If you were TT, would you be happy losing your no. 8 and getting nobody as a replacement? Or losing your best player when he was supposed to have extended? Or losing your world class defender to your no. 1 domestic and european opposition? I think his biggest fault was having a say in transfers. He should never have bought Toprak, Schurrle, Castro and Rode. Terrible mistakes. Aki and Zorc tried to forge the same relationship with him as they had with Jurgen Klopp and that was a mistake. JK developed his relationship with Aki and Zorc over 7 years, not 1. I watch Peter Bosz press conferences and he talks about simple stuff. Status of players in his squad, injuries, tactics and opposition strategies. That's it. I watched Thomas Tuchel and it's hard to follow (likely because unlike him, PB and I aren't native German speakers). He's got a terrific command of the language, he's talks about a lot of things in depth. His thoughts are also philosophical in nature. Pal Dardai said he was glad he didn't have to face TT because playing PB is simply playing football whereas playing TT is like playing chess. That's a big compliment. I'd have kept TT.
Well Tuchel is gone now. I was not a fan and did not like his constant tinkering. To come 3rd and almost 4th when he had a vastly superior squad to anyone except Bayern was extremely poor. Both years he was lucky to have had a better squad than Bosz has at the moment. That's not to say I am a fan of Bosz. Reus when he plays, which is getting rarer and rarer is our best player. Auba is the best player overall and then probably comes the like of Weigl. The board replaced Miki with a better player. It was Tuchel that decided to play Gotze as an 8. He chose Bartra as a replacement and he was the one that wanted Castro, the replacement for Gundogan who was always going to leave. In hindsight selling Gundogan for as much as we did was excellent business, because he is very injury prone.
Largely agree with this except I would drop Pulisic to a 4 in absolute terms, but considering the travelling and high pressure games he has been invovled in, then a 5 probably fair. I don't have much optimism for the Yarmolenko signing, but you are far too harsh on him. He was only on 12 minutes or and was it was his first game, after international week.
PB has a healthy and improving no. 10 in Gotze. Improved Pulisic and a Sancho behind him. Reus is backed up by Max and Schurrle. Finally, a potential world class no. 8 in Dahoud who doesn't get injured like Gundogan. This means Raphael will likely play in his native LB position. An improved RB in Toljan. Bartra has a full year in our colours. Roman Burki is perhaps the only player who has improved steadily with us. I'll take this squad over one with Dembele and what we had last year any day. Even in his first year with Miki and Hummels, TT had a rather thin squad. Today we can put these 2 squads out: PEA Reus - Gotze - Pulisic Dahoud - Weigl Raphael - Bartra - Sokratis - Toljan Burki Isak Max - Kagawa - Yarmolenko Sahin - Castro Schmelzer - DAZ - Toprak - LP Bonmann With Rode, Schurrle, Durm and Subotic on the bench, that's not a bad squad at all.
You're being fair when you judge a squad with a fit and healthy Reus/Gundogan vs a squad without them. Gundogan is a better player than Dahoud will probably ever be and Reus is much better than any other player in the squad except Auba. There was no reason to play Raphael in the middle and not left back. Raphael was never a particularly great midfielder, it was just Tuchel trying to be smart. How are we judging Sancho? He is playing with the 2nd team. Basically this the team Tuchel took over and could put out. Tuchel best team at the start of first season. Burki LP-Hummels-Sokratis-Schmelzer Mkhitaryan-Gundogan-Weigl-Reus Kagawa-Auba This is the best team Bosz can put out. Burki LP-Sokratis-Bartra-Schmelzer Pulisic-Dahoud-Sahin-Philipp Gotze-Auba Apart from the improved Burki and improved Auba (but not by a huge amount) every player Tuchel inherited was better, Even in the 2nd season when Tuchel did poorly he could put out this team. Burki LP-Sokratis-Bartra-Raphael Dembele-Castro-Weigl-Pulisic Gotze/Kagawa-Auba In the second season the team is much more comparable to what Bosz has, they are around the same level and he struggled to finish ahead of Hoffenheim. Reus also came back much earlier than he will this season. EDIT This is nothing to do with hindsight either. Tuchel inherited a number of world class players like Auba, Reus, Gundogan and Hummels. Then Weigl turned out to be a lot better than expected. Bosz has inherited just one world class player in Auba.
Whoa whoa whoa, calm down everybody, sure a win would have been nice, but a clean sheet is always important, remember that under Tuchel we were leaking goals left, right and center and even when we were utterly dominating and tearing apart our rivals' nets with goals of our own we were still prone to giving away silly goals (8-4 vs. Legia), and when our attack wasn't working all our opponents needed to beat us was a simple counter attack or a set piece and that was it, we were beaten. As for you Slash, Tuchel is gone, get over it, if you ask me he struck me as having something of a weak character throughout his two-year stint with us, first by bending over to Guardiola much to our embarassment, refusing to challenge him because according to him he's best thing to ever happen to football and thus he must never be beaten, but the moment where I realized Tuchel had no interest in challenging fo trophies was the week in which we faced Schalke and then Liverpool in the 2nd leg of the Europa League. We could have beaten Schalke to keep up the pressure on Bayern and end the BuLi with a narrower points gap as proof of how competitive he was willing to be no matter hopeless it all seemed, if anything it was a matter of pride, but no, Tuchel chose to rotate and throw away the win because in his words he "didn't want the players to feel burdened about possibly winning the league whilst having another important match coming up". Seriously? What kind of attitude is that? Only a loser thinks like that, and it was with that statement that I lost all respect for Tuchel, and guess what? That very week went from challenging for the Bundesliga and the Europa League to being out of contention from both competitions. I was furious. I also knew we wouldn't win the DFB-Pokal since it was against Guardiola and in the press conference prior to the match Tuchel wouldn't shut up about how he was sad to see Pep leave the Bundesliga, basically cheering on him to win. Then came the second season. With Guardiola gone Bayern were still formidable and we lost three key players but our squad was still good enough to finish second without too much hassle yet Tuchel did his best to sabotage the team with constant tinkering and the fact that he never gave Merino a chance preferring that useless piece of shit Castro, thus we will never know how good Merino really is, it also didn't help that he constantly underestimated opponents who played "ugly football" leading to catastrophic losses and/or precious points lost, and finally there there's his dismissive attitude towards defeding, I still think our victory in the DFB-Pokal last season was more down to the players wanting to finally emerge victorious than to Tuchel, finally his terrible transfers speak for themselves and I think we've already dicussed them at length. All in all I admit I don't miss a coach who only seemed concerned with playing pretty football and being statistically great with no real intention of challenging for trophies. I still haven't made up my mind on Bosz. So far he seems to share Tuchel's fascination with Castro which is a negative, but he's had a good start so let's see how it goes.
