Welcome to The Debrief, Box Score’s freewheeling conversation about the sports we love.
This week, our Premier League experts talk about Manchester City’s troubles off the pitch and Manchester United’s troubles on it.
Contributors
Neil Squires
Author and journalist, former chief sportswriter for the Express.
Neil McLeman
Broadcaster and journalist covering the Premier League, golf and tennis, former sportswriter for the Mirror.
Paul Mahoney
Award-winning journalist, former sportswriter for the Independent and Esquire.
Manchester City is off to a 7-1 start despite playing under the shadow of a historic guilty ruling on breaching Premier League financial regulations and an impending and likely severe penalty. How do you see this playing out for City on the pitch and in the courtroom?
Neil McLeman: The first thing is this is the biggest story in the history of the Premier League, in my opinion. Absolutely extraordinary story. And it’s actually the easy part they’ve done now, as they’ve been found guilty by this inquiry. Now it’s finding what the punishment’s going to be. So this story is going to run and run.
And the big danger for the Premier League is not only reputational damage to the Premier League going forward, which is a huge business at home and abroad, but it’s also what’s going to happen to this season. We just don’t know what the punishment’s going to be. What happens if Manchester City win the title this season and then they’ve deducted X amount of points? It’s going to be an extraordinary story.
The team has had this bunker mentality since this verdict. They lost at Aston Villa on Saturday, but I didn’t think that the performance was that bad, actually. Villa just has City’s number. They’ve beaten them four times on the run now. City is now level on points with Arsenal. So let’s see. We’ve got a title race on the pitch. But what happens off the pitch this season is going to be more important.
Neil Squires: I think Neil’s absolutely hit the nail on the head about the scale of this story. One thing worth noting is the job Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca has done in shutting all that out for the team. I mean, the noise is deafening, but he’s told them to make their noise on the pitch, and their response to it has been, I’d say, remarkable. It’s pretty much been business as usual. As Neil said, they played well enough at Villa. Yes, they probably deserved a point, but for an error by Donnarumma. Haaland’s still banging in the goals, leading scorer in the Premier League this season, nothing changes. And it’s quite remarkable given what’s gone on around the club. And in the background, must be the thought of what’s going to happen to them. Players and agents have got to be looking at different places for their players if the club is relegated down the leagues, which is quite a likely scenario.
If you look at an equivalence, there was a very small equivalent in the Premier League when Chelsea were docked £10 million and banned from a couple of transfer windows for breaching agent rules. But it’s nothing on the same scale as this. Chelsea complied with the investigation, whereas City have done everything to try and obstruct. And if their appeal fails, I think it’s quite likely that they’ll basically be out of the Premier League. They might even find themselves starting again at the bottom of League Two, which is just remarkable. And then the whole squad would go. So I’d say the fact that the players are just continuing on is a great credit to the manager.
Paul Mahoney: It can’t continue. Can you imagine an end of season where the Premier League has to award the trophy to City with fireworks going off in the background and having to sell that it’s a great win and another fantastic season? It would be a huge embarrassment for the league and the brand, if you want to call it that these days. They can’t get to May and have nothing done. It’ll just be awful. I think the Premier League are going to have to decide and release what the punishment is and then deal with what City do after that, because it will just make a complete farce of the season, which is already daft.
I had the dubious pleasure of being at Anfield for City’s return to competitive football since the guilty verdict. It was the most bizarre football game I’ve ever been to. That bunker mentality that the City fans have been continuing of just creating a party atmosphere, pretending that everything’s okay. It works in the short term because, frankly, what are they expected to do? I think that any football club supporters’ group would be behaving the same, but it’s going to wear on them. And the same with the players. They’re getting vitriol from the opposition fans everywhere they go now. And whilst Elliot Anderson was laughing about it Saturday and Enzo Maresca’s been grinning and being cool, it’s going to wear on them, week after week after week of just being booed, and however strong they think they are, I think it’ll wear them down.
