Whoa apparently Barack is not too busy after all The White House yesterday released a statement supporting English powerhouse Manchester United legenday manager Sir Alex Ferguson's claim that rivals Newcastle manager Alan Pardew is indeed a cnut. "Let me, let me make this clear. Alan Pardew is a ********", the President said while adding that Alan Pardew is really a ********.
From the Yanks Abroad Gameday thread on Stoke v. Liverpool: "Some big club needs to sign Pulis as their defensive coordinator. That defense is fun as hell to watch." Some big club as in MUFC?
Why not? I've been saying an NFL team should pick up Rene Meulensteen to train up the teenagers in their youth academies for years now.
I guess cuz it's not pre-modern football, who knows? Whatever the proper terms might be, some posters have been yearning for CQ's tactical abilities. Pulis appears to shine in defensive tactics, and now may be expanding his talents to all aspects of the game.
Thing is, no Premiership manager would give up their job to be an assistant manager, which is higher than first team coach, which is higher than a coach whose job is to focus on defending. It would be like one NFL team getting a head coach with a lot of job security and decent success from another NFL team to move to them as defensive quality control coach or something along those lines (say Marvin Lewis leaving the Bengals to become defensive QC coach of the Patriots). Not an exact correlation, but with there being so many more football teams than NFL (and even NCAA, Canadian, Arena, etc) teams it means that it just doesn't happen.
But soccer is different. Defensive and offensive players simply don't exist in a vaccuum in soccer, compared to football. All players must be able to contribute at both ends of the field. It's not like they can simply sub off for their more offensive/defensive counter part the minute the ball crosses the half way line. Stoke and Pulis get a lot of clean sheets for reasons above and beyond simply playing good defense. In fact, as individuals, their defenders are not better than most of the defenders already at the top clubs. Stoke simply set out their shape and stall in a defensive way across the pitch, top to bottom. And I give them credit for the fact it works for them, but it has limitations as well. It's no surprise they have one of the lowest goal outputs of any team in the premiership era at the half way point. And it's not about individual attacking talents, or lack thereof either. The one thing every team in this league lacks right now (and across a lot of Europe actually), is balance across the park. Personally, I think that's because it's harder to strike the proper balance in modern football than 10-15 years ago. I subscribe to the argument the highs can be higher now than they used to be, but because players have become so specialized across all positions, and players tend to concentrate on a select few high spending teams more than ever after a good few seasons, that finding that right balance is massively challenging now (and bloody expensive).
Funny, had Wenger been on one of his huge moans (after Pardew having a few goes at him) and Fergie not had been on the receiving end of the third wrong call directly involving a goal being scored in 4 matches and thus said nothing... we wouldn't be hearing anything about this from you, now would we? But what should we expect? I mean, Arsenal fans themselves do love to brag about "just being a small team from north London" after all.
lol @ implying that the worst loser and probably the whiniest manager in the history of, ever, is somehow a gracious winner.