"Estoy triste": The pouty, not impressed, hands-on-hips Other Teams' Thread [R]

Hey, I need help on a quiz thingy. Only have a day or two to answer.
Anyone know what stadium this is. I'm guessing somewhere in England?
Click image for slightly bigger view.



I feel like putting this somewhere in the Premier League forum.

 

I can't consider last season a success, though I think we played ok-ish. Could've won CL with a little luck or little more sharpness, close close close, but fair is fair and no title is right. In Liga we were poor away and deserved not to win the title. We started the season as reigning Liga and CL champs and were unable to win zero of those, the two major competitions of the season -> not success by default, sort of.

That said, as far as "the other competitions" are concerned, I also give value to (especially) CdR and (also) to Club World Cup. But they're still very, very secondary to Liga and CL imo.

 

Tough question. Obv hints the sponsors (but they're large companies and offer little help except for the English language: England, Scotland, Ireland...), the blue&gray colours of benches (team colours?), capacity (not huge, but not too small either->maybe around 15-20 thousand), the blocked out texts (the closest one has two higher letters in the middle of the text, maybe)... in sum: you either know this and it's easy, or you don't and it's mission almost impossible.

My best guess is pick the teams with blue & gray colours from League One and go from there.

 

Maine Road?
Y'know, that entered my mind but when comparing to other images I eventually ruled it out.

 

I think you're being a bit harsh on our efforts and accomplishments of last season. Yes, we didn't win the two most important titles last season, but when you take into consideration that we managed to win everything else on offer, managed to fight for the Liga even when 13 points behind, and go to the CL semifinals for the fifth year in a row, and all that with such an injury ravaged season, I'd consider the work of the squad successful. We didn't have the wheels required to finish very strong but that's mostly due to players like Villa, Pique, Pedro, Abidal, Xavi, and Alves not being at top fitness during that late April run-in.

And Pep's exhaustion along with Tito's operation in the middle of the season meant that the management had their own problems to deal with as well. It's really amazing considering how much we were able to do last season but there's still that bad taste in the mouth that we didn't win either La Liga or the Champions League. I still consider it a success, like unclesox did, because of the trophies we won and the extraordinary efforts of everyone involved.

 

Very interesting. I have to say that last season was a tad bit disappointing. I don't value the Club World Cup at all, and this is just my opinion. Of course we lost Villa there, so that makes my opinion biased.

The league is my ultimate test, and we weren't good enough last season away from home. That's not why I was disappointed though, as LPB put up a record amount of points. In any other season where we didn't win the league it would have been enough points to win the league. So I'm neutral about that. We won the Copa so I was happy about that. No matter what anyone in the media is saying, both LPB and Barcelona are taking this tourney seriously these days, so its definitely a big accomplishment, especially given our side of the draw that we had to compete with.

Actually as I type this out, the real disappointment comes in the fact that we didn't defeat Chelsea, even though we should have won the tie easily. If you told me that we were up 2-1 after 134 minutes and a man up at home, I would say great, we probably won't lose now because we had so many chances against them. That defeat was harder than any other Champions League exit in recent times, because really Chelsea wasn't on our level. We can point to many things, like Villa being hurt, we were exhausted, the Clasico was inbetween, and Chelsea had a nothing game, we hit the post/bar a few times at SB, but at the end of the day....Chelsea with ten men, held out and played their best half against us (not like it had to be really good given what little they provided in the previous three halves) when it mattered the most. You'd be lying if you said you didn't expect to make the final when we first drew Chelsea.

 

The only thing bad about our away form last season were the road games we played in the middle of that Copa del Rey run and that Getafe loss in late November. We were very good away from home apart from that though. We won 10 out of 15 away games last season if you exclude the games we played during that Copa del Rey run, in which we dropped points in 3 of the 4 matches we played. Clearly that condensed cup schedule coming so soon after our return from Japan had an effect on things, we could hardly prioritize the league first and foremost in that period. We couldn't lose the league in January, but the Copa and CWC we could have, so that's why we took those two competitions more seriously I assume.

Yes, Chelsea was undoubtedly the biggest disappointment of last season for us. But like I said, we missed Villa, Abidal, and Pique through that period where we played the semi matches and the Clasico and they are all three very important players. Alves and Pedro weren't very fit for those matches either while Xavi was starting to get fatigued from the number of high level matches he was being involved in over the previous few weeks. That's six KEY players right there. Not to mention that Cesc and Alexis were enduring dry spells, Messi was double marked, and the likes of Thiago and Keita were underused in those matches. We missed the presence of authority that these guys offer at their best. Tello, Adriano, Cuenca....these guys did well last season in general but there was just no way that they could have offered exactly what was needed to overcome Chelsea's bunker style and get us to the final. The players that were missing hurt us more than it helped us. Abidal at the back could have stopped Ramires from entering that gap he went into for his goal at CN if he was there, Villa could have take some shots from long range, Pique could have brought the ball up out from the back, etc. We just weren't going to have it happen with all those handicaps. We hardly had any player in the squad in that period playing some of their best football at that stage of the season, Chelsea had the total opposite of that and it won them a Champions League title.

It's really bizarre how we got hit so much ahead of such important matches last season. Something as rare as that surely won't strike again for a very long time. But my point is, when you think about how much we had going against us than for us, you can only admire the players and management for how close they came to a CL final and how long they kept the league title race going in spite of all these handicaps. Had our luck on the injury front been better and had we peaked at the right time last season, I have no doubt that we would have been more than good enough to win both the league and the Champions League.

 

Barcalona and bayern could've played together at the same time against Chelsea.
The football gods would still force Chelsea to win no matter what....

What a nightmare of a team to win

 

Yeah I agree that we were good - that's why I said "not success by default, sort of" - but with today's standards and expectations, no Liga or CL doesn't spell a successful season. Anyway, after all, this was our worst season with Pep as head coach (the only one with no major trophy ie Liga/CL).

As for players injured and and not being in top fitness, that's our own fault in a way that we need depth to cover injuries (although luck plays a part in this obv) and not being top fitness, can we blame someone other than ourselves, I don't think so.

As for the work rate and effort: I don't think we lacked in those at all.

 

That means we dropped points in away matches about every other time. It's not good enough, not consistent enough.

 

So much hype surrounding today's LPB-Man City game that I can't help but think it will be a let down in terms of futbol entertainment.
I'm actually feeling a bit more keen on watching Málaga-Zenit. Not on tv though so I guess I can have LPB on tv and stream Málaga. I usually like to stream the German Konferenz.

 

Just occurred to me... how the hell did you find this so quickly after I asked?

 

Woo! Isco with a nice run into the box to shoot Malaga ahead in the 3rd minute!
Malaga 1-0 Zenit

Hulk comes right back and smashes a thunderbolt against the crossbar.

 

Wow, Essien starts with Xabi and Kedhira and no Ramos (on outs with Mou?). Maicon on the other side. 4 shots by Ronaldo already, 2 requiring nice saves.

 

Dammit, I lost the stream and Malaga scored a second.

EDIT:
Saviola the scorer. He's doing well with them so far.

 

DZEKO!!!

 

Then a Yaya miss, and Marcelo answers for a 1:1.

 

Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

 

Kolarov!!!! Not very impressed with him till that free kick.

 

No way.

 

Now Karim, yikes.