier League continues to pay its fair share to the pyramid further down.

If we get that, we get the best of everything. We get our clubs competing in Europe, we get a decent competition instead of a cakewalk every year, we get clubs further down getting paid proper money for their players and we avoid the litany of bankruptcies and winding-up orders.

The post Collymore’s column: Most one-sided FA Cup final ever, another poor decision from Chelsea and more appeared first on CaughtOffside.

In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why Villa need to grab their UCL chance with both hands, the shambolic way David Moyes has been treated, why the Premier League have bottled it against Man City, plus much more.

Villa need to grab UCL with both hands next season

Purely as an ex-pro, I don’t buy into this ‘I’d rather play in the Europa League or the Conference League’ because that’s usually an excuse for clubs worried about taking more than baby steps. Eighteen months ago under Steven Gerrard Villa were heading towards relegation so European football is great, but make no mistake – the financial uplift, the global stage, the ability to be able to get better players, to tie down your better players – all of a sudden becomes it infinitely easier.

When you’re in the Champions League players don’t need to look around elsewhere. What’s the point unless they’re going to Manchester City who are virtually guaranteed to win a trophy? Why would players want to go to a Liverpool or a Man United? Some clubs can’t offer Champions League football next season and are in transition too.

I think that it’s really important for Aston Villa to get into the Champions League and if we’re using this awful phrase of ‘branding and marketing,’ the club can reconnect with Asia, Australasia, the Americas, Europe etc. People will go ‘Aston Villa? I know them. That’s the club that Tom Hanks supports.’ It makes a massive difference.

Villa have got top four money in terms of the ownership but you can’t just go and blow half a billion pounds, which Villa would if they could. I’d like them to look around and buy three, four or five players that know what the Champions League is all about, but we’re not talking about 37/38 year olds like Thiago Silva et al.

I’m very comfortable with Monchi and his staff who have done a fantastic job, obviously, in terms of recruitment but they’re gonna have to go up a level now. If you get one chance as a club to get in the Champions League, take it and run with it. I’m very excited.

Shambolic the way West Ham have treated Moyes and Lopetegui is a disgrace

David Moyes had a pretty good run at West Ham, even if it’s been a real mixed bag at times. They’ve struggled in the Premier League but in Europe, they’ve been fantastic and winning the Conference League was a real high point. Do I believe that David Moyes’ time at West Ham is up? Yes, but the way in which West Ham have done it is absolutely shambolic.

All clubs talk to potential new managers behind the current incumbents back, that’s just a given, but in Lopetegui in particular, I think to myself are their better options out there and I think there probably are. The way that he walked out on Wolves was an absolute disgrace regardless of what promises he was made.

And that would raise a massive red flag for me because if he did well at West Ham then the likes of Liverpool and Man United came in for him down the road, because they’re teams that will have been in transition for years to come (maybe Chelsea as well), he would quite happily walk out on the Hammers as well. So I think their due diligence in terms of finding the right man has been appalling.

For me it’s really simple. I think that that West Ham need to have a long, hard look in the mirror and assess their conduct. David Moyes, for bringing the club their first trophy in over four decades and keeping them in Europe, should’ve been given a rousing send off. Club media doing an interview with him and asking about his experience with the club, what were his favourite moments and stuff like that. They did nothing. Not a dickie bird. He’s been dealt with very, very, very badly, particularly when you look at what other clubs do when a manager gets to the end of his tenure.

Jude Bellingham is nailed on for Ballon d’Or

I want the Ballon d’Or to be given on sporting merit, but it’s not. Or at least it hasn’t been for a while. I think we’ve got to a ridiculous situation where the Ballon d’Or has become a subjective decision given out because of the emotional attachment and which is always going to reward players that have been in the game for a long time. Think of the Oscars and a Lifetime Achievement Award… the Ballon d’Or should not be a Lifetime Achievement Award, it should be an ‘in the now’ achievement award.

It needs a reset after the Messi and Ronaldo years, and now we’ve got the luxury of having Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappe, Vini Jr., Phil Foden, Declan Rice, Jude Bellingham… a number of quality younger players that are playing for big clubs and are doing the business.

What Bellingham is doing really is arguably the greatest achievement by an English player abroad and I say that going all the way back to the likes of John Charles who had a massive impact on Juventus, Denis Law, Jimmy Greaves, Liam Brady, Steve McManaman, David Beckham…

Every week he’s been playing against the very best in the world and for a relative top-flight rookie to walk into that club with such confidence from day one is quite extraordinary. We’ve started to see him get forward that little bit more and score important goals, and he’s been the conduit for the rest of his team-mates at arguably the biggest club on the planet.

