Cole Palmer gets a kicking in a Mailbox that also lauds Roberto de Zerbi and Unai Emery after magnificent Saturdays.

There will be a Man Utd mailbox along soon but for now read about the rest of the Premier League. E-mail us at theeditor@football365.com with your thoughts.

Cole Palmer the fraud
Pardon my french but Cole Palmer is a horrible little c**t when he’s got the hump.

How he wasn’t given a red for kneeing Fernandes is beyond me but justice served with a bowl of just desserts after. He’s not even that good so he can keep pulling out of England squads.

Anyway, enough of that, just wanna say Up The Villa!
Iain

Wait, we won at the Bridge?
I f***ing love it when a plan comes together.

Forza Roberto!
Jon (Spurs!), Lincoln

…What a performance that was from Spurs. The only chances Chelsea created were from our mistakes. Dominated in possession, great second goal. Fernandes and Tonali looked all of 185m, top quality from both all game. I’ll admit I had doubts over Tonali when we forked out 100m but he’s a great player. Gutted Maddison went down again, this guy can’t catch a break. Gallagher filled in nicely though when he came on. Kudus’s hold up play is massively underrated.

I can’t get my head around Chelsea buying Henderson, he was shown up today. Can’t wait to hear Mike Dean explain how neither of Palmer’s yellows were straight red cards. The refereeing in this league is still horrendous.

Anyway 7 points from 9 in our last three games and we have been playing well in the few games before that as well. It’s good to look forward to watching us play again. Now let’s push up that league please.
Sam, THFC (De Zerbi may be the one)

Tel it to my heart
I absolutely love the goal from Tel. Took it and ran at people and then hit it.

Take your xG and go do some deep knee bends in a cucumber patch.
Matt Carr

Existential question
What are Spurs?
Aidan, Lfc

Let’s take a minute for Aston Villa
Appreciate this website will probably be in full Spurs365 mode very soon, so I’ll be as brief as I can.

Villa were great again, I’ll get my hyperbole in now before everything goes wrong, this is the best set of players we’ve had under Emery so far. I’d take Konsa back, assuming Arteta hasn’t ruined him yet, and all of the Ramseys leaving still makes me feel a bit sick. But I’m literally over everyone else. Even Diaby and Mad Jhon are distant Unai Memories now.

Shout-outs this time: no idea what’s going on with Matty Cash’s hair but he does look more Polish. But more importantly, Emery has done his glow-up trick *again* – sign a new player in someone’s position, leave the old player in the team and bingo. 2 Like A New Player players unlocked at a stroke.

And lastly, to those fans in the Witton throwing packets of Cheetos all over the City dug out before the teams came out: absolutely Grade A stuff. Bravo.

Now I’ll leave you to 100 articles on how Spurs are going to win the league or whatever. TTFN 🇸🇳
Neil Raines, vive les Lions de la Teranga and up the f**king Villa

…Well that’s certainly up there amongst my favourite visits to Villa Park.

Nicolas Jackson, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I thought you were useless at Chelsea, but it wasn’t you, it was them.
Gary AVFC, Oxford (Kudos to the peeps with the Cheetos)

This is the Barclays Cucks League
First time emailer. Just settling to watch Villa vs City and left a bit bemused by all the boos, plenty for the Barclays…natch but aimed at City?

Why? Martin Samuel nailed it with his piece on the ‘Red Cartel’ being the three beneficiaries of the removal of City from the records (unlikely as it is.).

Spurs are just useful idiots and Chelsea are sly f*ckers keeping quiet. Jordan has outed Chelsea comprehensively this week. The remaining 14 clubs should hang their heads in shame, being there is simply not enough. Imagine the remaining 14 as cuckolds meekly watching the Red Cartel banging their wives while Spurs & Chelsea act as Fluffers. Then thanking them for letting them watch. That is your future if City fail.
D City since the 60’s and nothing will take away the memory of watching them win 4 in a row

Beating City feels real good
To all those fans who say they feel nothing about the results of the Etihad cheats, let me just say this….

It feels f***ing great to beat them!
Jeff G, West Brom Villan (In Unai we trust!)

Time to talk about Moyes
Let’s talk about a Premier League manager with 2 wins in 15 and no away wins since February.

Yes, I realise I sound like a Lidl Stewie Griffin of this parish, but I am sick of Moyes and his media outriders telling us what to think.

I am sick of his selections, we looked like we had a dynamic trio of KDH, Armstrong and Hackney, but Davey insisted his favourite James “Gloves on a sunny October day, also I missed part of preseason and I’m unfit!” Garner gets in the team.

I am sick he doesn’t make changes until “the game’s gone.” Dithering Davey is a name earned, he hasn’t learned and because of this Everton get Burned !

