In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including his former club’s recent decision to increase ticket prices, Cole Palmer’s omission from Chelsea’s European squad and why Man United must sack Erik Ten Hag, plus much more.

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Aston Villa ripping season-ticket holders off is a disgrace

There is a lot of excitement surrounding Aston Villa at the moment.

Off the pitch, there have been stadium renovations and good partnership agreements reached with the likes of Adidas who will now manufacture the kits.

On the pitch, the good times are back thanks to Unai Emery. After finishing fourth in the Premier League last season, we’re now on the verge of kicking off our Champions League campaign — the first time we’ve been in the competition since 1982!

Despite all of this though, the club, who have decided to charge season ticket-holders between £85 and £97 for Champions League home games, are using the feel-good factor to cash in while they can, and I think it’s an absolute disgrace!

I have a friend who is a die-hard Villa fan — he can count on one hand how many games he’s missed, including pre-season friendlies, in the past 10 years — but even he is being fleeced, and it’s not right.

I urge Villa, who are the club I have followed and supported since I was a kid, to reconsider their recent pricing decision.

La Liga already use dynamic ticket pricing, the Premier League wouldn’t dare, would it?

And on the subject of football ticketing prices, I want to bring to people’s attention dynamic pricing.

Dynamic pricing is when a ticketing company adjust a ticket’s face value in real time based on demand, therefore, the more people vying for an event’s tickets, the higher their price, once through the online queues, will be.

This sales tactic was most recently used for Oasis’ reunion tour, but, as many may not know, there are already European football clubs following the same model.

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Valencia and Celta Vigo both use dynamic pricing for their home La Liga games, so as you can imagine, whenever Barcelona and Real Madrid come to town, prices are unfairly ramped up and fans left facing a decision: part with hugely inflated sums, or miss their team’s biggest games.

I really hope Premier League clubs do not follow suit. It is an awful way to charge fans — a tactic that relies on impulsiveness and people’s fear of missing out. I never want to see this style of ticket pricing used against fans of English clubs.

As far as I am aware, this tactic is going to be looked at by Watchdog but until legislation is brought in to combat it, it will continue.

Players should be capped at 50 appearances a season

Interestingly, my thoughts on ticketing ties in quite well with another topic I want to discuss.

One of the big stories this week has been Chelsea’s decision to leave Cole Palmer out of their 23-man squad for their UEFA Conference League group games. Although we were surprised by the news, we probably shouldn’t have been.

I think we’re going to see this kind of thing happening more and more often — and going back to my very first point about Villa charging season-ticket holders nearly £100 per home European game — if I am right, and other teams take the same approach in the future, how can clubs then justify increasing ticket prices when their best players may be missing?

There is an absolutely ridiculous amount of football played in a season nowadays and players, despite being in peak physical condition, just can’t cope with it. This was proven by several lacklustre displays in the EUROs.

There is a reason Erling Haaland looks like a beast compared to other big-name strikers. He’s 100 per cent fit and fresh after having the summer off following Norway’s failure to qualify for the EUROs.

If players are going to be expected to compete across multiple competitions, both domestically and internationally, then surely it’s time we thought about bringing in an appearance cap. I recommend a 50 appearance cap per player, per season, and then let the player decide how we wants to split his allowance.

Time is running out for Erik Ten Hag

Moving away from ticket prices and football’s scheduling demands, Erik Ten Hag is under pressure at Manchester United.

I don’t care what anybody says, he is so far out of his depth its unreal.

I am sure Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS have come in and agreed to let him stay on because they’ve looked at the time Arsenal have given Mikel Arteta and thought ‘see, if we trust the process, it can work out’.

Ten Hag isn’t Arteta though. I know Arsenal have only won one FA Cup with Arteta but there is clear and obvious progression being made season after season under the Spaniard, and more importantly, the team have their identity back. The Gunners play technically exciting and fast-paced free-flowing football.

Historically, United have played the same kind of electric, all-action football; devastating defence-splitting counter-attacks but they are absolutely no where near rediscovering that identity under Ten Hag — at best they’re too passive and at worst they’re boring. He has got to go.

With the exception of Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp, the pull of Manchester United should still be big enough to make any manager in the world think about taking the job.

INEOS should be out there trying for Carlo Ancelotti. Yes, ‘Don Carlo’ is very much a Real Madrid man, but why not say to him: ‘You’ve won everything there is to win in Madrid, do you want to come here and make us great again?’ — Regardless of what he’d say, Ancelotti is the calibre of manager United should be targeting, not below average Ten Hag.

The post Collymore’s column: Villa’s ticket pricing is a disgrace, there will be more Cole Palmer-type omissions and why are INEOS waiting to ditch Erik Ten Hag? 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 which team has had the best transfer window, is Kieran McKenna showing his naivety at Ipswich, should Chelsea players sue the club and much more. 

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Ridiculous Carabao Cup draw shames the game

The Carabao Cup draw was an absolute shambles. It was a loaded, managed, overseeded draw, and we are now getting to the point whereby clubs with clout are having too much say in tournaments.

It’s massively subservient to the Premier League and the Champions League and the FA Cup will end up doing it too.

We’ve got the situation even as low as the National League, where U18 teams are playing senior men’s teams in their cup competition, and I just want to get back to having just one tournament somewhere where there’s 50 teams that go in a pot, they get drawn out and they play each other.

Back in 1978/79, Liverpool were champions of Europe and Nottingham Forest were the newly crowned champions of England when the draw was made for the European Cup.

Lo and behold, champions of England, Nottingham Forest, come out against defending European champions, Liverpool, and Forest beat Liverpool over two legs in an unseeded first round.

I think the fact that we’ve gone from a very common sense European Cup draw to an artificially constructed draw, which skews the draw towards clubs in the Champions League or high end in the Premier League, is killing the game with 1000 cuts.

It’s a really bad look for the Carabao Cup, but it’s a really bad look for football in England too.

Let’s get back to at least having one or two tournaments where you have an open draw, and every smaller club up and down the country is going ‘happy days, we might actually get an opportunity to win this.’

In the meantime… the game’s gone.

Transfer window common sense has been restored

It just goes to show that for Premier League clubs this summer, there’s a lot of creative accounting gymnastics going on.