But I don’t see any way around a massive points reduction and relegation, at the least. I mean, they ought to have penalties that keep them down for three or four seasons in the lower leagues, which will decimate the squad they’ve got now, and they’ll have to start again. But that’s the way it is.
Neil McLeman: That’s what I find one of the many fascinating aspects of this: what is an appropriate punishment? And it goes beyond sport. This has become a political and business decision. The first thing, Manchester City is owned by a foreign government, basically. It’s owned by Abu Dhabi. So there are political implications. There are already reports in the UK press about the Abu Dhabi government putting pressure on the UK government not to sanction them too much. Abu Dhabi has huge investments in the UK economy. And the Premier League is owned by the clubs. Do they want to get rid of Manchester City permanently effectively, or for the next five years or so? Do you want to not have Erling Haaland playing in the Premier League?
These decisions have to be weighed up. Let’s say you have a points deduction and one season down. So Juventus got relegated for one season in 2006, and they were able to keep their squad together and come back the next season. It was actually quite a good story. They came back into Serie A. Would that be appropriate, is that enough of a punishment for City? Do you want them to hold the squad together? Do you still want them to be a force? All these things are to be weighed up over the next few months about this punishment.
Neil Squires: I think the other point is that this is the first test of the regulator that’s been brought in to English football to make sure that the owners of the clubs are fit and proper people to own the clubs. If you’ve got owners that have overseen a fraud on this scale and their appeal fails, they’ll be banged to rights on that. Well, how can the regulator then just ignore that and say, “Well, carry on. Don’t do it again”? There has to be some punitive action taken against the owners. Will they be banned from owning the club as well? Then what happens? The club could go completely down the Swanee. So there’s so many imponderables here. It is an extraordinary story and a massive one.
Paul Mahoney: The positive PR that Abu Dhabi wanted from investing in a Premier League team worked for a long time, but it’s completely blown out of the water now. So if they don’t get thrown out by the Premier League, they’re going to want to leave anyway, because their project has failed now. And it’s all about PR for them. It wasn’t about caring about Manchester City or the local community in Manchester. It was about promoting Abu Dhabi. And that’s reflecting terribly on them now. And it’s going to get worse if they continue to brace up against the charges and kick it down the road all the time.
Neil McLeman: Yes, you’re compounding the error because you’ve basically got an autocratic state complaining about an independent judicial decision. So as you say, Paul, that’s not a great look.
Paul Mahoney: They are also people for whom I think this is possibly the first time in their lives they’ve been told no, and they don’t know how to behave with a no, because they rarely have to deal with it.
Is there any sense among insiders of when this will be resolved?
Neil McLeman: I think we’ll get a verdict by Christmas. But then there’s the appeal. If the verdict is any sort of punishment, that will be appealed as well. But I think Paul’s right, you’ve just got to make a decision and then go from that. You can’t get to the end of this season and not have the sanction announced. I think everyone acknowledges that.
Staying in Manchester, United is off to its worst start in more than 40 years, with just 7 points in eight games. That’s after finishing third last season. How long can manager Michael Carrick survive, and is this going to be a lost season for Manchester United?
Paul Mahoney: Well, I haven’t checked for 15 minutes, so I’m assuming he’s still the manager. If they sack him now, who’s next on the taxi rank to take that job? Who’s going to want it? It’s a completely poisoned chalice. They may as well just stick with Carrick and see what happens.
But what happened on Sunday, on the back of that midweek humiliation, has just been compounded at Old Trafford, where Carrick got applauded off and the players booed. So there’s no love for the team coming from the Stretford End. And he made a fantastic managerial posturing point Sunday by dropping Bruno Fernandes to the bench and just leaving him sitting there like he was on the naughty step for the whole game, for his outbursts criticizing the tactics in midweek. If the captain and the manager aren’t getting on, one of them’s got to go.
