2017/18 Soccer Thread

How do you spend so much money and end up with a team that has no strikers, so ends up wasting its best player by far as a false nine ?

And Bakayoko must be one of the worst buys of the season. He's got as much self-discipline as a chocoholic in a sweet shop. If he's in the correct position occasionally, it's only by accident.

Question for the chief money-launderer is....do you ditch him now, and if so, who are you bringing in ? And are you happy for them to say "this squad's sh*t, I'll need major money to rebuild it" ?

Also, we all did notice Michy Batshuayi showing up at Dortmund and immediately thwacking in a pair, right?

I was expecting that we wouldn't get points from the game over the weekend, but I was not expecting our defense to be so poor that we made Arsenal look like Atalanta.

To the extent I supported bringing Mangala on loan, it was with the expectation he would be keeping Williams out of the team. Playing both was madness - Williams committed an entirely unnecessary foul which lead to the opener, and both Williams and Mangala somehow contrived to dodge out of the way of the cutback for that first goal.

Prederick wrote:

Also, we all did notice Michy Batshuayi showing up at Dortmund and immediately thwacking in a pair, right?

Let's not go overboard - Koln are sh*te, but you've got to be in position to score, and Batshuayi certainly did that (as did Lookman in the last minute of RB Leipzig's 1-0 win at BMG).

He certainly looked to have a bit more cutting edge than Chelsea did last night.

One other thing struck me - that Delofeu is a bit of an odd duck. He's one of the few players who can regularly look great and look rubbish in a 5 second span.

Batshuayi is probably a victim of the system Chelsea play, considering they like a big man up top and he hardly even got a game in his first season; his confidence was totally shot. He probably shouldn’t have went to Chelsea, I still think he’d be a good player for another premier league side though, he just needs a run of games and not to feel like a stand in.

Chelsea do like to ruin strikers though, it’s quite curious how many good strikers have failed there.

I've figured out how Everton can salvage this season and make a run at qualifying for Europe.

Unfortunately, it involves somehow playing Notts County every week.

(Seriously, how bad is your defense when Swansea put eight past you?)

davet010 wrote:

One other thing struck me - that Delofeu is a bit of an odd duck. He's one of the few players who can regularly look great and look rubbish in a 5 second span.

I do believe that he is a fantastic example of what the phrase "mercurial talent" means.

Even Sunderland's social media manager has had enough

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DVr3F6-WAAEuOPf.jpg)

Those people are going to have to leave every game now, as Sunderland have scored twice since then to make it 3-2.

And they just equalised to make it 3-3.

Coming back from 3-0 down thanks to two own goals somehow seems VERY Sunderland right now.

Prederick wrote:

Coming back from 3-0 down thanks to two own goals somehow seems VERY Sunderland right now.

Must take some kind of idiot to get all the way from Sunderland to Bristol (talking at least 6 hours each way) and walk out after 40 minutes. At home, maybe, but after that trip ? And it's not like you'd have been travelling in expectation of giving Bristol C a good hiding.

In other news, Kevin de Bruyne to Sergio Aguero. And again. And again.

And on the BBC match feed...

Liz: Have you been watching Premier League football for 20 years? Sergio Aguero is by far NOT the best striker in this time. Not fit to lace Teddy Sheringham's boots!

Bit early in the day for crystal meth, love.

Don't get me wrong, while I have not seen him play (before my time) I have no doubt that Teddy Sheringham was a fine player. However, you have GOT to be kidding me.

davet010 wrote:

Must take some kind of idiot to get all the way from Sunderland to Bristol (talking at least 6 hours each way) and walk out after 40 minutes. At home, maybe, but after that trip ? And it's not like you'd have been travelling in expectation of giving Bristol C a good hiding.

Jesus, I didn't know that. Every now and then I must remind myself that just because it's small compared to our colossal land-grab of a nation, the United Kingdom is not a small place.

290 miles - supposed to take under 5 hours, but given that the route involves two of the most congested motorways (the M6 and M5), I would add an hour onto that.

North London Derby yesterday was pretty meh. Lots of intensity but not much actual quality play.

Fitting result better team + best player on the field won the game. Of note Bellerin looks shockingly average suddenly. The rumors use to be that Barca were going to come snatch him up. He looked like a mid-level club player yesterday. Lacazette missed 2 great chances. Thing is Wenger brings him in and puts him straight as the lead striker and Auba as the left sided player? I think its just a spell of bad form for Lacazette and he comes good. Auba is cup tied for the Europa league so depending how deep Arsenal go in that hes going to have some forced starts to get out of his funk.