I think it’s been a lukewarm window, and I think that I’m quite happy with that. The fact that clubs are having to look at alternative ways of creating squads and having to look for more value in the market is something that we’ve all been screaming for, for years.

Now it’s happening, people seem to feel a little bit short changed because a club hasn’t spent half a billion, the Sky Sports News ticker hasn’t gone over a billion pounds for the window….

There’s a degree of the Emperor’s New Clothes about the transfer window in that fans feel you’ve got to get three, four or five big name players in during every window to compete. You don’t.

Because of the academies – where you can promote players – and because squads are big enough nowadays anyway.

I actually think that my takeaway from this transfer window is that finally there’s some sort of common sense that has come back into English football, instead of turning on Sky Sports News and concerning ourselves with how many players have come in.

That’s a very healthy thing.

Kieran McKenna needs to be more pragmatic this season

If you go into a league and you play how you want but are getting done threes and fours and fives every week, that shows you are getting punished for having philosophies and theories that don’t work in your working environment.

It’s still very early days for Kieran McKenna at Ipswich, but I think he’s found, like Vincent Kompany did after managing to get the Bayern Munich job despite getting Burnley relegated, that football club owners like managers who play exciting and entertaining football.

They like entertainment because a decade ago in the Premier League, during the old Tony Pulis days at Stoke for example, football was stale and attendances were going down. That’s not a good look when you’re in the Premier League and you’re losing money season in, season out.

So of course, now every owner of a football club wants an entertaining coach that plays entertaining football and risk laden football, but the whole point of the Premier League is to compete and to stay in the league.

That enables a club to get enough money to be able to invite better players to them and for the club to stay in the league.

So I would like to think that Kieran McKenna has more about him than just ‘I’m going to play the way that I play, regardless if we get relegated.’

The Premier League is littered with maybe managers including Paul Jewell who had a couple of seasons in the top flight, possibly thought he was going to go on and be a manager in the top flight forever and was spat out. The phone didn’t ring and he hasn’t been a manager since.

I think that what Kieran needs to do is, if he wants to be a Premier League manager with Ipswich over a period of years, or even be a Premier League manager with somebody else over a period of years, is that he’s got to play with a degree of pragmatism.

In any vocation, you accept the terrain that you’re on, and don’t just say ‘I don’t care if I’m on Mount Snowden or I’m on Mont Blanc, I’m going to wear some flip flops and shorts and a vest.’ Do that, metaphorically speaking, and you’re going to get found out.

I don’t think the manager should come out of the season with any credit whatsoever if his team are being smashed every week but if he adds a little bit of pragmatism, I think he can achieve his achieve his aims this season, and perhaps more importantly, have some longevity as a top class manager over the next 10-15 years.

I’ll be bitterly disappointed in Trent if he’s trying to force a move

I’d be really disappointed if the thought had even crossed Trent’s mind that if he starts to be a bit of a mardy arse, he’ll get a move to Real Madrid. That would lower his stock significantly, because fans generally aren’t fans of people that want out of a club that is their club.

I remember Steve McManaman’s own move to Madrid, and his reputation at Liverpool never really recovered. I think there’s always a little bit of holding your nose in Liverpool where he’s concerned, and I think that it would be an awful look for Trent.

His attitude after being subbed was probably a case of professional pride in not wanting to come off the pitch, as well as thinking (about Arne Slot) ‘who does this guy think he is.’

Slot knows he’s on camera, and just said ‘I’ve subbed you off to give you a bit of a rest, it’s a long old season.’ No big deal.

I like that and the way that Slot’s going about his business. The style of play is to keep a little bit more possession, let’s not be as gung ho, but still at times having those kind of bursts we saw with Jota, Diaz and Salah.

I know Trent won’t listen to me, but please, please, please, you are the scouser in the team, you are the totem for the club. A lot of people, young Liverpool fans, look up to you as somebody that drives them forward. You’re needed for the marathon not the sprint.

Chelsea ‘bomb squad’ a prime example of why players could end up suing clubs

When I was a pro and got bombed out by John Gregory, it was just the norm. It was just the done thing. You’d still come in and train but it was a dispiriting experience, and one that, like a lot of other things football replicated at the time, was based around the armed forces.

There has to be some sort of significant cultural context to this to be able to give the younger readers an idea why football clubs behave the way they do sometimes.

Football back in the day effectively mirrored the army in terms of training methodology and behavioural methodology. Often football teams would literally go and train at army camps. Certainly, when I was at Crystal Palace, although I didn’t go, the first team squad went to Aldershot barracks and trained for a little while.

The whole thing was about team discipline.

The Army is very closely aligned to football in the sense that playing football in front of 50,000 people is quite an extreme thing to do just as being in the Army is extreme.

Football apprentices had to spend seven or eight hours sweeping the stands and it felt like a punishment. You got punished too if you didn’t clean the dressing rooms properly, or if you didn’t clean your pros kit properly.

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The bomb squad, as it was known across football, was another example of that. ‘If you don’t do this right, you’re going to get the army discipline treatment.’

Of course, things have changed greatly and for the better, so that we now are very aware that if you sign an employment contract, you should be signing an employment contract for the duration of that contract and be what you were bought as, which is a senior professional footballer.

When players are told by clubs that they’ll be banished from training and won’t play again so it would be best they were sold – Chelsea is the perfect recent example – those players have now stood up and said that’s not right. Clubs can’t be doing that and they couldn’t get away with it in any other industry.

I think that unless the PFA come out and say ‘we need to stop this practice and if you are at a professional football club and are surplus to requirements, that’s fine, but you still train with the first team until you are sold,’ and make it almost a dictat, then there might be a situation whereby a player says ‘this is restriction of trade, this is workplace bullying, and I’m going to sue the club.’

My preference would be that the PFA now step in, they sit down with the Premier League, the FA and the EFL, and they all put statements out next week saying the long standing and old practice of the bomb squad is now finished.

I think that that way, you also get to a position whereby players would get sold quicker because players wouldn’t dig their heels in and not turn up for training amongst other things.

The post Collymore’s column: Carabao Cup draw isn’t a good look, solid start from Slot 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 Enzo Maresca has made a disgraceful decision at Chelsea, why Liverpool fans must be patient, why Ivan Toney’s move to Saudi is an absolute waste and much more. 