And I think that was a statement from Carrick on Sunday that he wants to stay, and it’s Bruno that needs to shape up and do as he’s told or he’ll be sitting on the bench for the rest of the season. And the fans, I think, are behind that from what I was watching.
Neil Squires: Just on Paul’s point there, I think dropping Fernandes was understandable, because in fact it was the right thing to do, because he was out of line speaking out in midweek after the comatose performance in Como. And he was right to do that, but it looked to me like he was too stubborn for his own good.
When the game was going away from United at home against Bournemouth, and you’ve got your best player on the bench, admittedly who has been out of form recently, not being United’s catalyst as he usually is. Maybe if you taught him a lesson there, maybe swallow your pride, bring him on, try and rescue the situation. Instead, Carrick makes his point all the way through. The game ends in a humiliating three-nil loss and the roof falls in. So I’m not sure that in the end that was the smart play during the game.
But if you look overall, Lisandro Martínez started this when he took the lid off the can in having a go at the club’s hierarchy. And then Fernandes had a go at the management, then Carrick had a go at the players’ work ethic. That’s the full house, isn’t it? So the place is in turmoil. The roof’s falling in at Old Trafford. I can’t see how Carrick can survive, to be honest, after eight games without a win. Decent bloke though he is. Great job though he did last season. United just seem to be in such a rut that he has to go. But as Paul said, who wants that job? I mean, it pays well, and there are egos out there who think that they can be the one. Someone will take the job, but it just seems to chew up and spit out every person that does it.
Neil McLeman: First of all, I’d agree that Carrick is going to go. I’d be astounded if he doesn’t go in the next few days. He made a big call Sunday in dropping Fernandes, and he had to win. And then they lost, and the performance was terrible, and he didn’t bring Fernandes on at all. And so you’re in a position now, how can you mend that with the captain? You say it’s the choice between the captain and the manager. And it could be a choice between the manager and half that team as well. And you can’t get rid of half the team. Something’s got to change. They’ve lost eight in a row. Toxic atmosphere there. I’ve never heard a crowd chanting against the sporting director of the club.
And so would someone else come in? Well, someone always will. And there are some people immediately available. Antonio Conte is the nuclear option, that he will go in and he will sort things out. It’ll be combustible, but he wins things. You’ve got Eddie Howe, a safer bet and he’s available as well. He left Newcastle. He knows the Premier League well, as does Conte. Julian Nagelsmann’s available. But would these guys want to come in midway through the season? There’s talk of getting guys existing in the Premier League like Fabian Hürzeler at Brighton. I mean, pound for pound, the best manager in the Premier League now, now that Guardiola is gone, is Unai Emery. Would Emery leave Villa halfway through the season to go to Manchester United, which, as we mentioned, is a basket case?
I just think they’ve got to do something, and they can’t change the whole team. They certainly need more players. They need a left back and they need a center forward. But I think Carrick’s got to go.
Paul Mahoney: I can tell you who can manage Man United, P.T. Barnum.
Neil Squires: What about Pep Guardiola? He’s available.
Paul Mahoney: That would be fantastic.
Neil Squires: I don’t think he’d probably take that one on [laughs].
Neil McLeman: But this is how things go. It’s Ole Gunnar Solskjaer all over again. And it’s just the definition of madness, the same thing keeps happening. It’s like Solskjaer, brought in as a caretaker manager, good start. They gave him the job full-time, he was popular with the crowd, just not up to it. And United have just spent so much money over this last decade or so. There’s obviously an issue with the ownership with the Glazers, but they still spend an awful lot of money on players. They just spend it badly. And you look at smaller teams like Bournemouth, Brighton and Brentford, with just a fraction of the budget. They’ve got a system, they’ve got consistency, they’ve got continuity, and they just do it an awful lot better. The thing in the Premier League now, you get enough money. There’s so much money that you can make it work with that. Other clubs are making it work, and it just makes United look even worse.
Neil Squires: United’s next three games in the Premier League, by the way: Chelsea away, Aston Villa at home, and Liverpool away. So if someone comes in, they’re not going to have an easy start there. It’s not impossible to think that United could be in the relegation zone in a month’s time.
