2015/16 Soccer Thread

Watching MotD replays. If you haven't seen any highlights, look up West Ham - Bournemouth. I've seen some exceptional things from Sunderland defence over last 12 months, But this performance West Ham was the sh*ttiest I can remember, orders of magnitude above Sunderland. It's impossible to give it justice, especially Messers Cresswell and Jenkinson, just find some replays.

Cracking game, though. Bournemouth should be everybody's second team this season. And they have the Holy Goalie on their side!

edit: Although watching Sunderland game now, I might be tempted to revise my opinion. It's amazing how consistent their defence is - not only they don't turn up, they just don't even make effort to switch on, ever. From Swansea having THREE free headers from five yards to John O'Shea trying acrobatically to clear the ball from going off for... a goal kick, they're in the class of their own.

Oh, and van Aarnholt trying to dribble next to his penalty spot. Delicieux.

Sunderland's defence will still turn into the reincarnation of Baresi and Maldini when City play them, mind you.

davet010 wrote:

Sunderland's defence will still turn into the reincarnation of Baresi and Maldini when City play them, mind you.

;)

Yep. But I thought you did manage to break that amazing run they had against you last season, right?

Terry you prat. Now all the pundits will be certain Roberto Martinez will see Chelsea's plight, feel pity, and just give them Stones.

Another week of this non-story.

Psych wrote:

Terry you prat. Now all the pundits will be certain Roberto Martinez will see Chelsea's plight, feel pity, and just give them Stones.

Another week of this non-story.

It has been impressive to see the fervor of media pundits to ensure that Stones doesn't remain at Everton this window.

Of course I hope he stays.

And that we destroy Chelsea in the first game after the window shuts.

First things first though - time to see if we can get anything out of today's match against City. (An in-form Aguero makes me awfully nervous).

Well, Everton being Everton, you had a good game last week, so there's only one way this could go

UCRC wrote:

Well, Everton being Everton, you had a good game last week, so there's only one way this could go

Yeah - Everton 2 City 0

Typical City.

Well, I will take that first half. That offside call for Lukaku was really close, but typically Everton will self destruct after really good performance. The held off City, who had some really good chances, and I hope we can adjust at half and look even stronger.

Watford's shirt for this season is really good; looks sharp with those front stripes. The Watford-Southampton match isn't great but it had enough flow to make the first half watchable.

Galloway looked really solid (though we had a lot of folks tracking back to help him out).

Glad to see Browning get a run out, though I wish it wasn't at the expense of our already-thin defense picking up another injury.

Waiting for a pundit to spin Galloway's injury as confirmation Stones will leave for Chelsea.

Fair play to City - deserved the result, for sure.

Decent showings by Galloway and Browning, though I will admit that Cleverly has been better than I'd expected so far.

Would like to see the statue of Gareth Barry get fewer starts, and we definitely need a creative player before the window shuts. (Yarmolenko seems like a good choice, though I'm not holding my breath).

Durp wrong thread

Arsenal v Liverpool... What a weird game. We alternated between playing like the worst Arsenal sides circa 2010 and world class moves on the attack. And same goes for Liverpool. Kind of a game where no one goes home happy because you only remember missed chances.

Highly frustrating to see Arsenal try and play with it at the back when there's a clear front man to hoof it to and guys like Ramsey, Ozil, Sanchez to knock it down to.

Unlucky to lose and to draw at the same time?

Edit:

Oh yea we need to start the Cech count. How many points he arguably wins Arsenal.

I'll make the case that the finger tip save vs Coutinho is worth 1 for the draw. It happened early enough that maybe Arsenal draw but probably not the way they were going today.

No negatives. So Dave don't bother saying what about the questionable West Ham game. The assumption is any other goalie would of been equally abject.

I thought both teams had moments of brilliance followed by moments of utter carelessness. Ramsey's goal shouldn't have been ruled offside, in my opinion, and that probably would have changed things quite a bit.

Four games, two points, just above the relegation places.

Why do I watch this team again?

Unlike Mangala, who last year did this to Eto'o (sorry for terrible quality) and this past weekend decided to stomp on Cleverly's head/neck.

Neither foul got punished.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/vJlOfMN.gif)

[Edit]

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Serie A started at the weekend, and, man, did Juve look a shell of the team they were last year! They lost 1-0 at home to Udinese and looks like they might struggle without Tevez this year, unless Dybala creates wonders. I think it'll be the most open it has been in years at the top in Serie A, with Juve, Roma and Inter all with decent squads now.

I think Juve are a bit all over the place right now, Cuadrado is definitely not what they need. They also bought Zaza for 18m Euro this summer and now they're going to loan him out immediately to West Ham!

The Vancouver Whitecaps finally won the Voyageurs Cup. Pretty good match for 30 minutes and then a Montreal player got an incredibly dumb 2nd yellow and Vancouver were in control from then on.

Man City just can't get a break in a Champions League draw, can they? In there with Juve, Sevilla and Monchengladbach, which looks to be, again, the group of death for them! Still, I think they'll have a much better season, much of what I said before, the group is a much bigger concern for Juventus, who will be expected to qualify.

Looking at all the groups, Chelsea and Atletico Madrid probably have it easiest in there.

Group D looks to be the one to watch (unless you're a City fan).

Juventus, Sevilla, and Borussia Mönchengladbach - not the worst draw I can imagine for you guys, but definitely looks like the hardest draw of the EPL sides this year.

Welp. Guess Saints don't have to worry about European competition dragging down their league form.

Not that they have league form to drag down.

I'm pretty happy with the CL groups draw.
Last year was a nightmare.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

Group D looks to be the one to watch (unless you're a City fan).

Juventus, Sevilla, and Borussia Mönchengladbach - not the worst draw I can imagine for you guys, but definitely looks like the hardest draw of the EPL sides this year.

Nice to see that despite all the time consuming requirements of his FIFA presidential candidacy, the Gallic Gonk can still oversee the ritual 'warming of the balls' before the CL draw.

The only thing that stopped me being more upset was that my first sight of the draw was in a restaurant bar in Bahrain, where I was enjoying my first beer for 4 months in preparation for my return to the UK.

Oh, and that a Liverpool fan decided to make some sarcastic comment, which the assembled multitude agreed was trumped by my response of "can't wait to see who Liverpool get...ohhh, right".

A lot of our fans are outraged at the ref today, but I don't think we can really complain at the Mitrovic challenge, on another day, it could've been a yellow, and Arsenal should've had a penalty that wasn't given (coincidentally, I was lectured by some fan on Twitter that it wasn't a penalty because "it was an accident". Not too sure he would've went with that line if it was in the other box...)

At least we're defending a lot better, and we were slightly unlucky to concede the goal we did. Arsenal looked poor considering we spent the majority of the game down to ten men. I'd still like to see us sign one more player, but apparently we're done!

The best thing that happened as a result of the Newcastle Arsenal game was the twitter comment along the lines of "Newcastle achieve their plan to eliminate themselves from Europe through fair play spot".

Tad harsh on the red but at the same time that was the 2nd studs up challenge early in the game? Also it was the worse of the two as it wasn't even on the foot/ankle but so high up it didn't give the Ref much room of interpretation.

On a positive note for everyone though... 1-0 Palace Chelsea with about 20 to go

I'm in agreement with Clusks. I took an eye off the match in the second half but every card in the first seemed deserved for me and having both the ref and the linesman unsighted for the penalty was lucky.

Also, CHELSEA IN CRISIS. Shame they don't get to travel to Kazakhstan for the Champions League but hopefully they'll have an injury crisis once the transfer window shuts.