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Maresca’s decisions deserve respect… apart from the captaincy issue

Players respect the fact that managers give them clear information because too many don’t. Too many will literally walk down a corridor towards a player and give it the old ‘how are your pal? etc. etc.,’ pat them on the back, and then knife them in the back by leaving them out and not saying anything or facing up to the problem.

It’s happened many, many times in football history and the stories are legion about how a manager will say one thing and do another.

I think that you’ll find players won’t be overly angry by these instances of a manager basically saying to five or six Chelsea players ‘you’re done, you’re finished, you’re not going to get a game here.’

I’m a massive fan of that.

In the case of Conor Gallagher, he gets a very warm welcome from 40,000 fans at the Atletico Madrid stadium with fireworks and stuff, so he won’t care now what opinion Chelsea have of him.

I don’t fully understand what Chelsea didn’t know about Joao Felix that meant they desperately needed to have him coming back? For me, that’s filed under another Chelsea aberration. If it didn’t work the first time, what makes them think it’s going to work the second time within a year or two?

In terms of Raheem Sterling, he was okay at times for Chelsea but I don’t think he was ever great. His options in England are limited and he’s no longer at the elite Premier League level. I could see him going to an LAFC, New York Red Bulls or maybe to one of the Saudi clubs.

In terms of giving Enzo the captaincy, I think it’s nothing short of a disgrace, if I’m being perfectly honest. It sets the tone.

You saw the players on their social media feeds, the reaction after what happened in the Copa America, with some coming out who were very, very upset.

On what basis now have those players been placated to the point where the manager has sat them down saying ‘Enzo is going to be captain.’

No black player at the club, and I don’t any white player either, would be happy with the manager saying Enzo’s our brand spanking new captain. That he’s going to be the poster boy and the face of Chelsea Football Club.

I think that Maresca has got that one absolutely wrong, and I think that the fact that the club had to come out and make a statement after something that Enzo Fernandez did on on international duty tells you how wrong it was.

The optics are absolutely awful but let’s be perfectly honest… Chelsea Football Club over the years haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory on or off the pitch when it comes to matters of racism.

Ivan Toney’s move to Saudi is an absolute waste

If Ivan Toney was 32, he could go out to graze in Saudi Arabia and earn a few million by doing the classic 12 to 18 month stay. Say that his family haven’t settled and come back. Likewise, if he was 25, Toney would stay put because top-class European football is where it’s at.

But at age 28 it’s interesting, because if he does sign a three-year contract with the Saudi Pro League, as has been rumoured, that will take him to 31 years of age, and there won’t by anyone in the Premier League’s top 10 that would be willing to take him by then.

To be honest, it’s a dreadful move for him, but he’s clearly being advised to go to Saudi. What a shame. What an absolute waste.

In my opinion, he should stay at Brentford, get his head down and score goals. If he scores a shed load, who’s to say that the big clubs he expected to move for him this summer still won’t come in for him?

Let’s be realistic here. Ivan Toney has been very good for Brentford and Brentford have been very good for Ivan Toney, sticking by him throughout the gambling stuff.

Did he think he could just coast it at the end of last season and he was going to get a massive move anyway, because there was just this queue of clubs?

You could argue that the current situation is a lot of his own making. Just four goals from January to the end of the 2023/24 campaign tells its own story.

If Solanke doesn’t work out at Spurs, or if West Ham are still on the lookout for a hit-man, there’s a possibility that there’s a route back to the top of the English game for Ivan Toney… but don’t hold your breath.

Hold your horses Liverpool fans

Key players turned up at Ipswich in the second half for Liverpool, and showed Arne Slot exactly what he already has in situ.

The Reds are like any other club in that they need a couple of players every window to be able to freshen things up, but we are now, of course, not talking about a team of just 12 or 14 players like when I played, but a squad of 25/26 players.

Liverpool have also got an academy of players that has produced plenty of talent over the years, like the Trent’s and the Curtis Jones’.

The question I’d put to Liverpool fans is, yes, ordinarily, you’d have at least two that would come in to freshen the team up and to create competition for places, but with a squad of 20 plus an academy that’s producing players that can get into the first team squad, why do you think the need to buy more players is still so great?

Look at what Manchester City do. They bring in a couple and they let a couple go, but there’s always an improvement of personnel, not buying for the sake of it.

I think that Arne Slot has come in and he’s assessed what he’s got, and then gone to the board with a shopping list.

He’s obviously not that desperate, and he’s still got another nine days before the window closes anyway, so Liverpool may yet still do business.

Furthermore, I honestly believe that when you look at Arsenal’s first game performance, you look at Spurs, Villa, Manchester City, Manchester United… Liverpool’s second half at Ipswich was as good as any performance that you’ll have seen over the past weekend, so there was obviously a lot of confidence in the camp and perhaps they just don’t feel the need to change things a hell of a lot.

So I’d say to Liverpool fans ‘don’t panic.’ There are players that are not needed arguably until the January transfer window, when the squad might need a little bit of help.

Chill out, the big cavalry is already there. The captains, the lieutenants, the generals, are already in the team, and even if one or two infantry are required to help them get across the line, the last days of the window or even in the January transfer window is just fine.

Jhon Duran is a maverick talent but if he doesn’t grow up, Villa should get rid

Aston Villa fans have already shown their fickle nature where Jhon Duran is concerned.

A week before kick-off, it was like ‘silly boy, get him out, what an idiot, don’t want him anywhere near Villa Park,’ and then he comes in against West Ham, he looks sharp and scores a cracking goal, and all of a sudden he’s back in vogue. They’ll be going to the club shop and getting Duran on their shirts I’m sure, and will be very excited about him playing for Villa.

The boy’s undoubtedly got talent and ability but he’s a maverick, and let’s make no bones about this, he will create problems for Aston Villa.

Despite Chelsea and West Ham wanting him, Unai Emery has handed him the number nine shirt. That’s a responsibility in itself because Villa have had great number nines over the years, going back to Peter Withe, who scored the winning goal in a European Cup final.

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Emery will have to realise that he’s got to keep him on quite a short leash, however, because he doesn’t want any antics or perceived favouritism to upset squad equilibrium.

Duran could ‘poison the well’ for want of a better phrase, and players like John McGinn and Emi Martinez could turn around and say ‘hold on a sec, we’ve done the business for you for two or three seasons, and this guy turns up, doesn’t train hard, is disruptive and he’s in the team’… that could be a problem.