Liverpool notched an important 2-0 win on Sunday over Brighton at Anfield on the heels of a midweek Champions League win against Villarreal. Are Liverpool starting to settle in under new manager Andoni Iraola?
Neil Squires: I think they’re getting into their stride now. It was a new manager. I think it was a stuttering start as they got used to his methods. But I do feel they are getting somewhere. They’ve spent an awful lot of money on their strike force, and there are signs in the last couple of weeks that that’s beginning to work. The goals are going in. Alexander Isak is delivering on his £125 million fee. He’s got six goals in the Premier League this year. Only Haaland has more. There are some question marks that they might be a bit open at the back, but to shut out Brighton, who are the most free-scoring side in the Premier League this season, I think there’s quite positive signs at Anfield. I don’t see them as title contenders, but I think Champions League football, it’s pretty much assured, I’d say. They’re heading in the right direction.
Neil McLeman: I think the big thing from the Brighton win is that the big money players are beginning to live up to their price tag. So against Brighton, Florian Wirtz had a deflected shot so he’s not going to get credit, but he’s basically responsible for the first goal. Then Bradley Barcola provided the cross for Isak for the second goal. So we’re talking about three £100 million players, and they’re beginning to live up to that and they’re playing well. And Iraola had a slow start at Bournemouth with them. It took him 10 matches to win his first one there. So it takes some time for him to get going, but I just think Liverpool are beginning to find themselves now.
We talked before about what an open Premier League season this is, and I think Arsenal and City are clearly the best two teams. But underneath that, I think anybody, the third place is open to grab the Champions League places. So I think that’s one of the huge frustrations for Manchester United fans. If they’ve just bought a couple more players, they should have been right in there. After the performance of Chelsea in that terrible result for them at home to Spurs, Liverpool are looking like the best of the rest at the moment.
Paul Mahoney: I think it’s changed with Iraola now settled in. Last year, the Kop and the fans in general were restless. It wasn’t an identity of the way they were playing, and it got boring and staid. This season, I think they’re starting to understand how to play again as a team. And as the other lads have said, the big players now are contributing a lot more. Wirtz has settled in, he’s been playing really well. Ekitike is coming back, probably in January. I think it’ll feel like a new signing to have somebody that good for the run-in to May. Barcola got a hat trick two weeks ago, and it’s all looking good. Brighton hadn’t conceded a goal for five games until Sunday, and Liverpool shut them out from scoring. That doesn’t happen very often.
If you discount City from being top of the league, because I think by May they won’t be, then Liverpool are third, and I don’t see Brighton staying the whole way to May. Liverpool’s next home game is Arsenal. So that’s an old-fashioned six-point game. So I’m much more confident going into the winter months with Liverpool.
Tottenham likely revived its season with a 2-0 win at Chelsea. What do you make of this Spurs team, and which three teams now look most likely for relegation?
Neil McLeman: Spurs are looking more like how Spurs should play. That’s a great result for them at Chelsea, as poor as Chelsea were. That’s the kind of result that’s really good for confidence for Spurs. They’ve had a great week. Last Monday night they had James Maddison scoring his first goal since his comeback. And Dejan Kulusevski, who’s such an important player for them, he was their best player before getting injured. So they’re getting a proper squad together there. De Zerbi is a top manager, and they’re not going to win the title, obviously, but they are going to have a solid season. They’re going in the right momentum. It’s so important to get that first win, and two wins in a week. The whole season is looking different.
As for the teams who might be relegated, it’s interesting, because usually you look at the three promoted clubs, but it’s different this year. Ipswich and Hull have had really solid starts. I mean, the one team that I think are an absolute mess is Crystal Palace. They won the FA Cup, they won the Conference League last season. They’ve sold so many players. At any club, if you consistently sell your best players, you are in trouble. And so they’ve lost Marc Guehi, they’ve lost Maxence Lacroix. Guess what? They’ve let in 19 goals in their first eight games this season. It’s the worst in the Premier League. So they’ve got a manager who is new to the Premier League, Pierre Sage, and he’s under pressure already. So I would be looking at them. I think they are really in trouble and going the wrong way.
