Greenlizard0 Weekend Football Thread ** spoilers ** [28th December 2013 - 1st January 2014]

Podolski kept dropping too deep yesterday, was a bit disappointing. We looked more threatening when Bendtner came on. Will give him the benefit of the doubt as first start since injury and not used to playing through he middle, I think the coaching staff need to work on his positioning if he's going to be deployed as the main striker.
 
As much as I like the thought of Podolski through the middle I can't help but feel his best position is starting on the left wing and drifting inside when he feels like it. I think there's a case for giving Bendtner some starts as well, he's won a few points for us in recent weeks and Giroud needs a break.
 
Pigeon_Killer said:
If we're going to ban refs for using the same language they have to put up with week in week out I might finally have sympathy for them.
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Ref's have for a very long time been swearing right back at players, which makes me think instantly this isn't along the lines of swearing. I forget which ref it is you can extremely routinely telling players to **** off when they get mouthy over a decision not going their way.

Players swear at refs, refs swear right back at players and have done for a very long time. I'd be surprised if this wasn't about something much more than just swearing.

HangTime said:
Podolski kept dropping too deep yesterday, was a bit disappointing. We looked more threatening when Bendtner came on. Will give him the benefit of the doubt as first start since injury and not used to playing through he middle, I think the coaching staff need to work on his positioning if he's going to be deployed as the main striker.
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It was clear last season, Giroud is a poor finisher, poor at running on to through balls but great with his back to goal and flicking passes in behind or over the top. I think he's pretty crap when running with the ball and I don't think I've seen him come close let alone actually score a chance where he receives the ball and either turns or beats a defender, runs at goal then scores.

Podolski IS that striker, but not good at the hold up play, it's not size it's just the style of player. They'd work well together but neither is suited to the build up play. Last year Podolski with Gervinho as the main striker, awful. Giroud with Gervinho on the wing, awful, Podolski on the wing with Giroud, Podolski played the ball into Giroud, made the right run, Giroud made the space for that run and then put the ball in to Podolski.

Bendtner's style is much closer to Giroud's and with the midfield we have, not exactly powerful runners, we don't have Ronaldo's pace or power to go shoulder to shoulder and fight through a defence so a guy to occupy the defence while our ickle midfielder's make the runs in behind.

Playing Giroud more consistently is one of the reasons Ramsey is doing so much better, he's still rather crap defensively but there are now spaces opening up for him to run through.
 
Robbo said:
It's easy to sit here and be negative all the time (like you are) because we don't play like Barcelona, or now Bayern. Yes, we should be more like those teams (in terms of team quality) but we've been carried by an utterly incredible manager for quite a while now..
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There in lies the problem , probably only a very small handful of Managers in world football would have got Utd two of the last three titles (and so close to the third that Man City won in the last seconds of the season) with such an unremarkable squad, with two or three top quality players.

Robbo said:
We've fallen behind on investing in the team because of this, but that will surely have to be fixed now. The club has behind it some of the most lucrative commercial deals in the business, so it's time to spend that money on the right players. If, as someone will no doubt suggest, we have no money, then we're in all sorts of trouble, but I very much doubt this is the case..
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I completely agree. I am concerned the new Nike deal hasnt been announced yet, I saw a couple of articles several months ago about a much shorter (ie 5 year) deal being negotiated but nothing since then.

I hope the club has the money it should be rolling in, but the longer little to no investment in the squad goes on, the bigger the concern.

Robbo said:
I thought this article raised some interesting points: http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11096/9098542/style-issues

One midfield player won't solve the problems. The winger style isn't working because our wingers are poor. Nani is the only one who can raise his game to an acceptable level and he's often injured or just plays badly..
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One top quality midfielder should cover the team until the summer (when transfers should be a little less extreme), when at least one more should be brought in to compliment the Jan purchase.

Nani hasnt been any good for 18 months and even at his best he took a high percentage of the chances (a la Ronaldo), but unlike his countryman Nani wasted a huge proportion of them.

Robbo said:
Cleverley for example is an absolute joke.
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Anderson hasnt been far worse for at least 3 years......and Giggs should never be used in a CM position either, but both managers have done that in the last twelve months.

Robbo said:
Lastly, RvP being out doesn't help. We look much better when we can field him along with Rooney, any team would suffer in a similar situation. Unfortunately the extent to which we suffer further highlights the weakness of the team..
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Spot on (and the fact that Rooney takes a high percentage of the free kicks / corners , rather than attacking the delivery where he should be. And in general play playing too deep to help the team but therefore less likely to be in the box when it matters.

Robbo said:
The only good things he's really done are hung on to Rooney and brought Januzaj through to the first team. Both things SAF would have likely done anyway.

I can't disagree though, he seems very negative overall. Calling a loss to Spurs a "good" thing, or even remotely implying it, is terrible.
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Actually I think Rooney would definitely have gone had SAF stayed, as the whole "requested a transfer" woudlnt have cooled down at all and SAF wouldnt have backed down. Agree about Januzaj though (although he could equally have been another Pogba)
 
I wrote this thinking of UTDs current situation.

Why do we attack?

A boy was pitted against a lion. And the boy had been given a stick and told to attack and kill the lion in order to keep his life.