Let me be clear, the owners have always treated us as 2nd best to Roma which is part of my gripe of the multi club ownerships that have sprung up. But regardless they aren’t the people who are denying us the best chance to get results out of games. Every game is set up to be 0-0 or “get out of there alive.” Other clubs look like their playing a different sport!

Heck to quote you guys “The prospect of Everton Just Staying In The Game before an ultimately limp defeat at the Emirates next weekend is positively titillating.”

When f365 is getting a prediction spot on it’s time to go!

West Ham won their conference league because of a moment of brilliance from Paqueta, not Moyes being astute!

Anyway off topic, but what’s going on with Cole Palmer? Last week he committed 3 bookable offences (delaying the restart, dissent and late tackle) but the ref incompetence saved him, this week, he could have had a straight red! Is his sister’s birthday soon?? Did he want to avoid playing Man United? Not happy with sharing the spotlight with Rogers? His behaviour is odd.
EFCraig (Newcastle cup game could be an all time headless)

Premier League rubbish? But there are more goals than ever
The ever-running debate continues about whether modern football is rubbish, or we are just a bunch of middle-aged men harking back after a day that never existed. My view is the latter. Memory is a funny thing. You remember the good stuff, and you forget the dross. And my lord was there a lot of dross back then.

Which brings me to Shunt LFC and the idea that defending has ruined football. It does appear that defending has got better. But, by that logic we surely must be seeing far fewer goals. Let’s take a look.

The all-time Premier League average is 2.69 goals per match, across completed seasons.

9 Premier League seasons have averaged 2.8 goals or more. They were all 2010 or later.

The 5 lowest scoring seasons all happened between 1996 and 2007.

The 5 highest scoring seasons all happened between 2018 and 2025

The Premier League exceeded 1,100 goals in consecutive seasons for the first time in 2023/24 and 2024/25. Before 2023/24, no 38-game season had reached 1,100

Nearly one in four matches (23%) featured five or more goals in 2023/24. The previous record was 17% in 2021/22

Maybe defenders are better. Maybe football is worse. I don’t know. But one thing is for sure, there are definitely not fewer goals.
Mike, LFC, Dubai

Yamal the best in the world? It’s not about stats
Does Phil really not understand Yamal having a case for the Balon D’or? 24 goals and 16 assists is good but it’s not telling you half the story. It’s not all about stats. Watching him play weekly and he just does extraordinary things whether it’s dribbling past half the team, playing multiple insane passes a game or a worldie from 30 yards. He was voted as the best player in La Liga last season, that has to count for something, no?

I would personally lean more towards Kane but there’s definitely factors going against him too. I didn’t rate his World Cup like others did. He didn’t really do much against any good opposition. Bayern walked the league as they normally do. I just think he needs to do something in the latter stages of a big tournament vs an elite opponent for people to look at him differently, which may be fair or unfair.

I don’t see there being an obvious winner. They all have faults to their credentials.

Yamal – Played amazingly for Barcelona, knocked out early in CL. Wasn’t one of Spain’s star performers
Kane – One of Bayern’s best two players, elite overall game.
Olise – Up their with Kane for importance for Bayern, Mbappe was France’s main main.
Mbappe – Great World Cup, quality for Madrid. Trophyless. Knocked out early in CL.
Dion Byrne

You’ll Never Walk Alone
On an old pilot, a Liverpool hat, and the dangerous business of getting to know your patients.

I met a remarkable old man today.

He was ninety-four years old, and I was about to give him what might be the last anaesthetic of his life.

A retired RAF pilot. He’d flown missions involving nuclear weapons, and subsequently worked in major incident investigation, including the Hillsborough disaster. A lifetime of extraordinary experiences, most of which I could only begin to imagine.

We discovered our shared allegiance to Liverpool Football Club. Which might not sound particularly remarkable until you remember that this was happening in Western Australia, some fifteen thousand kilometres from Anfield. Two strangers, meeting by chance on the opposite side of the world, discovering they supported the same football club. He even had the same Liverpool hat as mine in his bag.

And this, as it turned out, was going to be a problem.

He had come to us with an abdominal aortic aneurysm – a dangerous swelling of the body’s main artery. Except this wasn’t simply an aneurysm. It had already ruptured locally, the bleeding temporarily contained by the surrounding tissues and clot. We were attempting an emergency repair in a man whose heart, kidneys and cardiovascular system had already endured rather more than their fair share of life.

The estimated chance of dying on the operating table was one in four.

And yet here he was. Ninety-four, still engaging, still talking, still very much himself. He reminded me very much of my own father: softly spoken, quietly charismatic, and carrying a formidable collection of medical problems that seemed entirely at odds with how well he was still functioning.

One of the curious privileges of anaesthesia is that we get to meet people at extraordinary moments in their lives. Sometimes the encounters are brief and transactional. Sometimes, almost without meaning to, you get to know somebody.

