Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost Wes Brown was miserable. He made Robert Huth look like Baresi. Anyway, the comments upthread about losing to mediocre teams are the ones that should be paid attention to. Arsenal and Chelsea are set up to beat the snot out of the WBAs, Blackburns and Birminghams of the world. They don't let them have any of the ball and they either a) bang them into submission from every area of the field (Chelsea) or pass the ball around until the poor minnow defenders are dizzy and give up a clear-cut opening (Arsenal). Manure struggled to find a fulcrum in their attack last season. When Chelsea struggled with poor play from their forwards, they still had excellent, consistent and creative play from their wingers. C Ronaldo is good on his day. But he is not the finisher that Robben is and he is not as consistent as Duff is. Giggs carried the team at times - but he struggled through other times with his tender hammies. And then there was Lampard and Gudjohnson. These two guys are so steady and are capable of simplifying and controlling the game when things go dodgy. Ya'll missed that last season. Rooney will grow more into that role and Smithie showed some of that skill early in the season. But you really never got over your dependance on Ruud and Scholes was simply not the force on and off the ball he has been in other years. SAF needs to find out a way to dial Rooney and Ronaldo in on the same wavelength with the rest of the team and he needs to do it pretty quick. Arsenal has made some smart signings recently. Van Persie and Reyes both showed that they can finish games out in a pinch and Hleb may be the boldest move yet. Hleb will either render Pires moot (should he continue to kibbitz about his contract) or light a fire under his butt. He is also far more prepared to play in a Bergkamp withdrawn role when called upon to do so. Now Wenger only needs to sort out his rather pedestrian backline and he will have the Arsenal train back in the station. Arsenal are dangerous from all over the field. They are able to find a weak player on a mediocre team and exploit him, because they have so much skill in each attacking position on the field. And because of Henry's consistency and acceleration and the passing touch of their midfield and linking players - they are able to unhinge almost any bunker. In fact, they are so dominating and dynamic in possession that unlike almost any of the able-to-dominate teams in the EPL, they force their opponents to fight for possession and abandon the bunker and open themselves up to more bloodletting by M. Henry, Ljungberg and Pires. Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea are all more vulnerable to the bunker than Arsenal. Arsenal struggled last season due to their dodgy keepers, momentary losses of self-belief (crucial to the Arse agenda) and their short bench. If they don't have the injuries they had last season and get even average improvement from their developing players (Reyes, Van Persie, Toure, etc) than they are in a better position to challenge Chelsea next year. Not because they are necessarily better. But because they are better at beating crap teams and it will be easier for them to plug their holes. But don't worry. They will still be crap in Europe. They still struggle in games where they cannot dominate possession. Their defense just isn't up to the standard.
Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost Yeah but I think we could all agree that Carroll was Sh!t..........
Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost Ummm....put it this way.....I was sad to see him leave your club.
Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost Well, yes and no. Having a reliable keeper helps instill confidence in the defense to a much greater extent. Without that confidence, they're not as likely to push forward, hence the attack suffers from a lack of options on the wings, the central mids leave more space in the middle of the pitch, and goalscoring options decrease. Having a goalkeeper who can truly be the backbone of a team's defense goes a long way towards success on all parts of the pitch.
Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost And yet despite Schmeichel's supposed invincibility, it was Chelsea last season who had the best defensive record in the EPL ever (while scoring the second most goals, btw) despite not having a left back for most of the season. Or are you arguing Cech is better than Schmeichel?
Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost Other than your comment on Wes Brown (I thought he looked fairly solid last season, unlike the previous year), I agree with the majority of your post. Our inability to really scare teams with our passing and possession has left us susceptible to the bunker for a couple of years now. Taking a fast English game and making it even faster is something we need to get back to. I think our personnel is just fine--the problem remains SAF's insistence on fitting square pegs into round holes.
Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost Oh for crying out loud nice... I was agreeing with Achtung that Peter gave our defense the confidence, confidence which translated to all areas of our pitch. Last season our goalkeepers never had that confidence, and the whole team suffered for it. No one was saying that Schmeichel single-handedly give us the best defense ever ugh...
Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost Yeah but one could argue that Roman single handedly gave Chavski the best defense ever.....
Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost What does all this have to do with the idea that a solid keeper can help build confidence in the attack?
Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost Exactly. Every visitor to our boards these days always seem to come here looking to provoke an argument, it's annoying.
Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost Doesn't wash. Players in positions where defense occupies a significant amount of their time scored more goals this past season than the players in the same position in 2002-2003 when Utd last won the title. Rio even had a couple of shots on goal this year!.
Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost What improvements have Man U made in order to close the gap with Chelsea and Arsenal? I new goalie helps and Saha goes, that helps. But not a whole lot.
Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost That's not what I was referring to. I was simply pointing out that a team's confidence in its keeper is a factor, albeit a minor one, in allowing a team to push forward and create chances on goal from more players. Anyone who has played at even a rec level (which includes most folks on this board) can tell you that. Overall we scored more goals in 02-03 than we did this season. Same can be said for the Schmeichel years as well (though his distribution went a long ways towards helping as well). Of course it isn't a hugely significant factor, because we were still scoring in buckets with the inconsistent Bosnich in goal.
Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost Wes Brown had one, maybe 2 or 3 bad outings... Huth had, maybe 2 or 3 outings... shut up... Spector played more games than Huth. Wes Brown is a competant CB when not being made a b!tch by Alan Shearer I don't think u saw many or any of our games... we struggled against the weaker sides, but the majority of those draws/losses came as a result of poor finishing, you could count on one hand the number of games we played where we did not have the most possesion or most shots. We need to tweak our team just a bit against the weaklings, but having our best goalscorer healthy and in form will go a long way to beating those teams. Ronaldo was quite consistent, his crosses improved greatly, so much so that it was noticable despite the lack of a real target in the center to receive them. We suffered from a loss of form from Giggs from time to time, but hopefully we've addressed that by adding Park. Smith has never controlled a game in his life. He's a guy who benefits from mistakes and works very hard to find an opening, he's not a dominator though, he lacks the skill to take a game by the scruf of its neck ala, Keane, Rooney, Giggs and even sometimes Ronaldo - though this happens mostly when playing for Portugal. We were over-reliant on Rooney and Ronaldo last season, the only good thing u said here was that Scholes was not as good as he usually is, and that was only for the very beginning and the end of the season, cuz his goal tally was still good. What we need to do is focus on attacking more as a team, and moving the ball from wing to wing to spread teams out. Too often we just give it to Rooney to work magic or give it to Ronaldo to beat a man or two and swing in a cross or shoot, or the same for Giggs, we need more passing and if possible to stop being quite so direct. Its fine to counter attack, but the goals where 5 or 6 players touched the ball before the shot seemed to have dried up last season. I'm glad you admire Arsenal, we've made some good moves too incase u have not noticed. We've increased our depth on the wings and added someone to backup Fletcher in the 433 with just the signing of Park and we were able to sure up the goalkeeping by landing VDS Arsenal play pretty football, and their style is unique, however - while they dominate weaker teams with that style some of the top teams will soon learn how to combat their play. They dont dominate possesion quite as much as u suggest, they do hold the ball from time to time, but not in the way ManU and Chelsea do, Arsenal's primary mode of attack is the lightening counter with lots of movement off the ball and passing. You are right though, they break down the bunker better than most. Alas, we dominated them last season though, things can change this year or the next, but I dont think we should adopt their approach at all, just tweak ours. In case u did not notice, Chelsea only lost 1 game last year... Arsenal pulverizing crap teams wont get them closer... Chelsea wont have another season like that again... maybe close, but not as good, and its up to all the teams to raise the level of their game up to chelsea's and to find a way to crack their scheme. Arsenal did not suffer that badly from their keepers... it was bad, but mostly their problems stemmed from injury like you said, and their lack of depth. They lost Edu and added Hleb, whom all their supporters claim will not play in central midfield, so they did not get more depth in the area they most needed it last season - until they do, its a distinct weakness and failure on their part. Its not their defence, its the defence of the other teams... you cant counter when a team is sitting back, and part of Arsenal's problem is marking on set pieces and lack of committment by the non-Vieira midfielders (they dont get stuck in).
Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost You are a horrible person. And not for what you posted here, but for what you got red carded for.
More from Mourinho the Jackass Mourinho just never shuts up..... Poor Chelsea have things so hard it's not fair Boo Hoo..... Love how he tries to make it like he's Mr. Innocent http://soccernet.espn.go.com/headlinenews?id=336930&cc=5901
Re: Mourinho: Get better or get lost Well, it is pretty embarrassing to lose to Liverpool. I'd come up with every excuse I could if we lost to them as well.