Greenlizard0 Weekend Football Thread ** spoilers ** [13th - 15th August 2011]

Villas-Boas seems a nice chap though so I hope he gets on well.

I'm just going off my initial impressions of him though, he might be a wife beating ****** for all I know.
 
Really enjoyed the Real Madrid v Barcelona game :)

Real Madrid really played well and enjoyed lots of possession and looked really fit and sharp. Also, the referee that was in charge should be ashamed of himself, he bottled almost every decision, it's been a long time since I've seen a ref so out of his depth. Literally half the Real Madrid side should of been sent off.
 
Alonso and Pepe should have, though Barca don't help themselves with making a meal out of everything, the Pepe/Alves thing was stupid, but no more than a yellow, Alves threw himself in the air after what really was minor contact.

On replays Valdes should have gone, Marcelo actually got the ball, from first looks both looked like penalties.

It is the equivilent of the the community shield, ref's generally go easy with "preseason" style letting stuff go.

Shouldn't be surprising, last season one game Real dominated the first half against Barca by playing all out attack, every other game they were defensive, as were UTD and Barca had no problems.

Barca are weak at the back, not even close to playing on the back foot and make lots of mistakes at the back. Sure they weren't at full strength, but Barca's defence wasn't at full strength most of last season either. Benzema should have scored at least one of his headers, two cracking deliveries from Ronaldo and Ozil. Getting at Barca is the way to win, not sitting back. Khedira screwed up for the Messi goal, knocked it down for him and midair bumped into Messi to help him on in the right direction after the ball, talk about an assist :p

Messi's goal was a stunning striker, Barca will always be dangerous, but when you get at them, you'll score aswell. Hopefully Mourinho has finally learned that and all the El classico's the rest of the year will be the same open attacking footie(with Pepe attempting to murder everyone).

Alonso, I can't stand the guy, yeah got a goal, boo hoo, he kicked everyone, all game long, he's a filthy cheat, loses the ball constantly and his range of passing is kicking it high and long down the field, every single time he did so both a defender and an attacker got there, he's just hoofing it, defensively attrocious.
 
Alonso's a filthy cheat that goes around kicking everybody and can't pass but Diarra's the best thing since sliced bread? You've got to love DM. If his posts weren't so long and didn't take up half my screen, I'd take him off ignore.
 
Tom84 said:
Impressive stuff
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i thought they were pretty much spot on today, my blame rested on the ones ahead of him, Nani done **** all, all day apart from miss 2 sitters, Rooney was a little anonymous after the first 35, Young was good, but seemed to wait a second too long to cross at times and would hit the defender too often for my liking.

Cleverley and Anderson both looked composed and well in midfield, Cleverley especially when players were close around him, he'd control the ball, gather himself some space and lay it off or skip past the defender then lay it off. Made Carrick look like a fool once again.

Mostly annoyed with Nani, i can't remember anything he done well, just the usual i expected from him. I still don't see what people see in him, one good moment every 3-4 games just doesn't cut it for a player in the Man Utd shirt, maybe it's just he's stained with comparisons to Ronaldo, but with Young in now and much more productive, i'd rather we just played Valencia on the right, plenty of width, balls flashing across the box for Hernandez left, right and centre, sell Nani to the Madam Tussaud's as spare parts for the Jacko exhibit.
 
Pigeon_Killer said:
Agree. The amount of hoofing he did tonight was indeed laughable, got the ball and hoofed it straight to a team-mate nearly every time, shocking stuff.
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You do know most of his long balls did not get to a team mate, but don't let that trouble you or anything. HIs tackling all night long involved, letting someone run past him they kicking them from behind.

When he was "fouled" and rather threw himself to ground despite barely kicking the other guy in the shin on the follow through, he launched it 60 yards down the field, it was intercepted, he took the freekick, the same pass, it was intercepted.

The one thing Barca dealt with VERY easily all night long was the long ball from Alonso.
 
BaZ87 said:
Alonso's a filthy cheat that goes around kicking everybody and can't pass but Diarra's the best thing since sliced bread? You've got to love DM. If his posts weren't so long and didn't take up half my screen, I'd take him off ignore.
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Yet you knew exactly what I was talking about, did you actually watch the game tonight, download a copy of it from somewhere and honestly keep a tab of successful long passes vs unsuccessful ones, and successful tackles vs unsuccessful ones/fouls.

Diarra is simply a good player, he's not the best player in the world, he's simply good, very good mostly.

Diarra often fouls, but he wins a lot of tackles and most of his fouls are somewhere between Pepe's (psychotic)enthusiasm and Alonso's utter cynical challenges. All night long tonight Alonso simply kicked players from behind, I can't say it any more clearly and no one who saw the game without blinders on could remotely disagree.

