I don’t even consider a 23-year-old to be a young player anymore. I definitely don’t consider him/her to be a very young player.
Oh our creativity is kaput. Why are we so bad at making chances. Mikel has set us up like we are going for cups.
A little harsh - we've got a bunch of new players, and Saka, Odegaard, and Havertz have all missed significant time.
In rewatching the game, we did some good things attacking wise but in my extremely humble opinion the players executing the final actions just ain't that good, yet, or maybe they won't ever be but whatever. The little layoff by Gyokores to Timber gave me flashbacks to Giroud who was very good holding up play. I also think that Gyokores is too heavy but maybe he's just that way I dunno I aint never watched the guy so whatever. Defensively we were very compact and LFC matched that, when they started to go to a wider split in their positioning it seems we went man v man and that allowed VVD to start spraying linebreaking passes and stepping up more cause it seems we instructed whoever it was to follow Grav as he dropped in deeper and VVD kinda moved up to either drive in space iirc he got a freekick or two and thats also when Wirtz started picking up better attacking positions. Deccers in that sort of 8 position with Eze on the left was a vybz with Califiori overlapping and overloading that side, could prove to be more of a threat going forward as familiarity and cohesion develops. Not sure why Nwaneri didn't get a cameo perhaps the manager wanted an outright winger on the right and not Nwaneri who imo is better centrally. Still not enough chance creation and unless that changes we are not winning one of the big boys. IMO the patterns on the right with Madueke and Zubi would have been more threatening if (insert better player on the right's name) was there. Which reminds me, why didn't we ever consider going after Kudus? IMO a player of that ilk on that side on Sunday and we'd be off the champers as they say in the UK. Either way wish we would have gone up there with more attacking mentality but whatever. First half 1 shot on target from us, zero from LFC, 2nd half 3 shots on target from them, zero for us. All these other stats, field tilt, WAGS Quotient, Instagram engagement mean nothing when you don't threaten the opponent and again, cannot create chances. IF you've read this far, God Bless you lol its Int'l break so I had some time.
I haven't done a rewatch, but on the AV pod (they had), they mentioned that in the second half, it looked like Slot recognized Martinelli wasn't going to be much of a threat, so he had Szoboszlai start pushing up more into the midfield, which created overloads, especially because Jones, who replaced MacAllister was doing a lot more running. It took a bit for us to adjust to picking up what was now an extra man in midfield. Agree that the "other stats" don't mean much at the end of the day if you're not creating good shots from them. But what those stats are useful for is that they undermine the narrative that we just went up there for a draw. If the field tilt and final third passes and average defensive line position are all in your favor, that's not being purposefully conservative. That you don't create those killer chances is then more down to what you say in the beginning----the quality of those last actions before a shot just wasn't good enough on the day.
Yeah last part always lacked quality. It'll be interesting to see going forward if that improves because clearly that's the difference innit?
There is a very clear reason. Saliba averaged nearly 4500 minutes the last two seasons, .which has to be mentally and physically draining. It is nearly 500 more combined minutes (5.5 games) for the last two seasons than Rice, van Dijk, and Salah. I don’t believe any other field player in the Premier League and Campions League competitions is close.
Well Saliba’s minutes should be down this season, due to his new injury. He may miss a month of matches
IPossibly interesting factoids. 1. Only twice has a team that wasn't at least twice the season before won the EPL era. Liecester in '17 and Chelsea the next year. 2. No team has ever finished runner up 4 years in a row. 3. Last season was the first time since 1923 an Arsenal player failed to score double digit goals.
It might make some sense if you substitute second for the second use of twice, but that immediately falls afoul of the fact that Liverpool didn’t finish second in 23-24.
I don’t think he’s a bot. Some of his takes are the glass is half full and some are the glass is half empty.
Now that it's official: Ange will be at the helm Saturday for Forest's visit to N5... anybody wanna step up to make a new MD thread? (if no-one does, I probably will, but it's always good to share it around)
I would expect a bot to be consistent one way or another. Good AI, might be able to pull off differing takes on similar issues, but most of the AI I’ve seen (admittedly not a lot) has shown flaws.
Sorry typo, number one. In the EPL era, only teams that have finished 3rd or higher the season before won the title. The exception is Leicester in '17 and Chelsea the next season.
I’ve seriously considered the same question. The join date is 2003 but I don’t remember their contributions until the last several months, and the posts often ignore the context around it. Feels like a dormant account that was hacked and populated with ai content.
The only question I have is why they haven’t responded to this discussion, but that could be just jumping in with an opinion without reading the entire thread. That would also explain why they sometimes appear to ignore the context around their posts,
I am not as despondant about the game in retrospect. Why? We didn't give them much of a sniff and we didn't start two of our linchpin players (Odegaard and Saka) as well as our best central defender leaving the game early. I am very encouraged. Yeah its early and assume neither team is at their best but I am more optimistic now than ever. We just need to get Gyokeres 3 or 4 very good looks at goal and I am fairly confident he'll bury one of them. Even 2 or 3.