To be honest, I don’t think that Jhon Duran will have loyalty to any club, and if he’s still a pain in the ass in another season or two, then Villa should just sell him. Simple.

Brighton and Mitoma get opening day plaudits

Kaoru Mitoma at Brighton was excellent against Everton, the best player on the pitch by a considerable margin, and boy have they missed him.

Obviously, he’s had a long time out with injury, and though it wasn’t a disaster last season for Brighton, as a club that were hitting the giddy heights of Europe it was a little disappointing how things ended up.

From my perspective, it was a really good attacking performance at Goodison, and Brighton fans will be salivating.

If Mitoma continues to play well, then they’ve got a £50m-£60m player in the squad who I’m sure the big boys will be taking a keen interest in.

In three to four months it wouldn’t even surprise me if an offer came in the January window, because he scores goals, creates chances and goes past opponents with ease.

What more do you want…?

The post Collymore’s column: Maresca has lost respect with Enzo decision, Liverpool fans must be patient, Toney’s Saudi move a waste 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 the Todd Boehly has been a disaster at Chelsea, why Man City are still favourites for the Premier League, why Erik ten Hag is the manager that’s already most under pressure and much more. 

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Saudi’s €350m per season offer to Vini Jr is ridiculous

It’s hard to wrap your head around the numbers coming out of the Saudi Pro League. I mean, €350m a year to effectively buy yourself a poster boy for potentially the 2034 World Cup is ridiculous.

They could be putting that €350m into Saudi grassroots football and infrastructure, but maybe this is the way that they’re going to go if they want to create a football environment and a football culture in Saudi Arabia.

I just think that top players can earn top money in Europe, plus win the Champions League, the Premier League, La Liga… and they know that they could still go to Saudi aged 32/33 and pick up the kind of money that Ronaldo, who is no spring chicken and whose output isn’t as good as it was, is getting at the moment.

If the Saudi’s had offered five or six of the best young, up and coming players a contract, and spread their hires over the top few clubs in the Pro League, they wouldn’t have had to go to Ronaldo and offer him a ridiculous amount.

Why don’t the Saudis just spend their money on fast tracking young talent? Saudi success in a World Cup to be determined by revolutionising their youth system with pathways for players and coaches. Get U17, U18 and U19 coaches working with their young talents, because if Saudi were to get to a semi final or final, that will have 10 times the impact as is any marquee player going there now.

Inward investment in their own football for that kind of money will get them some sort of success with the Saudi national team.

I’m not even convinced that Vini Jr, if he went there for the kind of money that’s being put on the table, would be half as big a name as Ronaldo.

The amount of money… it makes no sense, but the Saudi’s aren’t looking for it to make sense. They’re looking to make an immediate impact on football, like they’ve done with LIV golf, and like they’ve done with boxing.

It’s just completely, completely bonkers.

Can’t look past Man City for the title again

In terms of the Premier League, I did my league table and to be honest, I went through it on the basis of what teams have bought, what teams already had etc., and unless Pep isn’t as intense as he normally is –  which he certainly isn’t showing any signs of at the moment – then Manchester City will win the league.

Then it’s Arsenal, a very good debut season for Arne Slot with Liverpool finishing solidly in the Champions League positions, and I’ve swapped out Villa with Man United fourth, Spurs fifth, Newcastle sixth, Chelsea seventh, Villa eighth, West Ham ninth and Brighton 10th. There are not going to be many wild fluctuations next season.

Teams that are in Europe will find that that does have an impact.

I like West Ham’s spending and I think that they’ve made some very, very solid signings that will give Lopetegui more tactical flexibility and more options, so they’ve had a very good window.

I really like the signing of de Ligt too for Man United, and it will be interesting to see what kind of role he plays there. There have been questions of ‘why was he got so cheap? Was he carrying an injury?’ but I think if they’re getting de Ligt at his very best, he will add to Man United.

At the other end of the table it’s going to be fascinating to see what Crystal Palace do.

Obviously, they’ve lost Olise and there are rumours of bids of Mateta and Guehi, so that would clip their wings from the high water point of last season, which would be a shame because they were fantastic.

It’s Everton’s last season at Goodison and that will mean they’ll want to go out with a bang, and Bournemouth losing Solanke is going to be very interesting.

Will Ivan Toney be switched on and happy just to be at Brentford, or has his head been turned for good now, and he wants out? I think they could struggle. Forest will be down near the bottom again but I don’t think they’ll go down, though I also don’t think they’ll majorly kick on either.

I think all three of the teams that have come up will end up going straight back down.

Leicester have lost players like Dewsbury-Hall and fans can’t yet see what Steve Cooper’s trying to do. Southampton like to get the ball down and like to play through the lines but I haven’t seen enough of them play a system whereby they’re going to be under major pressure for large chunks of games, and whether they can they came out on top. Can they duke it out with teams physically?

Ipswich have a tactical flexibility of being able to get in teams faces, to be able to sit a little bit deeper and to be able to play, but I just think that where they lose points is the fact that just haven’t got very much Premier League experience.

Chelsea’s transfer fiasco proves Todd Boehly hasn’t got a clue

I think that when Todd Boehly first came in at Chelsea I might have written in this column that the Blues now had a guy with money, wanting to organically grow a football club, that Chelsea will compete, they’ll win the league within two or three years, and they know what they’re doing.

I’ll scrap that.

I am happy to admit when I’m wrong, and what we’ve got is, apparently, someone who took his football advice from James Corden.

Under Todd Boehly’s reign, which is only two years and two months old, Chelsea have spent the 10th largest amount of money in the Premier League’s entire 32-year history.

You’ve got to expect there is a direct correlation between what you spend and what you get in the Premier League. Leicester City were outliers, Villa last season were outliers, but for the most part, if you spend the most money, you’re going to win the title.

News that the club want to bring back Joao Felix smacks of the economics of the mad house, and it’s the recruitment of a mad man.

I genuinely thought this guy would come in as a big hitter, big businessman, lot of money, huge backers, and know what he’s doing, but I’m going to say that Todd Boehly just doesn’t have a clue.

As we’ve also seen with Conor Gallagher and Trevoh Chalobah, making them train with the U21s and what have you is an utter disgrace, and it’s something that I would like to see outlawed in football.