He got 18 yellow cards last season, 16 the year before, and has deserved a heck of a lot more.

He never came close to that at Liverpool,(well not for his last few years there). The thing of it is, most of the time he really isn't going for the ball, he's just taking the player.

Its the first game of the season, Pepe conceded 2 fouls, but really a couple more at least, Khedira 5, about fair, Alonso 7, 5 I think basically not trying to get the ball, from behind, most because he was caught out of position, and he deserved more and he's one of the two people almost everyone thought should go.

Sanchez conceded 9? I'm not sure if that includes offside as he had a few of those, and some BS handball calls. But thats all coincidence right, and Alonso's the best player ever, despite rarely scoring, rarely assisting, rarely tackling successfully and frequently being at fault for goals conceded, sure.
 
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That Villa goal gave me a warm fuzzy feeling in my pants. wow. Messi's goal wasn't half bad either.

How is Fab going to fit into this squad now that Alexis Sanchez and Thiago look like regular starters? Sanchez will be playing in Pedro's role, right?
 
DanH84 said:
Heh that lampard pen claim was pretty cast iron to be fair.
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thought the ref got it spot on - he was falling before legs connected,

Looked for it way too much imo

shipinabottle said:
Made Carrick look like a fool once again.
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ummm - you know of course that Phealan / SAF have told Carrick and Cleverley to play completely differently, in different parts of the pitch and with different styles. So this kind of statement only makes you look foolish rather than MC

At the end of the day MC has been at the core of enough EPL titles and other trophies to deserve a little more respect

StewartMG said:
I'm pretty happy with Smalling and Jones as a CB pairing tbh. De Gea is slightly worrying but you'd assume it's just nerves *touch wood*.
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So would I be IF Smalling and Jones were being used as a pair but currently its Jones and Evans who due to the latter, will always look shakey. Until Evra's knee gets better (and I havent seen an estimate time for him to be back yet) , Fabio will be needed on the left (which seemed to work brilliantly with young yesterday) - which means Smalling is needed on the right.......which makes the whole back four look shakey imo

Tom84 said:
The worrying thing about De Gea is that his confidence looks shot to pieces and that's the exact same problem the likes of Tim Howard and Ben Foster had when they starting making mistakes. What made VDS so brilliant was not only were his errors few and far between when he did make them he was confident enough to just shrug them off (maybe being 20 years De Gea's senior helped with that).
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Pretty spot on imo - and yes totally agree its VDS's 20 years experience that makes him able to shrug off mistakes so easily (or even "just" the few years in the EPL @ Fulham before he got to Utd). It all helps

The other thing is Im not sure what experienced goalie Utd really had a shot at that would have made a huge difference. Yes maybe a seasoned EPL one would have allowed Utd to win Charity Shield 3-0, and yesterday 2-0.....but anyone apart from Reina and Cech (neither of whom were actually available) wouldnt make a difference in the big matches anyway .......well possibly Given, but he was at City anyway until recently so that wouldnt have made any difference to availability either. Did you ever read whether Buffon was ever actually available (and his transfer cost and weekly wages would have made the deal as expensive as Sneijder imo considering how few years Utd would have him for anyway)
 
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Shamikebab said:
I thought Evans looked fine when he came on yesterday and fine against City as well.
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Thought he came on for Evra against City didnt he?

There is also a big difference between WBA (no offence meant ) and Spurs / Arsenal / Chelsea -edit and a huge differnce between 15 minutes vs generally tired legs and starting against those teams mentioned
 
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'Just pat him on the head' fergie shows he understands how to console de gea after telling him he should do better lol.

The problem with a known dodgy keeper is that everyone is willing to throw everything at him, ball and player to force mistakes and to try to unsettle him as you saw on Sunday. they didn't bother doing the some to vds as he would just shrug it off.
 
According to the M E N Evra should be ok for the Spurs game, which means (depending on tactics etc) Fabio should be available to play on the right, which means any combination of Smalling / Jones / Evans available for centre half duty (while crossing fingers that at most Vidic will hopefully only miss one match at worst)


After spending £20m (give or take) on a player and moving him to a new league - of course you give him support and encouragement, if you dont give him a decent chance straight away that will only make the situation worse in the long run (and there is also no gaurentee any other keeper wouldnt make a mistake the original one covers well)
 
Yea he didn't make many errors but once your opponent senses a weakness they will try to force any advantage they can get off it. you could hear the wba fans getting on his back. Not confidence inspiring and now we have the youngest back 4 in the epl in front of him lol.
 
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