And for all the Arsenal are crap, Wenger has lost it, the squad needs a complete revamp....

United just lost to the real United. 1-0.

Besides City everyone has major questions and problems.

Pogba is an illustration of Mourinho's drawbacks. He's not a coach, so very rarely do players improve on his watch. It's clear that playing him with the increasingly pedestrian Matic in front of the back four is shackling half of his game, and his performances over the last few weeks have not really good enough.

Long may it continue !!

Oh, and how Mourinho can bemoan their luck when the hapless Smalling could have given away at least one penalty is again typical of him - it's always all about him, until it's time for the blame to be allocated.

If there's one thing I can say about Mourinho, it's that I don't think a lot of players have become significantly better under his watch. His teams may win, but I don't think he develops talent particularly well.

Mourinho still winless at St. James' Park. Happy to see Matt Ritchie get a goal. Doesn't look like he'll reach my "sell him to Everton for a boatload this summer" hopes I had for him heading into the season but I do like watching him play.

I agree with you Dave & Pred, Mourinho doesn't seem to develop players or build teams much at all.

I didn't watch any football live this weekend, I've been pretty sick with a cold of all things, but I did seek out the MOTD2 highlights to get a glimpse of the Newcastle-Manchester United match. Good to see Philip Neville is taking the Lioness job incredibly seriously, spending his Sunday on the MOTD2 sofa and following the Premier League games.

Mourinho is just a shadow of his former self.
I don't even want him in the national team now.

That game in Turin was quite the thing.

Mr Bismarck wrote:

That game in Turin was quite the thing.

Juventus were appalling. Ponderous and unadventurous, tactically inept.

You've got a RB (Aurier) who is on a yellow card and as uncontrolled as Bakayoko. Do you (a) run at him with the ball to get him to either commit to a challenge or let you past, or (b) try and channel the ball through a packed central midfield. You guessed it...

And what exactly was that wall for Spurs 2nd goal. At first sight it looked like Eriksen had done a De Bruyne and passed it under a jumping wall, but when seen from behind, it looks more like he actually went outside the wall. The freekick was dead central, so how was that wall lined up ?

When Higuain is picking up the ball in his own half, that's when you know you are safe.

Could have been so different, if he hadn't missed that pen just before HT.

Winner of tonight's Through Gritted Teeth award.

Step forward, Robbie Fowler.

"no, look, let’s be honest, it’s not all doom and gloom for City but we all know they can do a lot better than that...

The final score ? Basle 0 Man City 4

Mr Bismarck wrote:

That game in Turin was quite the thing.

On that evidence, Juve's going to get absolutely steamrolled at Wembley.

And, in fairness to Mr. Fowler, I had City scoring 5 today, so I am considering this result a disappointment.

I think Juve going up 2-0 so early actually did them harm, they looked like they didn’t really know what to do and ended up trying to soak up pressure in the first half to hit them on the counter from such an early time, meaning they didn’t have the ball much. Of course, the Higuain miss and penalty miss going in would’ve changed things. Second leg will be very interesting.

Speaking the The Champions League - this is a good read Basically how it's killing off leagues around Europe.

I try to be as realistic as possible about the nature of money in the game, but I'll be damned if seeing Neymar walk off the field sad wasn't surprisingly satisfying.

Also, that article perfectly explains why I'm not going to criticize any clubs with sugar daddies or the like. The only way a team like, say, Sunderland has of ever genuinely competing for a title for anything other than a single-season one-off fluke is if they have the $$$ to compete with the big clubs. The CL is creating a overclass.

For some teams, sure.

I think it's rather sad we're in the knockout stages and teams are getting beat 5-0 at home. These aren't necessarily bad teams either, they're top of their leagues in countries that are producing good players. It's a bad caricature of the way football is today, which has been ruined by money.

Clusks wrote:

I think it's rather sad we're in the knockout stages and teams are getting beat 5-0 at home.

Eh I do think there is something to the notion that Porto could have got a different result if they had wanted to go with a Swansea-like approach. It's maybe a hard ask for them to do that at home considering they're (I think?) undefeated domestically etc. and the fans will want them to be attacking, but if we're talking "do the players have enough ability to be competitive" I'm not sure the scoreline is an accurate indication.

Luck plays a part too...their 20+ goal forward Aboubakar was out injured and the first goal was down to individual error which you'd expect any professional keeper to get right more often than not.

And once they're goal down Porto has to push more players forward to chase an equalizer which obviously plays into Liverpool's counterattacking inclination.

RYAN. SESSEGNON.

HEART EMOJI.