Players that go into work and that aren’t wanted by their club is fair enough, but if you’ve been through the system at Chelsea since you’re eight or nine and you’ve been bombed out when you’ve not done anything particularly wrong is an antiquated, disgraceful way of treating professional men.

We talk about why footballers don’t have a lot of loyalty, but when you see home grown players being treated like dirt, is it any wonder.

It will have an impact in the dressing room too. It’ll ripple through the Cole Palmers, the Sterlings, the coaching staff… and then you end up with a club that just becomes basically a mercenary base for anybody and everybody.

Chelsea, the Saudi Arabia of Europe.

Ten Hag under the most pressure as new season gets underway

Erik ten Hag is the manager under the most pressure this season.

He was given a contract extension at Man United not because he’s done well, but on the basis of ‘let’s make him feel a little bit calmer, a little more comfortable. We want to give him the benefit of the doubt.’

Of course, United won the FA Cup against Manchester City, and if they hadn’t, ten Hag wouldn’t have kept his job.

If my punditry and other people’s punditry – that has Manchester United back into the top four – is correct, but then they fizzle out, I think that ten Hag would find himself right on the edge.

I don’t think there’s anything to worry about with West Ham’s Julen Lopetegui despite all of the new signings needing to gel, for the simple fact that he’s a good enough manager for that size of club and he will be able to get them to where they want to be; in the next two or three seasons getting into European football on a regular basis and maybe winning a domestic cup.

I don’t think anybody would be tremendously shocked by that, so it should be a realistic aim for Lopetegui.

He’ll have a bit of pressure yes, but I don’t think it’ll be anywhere near the same as the sort of  glaring spotlight that’ll be on ten Hag at Manchester United.

In terms of Arne Slot, I think Liverpool fans never really drive a manager out.

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They’ve had some managers there that didn’t work, Roy Hodgson being the most notable example, but the Liverpool faithful respectfully held their noses so to speak at that time.

It’s massively unknown what’s going to happen, because they’ve just said goodbye to a really big personality, a big character and a leadership figure that everybody walked alongside.

So from that perspective, Slot would only really be under pressure if the Reds were marooned in 14th or 15th in the table. Even then, I think that Liverpool would leave things to the end of the season before sacking him.

USMNT job is a brilliant move for Pochettino

I like Mauricio Pochettino and him landing the USMNT job is a great move. The reason why is that they’ve got a half decent team now.

Of course, they’re looking forward to the 2026 World Cup which is going to be in Mexico, the States and Canada, so I think that Poch will have a high profile prep going all across the world, and in the same way that Emma Hayes’s CV has been done no harm by winning the Olympic gold medal with the US women’s team, I actually do think this is a good job.

I was impressed with the US at the last World Cup. A bit naive, but they’ve got some talent there, some good young players.

I think that in a couple of years, if the USMNT were to get to a quarter final or beyond that would be an amazing success for them, and then I think Poch can come back two years wiser, two years older, to a big European job – or even the England job if it’s available.

Lee Carsley has got the nod temporarily, and I think it’s effectively his job as long as he navigates through the results, but there’s nothing to say that it’s nailed on.

So for me, if Poch does well in the World Cup, who knows?

Right job, right time, right man, he can put his Chelsea nightmare behind him now and I wish him all the best.

The post Collymore’s column: Todd Boehly hasn’t got a clue, Man City’s title to lose, ten Hag under pressure 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 Premier League should be ashamed of their silence since the race riots, why we’ve lost the essence of what the Charity Shield is all about, why transfer windows are anxiety inducing and much more. 

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Transfer windows are anxiety inducing for every player

Liverpool manager, Roy Evans, flew back from his holiday in Barbados to meet me at Heathrow Airport in London for two hours, before flying straight back to his long-suffering wife, in order to sign me.

I met Joe Royle, who was the Everton manager at a hotel in Cheshire and, I’m not going to lie, I think that when you’ve got the choice of two clubs the size of Liverpool and Everton – today’s equivalent might be Liverpool and Manchester City or Manchester United – you’re immediately flattered but also worrying that “I’ve got to buy a house, I’ve got to relocate” etc., and much more besides.

At least now there are transfer windows and release clauses.. When I was two thirds through a season back in the 90s, I had a phone call when I was in my car going home from Forest training from Sir Alex Ferguson. That would now be considered tapping up and was yet another layer of worry for players of a certain age.

That’s because every transfer window is anxiety inducing for a player.

Lots of dead ends… this club are interested in you, then they’re not, then they’ve dropped out of the race altogether and somebody else has come in.

How it normally works is players basically have a meeting with the managers who are interested in them to talk about the football side, and then the agent sees what they’re prepared to do or not prepared to do, and there’s a hell of a lot of waiting involved.

There isn’t enough done for players to be able to guide them through the process beyond just being a player.

In all honesty, even with clubs nowadays, I speak to a lot of younger players and of course they’ve got agents around them and the clubs try their very best with liaison officers to help players settle in – perhaps a little bit more at a club than they used to – but it’s still not enough.

That’s because there are a lot more countries to move to, players are being bombarded with all sorts of figures and money talks.

Are they going to a club to be the best footballing version of themselves that they can be, because that should ultimately will guide everything, or are they going to the club that are going to offer them a few more zeros on their pay packet?

They must do their due diligence.

Clubs need to stop pimping their players out to get around Financial Fair Play

I think that all football players need a permanent home.

I’m going to give you an example of somebody… Louie Barry, a wonder kid at West Brom, goes to Barcelona and then comes back and plays for Villa. As a massive Villa fan, he still wants to play for the club.

He had a nasty period with injuries and was loaned out five times by Villa, and has now been loaned out again – but the lad desperately wanted to stay.

He’s a familiar face for the fans, but beyond that in my view he shouldn’t have signed a new contract in the hope of breaking into the Villa first team (which won’t happen) when there were better options available for his career progression.

We need to have the conversation about when a player is being signed by a club, he needs to understand where he can buy a house, school his kids and have a home base to settle into. He shouldn’t be pimped out here, there and everywhere, just to be a great example of Profit and Sustainability rules in action.

Conor Gallagher is another one. Four loans in three years before settling down at Chelsea, only to then be pushed out the door by Todd Boehly.

It kills younger players to keep going out on loan and it basically leaves them like a ship that never docks. They’re constantly out and about and never find a home.