And today I made the mistake of getting to know somebody.

The ward interaction was all too brief. We talked about his flying, his career, his own doctor son, his football. Somewhere along the way, he stopped being a high-risk emergency vascular case and became an old fellow I desperately wanted to get through the day.

And then I made an even bigger mistake.

Down in theatre, as he charmed everybody, I asked him if he liked the music I had on. He didn’t. It was Taylor Swift. I told him not to worry, I had something I knew he’d like for when he drifted off.

And as we prepared to put him to sleep, I played You’ll Never Walk Alone.

For anyone unfamiliar with Liverpool Football Club, this isn’t simply a football song. It is something closer to a collective expression of loyalty, grief, hope and belonging. It carries an extraordinary emotional weight, particularly for supporters who have lived through the club’s history.

For a man who had been involved in investigating Hillsborough, I can only imagine how many layers of meaning it might have held.

I hope I never forget the look of delight that spread across his face as he slowly recognised the song. Then he broke down.

And then so did the theatre team.

And, for a moment, I came perilously close myself.

Not quite, obviously. I’m still a double-hard bastard.

But close.

There was something almost unbearable about the juxtaposition. This extraordinary old man, who had spent a lifetime doing extraordinary things, lying in front of us at perhaps the most vulnerable moment of his life. His own mortality was no abstraction. We had discussed it. We all knew the odds.

And now we were playing him a song about never having to face the darkness alone.

It was beautiful. And absolutely bloody awful.

As his eyes closed – perhaps for the final time – the song came to its glorious conclusion and I allowed myself a sigh of relief. The emotional charge of the room could dissipate. Time to compartmentalise our feelings and get the job done.

But the playlist, randomly selected, decided we hadn’t suffered enough.

Straight into Let It Be by the Beatles.

Nobody had even begun to recover. To get their acts together. To compose themselves.

Then, while I was still managing one of the most physiologically demanding inductions of my career, Somewhere Over the Rainbow came floating through the theatre.

Not just any rendition. The impossibly tender Hawaiian version, with the ukulele.

For God’s sake.

At this point I was occupied keeping a very fragile ninety-four-year-old alive. My hands, my attention and my thoughts were all spoken for. I couldn’t simply wander over and change the music.

The entire operating theatre appeared to be trapped in an increasingly elaborate emotional ambush.

Eventually I was able to reach my phone.

Gorillaz. On Melancholy Hill.

Not exactly the emotional reset I’d been hoping for, but I was desperate. I’d simply hit the first playlist that wasn’t the one currently trying to destroy us. Mercifully, it worked.

The spell was broken. The room returned to something resembling its normal state. We could all get on with the rather serious business of repairing an aorta.

The induction had gone well. In fact, remarkably well, considering what we had been anticipating. The old man had tolerated it beautifully.

And when my surgical colleague, Mahmoud, finally walked into theatre, I was able to offer the reassurance that seemed most appropriate.

“Right. I didn’t kill him. Now it’s your turn not to kill him.”

Which, in our particular corner of medicine, is practically a declaration of affection.

I’ve thought quite a bit about what happened in the hours since.

Anaesthetists are trained to be calm, technically proficient and emotionally composed. We’re a little like pilots ourselves. There are good reasons for this. When the situation becomes critical, somebody needs to remain capable of making decisions.

But composure isn’t the same as detachment.

I could have conducted the entire encounter differently. A polite introduction. A careful assessment. A clear explanation of the risks. A technically competent anaesthetic.

All entirely appropriate.

But I would never have known about the RAF, the nuclear weapons flights, the investigations, the Liverpool hat. I would never have seen the person behind the formidable list of diagnoses.

And I wouldn’t have understood what that song meant to him.

There is a temptation, especially in high-risk medicine, to protect ourselves by maintaining a certain distance. We see suffering, uncertainty and death often enough that emotional detachment can begin to feel like another piece of protective equipment.

Sometimes it is.

Sometimes it has to be.

But I don’t think the answer is to stop allowing patients to matter to us.

I suspect that old man knew perfectly well what was at stake. I also suspect that, for a brief moment before losing consciousness, he felt surrounded by people who cared about him as a person rather than simply as a surgical problem.

If I were ninety-four, facing odds like his, I think I’d want that.

I don’t know whether I’ll ever forget the sight of him listening to that song.

And I rather hope I don’t.

Because amid all the machinery, the monitors, the drugs, the numbers and the extraordinary technical business of keeping somebody alive, there remains something wonderfully simple about what we do.

A human being places his life in the hands of other human beings.

Sometimes, if we’re fortunate, we remember just how extraordinary that is.

You’ll never walk alone.

Today, at least, he didn’t.
Craig