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The briefing: Palmer gives Guardiola reason to regret, Salah is still irreplaceable

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Welcome to The Briefing, held every Monday during this season The Athletics will discuss three of the biggest questions arising from this weekend’s football.

This was the weekend when Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United suffered injuries, when Manchester United were on the verge of escaping a home game against Luton Town with all three points, and when Everton recorded another win to put them further out of trouble.

Here we’ll ask whether Manchester City should have made an exception to their one-player sales policy, whether Liverpool should have rejected any approach for Mohamed Salah in January, and what exactly Roberto De Zerbi’s comments about referees were intended to achieve…

Will Manchester City regret selling Cole Palmer to Chelsea?

It would be hard to argue that Premier League leaders and treble holders Manchester City made a mistake in selling Raheem Sterling to Chelsea.

Their policy of willingly selling a player who wants to leave as long as a reasonable offer comes in hasn’t exactly held them back in recent years. Sterling was dropped from the City team in his final season, so an exit made sense for everyone involved.

That he was the beating heart of Chelsea’s many comebacks in Sunday’s crazy 4-4 draw with City is still unlikely to make Pep Guardiola or anyone else at the club think they made a mistake: he served City well, but they replaced him and if you never sold a player because you thought he could play a good game against you… well, you would never sell a player.

However, one wonders if they will regret selling Cole Palmer in some way. Sterling spent seven seasons at City, scoring 131 goals and winning four Premier League titles. There is no sense of ‘what might have been’: it served its purpose and more.

Palmer is different. The 21-year-old had not yet become a regular starter for City when, according to Guardiola, he decided he would not get much playing time and so made the switch to Chelsea. He was all potential, a hugely talented prospect who clearly had the style and technical ability to fit into a few different positions. Guardiola wanted him to stay, probably because he knew how good he was.

Guardiola knew it before Sunday’s match and he certainly knew it afterwards. It wasn’t just Palmer’s superbly taken penalty (who believes his claim that he doesn’t practice them anyway?), but also the way he played the entire match. It was enough to make you think that, for all Chelsea’s lavish spending, maybe it was just a kid they bought on deadline day, almost as an afterthought, that they could eventually build their team around.

Sterling was also exceptional, as he has been for most of the season, and there has been much understandable uproar over his omission from Gareth Southgate’s England squad. But if you were to bet on whether it will be Palmer or Sterling in that squad for the European Championship next summer, the smart money might be on the youngster, who has just earned his first senior call-up to the England squad ahead of in the qualifying matches. against Malta and North Macedonia.

GO DEEPER

Palmer, Lewis called up to the England squad

Why would Liverpool even consider selling Salah in January?

It’s easy to forget how quickly this Liverpool team has changed.

Of the regular front six that won the Champions League in 2019 and the Premier League a year later, only one remains. Fabinho, Jordan Henderson and Roberto Firmino left last summer, Sadio Mane a year earlier and Georginio Wijnaldum the year before.

This is, as Jurgen Klopp proclaimed, Liverpool 2.0, the reinvention of a team in style (sort of) and personnel. They have recruited new forwards well and have done as good a job as anyone could realistically do in replacing an entire midfield in one summer.

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And yet the one that remains is their best and most powerful player.

Salah’s two goals in Liverpool’s 3-0 win over Brentford represent his ninth and tenth of the season in the league, with a further pair (in limited playing time) in the Europa League. You can also give four assists.

He has accounted for 37 percent of Liverpool’s Premier League goals this season, a figure that isn’t outrageous or wildly unusual for a side’s best striker (Erling Haaland has 41 percent of Manchester City’s), but next on the list for Liverpool is Darwin. Nunez (who has had one since September, but is crucial in providing assists for his Egyptian teammate) and Diogo Jota, both with four.

This is a roundabout way of saying that he is still Liverpool’s most important player and of reiterating that they should not sell him, no matter how much money is offered to them in January by Al Ittihad or whichever Saudi Arabian team is the ultimate prize of that competition.

Apologies for entering transfers while it’s still November, but there are only 48 days of gossip before the window opens and the wheels start turning.

There is a school of thought that says, not unreasonably, that Liverpool would be foolish to turn down a €100 million bid for a 31-year-old with 18 months left on his contract. It would be a wise business decision and allow them to be at the forefront of finding a replacement.