Perhaps Gallagher will do that now at Atletico Madrid – find what it’s like to go and play for a club, anchor down and become a club legend – but he wanted to be ‘the man’ at Chelsea.

Time to talk up the true meaning of the Community Shield

This weekend sees the return of the Community Shield, a traditional pre-season friendly that I’m a big fan of.

I do think that it absolutely shouldn’t be counted as a trophy, however.

I think we need to tell the likes of Pep Guardiola that this isn’t something that he can count as one of his trophy wins. It’s not about Pep vs Klopp or Pep vs ten Hag either, because we’ve already had that narrative on any number of previous occasions.

It was originally called the Charity Shield, and the money raised from the game was given to good causes. It still is.

So we should promote that angle way more than we do currently.

This year’s partner is MIND, and there’s a whole four or five days leading up to it where players, instead of talking about the inane rivalry of Man United against Manchester City, should be highlighting the charity and the issues they face etc.

Let’s be perfectly honest, it’s the last meaningless friendly before the big kick-off, so moving forward, let’s get back to what the Community Shield is all about.

Charity.

I’m a big fan of a salary cap… but it won’t work for individual players

The problem with a salary cap for me is it’s got to come from FIFA.

I think if you have got agreement across the big leagues of England, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, that would go some way to having a salary cap implemented, but of course, all it means is you’ll get more and more players going to the Saudi Pro League and picking up their £500k per week.

So it kind of becomes self sabotaging.

If FIFA said there is going to be a global salary cap, then I think it could work, but I think that FIFA would also have a fight on their hands from from UEFA.

We need to get there in some way though I worry that just like the creative accounting of certain Premier League clubs – selling or their swapping their best young kids or assets to get around FFP – the clubs will find a way to circumvent this cap.

What I would like to see is an organisational cap, which HMRC can then can get involved in.

The organisation, for example Man City, can only spend across all of its assets – whether it be players, staff or anything else – £100m total per year, and if you go over that then you get fined.

That way you can have some common sense because then clubs have to look around at where they’re spending every penny.

Silence from the Premier League over race riots is disgusting

I think that the Premier League have a massive responsibility as a big British brand, and as a big British brand that’s inclusive with all creeds, all flavours and all genders, to comment on the current riots from a football perspective.

After all, they can’t wait to tell you about No Room for Racism day.

I would really have liked to see Richard Masters come out after last weekend and say “any supporter involved in these in this disorder, will never set foot in an English football stadium again,” and that would have done as much as potentially the deterrent effect of a six month or a 12 month custodial sentence for some of them.

Frankly, I’m disgusted by the Premier League.

If you remember, when players were getting racist abuse a while back, the Premier League were quick to tell everyone to put a the black square on their social media profiles and not tweet or post for 24 hours.

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The fact they’ve said nothing whatsoever during the current riots, I would suggest, is 1000 times worse. The fact that I genuinely feel like the only voice in the professional football sports broadcasting space that was willing to call it out, hour by hour, and to show people that there were good people in Walthamstow, in Birmingham, in Newcastle and elsewhere that weren’t going to allow this race baiting to happen… I think it’s frankly disgusting and disturbing.

Football is multicultural, and not just the fan base.

We’ve got Muslims, we’ve got Jews, we’ve got blacks, we’ve got whites, we’ve got French, we’ve got Germans, we’ve got Italians, we’ve got Egyptians… all playing in the Premier League.

I get that a lot of players and clubs will be very reluctant to speak up because they don’t understand the politics, but for me, football needs to do much, much more.

The post Collymore’s column: Premier League should be ashamed, clubs need to stop pimping out players for FFP, time to remember the true meaning of the Community Shield 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 Premier League teams are bothered about winning in pre-season, why West Ham fans should be happy with their transfer window so far, why Victor Osimhen could become the poster boy for the Premier League and much more. 

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Premier League teams have one motivation in pre-season… and it isn’t winning

I’m talking as purely as a pundit but obviously using my experience as a player… pre-season is several things for an individual player. First, it’s to get fit. Secondly, to avoid injury. Thirdly, it’s to get yourself on the line on match day one and be as close as possible to not blowing out of your backside on what is guaranteed to be a hot, sunny, August day.

So, beyond pure fitness, if you can rattle in a few goals, fantastic – though it’s not the be all and end all.

I think the point I want to make in this… pre-season games are so far removed from what playing on match day one to match day six in the Premier League is like that it’s actually quite frightening.

There is very little in terms of pre-season work that prepares you for the first day of the season because usually it’s a warm day in August and the crowd dictates that you come out of the traps at 100 miles an hour when you haven’t got 100 miles an hour in your tank.

In all honesty, I think that for most players, as long as they can get through pre-season unscathed, that’s all that matters.

Don’t forget that some players have still got to come back off holidays after the Euros and who haven’t been available for selection yet. They’re going to be undercooked when it comes to the first five or six games of the season.

The primary motivation for any coach and manager is to see their players come through pre-season unscathed and so that there are no serious injuries to key players that could have a material impact on the first few games of the season.

If you remember, Man City in the Premier League at the start of last season were undercooked, but it still didn’t stop them comfortably winning the title.

Emile Smith Rowe can reignite his club and international career at Fulham

Fulham’s a great club, they’ve got all of the facilities that a high profile player would want, and Emile Smith Rowe wouldn’t have to move very far.

I think that it’s interesting that two years ago, maybe just a bit over, before Unai Emery came in, Villa were interested in Smith Rowe. Arsenal fans were like “no chance, small club, Villa – why would you want Smith Rowe?”

And yet, within a couple of years, he’s gone to a club who finished last season in a much lower place than Villa.

I don’t think he’s a lad that’s lost his way in the way that some younger players do. They become big time Charlie’s and they go off the rails a little bit, start going out on the town etc, and Smith Rowe doesn’t seem like that kind of lad at all.

I think it’s just a case of he’s been underused, and when you have a manager like Mikel Arteta, just as he did with Aaron Ramsdale, once you cross the line into being a player that he doesn’t want, he’s not one of those that goes ‘everybody’s got a clean slate here, and we’re going to use lots of different players during the season,’ Arteta has got his ideas who he wants, and based on the ones that he doesn’t want, he expects them then to be moved on fairly quickly.

