Greenlizard0 Weekend Football Thread ** spoilers ** [9 - 17th February 2013]
- Thread starter Robbo
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Despite a not great performance, it was almost a perfect day for us today. A scrappy 1-0 win, and none of the teams around us won... Us and Blackburn are the only 2 teams in the top 12 to win today!!!
We play Blackburn at home on Tuesday and 3 points would be massive. Hopefully this is the start of our play-off push.
We play Blackburn at home on Tuesday and 3 points would be massive. Hopefully this is the start of our play-off push.
Caporegime
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Thats almost verbatim what someone posted earlier, and its complete nonsense.
If you lose the gap is nine points, if City had won and you lose the gap would be 6 points... it doesn't matter what Utd do, City dropped 3 points, that means everything, extending the lead further is a different matter and just compounds the massive screw up by City(and mostly Mancini).
Mancini is mismanaging the team, has done for a couple years, and did for years at Inter, unless Mancini changes his entire style of management the chances of them making up a 9 point gap is minimal.
Caporegime
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yes and the team was much better last year.... and Utd threw the points away on top of that.
If Utd collapse in the same way, City aren't as good as last year so wouldn't make up the points anyway. Utd are 7 points up(plus a game extra played) than at the same stage last year and City are 4 points down and TWO extra games played than at the same stage last year(footie 365 compares to the date rather than round). So effectively City are 10 points off where they were last year, and Utd are doing better. Utd were BEHIND City at this point last year, then improved then dropped 8 points stupidly. If the same thing happens as happened last year from this stage onwards, Utd would increase their gap to 20+ points, then City would bring it back to a bit over 10.
Fact is watch City, they look broken, very few players are performing well every week, Yaya is half the player he was last season, Silva is less than half the player, Aguero is somewhere between no where near as good and getting woeful delivery, Barry got even worse, Kompany and Hart are worse, Garcia is worse than De Jong, Sinclair is worse than Johnson, Nasri is doing even less this year than last year. Tevez was one of the few players actually playing very well and Mancini is once again shooting himself in the foot by dropping him AND he sold Balotelli. They've scored 15 less having played 2 extra games, no goals, no spark, no fight and they don't have the players to bring either back. Nasri and Silva are wimps, they never take a game by the scruff of its neck, they can only play well when the team is, they've got FAR too many guys like that this season, sold one of the few fighters the team had and benched the other.
The team is doing worse, the team is worse, and the team are in a worse position, while Utd are doing better, with a more consistent striker who has been bang in form all season, I'd frankly be shocked if they gained significantly on Utd even if Utd drop a bunch of points.
Been playing like today on and off all year, more so now with the new guy.
Best bit, we outplayed city comprehensively.
Caporegime
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Since basically the start of the season Southampton have played some great attacking football, not like Barca, but patches of very good and in a lot of games they lost, scored, looked threatening, just with a frequently woeful defence. The lowest team to have scored more than them is Swansea in 7th, but everyone above them and even QPR at the bottom have conceded less. Theres not many games they haven't looked capable of scoring, something that generally kills relegated teams, and seems a huge problem for at least 2 of the teams below you.
They've looked the close to being a fairly decent team if they could concede a few less while others look a bit rubbish all over while other teams are struggling with goals, struggling with goal scorers and struggling with defence. They look more settled defensively and keeper wise, considering who is around them Villa and QPR look boned, their scoring records are beyond woeful, Villa with 23 and QPR with 19, injured strikers, sold one, one chronically injured and one that didn't break 11 goals in a season on the conference ffs.
Its hard to see both of Wigan and Reading can out do Newcastle/Fulham/Sunderland/Southampton this season with the players all those respective teams have.
They've looked the close to being a fairly decent team if they could concede a few less while others look a bit rubbish all over while other teams are struggling with goals, struggling with goal scorers and struggling with defence. They look more settled defensively and keeper wise, considering who is around them Villa and QPR look boned, their scoring records are beyond woeful, Villa with 23 and QPR with 19, injured strikers, sold one, one chronically injured and one that didn't break 11 goals in a season on the conference ffs.
Its hard to see both of Wigan and Reading can out do Newcastle/Fulham/Sunderland/Southampton this season with the players all those respective teams have.
Out of all the goals scored yesterday Michus second, where he shrugged off the massively over rated Samba like he wasn't there, was the best of the bench.
Samba is not a good defender, he looks good on corners and crosses because he's huge and always gets his head on it, but everything else, on the deck, cutting out through balls, tracking runners, holding a line, he's garbage.
Samba is not a good defender, he looks good on corners and crosses because he's huge and always gets his head on it, but everything else, on the deck, cutting out through balls, tracking runners, holding a line, he's garbage.
Caporegime
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Michus contribution for the other goal was great as well. nice assist.
Was a really good pass to get it out of his feet with so much backlift to Hernandez in so little space.
Caporegime
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He's a very neat player with his feet. Used a limited amount of space well.
If not the transfer of the summer, the bargain of the summer for sure.
From what i saw of him, he wasnt too bad..better than Santos although to be fair to Sunderland they should have had a penalty as Monreal crashed into Sessignon while he was in the box.
But all in all he was pretty solid, its his 2nd game playing for Arsenal iirc so hopefully he will get better. Is he better than Gibbs??, hard to say at the moment...give him some time and he could be our first choice LB unless by some miracle Gibbs can stay fit for a whole season
Watching the highlights of the game last night, i was pretty impressed by Sagna at CB...perhaps thats his new position, he made some great tackles, clearances and headers. But defensively the person who impressed me the most was Giroud
...a couple of times he headed the ball away whilst defending corners and set pieces. Seeing as Wenger has a penchant for playing players out of position, i reckon Giroud could fill in as a CB as well
Caporegime
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He was pretty decent, the main thing he lacked against Michu was pace, he was focusing more on getting to the ball than fighting off Michu but he's lacking sharpness, Russian season stops early December so he hadn't played for coming up on 2 months when he joined QPR, he's also been playing in a much worse/different league for a long time.
The best defenders in the world get brushed off the ball sometimes, that was one of the in form players in the league up against one who hasn't played in the league, nor played much at all in 2 months. I doubt he'll ever get to form with that defence around him, might see how he does next season after he moves somewhere else. I seem to remember Arshavin was it winning a header holding off Ferdinand which he popped down to Santi who scored a goal... being big doesn't mean automatically winning every battle of strength on the pitch.
As for winning stuff in the box, they banged on about that in his first game back, and he did very little at defensive or offensive set pieces, he looked weak(for his size) slow, sluggish and basically crap last week, and this week. The defence at QPR seems to change on a game by game basis, left/right back and CB partnership, and so does the central midfield pair, Samba will get fitness and some sharpness back but hard to get good form when in a misfit team with terrible players. Samba is a FAR better player than we've seen so far, I doubt we'll see Samba at his best with that team. Nelson had been crucial to QPR so far this season, individually one of the better CB's in the league, Nelson + Samba would likely have gone back to being a good CB partnership but they haven't got anyone else remotely as good.