He’s not the finished article by any means but show me another player that’s had a bigger impact on their club in terms of making them a consistent threat at home and abroad. You can’t find one. So it absolutely makes sense for him to be Ballon d’Or, and to do it at a club that can swallow you up and spit you out… I don’t think anybody else comes close this year.

Slot will suffer from being the first after Klopp at Liverpool

Arne Slot can speak English in the dressing room – big tick. A coach in a Dutch league that’s far from vintage – big red cross.

Slot’s perspective will be to look at things and go ‘if I do half as well and keep these in the top four…’ and his ambition will likely be to win a League Cup or FA Cup and that’s it. Then in season two, he’ll look for Liverpool to be more competitive.

I think Liverpool Football Club have taken a pragmatic approach and decided that they’ll never get anyone like Jurgen Klopp and gone ‘let’s get somebody in that is at least competent and confident enough to be able to maintain the status quo and keep the club competitive.’

Slot really believes he can do the job or else he wouldn’t say yes, but just like when Sir Alex Ferguson left Manchester United, David Moyes came in and everybody thought he’d do well. Moyes was very capable too but quickly realised that he couldn’t quite hit those high notes. I don’t think Slot will necessarily hit those high notes either. Why? Because it’s difficult following a Sir Alex, a Frank Sinatra, a Michael Jackson, a Muhammad Ali…

He’s going to be known in Liverpool history as the man that took over from Jurgen Klopp, a big, powerful and strong character and persona who had the personality, attachment and connection to the scousers that afforded him that ability to go the extra mile. It transcended just being the manager of the football club.

For me, honestly, Slot could go on and consolidate what Liverpool have, then once he has his feet properly under the table, he’ll need Michael Edwards to go and find two or three more signings like the Mane’s and the Salah’s of this world. Players in a decent price range but that won’t trouble the bank balance.

If that happens, he’s got a chance, but I just think that sometimes in football there are characters who are very difficult to follow.

Premier League to blame for not dealing with Man City charges

Apparently (Premier League chief) Richard Masters is going to the Arsenal game this weekend to avoid having to give the Premier League trophy to a club that’s got 115 charges against it.

The argument over the charges that we’ve had from Manchester City Supporters groups – who will undoubtedly have been briefed by the club – is that the charges are too serious and too hefty over a number of different domains, to be dealt with quickly. Okay, I can go with that. 115 charges, take some more time…

However, the fact is that no one expects a weekly digest from Richard Masters. I fail to see how the Premier League could not have taken one of Manchester City’s charges, perhaps the most serious and focused on that as the headline grabber, then just get to the other 114 as and when.

I believe that Premier League have got it wrong because they haven’t dealt with one single charge and you can’t honestly tell me it couldn’t have been done in the same timescale as Everton’s and Forest’s punishments.

They could’ve then said to people ‘this is the gravity of the club’s situation.’ Whether it would be a three point, six point or 10 point deduction, that would have had clear ramifications for this season’s title race.

It would then be a template for dealing with clubs in the future because I’m sure that other clubs will fall foul of FFP sooner or later. Villa aren’t far off, and Newcastle may not be far off either.

I don’t know what the outcome is gonna be because Manchester City’s lawyers are the best in the business, and when you have the best in the business you tend to get tangible results.

Remember that Everton and Forest could’ve gone down this season but haven’t because they still had enough in the tank despite the points reductions. The point is that they could have gone down – this season – because their cases were dealt with. Manchester City cannot not be champions of England if they’re found guilty, but they will be if results go as expected because the Premier League haven’t got their collective fingers out.

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Richard Masters looks older every time he goes on TV and I think that the Premier League are under massive strain, dealing with a situation that has very significant complexities. I’ve got no confidence in them at all and therein lies the problem.

If the stuff around Roberto Mancini apparently being paid off the books is found to be the case, for example, that should be a demotion in itself. Every single player and manager is paid like any other employee in the business. If it’s proven that he was getting paid a contract worth £1m via PAYE and HMRC,, but was getting £8m sent to a business in Abu Dhabi… that should be worthy of significant sanction.

I think that’s what a lot of football fans feel is unfair and that’s when you get into all of this sort of conspiracy theory territory.

I know that clubs will try it on, so the Premier League need to fire a warning shot across clubs to flex their muscles and so everyone knows that they really do mean business.

The post Collymore’s column: Premier League have bottled Man City decision, Moyes’ treatment a disgrace, Bellingham for Ballon d’Or and more appeared first on CaughtOffside.