Agreed. On the other hand, with Bielsa coming flair with no end product. Would not mind seeing a 7 man counter attack only for them to hit the post hehe.
My brief thoughts on this Pound Store London Derby: 1) Tottenham is excruciatingly mediocre. 2) Hojbjerg is just a complete waste of a footballer. He doesn't do anything well, and I don't think he'd stand out in any league above League One. 3) Palinha should have gotten at least 3 yellows in this game. No idea how he's avoided red.
On #2 I was looking at Declan Rice's stats and it seems that PEH is just as good if not better than Rice, who we are linked to.
Rice has had a disappointing season .. plus he’s leading West Ham into the championship - even Moyse kinda criticised him about ten days ago
Which is why WHU missed a trick not selling him for the reported 90-100mil last season. No way is he worth that now.
Watching this Madrid derby in the Copa del Rey, and my god does Dani Ceballos still suck. Man has been stealing a living for years.
Just catching up a little bit on USSoccer news (and not exactly wanting to dive into the USMNT forums on this website)... I knew that Berhalter's contract was not renewed in December. But today I learn that Sporting Director Ernie Steward and GM Brian McBride are leaving. And President Cindy Parlow says she hopes they can hire a new head coach by end of summer. So a rather extensive overhaul of the management team. With1.5yrs until the Olympics and 3.5yrs until we host WC'26, I guess that's enough time to make these kind of changes? I know it's a little bit apples and oranges but if Arsenal are any guide, we did our own house-cleaning in recent years, and our new HC (and TD/SD) took 2-3 years to really achieve impressive results on the groundwork he (they) laid over that time. So perhaps USMNT has a chance to do something similar? I'd guess the odds are not overwhelmingly in their favor though. So here's a question... Q: When you compare club teams to national teams, is it generally harder/longer or easier/faster to make big overhauls and changes of direction like this... with ultimate improvement and goal achievement? There are interesting differences: Budget constraints on squad building vs theoretically calling up any player that qualifies for citizenship; Working with squads 5-6 days/week for 10 mos/year vs having players only during interlulls; etc.
Nothing changes Atlético Madrid fans were disappointed with Memphis' performance and were insulting him on social media, calling him 'fat', 'slow' and 'out of shape'.
How does any journeyman midfielder get playing time at a big club? I guess he costs them nothing and can do a job
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...-in-the-world-2022?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other 3 Arsenal players - Saka (22), Odegaard (35) and Jesus (62) - make The Guardian's top 100. It's a pretty flawed list, Emi at 20? Giroud at 30? LOLoris at 76? It's a lot of overindexing what happened in Qatar and older players coasting on reputation.
Indeed. Obviously the algorithm is flawed. I've heard several pundits, Arsenal fans or not, argue that MO8 is the best in the Prem this year. And helpfully KdB hasn't been his most stellar self.
Spurs are the Harrison Bergeron of the Premier League. Always playing right to the level of their opponent; they have one win by multiple goals since the middle of October. Anyway, they're 0-0 with Preston, 11th place in the Championship, approaching halftime. xG for both teams thus far is 0.16.
They have a hard time scoring when they can’t counter and I would be surprised if Preston wasn’t sitting in a deep block for this game. BTW I turned on the Southampton Blackpool game this morning to watch Petino, but he was really hard to identify on the field and while the announcer knew most of the Southampton player’s names, the same can’t be said for the Blackpool players, so I ended up turning it off. However, Petino did score in their 2-1 loss.
Gotta say, I love watching BHA play. No Tossard or Caicado, and they still thoroughly handle Pool in the FA Cup. Mitoma is a monster. His game winner was incredible and worth a watch from several angles. I like this one best. From this angle you can really appreciate how good the #Mitoma goal is! #BHALIV #BHAFC #EmiratesFACup pic.twitter.com/r89VtQg3V1— Football Mad! ⚽️ (@FootballMadUK) January 29, 2023
That was Pools best chance at European Football in my opinion. No FA Cup, no EFL Cup, 2 legs coming up against Real Madrid and 9th in the league. We are likely to get Man U and New U in the top 4 and the EFL Cup final, so that means 6th spot will get a EL spot assuming a top 5 team wins the FA Cup.. FA Cup is still early and a wide open competition, but really Liverpool have to do what looks extremely unlikely and win the CL if they want European football next season. I actually want BHA to win the FA Cup. Gives them EL football and means we get a team playing really attractive football getting a reward.
6th place gets a Europa League berth if a top 5 team wins the FA Cup already; the EFL Cup final has no bearing on that, since that winner qualifies for the Conference League now. Liverpool is mighty ********ed though.
They already have with Diaz, Nunez, Jota, Trent. Their big problem is that their entire system revolves around VVD being superman, but kinda hard to find a second superman.
For me, the bigger issue is that their midfield got very old, very quickly, and they've done nothing to prepare for or rectify that. The last U-25 central midfielders they signed were Fabinho and Keita in 2018.
Their problem was that they decided to wait for Bellingham, but in doing so, may have put themselves in a spot where they miss out on him anyway.