The lion sits down facing the boy and the boy is too naive to coldy attack his adversary from the start. He begins to tap the lion on the nose with the stick, wondering whether the lion is that fierce afterall. After a while the lion gets fedup with being tapped on the nose and attacks the boy, drawing blood with a paw. The boy realises that he needs to be aggressive and attack the lion using strength and determination he has not used before to win the confrontation.

The next time the boy faced a lion he did not wait for the lion to attack him first.
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In UTD's case, they didnt seem to get past the tapping the lion on the nose bit. Occasionally they would fight back after the opposition hit first, rarely do they go into the match with the same gusto they could muster after being scratched. They failed to learn their lesson over and over again.

How many times do we need to go behind before we start 'playing' why cant we learn and come out of the starting blocks knowing that we cannot just simply run through the motions in order to grind out a win every week. The league is too competative for that.
 
drunkenmaster said:
I know, that's exactly what I've been saying for months, and for years with regards to Wenger. I don't care about doing worse, as long as you can see change. Wenger hasn't changed anything for 8 years, this year he actually went out and brought someone fairly top notch.

I think people are being a little fooled by our resurgence, inability to beat top teams and Wenger's fundamental mismanagement of rotation/players for fitness reasons has been a huge reason for failure every year for 8 years. Getting lucky one year with no injuries, Newcastle 5th, Liverpool jumping from outside of Europe to fighting for a title..... a little luck can shoot anyone up the table. Our injuries in the past 2 weeks mounting up is something I suggested would happen in this period for the past 3 months... not hindsight, but knowledge that Wenger still hasn't fixed the fundamental problem that has hurt us for years.

Either way in our case not much changed beyond spending big on one player, who is more and more looking not at all worth 42million, very good player, sure, consistent and THE guy to win the big games... almost entirely not so far.

42mil is the money you would spend on Ronaldo(or similar) and be the difference against Chelsea/City/Utd, not the guy who goes missing in those games.



As above, as I've been saying and Shami said, the position is almost irrelevant, in transition the CHANGE is the ONLY thing that matters. Change might one year take you to bottom half of the table then 2 years later truly competing with Barca/Bayern. Or you can be great for 6 months then get relegated, change is scary and a little unpredictable. The problem with Moyes is there is zero sign of change, none at all.

With no real changes to style/line up, the team really shouldn't be doing worse. It's when a manager comes in and makes it his team you expect the change to make the team better or worse. Benitez came in for RDM, made no changes and got almost identical performance out of the team(within around 1% same win/loss/draw ratio as RDM).

Every hint from Moyes is, too scared to make changes, unable to make the team work as is..... too scared to take injured players off for crying out loud. If ever a manager's actions screamed "I'm not capable in this job" I think it is being scared to sub RVP, seeing him get injured, then a couple weeks later doing it again to Rooney... in both cases in games they were losing and lost anyway.
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moyes should stay at united. Its cool to see united fail. Every club has its time and i hope united time has passed its sell my date.
 
The Running Man said:
I wrote this thinking of UTDs current situation.



In UTD's case, they didnt seem to get past the tapping the lion on the nose bit. Occasionally they would fight back after the opposition hit first, rarely do they go into the match with the same gusto they could muster after being scratched. They failed to learn their lesson over and over again.

How many times do we need to go behind before we start 'playing' why cant we learn and come out of the starting blocks knowing that we cannot just simply run through the motions in order to grind out a win every week. The league is too competative for that.
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Huh? That is the oddest analogy I've seen for a while, but to run with it:

If I was the boy, I'd just leave the lion alone, as I'd probably lose. Utd's problem is that they used to be the lion who teams were afraid to attack. They're becoming the boy.
 
manic111 said:
Huh? That is the oddest analogy I've seen for a while, but to run with it:

If I was the boy, I'd just leave the lion alone, as I'd probably lose. Utd's problem is that they used to be the lion who teams were afraid to attack. They're becoming the boy.
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Quite. My thoughts were around us attacking but without any venom m in the first half we had 66% posession. How many good shots on target did we hit? How many clear chances? Nowt till we went like 2 down.
 
So one more solo has contacted me and asked me to refrain from quoting his old posts. Why, I do not know.

But if you do read his old posts please try to use the context surrounding the posts and don't just take the post at face value as it might not be overly flattering.

Is that fair One More Solo?
 
jonneymendoza said:
moyes should stay at united. Its cool to see united fail. Every club has its time and i hope united time has passed its sell my date.
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While your post may not have been serious or whatever, I do somewhat agree for the neutral, it would be interesting to have United fall, as they have dominated the PL since forever.
 
BBC said:
Premier League bookings for simulation (from August 2008)
Gareth Bale - 7
Fernando Torres - 3
Adnan Januzaj - 3
Liam Lawrence - 2
David Bentley - 2
Ashley Young - 2
Luis Suarez - 2
Daniel Sturridge - 2
Javier Hernandez - 2
Oscar - 2
Andy Carroll - 2
Emmanuel Eboue - 2
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Some of these names are hilarious. I can't imagine Eboue or Carroll diving, they're far too clumsy - I expect they both just fall over!

Bale is streets ahead of everyone else though, Madrid was the perfect place for him to move to to continue developing!
 
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