Paul Mahoney: Well, Spurs only survived relegation on the last game of the season last year. So that was extraordinary. And De Zerbi, they had an honesty session at the beginning of October to try and identify what was going wrong and what they needed to do as a team going forward. Since then, they’ve gone on a run and they’ve won those two games. And as Neil McLeman says, that midfield with James Maddison back, he obviously just got injured, but if that’s a short-term injury, he’s such a good quarterback for them. He’s just sitting in the middle playing balls left and right.
I think that Spurs, they’re going to be fine now. I think De Zerbi’s a very clever coach, and they’re just surrounded by teams who are a lot worse than them. Spurs are on an upward march. And Palace, they’re parachuting down. It’s just awful.
But relegation-wise, there are only three teams. You look at the teams who can’t win. We’re almost in November. There are only three teams that have only won one game. That’s Forest and Manchester United and Sunderland. So you have to look at those three. But again, Manchester United, they could be in a relegation fight, and I’m not sure they’ve got the sort of back-to-the-wall fighting spirit that gets you out of those holes. You just look at the mess they’re in now. Imagine if they’re still in a relegation fight in three months’ time and they’ve got no leadership there and they’re still arguing with the Glazers and with Jim Ratcliffe.
They’re in a lot of trouble.
In 1977, there was a much better Manchester United team where everyone said it was too good to go down, and down they went. This team is a shambles of a squad, and they could well go down with Manchester City, which would be a fantastic story. The two Manchester teams get relegated. And so the Manchester derby next year will be in the Championship. That would be extraordinary. So my relegation picks are the two Manchester teams, and then you can pick anyone from Palace, Forest, and Sunderland. One of those will go down.
Neil Squires: It’s funny. There’s sort of pivotal moments, aren’t there, in games and seasons, but Chelsea keeper Mike Penders giving Spurs the lead with his own goal might be a turning point for Spurs’ season. They’re off and running now with the second win. They had one win in 42 visits to Stamford Bridge. So that is a really significant win and a great boost for their supporters in a big derby game.
The one counterbalance to that would be Maddison. He looks so good coming back. It wasn’t good to see him just go down on his own. Let’s hope that one isn’t too bad from a Spurs point of view. But I think the shape of them and the way they control possession were very impressive.
They could do with a real out-and-out goalscorer up front, but I still think they’re going to be fine now, and they’re going to climb the table now, I think.
Who’s going to be left at the bottom? Well, I think, sadly, we’re in the position of almost writing Coventry off. I don’t think they’ve got the ammunition having just come up. Frank Lampard’s got a mighty job there to keep them up. I don’t think he will. Firepower’s not really there.
I think the actual table’s a bit misleading because it’s got Sunderland and Nottingham Forest in the relegation zone at the moment. I don’t think either of those are relegation sides. Sunderland have got off to a sticky start, but while they overachieved last year, I think this is definitely underachieving at the moment. I think they will rise. Forest is a bit of a misnomer as well because they’re creating so many chances. They’re in the top five or six in the league in terms of creating chances. They’re just not taking them. So as soon as they start banging a few in, they’ll rise, too. I fear a bit for Palace as well, actually. Coventry and probably Manchester City by minus 100 points by the time the rulings come out.
Neil McLeman: I think Forest’s a really interesting story. Manager Oliver Glasner did so well with Palace over the last couple of years, and he was talking to Milan, and he was getting touted around for all the big jobs. He ends up at Forest, which was a bit of a strange move, to say the least, a bit sideways. And you say that they haven’t done great so far. So that’s one to keep an eye on as well, because the Forest owner’s not known for his patience with managers.
