2013/14 Pre-season Friendly Thread

[The Running Man]

and Rooney and Berbatov were 9 and 5 years ago, what's your point?

Strikers are more expensive than midfielders generally, this is hardly a revelation.

I guess my point was that none of our strikers have just retired, unlike scholes for example or Hargreaves effectively. Leaving us with only Carrick and Anderson as senior first team centre midfielders and leaving us with the likes of Young and Valencia. I dislike both of those players too.

Up front we already had rooney, welbeck, hernandez so we then blew 22 million on RVP which is fine. But why buy a player to replace your best player (rvp to replace rooney) when you have so many inferior playes right across the midfield who could all easily be replaced with that sort of money.

When rooney complained about our aspirations he wanted people like 'don't pass me the ball' Park replacing or gigs or scholes, or Ronaldo...NOT ROONEY himself. He is literally better than 95% of the rest of the team, so you can understand how is he confused and angry that we are replacing him and not the other dross. (though thankfully our Korean nightmare has now disappeared).

Although buying jones and smalling was seen as being for the future, you cant play two young inexperienced centrebacks, so you cant really develop them, hence you shuffle them out side or into midfield, because you invested so much in them you left yourself with no money to fill out our midfield, or just not will power to flesh out our midfield any more.

Edit, also the most expensive player in the world was not a striker. neither was Figo, nor Zidane. Nor is bale. Neither was kaka.

 

[Shamikebab]

We didn't buy RvP to replace Rooney..we bought him to replace Berbatov.

 

[The Running Man]

Oh I thought that when RVP came Rooney became second choice striker and got displaced? And now Moyes is telling Rooney that he is second choice and he is displaced?

 

[Shamikebab]

Neither of those things are true.

 

[shipinabottle]

Oh I thought that when RVP came Rooney became second choice striker and got displaced? And now Moyes is telling Rooney that he is second choice and he is displaced?

That makes my hungover brain hurt.

RVP was the runner up for Player of the year, he was the top goal scorer, he simply implied that were we to lose RVP to injury he'd expect Rooney to step up to the plate and perform as well.

You're worse than tabloid journalists, manipulating responses to take them out of context. Quite disgusting from a club's supporter.

I disagree with a lot of things that are occurring, but your blind hatred towards Moyes is appalling.

 

[cm1179]

spurs 4-0 up against south china. it's been comical.

 

[Yas786]

Dear god that pitch, that pitch...how the hell are they managing to play on that.

Hilariously Dzeko missed a penalty, absolutely skied it

 

[Psycho Sonny]

spurs 4-0 up against south china. it's been comical.

that pitch is horrible, and it has been ever since the first game was played.

united supposedly playing there on monday, after these 2 games, it's going to be even worse.

i know di canio has already stated how bad it is, but seriously, dont they have another stadium they could switch it to?

or can they not just cut out huge squares and replace them with new turf?

better than playing in sandy mud

 

[Pighardia]

First home game of preseason, pouring down with rain.... Of course!

 

[Yas786]

Leicester playing the almighty Monaco, Falcao is in the squad...should score a tonful of goals

 

[MissChief]

Leicester playing the almighty Monaco, Falcao is in the squad...should score a tonful of goals

Leicester playing much better than Monaco at the moment!

 

[Cosimo]

Leicester playing the almighty Monaco, Falcao is in the squad...should score a tonful of goals

You could have scored the one he got. Monaco 2-0 at HT.

 

[Yas786]

Leicester playing much better than Monaco at the moment!

The scoreline says otherwise

 

[Robbo]

(Might as well put this in here)

Dortmund currently beating Bayern 3-1 in the German Super Cup. 61 mins gone.

It's on ESPN for anyone interested.

Edit: 3-2 now, Robben.

 

[explicit4u]

Reus 4-2!

Guardiola bringing on a CB for Kroos is interesting.

 

[Pighardia]

Good game tonight. We lost 3-1 to Villareal, but some of the youngsters looked quite good. We went 1-0 up in 20 seconds.

Villareal were a class above!

 

[johnyccc]

I think it's a real shame that Bayern went with Pep. They were such a fast and exciting team to watch. His style is very effective but dull as dishwater.

As for MUFC, aside from januzaj, I have been impressed by Zaha. Without having seen too much of him at Palace, the slightly clumsy dribbling style seems to have gone and he's shown more maturity, not trying to beat half the team each time he gets the ball.

 

[shipinabottle]

I think it's a real shame that Bayern went with Pep. They were such a fast and exciting team to watch. His style is very effective but dull as dishwater.

As for MUFC, aside from januzaj, I have been impressed by Zaha. Without having seen too much of him at Palace, the slightly clumsy dribbling style seems to have gone and he's shown more maturity, not trying to beat half the team each time he gets the ball.

I think one thing between his days at United and Palace is that at Palace he was their best player, and it was probably more effective for him to just lone gun it at times, where as with United he has players he should be able to rely on to communicate and create sequences with that will be more effective. He's a talent, hopefully we help him develop and mature in the right way both on the pitch and off it.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Posted in the other thread

I missed it during the game, but heard them comment that Thiago seemed to be taking most of Pep's rage, didn't have a clue that is what they meant. That really isn't "friendly" or joking, just flat out slapping him seems very odd.

Overall I thought Thiago was poor, all well and good chesting it in against a crap team when you dominate but, last night against a good team he seemed completely out of place. Particularly in the defensive midfielder role, something Martinez absolutely shines at and Swineface is pretty good at(but is more offensive than Martinez), the thing being he's brought in his Barca player, started him loads in preseason, and played him in a relatively important game when they could quite easily have put Dante in there defensively. It comes across as he's brought in "his" man and will play him and he seemed to match what I thought of him at Barca, he's more Iniesta than Xavi, not particularly good defensively at all, weak on the ball, mistake prone and not all that good.

Robben was always good, he had a run there for a couple years where he and Ribery both seemed a bit cack in all the big Champs league games, the finals they lost but last season start to finish in the champs league and in the german league(made an effort to watch more last year) he was generally outstanding, brilliant in the biggest games, and despite the team being meh him and Lahm still performed as required.

Will be interesting to see what Pep does, if they do over time become more Tika-boring, or if Bayern continue to attack the same way. Defensively last night was a pretty good example of why Dante was first team last night, own goal and doing his best to get out of the way for the second goal iirc.

What I really don't get is, Pep promoted several players from the b team, Thiago included, but he barely gave him a game till they had a stupid long season, Euro, long season with champs league and confed cup, so they rested Iniesta/xavi a bit more and he finally got games. Guardiola didn't really give him the time of day till the squad was knackered and not in Busquets position, yet now he seems to have taken over the defensive midfield role Busquets had... which he seems ill equipped for.

 

[BaZ87]

Oh Coutinho