But without him, Liverpool might be a shot in the arm for the Champions League places, let alone a chance of a convincing title bid.

That aside, Salah is one of the greatest players Liverpool will ever have: clubs don’t necessarily have to make these kinds of decisions based on sentiment, but they almost owe it to their fans to make sure he stays with them for as long as possible plays.

What use are De Zerbi’s complaints about referees?

“I am honest and clear. I don’t like 80 percent of English referees. It’s not something new. I do not like them.

“The behavior. I don’t like their behavior on the field.”

It will be interesting in a few years if De Zerbi succeeds Guardiola at Manchester City, as some think.

He currently plays for Brighton & Hove Albion, a team that most neutral players generally like very much and where he receives almost universal praise for his exciting and progressive football. At a club that is, to say the least, not yet universally popular and that plays many more high-profile games, we could be seeing the first example of a manager truly blowing up on the touchline.

His comments after Brighton’s 1-1 draw with Sheffield United were extraordinary, especially when he acknowledged the match’s decisive decision was correct. “When I see the new rules, it’s clearly a red card,” he said of Mahmoud Dahoud being sent off for a foul on Ben Osborn. “But I was a player and the dynamics of the situation were not a red card.” It was a bit of a shame that he didn’t elaborate on what kind of ‘dynamics’ a red in the head would be, if it wasn’t a player missing the ball by a meter and planting his studs in an opponent’s calf.


De Zerbi speaks with John Brooks after the match (Steve Bardens/Getty Images)

We rarely get through a weekend now without at least one manager going deep into the officials, but usually they at least complain about decisions they believe are incorrect.

What’s the idea here? Does he think referees receive too little criticism? They just get distracted too easily by the decisions they make, so he thought he’d throw “I don’t know, I just don’t like their vibe” into the mix?

What is he trying to achieve here? Clubs and managers will say they just want to improve the standard of referees when they criticize, but how is this kind of thing constructive? Presumably De Zerbi is referring to the perception that some referees are ‘peacock’ and try to make the matches all about them. But even if this is true, who cares?

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It’s something you’d expect fans and neutral observers to be annoyed by, but managers? Aside from the fact that they probably have other things to worry about, managers need to understand that their words carry far more weight than fans, broadcasters or journalists. One comment like this adds even more weight to the already unbearable burden placed on civil servants.

Managers whining about referee decisions are annoying and we could probably do without them, but at least it’s understandable if the decision is wrong or questionable. If you admit that the referee did everything right, but still make an excuse to try anyway… that’s just not understandable.

Shortly

  • It’s international week, honey. But don’t worry, you shrill domestic followers: there are still a few more club matches to keep you happy before the nations get involved. The replays of the first round of the FA Cup, for example, as small Isthmian League team Horsham take on another attempt at League One Barnsley before, even more unlikely, Cray Valley Paper Mills take on Charlton Athletic.
  • There’s also the Women’s Champions League, a little light on English teams but still with a few humdingers: Emma Hayes’ quest to win the big one in what will (for now) be her final season at Chelsea begins with a trip to Real Madrid , while holders Barcelona begin their defense against Benfica and previous perennial champions Lyon face Slavia Prague.
  • Then it’s the internationals: England, who have already qualified for Euro 2024, play Malta at Wembley on Friday evening and travel to North Macedonia on Monday. Scotland can also take it easy as they have already sealed their place, but Wales will go through if they beat both Armenia and Turkey.
  • Netherlands v Ireland next Saturday is worth keeping an eye on if you like weirdness/the vagaries of UEFA qualifying rules, as it will boost Ireland’s hopes if they lose (even if a few more things need to be done to find their way).
  • Elsewhere, Italy will need to defeat both Ukraine and old enemies North Macedonia to avoid another rather embarrassing failure; it’s still all to play for in Group E, where Albania, Czech Republic, Poland and Moldova are all vying for the two automatic spots; Technically it’s all up for grabs in Group G, but realistically Serbia and Hungary are likely to advance; while in Group J there is the delightful, if somewhat unlikely, prospect that Luxembourg will qualify, but they will have to beat both Liechtenstein and Bosnia and Herzegovina and hope that Slovakia loses both games… but it could still happen…

Your reading list for Monday

(Top Photos: Getty Images)

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