I like Arsenal’s Myles Lewis-Skelly. Attitude is oozing out of him and it’s why I think he’s going to be a real player.
He put in a strong performance during Arsenal’s 5-1 defeat of Manchester City last weekend which included him mimicking Erling Haaland’s goal celebration after extending his team’s lead.
I love attitude in all walks of life – and not just in the football world. People who go out there and say: ‘This is me. I’m going to do this.’ I like to see players who have b******s, too.
But I have to say, having seen that celebration, I think he needs to wind his neck in.
At 18, it’s a bit early to be going down the road of mimicking a player like Haaland, someone who’s achieved great things in our league.
Wait till you’ve won a few things in our game, son. Just give it a few years. Listen and learn every day until then. Know that someone so young going down that road is not a good look.
I really like Myles Lewis-Skelly but he needs to wait until he’s won a few things first
I love Lewis-Skelly’s confidence but mocking Erling Haaland isn’t the way to go yet
I like to see players assert themselves but in this case he needs to wind his neck in
Mikel Arteta has built a really good team who are still a couple of top strikers away from challenging Liverpool to be the very best.
Those strikers are the hardest thing to find. The most important ingredient in building a winning team – and very much Arsenal’s missing ingredient.
Put Newcastle United’s Alexander Isak in that Arsenal team – because he’s the player they want to buy this summer – and you are looking at a side who would be the finished article and ready to get their hands on either of the two big trophies.
The club’s Carabao Cup semi-final this week proved my point. Yes, Arsenal were beaten by Newcastle United, but for me they were the better team.
Stats never go near to telling the full story of course, but Arsenal had 68 per cent possession in that game, 69.5 per cent possession in the first leg and yet still went out 4-0 on aggregate because they didn’t have anyone to put the ball in the net across those 180 minutes.
Arsenal should have owned those games. One day, they go and score five against Manchester City. Three days later they dominate Newcastle and come unstuck.
I assure you that they will have come away from St James’ Park thinking, ‘how have we not gone through over two legs?’ They can’t afford that inconsistency.
It is the fundamental difference between them and Liverpool. My old club have better goalscorers, which means they don’t have to play well to win games and are less reliant on set-pieces. But without those strikers, Arsenal have to play well to win games.
Arsenal will have come away from St James’ Park thinking ‘how have we not gone through?’
The Gunners should have owned the two legs against Newcastle but had no goalscorers
They spent £65million in June 2023 to take Kai Havertz from Chelsea, believing Mikel could make him a better player. Well, I’m afraid that’s not happened. Havertz has not got any better. He is simply not the answer for them.
It doesn’t surprise me that Mikel has come out this week and said he is disappointed with his club’s business in the transfer window. The fact that Arsenal were trying to buy Ollie Watkins from Aston Villa in the last knockings of the winter transfer window tells you how badly they wanted a striker.
If Arsenal had met the asking price of £60m-plus for that 29-year-old early in the window – and before Jhon Duran was sold to Al Nassr in Saudi Arabia – they might have got him. Had that proved the difference between them winning the title or being the nearly-men again, they would have felt the price was worth it.
For them to make a last-minute bid like that tells you that Mikel was desperate. Really desperate. When they do get the right striker or strikers in, that club will be a force for anyone and a club to fear. Until then, where the title is concerned, I’m afraid they’re looking like a near miss.
WHY THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE IS HEADING BACK TO ENGLAND
I wouldn’t be judging any of the players Manchester City have just spent more than £180million on, between now and the end of the season.
It will all be about next season for them. City’s priority will just be to get back on the horse, dig out results and be in the Champions League next year.
But despite the fact they play Real Madrid in the first game of the two-leg Champions League play-off on Tuesday, you would be brave man to bet against City going all the way in that competition and possibly winning it.
There’s no one out there that Liverpool, Arsenal with a bit of luck in front of goal, or Manchester City if they turn up on the night, need be fearful of. I see the Champions League being in an English trophy cabinet, come the end of the season.
New Man City signing Abdukodir Khusanov had a rough ride on his debut against Chelsea, but I won’t be judging him just yet
Omar Marmoush is part of a £180million spending spree – and may yet help City to Champions League glory by the end of the season
WHAT MAINOO IS STILL MISSING
It didn’t surprise me to hear Ruben Amorim say that he felt Kobbie Mainoo was not ‘comfortable’ with the defensive side of his midfield game.
I said on these pages last June that of the young crop of England midfield players, Crystal Palace’s Adam Wharton had a far better understanding of the defensive duties in that role than Mainoo.
Mainoo catches the eye because he’s so good on the ball, drifts around, pops up on the left and the right, but he’s not got any sense of danger yet, and empties the midfield area too readily.
I was lucky, because I went to football’s equivalent of Oxbridge for my football education, with Joe Fagan, Ronnie Moran and Bob Paisley. It wasn’t too difficult for me to understand the defensive obligations and I got it almost right away.
Kobbie Mainoo doesn’t yet understand all the disciplines of his position – but he’s only 19
Liverpool assistant coach Joe Fagan made sure I was in no doubt about my defensive duties
The game where the penny fully dropped was against Nottingham Forest in the second leg of our European Cup first round game in 1979, when I ‘emptied the hole’, as they called it, exposed my defence and Forest’s Colin Barrett scored their second goal.
Joe quietly pulled me aside after the game and said, ‘you know what you did wrong, don’t you?’ I replied, ‘No?’ He went through it with me.
It was a rollicking without being a rollicking. Both he and Bob had a way of delivering those. I learned a lesson that night. ‘Never do that again here, son.’
Mainoo doesn’t yet understand all the disciplines of the position but he’s only 19. He can develop, with the proper guidance and instruction.
ALL HAIL ‘THE DOC’
I was pleased to see that a mural to my former Liverpool team-mate David Johnson, a great servant both to my old club and Everton, was unveiled near Anfield on Thursday.
‘The Doc’, as we knew him, was a gem of a human being, without a bad bone in his body. We called him ‘the Doc’ because he always carried around this leather bag with cures and potions for a hangover, bad stomach or anything else. We never really needed a doctor!
In my early days, I remember catching him a few times in training early on and him asking Ronnie, ‘Has he got a f****** license to go around kicking people in training.’
David ‘The Doc’ Johnson was a gem of a human being, without a bad bone in his body
The Doc and I congratulating Ronnie Whelan (right) after his late equaliser in our 1982 League Cup final win over Tottenham at Wembley
That one stuck! The Doc got some merciless stick with the Franglais pronunciation of ‘license’, in the style of Peter Sellers in the Return of the Pink Panther movie!
I can also remember playing a game at Anfield one day and getting dispossessed. When the ball went dead, I was looking around for someone to blame for my extra touches and I started to count the players we had on the pitch.
I could only get to 10. The Doc had run off the pitch for a call of nature! Every day in training he was on it and every match day, he gave his lot.
He was a great servant to both Liverpool and Everton. Both clubs will be remembering him with affection on the night of the last Goodison derby on Wednesday.