Both Tuchel and Bosz are excellent coaches, who both have a vastly superior footballing knowledge then I do. So I am intrigued as to what they see in Castro, as his merits seem somewhat questionable. He must bring something to the team that an untrained eye is unable to appreciate, but what is it?
Castro may be just playing under Bosz because he's familiar with the teammates, unlike new Dahoud.. But I wanted to say about Tuchel, and what i remember about him: - it's only 2 seasons: 1 was good, the other was under achieving.. so i don't see why the hype - he made things harder on the players, and we probably could have won many more games with a little more defensive minded in the midfield, and had he changed formation a little less often - he threw players under the bus when we lost, and probably never admitted his share of responsibility in a loss I'm a big fan of beautiful football, and i don't care about a clean sheet if we score more goals than opposition. But I don't really consider that we played football that is that beautiful. Certainly not the kind that was achieved under Klopp. It was high octane football, relying on the speed of Auba, Miki, etc and it was a lot of tactics.. but so what? Klopp with his 4231 day-in day-out produced more beautiful football -- and still is with Liverpool.
I don't agree with this sentiment at all. Actually a lot of football managers are fairly clueless about tactics in football. Just listen to a few ex-players/managers saying last year Chelsea could not win the league, because the 3 at the back does not work in England. Then all of sudden when Chelsea look set to win the league, every manager in England starts copying the formation ignoring whether they have the right players ton make it work. Sir Bobby Robson was one of the greatest British managers and he was very bad tactically, what made him great was that he an excellent man manager. He kept everyone happy and people would die for him. I think Bosz at the moment is managing the situation well. We won our first two games and he could not drop Castro after that. Castro is a senior player and has friends in the dressing room. It's much easier to give Castro enough rope ton hang himself before bringing in Dahoud.
I'm sorry that I'm not the most positive or optimist here. But 60+ minutes with a man advantage against a team who was in B2 the year before last and getting away with a clean sheet and a draw is not very impressive to me... As a a matter a fact it's quite alarming that PB saw 60 minutes of Castro pass to Toprak pass to Sokratis pass to Sahin pass to Castro... endlessly rinse and repeat and did nothing about it. For me this is Strike 1 against PB. This was a chance to show that we have the ability and creativity to beat parked bus. Now expect much more of the same from many of our opponents and if we don't find answers asap more of the same results.
Quenton, this isn't twitter. You cannot post a pile of crap and expect it to not cause a stink. That whole notion of defence wins championships is overblown. Of course you need a good defence and I think TT's defence was about average. But he had an excellent attack even with Reus injured. I think you're mistaking JK's last season with TT's tenure at BVB. No coach strives to be statistically great. What does that even mean? To them the only stat that matters is wins. That's it. I agree. He didn't give Merino a chance but the board shouldn't have given him free reign on transfers. Castro shouldn't even be playing at BVB. He should be thanking RB for taking Kampl away so he can get first team min at Bayer. But it was PB who decided to move Merino on, not TT. Now he's killing it at NUFC while Castro practices his back passes against Freiburg. I don't get this "beautiful" football you're talking about. TT wanted to play possession football with the aim of creating passing triangles, overloading the half spaces and launching through balls into the paths of PEA and whoever else. And the team executed that really well. Which is why we scored a shit ton of goals. Your quotes about TT after the S04 game is either wrong or completely misunderstood. He never said that. Yes he's gone and will never be back at BVB. My point is that TT did exceptionally well with a squad that finished 7th under JK and then took half a brand new squad that hadn't met each other the year prior to a cup win and finished third despite having Weidenfeller fück up every chance he got for an entire half-season. I had to listen to all your BS about his rotations, tactics, transfers etc. But the fact is his bosses sucked at their job, particularly Watzke. He had no control over the bus bombing and he didn't have a decent goal keeper so had field Weidenfeller. He did the best he could given the circumstances and deserved a 3rd season with a complete squad.
We are three games in with a new coach. He hasn't even had all his players yet and we are in first place That said I don't know if he will be great or terrible but neither does anyone else. We need a far larger sample size
people should to calm down, he's only had a handful of games. It's not as though PB was happy withthe result, he made it clear after the game that the result was not good enough. As underwheling as Castro is, he is the player that created the few very good chances in the game. Had Auba or Maxi finished the chances created, then a lot of this hate wouldn't be happening.
Ok Quintin, not sure why you're obsessed with Schürrle. Unlike Castro at least he's permacrocked and stays the hell away from the pitch.