Victims of a Campaign- The Other Footy Teams Thread

I’d say Erling Haaland’s little slump is officially over this week. Woosh!

5 on Tuesday. 3 today. 6 hatricks in the EPL this season. Today’s goals in the cup were pristine and supremely confident.

Scary when he’s like this.

 

Our old buddy Willian may have just helped us a bit by getting sent off, giving up a PK and opening up the sluces for Manure to make its way to Wembley.

Edit: apparently Mitrovic and Silva got themselves ejected also not sure when. But Fulham were like 15’ from an upset win and trip to FA Semis… when they threw it all away!

 

Helps Arsenal how?

 

An added match, more minutes and distraction for the team that’s 2 places below us. Definitely not as important as the upcoming load on Citeh but still potentially helpful.

 

Man U have literally no ability to reach us in PL, why would you want them to potentially be able to win another trophy?

 

Fergie was going through a dreadful time .. worse than Palaces and there was talk about him playing one game at a time to save his job .. they stood by him

 

1. Where did I say I wanted them to win a trophy? It was all about wear and tear, potentially causing them to drop more points in the league.

2. They are 19 points behind us. OK that’s more than I realized when I made that post BUT there are still 36 points on offer to them. So no they aren’t “literally” unable to reach us. In a month or so hopefully that’ll be true but not yet. And loading them with more midweek matches might just help.

3. My preferred order of desirable FA Cup winners would be: SUFC, BHAFC, MUFC, MCFC. YMMV and that’s perfectly fine by me if it does.

 

Sarcasm mate

 

That’s not what I asked you. When Ferguson was going through that rough patch, he already broke up the old form with Aberdeen and defeated Real Madrid in the Cup Winners Cup final, the only trophy Madrid never won. He also guided Scotland in the World Cup after Jack Stein’s death.

Where in Vieira’s managerial background do you see that?

 

During the start of his ManU tenure… as described

 

My bad, I thought you could understand my post. Carry-on, buddy.

 

So United can catch Arsenal if they win every game and we drop 17 points?

If they manage to even come close to catching us, we have way bigger problems to deal with. United is irrelevant.

 

Of course that’s very likely true but not “literally” true as Llama said.

UCL qualification is in same category. Someone like yourself(?) might’ve even made just that point above? St. Tott’s Day too.

And I very much look forward to all of these milestones becoming literally true!

 

This article compares the sale of an NFL team to an EPL team. While it’s written from a layperson perspective, it touches on a bunch of the things that have been discussed on this board in recent years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/sports/commanders-manchester-united-sale.html

 

Another game, another goal for Balogun, 17 in Lige 1, leaving him just 2 goals behind Mbappe, 18 in all competitions. He also hit the woodwork.

 

Wow. At the start of the season, who woulda predicated such a performance by Flo? Just like who woulda predicated such a performance by Arse? What a season!

 

Now I can see why he never took the Real job: Seems to me that once you expose him as a hack he does nothing but whine and complain about the job, about the quality of the players, about the transfers he wanted but never got.

Never mentions how he was crap in his 2nd season at Chelsea and not much better with *****.

 

I watched a YouTube video of his goals on YouTube just now which pretty much makes me an expert.
On first watch thru, the thing that stood out most is how bad the goalkeeping and defending is in Ligue 1.

Of his 15 goals featured in the vid (probably a few weeks old) 5 of them are PKs. He does seem to find himself in some good positions, but I found myself asking whether he'd have the time and space he's in, against an English Premier League team. Some of these goals are great strikes. But some of them are assisted by some pretty bad errors in defending and goalkeeping.

Certainly a 10 in terms of the overall experience, success and confidence he's gaining on loan, no complaints there at all. But I wouldn't expect him to leap frog Nketiah next season based off what I watched.

 

Just caught up with this FA Cup QF match from the weekend. If you've got 8 mins on your hands, this won't disappoint too much. Classic English cup tie, classic English atmosphere, not half bad commentary ("Ollie McTurnie!") and a late winner that rivals what Reiss did for us 2 weeks ago...

 

I would love to know what in the blue hell was going on inside the heads of Silva and Mitrovic in that VAR review during their tie with United.

First: It was clear to me that Willian (*hock*spit*) handled the ball and second: Clear that he denied a goal scoring opportunity by handling the ball. So what were the remonstrations all about unless they were playing "whataboutism" with other calls that didn't go their way?

 

While I agree that Ligue 1 is a weaker league, its offset by the amount of goals Balo is scoring and the age he is. Its not like he is an established 26 year old over there on holiday, he is 21. A lot of strikers don't hit their peak til much later.

Just looking at Ligue 1 stats, Balogun has 17 goals in 14 matches and 4 of those were penalties.

Also, it we look at the goal scorers ahead of him, David has 19 goals in 12 matches and 6 of those are penalties, and Mbappe has 19 goals from 13 matches and 2 of those are penalties.

So its not like 50% of Balos goals or more were penalties to fluff the numbers, and its not like other players around him in the goal scoring charts aren't scoring penalties either.

If you look at the other players on 17 goals with Balogun, Lacazette and Ben Yedder both have 4 penalties as well.
Which is insane to me how many penalties are given in Ligue 1, but then again thats coming from a fan of a club who gets scrooged out of penalties so maybe my perceptions are warped.


Also the line about bad errors defending and goalkeeping, have you been watching the bottom 5 clubs in the EPL? Some of the defending this season by those clubs hasn't even been bottom of the Championship level at times.

 

Or they could be like the FIA, wait until the next to last lap to realize they should have penalized Alonso for something that happened 35 laps ago, then enforce a 10 sec penalty after the podium celebration, then reverse the 10 sec penalty hours later. FIA challenges FIFA, the NCAA and the IOC for the biggest clown shown.

Also, while I like the idea of a middle ground punishment between a meaningless yellow card and the very harsh red card, I irrationally hate the term sin bin. But I guess penalty box that hockey uses is taken so they'd have to come up with something else.