I think Fulham will be a revelation for Smith Rowe, and as long as he doesn’t go “I’ve come down a step because I was at Arsenal, now I’m at Fulham,” everything is there for him to progress.

From an England point of view, a new coach is coming in and you’ve got a player there that’s got undoubted ability, and who should be wounded enough leaving Arsenal to basically stick two fingers up to Arteta and show him what he’s missing.

If he starts the season very well there is no good reason why he couldn’t see himself in an England squad come the Nations League.

Being ‘the man’ at Chelsea and in the Premier League could weigh heavily on Victor Osimhen

When I broke the British transfer record, you had players that would periodically do it, particularly through the early to mid 90s, as more and more money came into the Premier League.

Roy Keane broke the British transfer record I think at £2m-£3m, Andy Cole went for £7.5m, I was £8.5m and then Shearer nearly doubled it with his £15m signing for Newcastle.

So, the birth of the transfer record player became a big deal.

That player, whoever it was, got talked about way beyond whether they were good, bad or indifferent on the pitch. It was always that the record signing would be expected to make the difference which I always thought was very unfair.

If you fast forward to say Jack Grealish, which is probably the apex of recent transfer windows, I think it was the opposite. Grealish could blend into the Man City squad even though he was, by far and away the biggest transfer deal.

Things are different again now, because you’re looking at Financial Fair Play and PSR being a real thing.

At this point of a window previously, we might’ve expected a number of clubs to be breaking their transfer records but they haven’t, so all of a sudden we’re going back to the sort of mid to late 90s outlier.

The big-name signing that won’t just entertain us but will also become the poster boy of both his club and the entire Premier League.

That could well be the case for Victor Osimhen if his rumoured move to Chelsea comes off, because the mind boggling numbers then puts unfair pressure and expectation on him.

West Ham fans should be delighted with their transfer window so far

I remember saying that when Julen Lopetegui signed Max Kilman, that’s the manager getting his own way, getting his feet under the table and being placated.

Fans perhaps don’t understand how long it takes to get a deal over the line. It’s all ‘get it done, get it done’ but it’s never as simple as that. Transfers have got to be done at the right time and for the right price as well.

Fullkrug, I thought did well for Germany at the Euros and he harks back to a British type centre-forward.

West Ham have generally been more successful when they have a big man there (Andy Carroll/Michail Antonio), so I think that Jarrod Bowen and others playing off him is a great idea for West Ham.

Wan-Bissaka for £10m-£15m would give West Ham a steady full-back, and we know what he can do. He’s got pace even if he does have questionable defensive abilities at times, in the same way that Trent Alexander Arnold’s capabilities have also been questioned.

So, Fullkrug, Wan-Bissaka, Kilman and Crysencio Summerville… I think that’s good, solid business from West Ham in this window.

No place left in the English game for Bruce, Allardyce, Pardew, Redknapp and McLaren anymore

Unless you get to the end of November and a club says ‘we need somebody to come in and steady the ship for a few weeks, but the aim is to keep us in the Premier League,’ then English top-flight clubs now need to steer well clear of the likes of Steve Bruce and Sam Allardyce at al.

I’m not dismissing those guys achievements, but they were, for the most part, years ago.

You could argue that Sam Allardyce’s best team was Bolton from 20 years ago. You could argue that Alan Pardew’s best moment was his dance on the sideline for Palace in the FA Cup final – which was over 10 years ago. You could argue that Steve McLaren’s best work was at Middlesborough, some 20 years ago. Steve Bruce’s best work came at Birmingham City and that was 14 years ago or more.

We’re not talking about guys that should be feeling hard done by and coming out saying ‘it’s a disgrace that I can’t get a job.’ These are guys that had long managerial careers, and the ones that had shorter managerial careers was because they didn’t do very good jobs at their second, third, fourth or fifth club.

A recent example of Andoni Iraola, a rookie Premier League manager keeping Bournemouth up by playing the kind of quality football that fans want to see, will prove that we don’t need to have an Allardyce or a Pardew anywhere near a Premier League club again.

I’m very surprised and really disappointed with Steve McLaren getting the Jamaica job too.

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FIFA put a lot of money into countries like Jamaica and Barbados, and with my heritage, I’ve always been interested in seeing where the funds pop up during World Cups on the FIFA website.

This is where all that money you pay for tickets and sponsorship goes and that’s an important part of the FIFA puzzle.

Jamaica had the Reggae Boys and a very positive legacy to build from including expat, dual nationality players that can play, and dual nationality expat Jamaican coaches that could coach.

I think it’s nothing short of a disgrace that the Jamaican Football Association should be going back to an old dude from Europe.

Steve McLaren going there flies in the face of what that money is supposed to be for.

The post Collymore’s column: Great window for West Ham, Smith Rowe to reignite his career, pressure on Osimhen 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 Kevin De Bruyne’s Saudi Arabian u-turn is a real fillip for Man City, why Liverpool fans need to be careful what they wish for, why Kylian Mbappe needs to be humble, why Mikel Arteta could still be at Arsenal even if they don’t win the EPL title for 10 years and which team has had the best transfer window so far. 

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Kevin De Bruyne’s decision is a real fillip for Man City

I think that the Saudi Pro League would look at anybody that would push any progressive football club forward, hence their interest in Kevin De Bruyne.

It also goes to show that, along with Ederson, this Man City squad is starting to age a little bit, because I think that Mbappe is probably the only player where the Saudi clubs have come in to try to tempt someone at their peak.

Even below his peak, Kevin De Bruyne is that sort of totemic experienced figure who’s quietly assured and who, without a doubt, you’d want in your dressing room.

So it’s a compliment in one way to the player, even before you take into account the generational wealth that he’d be likely to earn in Saudi Arabia.

De Bruyne has had his injury problems but I think he’ll definitely provide more competition at Man City this year as they aim for another title.

It’d be very interesting to see whether Pep Guardiola does leave at the end of the season, or whether he signs a new contract and stays for another cycle too.

Regardless, with Kevin De Bruyne in the team, it’s a massive fillip for Manchester City as a football club to keep their best player.

Liverpool supporters should be careful what they wish for

Liverpool fans are unhappy at the club’s lack of transfer business this summer, but what seems to happen with progressive coaches, and I saw it with Unai Emery when he came to Aston Villa, is that they’ll have a really good look at the academy and at who’s loaned out first.