Harry Kane is widely expected to win the Ballon d’Or on Monday, making him the first English player to win since Michael Owen in 2001. What would a Ballon d’Or mean for Kane’s career and for English football?
Neil Squires: It’d be a great personal honor for him, and one I think he deserves. I think he’s taken for granted to a degree, I think, in England. He’s been there for so long, just doing the job, scoring the goals, leading the team, never any fuss around him, never any controversy. He’s just a truly great goal scorer, to start with. His numbers are remarkable. 91 goals for England, notwithstanding how many he scored in the Bundesliga, quickest man to 100 in German football. But also as just an all-round footballer, he’s remarkable.
Steven Gerrard touted him possibly as England’s greatest ever footballer this week, which is an interesting discussion point. I don’t know if you can go that far, but certainly of this generation, he’s head and shoulders above, and I think it’d be a great honor for him. And also for English football to have an English winner, although I would say it is quite ironic that if English football did have a Ballon d’Or winner, given the strength of the Premier League, it would be a player who plays outside the Premier League. But even so, I’d say he deserves it, and let’s hope he takes that honor.
Neil McLeman: I think he would deserve it. I think the criteria for it is individual performances, team performance and achievement. The third criteria, which for me is a big one, is class and fair play. And I think Kane sums that up as well. He’s been such a good role model at Spurs and Bayern Munich. He always fronts up. Even when Spurs were terrible, I remember he always used to come and speak in the mix zone. That’s a journalistic bias point of view, but that tells you something about the character of someone that always was prepared to front up no matter the results.
I think it’s good that the Ballon d’Or is decided by a panel of journalists. I think if it were a popular vote, you’d have Mbappé or Lamine Yamal winning it still, even Messi would’ve won it if Argentina won.
If Kane’s not going to win it this time, he never will. He scored the most goals last season, and he performed well. I think it’d be great to see him win. And that mention about the best player of all time, he would be the fifth English player to win the Ballon d’Or. And it’s debatable whether he is the greatest. I still think he’d need to win a major title. I certainly think that would help his cause to be in that conversation.
Paul Mahoney: I like the fact that Gerrard has spoken up to say that Kane could well be England’s greatest player, which is a great headline quote to shove out there. But if you compare the other English players who won the Ballon d’Or, he’s going up against Stanley Matthews and Bobby Charlton and Kevin Keegan, and then more recently, Michael Owen. Does he belong in that company? Probably, with the numbers that he puts in with goals and assists. But there’s kind of a popularity contest about this Ballon d’Or as well. And you can see how Yamal, as a young kid, just looks cooler than Kane. Kane looks a bit awkward and a bit strange. And that’s just the way he is. He doesn’t do fashion shoots. And I think there’s a lot of that about the popularity contests of the Ballon d’Or. And Yamal’s winning the World Cup as well is a big plus for him.
And as Neil McLeman says, playing for Munich is not the same as winning it in the Premier League, which is the same with Kevin Keegan when he won his Ballon d’Ors back-to-back and he was playing in Hamburg. Whatever happens, even if Kane wins, I don’t think he’ll do anything for English football. I think it’ll just be a nice gong in his trophy cabinet.
Neil McLeman: If Kane doesn’t win it this year, I don’t know what he has to do. The Euros are going to come to England in a couple of years’ time, and Jude Bellingham could be winning it by then. I mean, Bellingham could be England’s greatest player. We’re looking at him in five years’ time, so we’ll see. And he’s got the X-Factor and the sex factor as well.
Paul Mahoney: Well, that’s your point, though, isn’t it? You mentioned that Yamal’s won a World Cup. Kane’s got to win something big, as well as score goals, and he hasn’t.
Neil McLeman: But it’s not only about winning. I think Kane’s been the best. For me, he’s the best technical player. Even watching him in Bayern Munich against Arsenal the other night, just that pass he made. He’s developed into such an extraordinarily good all-round player as well. So I think he personally would really deserve the award. 🏆
