WORTHLESS AWARDS + NAPOLI UCL OPENER
I tell myself, don’t do it, don’t crawl into the muck… but here I am, swimming in the swamp waters of Ballon d’Or nomination nonsense.
French journalists rolling around in the mess of 9 PSG players being awarded the nod, in a sea of WTF names that shouldn’t be there… with the Premier League getting short shrift like this was 1992.
Sadio Mané? Lautaro Martínez? Pau Cubarsi? What are we doing here, people? This is worse than the Oscars. La Liga was the third-most-represented league!
Let’s just remind ourselves of some factoids (only the most annoyingly presumptive writers use the word factoid, and it’s just to anger percieved pedants).
PSG spends more money on wages than any team in the world, including Man City. About a billion euros over two seasons.
Add up the wage bills of the 5 clubs behind PSG last season and you start to get close to what they spend a year… which is more than Man City. In fact, their wage bill is worth more than the entire Ligue 1 TV deal.
They use this dominance to bully the French league with their back-up players — and if things get a little too close, as it did with RC Lens last season, they’ll just get league games moved so they’re good for the UCL.
This means their players are fresher than any other teams in Europe for the only thing that matters to their project… the Champions League.
Arsenal won the Premier League with the 5th-highest wage bill in the Premier League, went unbeaten in open play in the Champions League (PSG did not do this), and that penalty shootout miss earned PSG that many extra nominations? Even their very average keeper got a goalkeeper nomination!
Let’s be very, very clear here… most of those PSG players would look very average in the Premier League. They wouldn’t hack the pace; they’d break down having to play at the intensity of the Premier League, and some of the players would outright flunk over here.
The English clubs pay a heavy tax for being English. Europe looks down on the money, the talent, and the league's prestige… they treat us like it’s 1992, like we’re the unwashed, celebrating Dean Windass comps, while beating each other up outside the Boelyn. All this despite our dominance with an outrageous league product and the outright control of global media attention. It’s why so many European clubs pushed for Super League… they wanted to curtail the power of the Premier League.
This award has been bullshit since Thierry lost out to Nedved. It was a joke last year when Mo Salah, the best player on the planet by a country mile, lost out to Ousmane Dembele. So I shan’t be losing too much sleep over this sort of list. But the awards certainly haven’t showered themselves in glory over the last 20 years, and pretending the Premier League doesn’t have the best players because no one can score 50 goals a season beating up teenagers on $3,000 a week is just embarrassing.
Let’s break up some of the anger here and salute the excellent Rory Jennings.
One of the greats of YouTube punditry. World-class hating. You cannot deny that what he’s doing here is irresistibly petty. This is the internet at it’s best.
If I were to riff on hating Chelsea, I’d say…
I hate Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. I hate Wayne Bridge for the Champions League quarter-final defeat; he didn’t even like football. I hate Jose Mourinho for jibing at Wenger. I hate 1000th game anniversaries because of Chelsea. I hate Frank Lampard for deflected goals. I hate Petr Cech. I hate William Gallas for sending me PR emails loaded with some of the dumbest hot takes in football, like I don’t remember he was a formidable Chelsea player and a dreadful Arsenal captain. I hate that Chelsea made me hate Ashley Cole for an extra £5k a week. I hate Mourinho for going to that secret meeting at the hotel that made me hate Ashley Cole. I hate Chelsea for letting Willian’s contract lapse. I hate Abramovich for the under-the-table deal that took Hazard from us. I hate Obi Mikel because he wasn’t that good, yet seemed to have a feted career. I hate Stamford Bridge for being a terrible stadium in a nice area of London. I hate John Terry for saying nice things about Max and making me like him for a short moment in time. I hate Didier Drogba for traumatizing Senderos and the whole fan base for many years. I hate Chelsea for ruining 2 weeks of my life by stealing Mudryk from us, but I do love that he tanked, and we got Premier League-winning Trossard, and he scored that wonderful goal. Ok, I love Chelsea for that.
Quite cathartic. What extras do you have that I missed?
Arteta is excited about facing Allegri’s Napoli tomorrow.
“I’m really excited,”
“We know what this competition means to all of us, the experience of last year as well, so we need to start with the first game in a really, really tough place, but really excited to start the campaign.
“Start well tomorrow; that’s the only thing we can do. Start by putting in a big performance tomorrow to increase the probability of winning the game.”
I am always somewhat alarmed by the manager when he says things like ‘we must start strong’ because he said that last year and just went all out for basically every game of the Super League phase. It rewarded us in the end because we landed the easy part of the draw, so who am I to complain? But it also cost us with near-complete exhaustion when it got down to the action part of the season.
The question is, will he change tact this season? Will all the new fitness folk he hired help him make better decisions with his squad. I mean, let’s be honest, there’s not a clear ‘best starting 11’ right now. There are so many good players, so much insane depth, you could start anyone and feel very happy about what we’re doing.
I’d love to see Bruno and Zubimendi get a run out in midfield. The game could be poised to see Eze and Gyokeres get some time on the pitch. We could also see Madueke start his first game this season. There are loads of really good combos Arteta could try. The main players I want preserved are Kai Havertz, Calafiori, and Declan if possible. Three unbelievably essential players we want to keep fresh for as long as possible.
Kai in particular has been so strong so far this season… with Gyokeres looking so desperately bad, you’d probably opt to start Merino over him. The whole world seems to be recognizing both those issues now; the only one I really care about is keeping the German at his best. If we can do that for 4 months, then maybe we can find someone more suitable to backfill his role.
Allegri is quite a grim manager. Arsenal spoke to him and got short shrift after Wenger exited. He’s old school. The football isn’t nice to watch. His ways are antiquated. The Italian is already in a spot of bother, losing 2 of Napolis three opening games.
“Tomorrow is a different competition from Serie A, a sort of mini-league where we need 12 points to secure qualification for the next round,” Allegri said at his pre-match press conference.
“Europe gives you motivation and adrenaline. We’ll be playing against the best, and we need to play a game of great technique. When we don’t have the ball, we’ll need to defend better as a team. We left a lot to be desired against Como and Inter.
“We know the difficulties of this match, which we must go into with pride and the desire to do well.”
Imagine looking for your reset against Arsenal? Can’t be a fun thought. But hey, at least they’re coming with pride.
My hopes are for a lovely win and no drama on the injury front. We have two very hard games coming up in the league with Brighton and Sunderland. I want good vibes so we can sale into that international break in good shape!
Ok, we’ll be going LIVE for the On The Whistle. If you want full access, sign up for a membership now, and we’ll see you later! There’s also a podcast Matt and Jacob recorded waiting there for you. x