I think that the fundamentals with Liverpool at this point are fairly similar to Villa in terms of Arne Slot wanting to assess what he’s got, and that’s not just in the first team squad.

Liverpool, historically, have been good at producing players and Slot will want to have a look at them all together before going to the technical board and saying ‘I need a right back, I need a central midfielder, I need a wide left player,’ – and I think that’s the best way to do it.

Liverpool fans ranting and raving on X don’t quite understand that the new manager almost has to have an inventory or a stock take first to see who’s good enough and who’s not good enough.

What the club don’t wan’t and what football should never be about, but what football fans have indulged over the last 10 years is the ridiculous yellow tie, yellow dress wearing Sky Sports News Deadline Day brigade, where fans are just hoping that the club gets anybody through the door.

Especially now with FFP, clubs need to be more creative.

What do Liverpool fans really want? Their club blowing £50m/£60m on a player that will end up being surplus to requirements, or blowing £5m a year on a recruitment guy that keeps them with a pipeline of the world’s best talent over the next five or six years.

For me, it’s a no brainer. The latter scenario means the football club is sustainable, works better and their recruitment looks much more solid.

Arsenal board won’t be concerned if it takes 10 years for Arteta to win the title

Mikel Arteta could stay at Arsenal for 10 years and still not win the Premier League, and it’s unlikely to make a huge difference to the board.

I think that he’s almost hanging on by his fingernails at the moment waiting for Pep to go, and I know that a lot of Arsenal fans reading that would go ‘well, we’ve run them (Man City) very close in the last couple of seasons.’

Once Pep Guardiola goes, then yes, there’ll be a few teams below them that are going to be in better shape to be able to take advantage, but let’s not forget the fact that Arsenal have only run them very close in seasons where Manchester United seem continually in flux, where Liverpool could have and should have done better, and where Tottenham were in transition with the new manager, Ange Postecoglou.

So from that perspective, Arsenal have had very fertile ground to try and be successful, and they still haven’t done it when it comes to Premier League.

The Arsenal board like Arteta’s work, his style of play and the players that have been brought in, and the first-team have been relatively successful.

I almost see it as a sort of Gareth Southgate scenario but in club football.

It sounds odd, but I genuinely believe that from where they were when Arteta came in – wasting money on players like Nicolas Pepe, other players not really wanting to go there, falling away in the title race and not challenging for a number of years – to where they are now, that should be considered a success in itself.

At least now Arsenal can offer regular Champions League football again and  it’s a place whereby on and off the pitch, there seems to be some sort of unity and enjoyment of the work process.

Kylian Mbappe has to be humble at Real Madrid or face the sort of jealousy I did at Liverpool

Kylian Mbappe, particularly because of the of the clout and the unrivalled power he had at PSG, will automatically go in at Real Madrid as a senior player, but he’ll definitely have to be humble because there are enough senior players in that dressing room and a stadium full of people that are used to seeing Galacticos arrive.

They won’t really care that he was a Real Madrid fan as a kid or that he had Cristiano Ronaldo posters on his wall.

Players like Dani Carvajal have been there, seen it, got the t shirt and so there’ll be two or three that will be looking at him and seeing how he is in the dressing room.

As I was told when I joined Liverpool, ‘play the political game,’ because obviously, if he doesn’t, he’ll find things very different to Paris Saint-Germain on and off the pitch.

When I went to Liverpool, there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever that within two or three weeks of signing and after all the happy, clapping, ‘hey, how you doing, do you want to come out with us for a beer and be our friend?’ kind of thing, that my team-mates thought I was some big time Charlie.

I did an article for FourFourTwo in which I basically made a criticism of an industry that buys a player from a club (me), already knows what he does over a number of times that they watch him and then completely tries to change his natural game.

It wasn’t meant to be ‘here I am, a British record signing, the best thing since sliced bread,’ it was that Liverpool’s way of working just made no sense to me.

Liverpool knew how I played; get the ball into feet early, I could turn people. I could run at people, and if there’s space in behind, I could run behind.

The late, great, Ronnie Moran said ‘look, Steven McManaman is the one that runs with the ball, Robbie Fowler is the man and Ian Rush is the fox in the box,’ so I had to completely reinvent my own game.

I made a point in the article of saying ‘what other industry buys an asset only to completely change it?,’ and after that, there was kind of like a genuine, I wouldn’t say hostility, but a snideness from some players that wasn’t there before.

So, Kylian Mbappe, who has been top dog and massively over indulged for so long, will have to fall in line fairly quickly, be humble and say the right things.

If he doesn’t, there’ll only be problems down the road.

Aston Villa have been the most impressive club in the transfer window so far

I’m going to go with my club Aston Villa for being the most impressive so far in this current transfer window.

Firstly, they’ve had the stumbling block of wanting to spend lots of money but can’t because of FFP, so they’ve had to get creative.

Morgan Rogers was originally at West Brom, who have arguably the best academy in the country, but Villa had him watched and brought him in prior to this summer – a deal which indicated that the club were getting it exactly right in terms of recruitment.

Jaden Philogene coming back again is a really good bit of business for £12m too. They sent him out and he was battle tested in the Championship, and he’s done the business. We all know what he was like at Hull, and now he’s got an opportunity to shine.

I remember writing about Amadou Onana several years ago and thinking this guy could be a real tour de force as a midfielder. Some Villa fans have said, ‘well, it’s not exactly an upgrade on on Douglas Luiz,’ but he’s a very different player, who is physically stronger.

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When John McGinn was having quiet games last season, they didn’t have that physicality between Luiz and Kamara.

So, Onana’s ability to drive forward and to be a physically big presence as well as being able to pass the ball will be manna from heaven for Unai Emery.

There might still be some more deals to be done as there’s talk of Joao Felix heading to Villa Park, and that would really would set the cat amongst the pigeons.

Yes, they’ve spent the most money this summer, but they’ll recoup a lot too, don’t forget. They’ve got Moussa Diaby off the wage bill, Douglas Luiz is gone and Jhon Duran is likely to move to West Ham…

They’ve added where they’ve needed to and sold well so, for me, the club that has done the best business in the Premier League so far just happens to be the club that I support.

The post Collymore’s column: Liverpool supporters should be careful what they wish for, De Bruyne news a real fillip for Man City 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 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.