Greenlizard0 Weekend Football Thread ** spoilers ** [5th - 9th December 2014]

Craterloads said:
Hope united start Falcao today, wasting someone of that quality on the bench if fit.

Edit: IS that why we haven't seen much of him, has he been injured?
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He has been injured since January.
A major injury (cruciate ligament).
He has had his operation (which was successful) and is gradually getting match fitness.
LVG tried bringing him back earlier in the season - he got injured.
So now, he lack match fitness and can only play about 20 minutes at a time.
To put it another way, I dont think he has played a competitive 90 minutes since January (perhaps someone can confirm this).
In a nutshell, he is recovering from injury, which is why he wont be starting any games for us in a while.
 
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Question: Southampton sold many of their players a few months ago.
They got paid big bucks.
Where did this money go?
Did they not use the money to buy equivalent replacements?
 
sunama said:
Question: Southampton sold many of their players a few months ago.
They got paid big bucks.
Where did this money go?
Did they not use the money to buy equivalent replacements?
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Yes, they bought Pelle, Tadic, Long, Forster, and brought in Alderweireld and Bertrand on loan. If anything they have brought in better players than they sold, or at least comparable. Pelle is a million miles better than Lambert for example, and I'd say Tadic is comparable to Lallana (he's had a better season than Lallana has had so far at Liverpool anyway).

It's amazing that United won tonight, we were so lucky. Still, winning when playing badly and suffering through lots of injuries is a great sign :D
 
Liverpool will always raise their playing level against Man Utd.
Man Utd will need to play well against Liverpool to get a win.
It doesnt help that we have so many of our 1st teamers injured. And today, yet again, one of our defenders (who are all made of glass), broke down during the game.
 
sunama said:
Liverpool will always raise their playing level against Man Utd.
Man Utd will need to play well against Liverpool to get a win.
It doesnt help that we have so many of our 1st teamers injured. And today, yet again, one of our defenders (who are all made of glass), broke down during the game.
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Er not at old trafford we didn't when you had ferguson bar the odd occasion, just like most teams that went there, rolled over and didn't go at united, I expect us to get thumped.
 
Hopefully Di Maria will be fit again by the game against Liverpool. I'm still quite amazed that we are only 5 points behind City and 8 behind Chelsea. We have had a shocker of a start to the season yet a little run of good results and we are back in the game. I still don't think we will end up anywhere near the two above us unless we miraculously dont have any more injuries this season and buy at least a top centre back in January but hopefully 3/4 place is very possible.
 
fez said:
Hopefully Di Maria will be fit again by the game against Liverpool. I'm still quite amazed that we are only 5 points behind City and 8 behind Chelsea. We have had a shocker of a start to the season yet a little run of good results and we are back in the game. I still don't think we will end up anywhere near the two above us unless we miraculously dont have any more injuries this season and buy at least a top centre back in January but hopefully 3/4 place is very possible.
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Full credit to West Ham and Southampton particularly but Im not sure how their current squad's will contend over the whole season (their 1st choices are very good team's though).

Still very worried about Arsenal and Liverpool and even Spurs to an extent who only need one or two good purchases in Jan to really start kicking on (and Sturridge should be like a new signing when he makes it back)

Im with you, dont think we will really be that close to either of the top two by May but now Utd have got to 3rd (and with a reasonable Xmas fixture list - all around ~10th spot as of now) thats a reasonable target.

Cant imagine having a worse injury time in the 2nd half of the season but one never knows
 
jonneymendoza said:
the standard of football in our league is depressing
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It is quite alarming how much the PL has dropped off the radar competing with other leagues.

I wish they'd bring an international law that all teams must play 5/6 players born in their nation, this doesn't change the standard of football here but teams maybe able to compete better using their own facilities and not just buying players for mega bucks from abroad.
 
Andybtsn said:
It is quite alarming how much the PL has dropped off the radar competing with other leagues.

I wish they'd bring an international law that all teams must play 5/6 players born in their nation, this doesn't change the standard of football here but teams maybe able to compete better using their own facilities and not just buying players for mega bucks from abroad.
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We had the similar ban for Europe years ago, it was depressing but it meant that the likes of Beckham, Neville's, Butt....etc all got pushed further up the ladder because of it. On the flip side, when the PL got going and the ban was lifted it meant we had the best foreign players joining our league.

I remember the days of United in Europe and we had to choose between which foreigners played, it was usually Schmeichel, Cantona and Irwin from what I can recall, it meant teams couldn't field their best 11 if they had 4/5/6 foreigners.

Domestically I think it could be possible and would help us nurture talent in this country but it would also harp back to the old days of not having the best footballers playing in this country. There is also all the European law nonsense that we have consider now.
 
Trying to limit the amount of foreign players used is pointless. Every prem team would fight it, particularly the big ones, and it would take a while for any cap to have an appreciable effect on the quality and quantity of homegrown players in the league. If it was going to be done it would have to be a Fifa-organised worldwide cap on foreign players, otherwise the prem would just lose loads of good foreign players to Spain, Germany, Italy etc.

At the moment there simply aren't enough good homegrown players out there, the big teams would be massively disadvantaging themselves by accepting any such measure, which would affect revenue, attendance figures, sponsorship deals. I think it would be a huge mistake, it could really damage some teams. To be honest, if it's a choice between maintaining the premier league and improving international success for England, I'd choose the prem every day. England's failures in major tournaments are disappointing, but I'd be absolutely gutted if the league I watch week in and week out was negatively affected at the expense of our national team.
 
There isn't enough homegrown players out there because they're replaced with foreigners! Chelsea have a great bunch of kids coming through but are loaned out and never given an opportunity anywhere near the starting 11.

City have built this amazing new training complex to bring up their youth but will they actually ever see the first team or will City just spend massive amounts on already made superstars.

Plus the Premiership standards have slipped so much it's not really a valid argument saying the league will suffer from limiting the foreigners.
 
Do you all genuinely believer that the standard of the PL has dropped massively. All I see are a lot of teams that are are much better than ever before which is causing the bigger sides problems that they wouldn't have done in the past. The top sides may not be much if any better than in the past 10 years but I would say the other 16 certainly are.
 
I'm not convinced the standard has dropped either, I think certain teams are struggling compared to last year (Liverpool, Everton, Spurs, Arsenal come to mind), but the general standard is still very high imo. For the first time in a while there's no team at the bottom who are miles off the pace. Normally at Christmas you can say for certain that the bottom team are going down, but that's not the case at the moment. I think that reflects the fact that more of the smaller teams are representing a greater challenge to the bigger teams.

I wouldn't say the prem is any worse than any of the other major leagues, it's just that the Spanish and German leagues happen to have arguably the three best teams in the world. I would certainly much rather watch the prem than any of the other leagues, it's boring having one or two teams absolutely dominate. At least in the prem you aren't ever absolutely 100% certain a team is going to win a game, whereas Real and Bayern at the moment are just steamrolling the opposition.

As far as I'm concerned, as long as the prem is the most watched league in the world (which it is) and as long as it remains competitive and entertaining I don't see why things should change.
 
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