Pre-season Football 2011/2012 Season

B1gbeard said:
I can't believe all this drama over some friendly's. :rolleyes: There was a time when it was almost impossible to get friendly results unless you went.

We were clearly the best team in the tournament but thank god, the guys treated it as a friendly and didn't do anything stupid. This was clear for pretty much the whole game yesterday. If it was a competitive tournament we'd have won it at a canter defensive issues or not.

It's funny also that every goal Arsenal concede is part of this big defensive issue. The forwards are to blame as much as anyone for not scoring more goals when we were so dominant (pretty much the whole game). The goal we conceeded well, I've seen a lot worse in the PL most weeks from other teams. These goals went in when the team was pretty disrupted by lots of subs and the likes of Squillaci, Bartley and Eboue won't be getting near a game.

Lots of positives from the tournament. RvP, Wilshere + Ramsey (I almost feel we could do without Cesc), Frimpong, Afobe who was great yesterday, Gervinho is going straight in my fantasy team.
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I dont quite understand how being "the best team in the tournament" is a positive when you ended up third against mickey mouse opposition.

You should be rinsing teams like that, pre-season or not.
 
fez said:
I dont quite understand how being "the best team in the tournament" is a positive when you ended up third against mickey mouse opposition.

You should be rinsing teams like that, pre-season or not.
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I disagree. For the players these games are a training and fitness excercise and shouldn't be anything more. The fact that the club make a massive presentation of it and tie it up in pretty ribbons is all about money and that's it.

We did dominate the game yesterday anyway, completely.

I don't know about anyone else but I remember, not that long ago, having to scoure the papers tiny sports print at the bottom of the page to find pre-season results. The fact it is what it is now is because it is part of the yearly revenue. Chelsea's poor pre-season last year did nothing to effect their start.

Booing the team in a pre-season game is frankly embarrasing and shameful.
 
B1gbeard said:
I disagree. For the players these games are a training and fitness excercise and shouldn't be anything more. The fact that the club make a massive presentation of it and tie it up in pretty ribbons is all about money and that's it.

We did dominate the game yesterday anyway, completely.

I don't know about anyone else but I remember, not that long ago, having to scoure the papers tiny sports print at the bottom of the page to find pre-season results. The fact it is what it is now is because it is part of the yearly revenue. Chelsea's poor pre-season last year did nothing to effect their start.

Booing the team in a pre-season game is frankly embarrasing and shameful.
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I think that we are all just getting withdrawal symptoms from the lack of football so we grasp anything we can get! Friendly or not.

I agree that there is little correlation between pre season and premier league form buts it does fill you with confidence when you are comfortably beating sides who are up for beating a big british side as well as having a superior fitness level.

Chelsea at the start of last season were phenomenal. God knows where that came from. Thankfully they fixed that eventually.
 
We've got our 2nd to last pre-season game later today against Valerenga. The majority of our first team squad have travelled so we should see a fairly strong line-up for the first time this pre-season.

Other than Gerrard, Lucas and Suarez, the only other missing players are Meireles and Skrtel. Meireles has supposedly got a bruised foot but I'm not convinced and Skrtel still isn't ready following a calf injury, which is a worry considering he was meant to be fit for the game last week.
 
B1gbeard said:
It's funny also that every goal Arsenal concede is part of this big defensive issue. The forwards are to blame as much as anyone for not scoring more goals when we were so dominant (pretty much the whole game).
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1-0 to the Arsenal anyone?

To win a game of football you have to be good at the front and back, the Tottenham and Newcastle games are a good example of what happens when we're only good up front. Being 4-0 up and then drawing 4-4 has nothing to do with the lads up front. You can't always score 3 or two goals, being able to hold a 1-0 lead for 90+mins is what title winners do. Last season we had only three 1-0 wins compared to Man U's 9 in all competitions. Also, it's not just the fact that we concede goals, it's that we always seem to find more and more interesting and comical ways e.g. Jenkinson OG, Bartley OG, Almunia pushing Squiallchi out the way, Liverpool in the 112th minute, CC final etc.
 
Liverpool 11 to play Valerenga: Reina, Johnson, Carra, Agger, Robinson, Henderson, Adam, Spearing, Downing, Kuyt, Carroll.

It will be interesting to see what system we use. We could go with a 4-4-2 with Henderson tucked in on the right or a 4-3-3 with Kuyt and Downing either side of Carroll, or even a 4-2-3-1 with Downing, Henderson and Kuyt behind Carroll.
 
Interesting to see Johnson at RB today. Unless we sign a LB in the next 10 or so days, he's got to be favourite to start the season at LB for us. In which case I'd have thought it would be better for him to play these last couple of pre-season matches there.
 
Just seen our match against Marseille has disappeared from the Utd website and there's now a match against New York Cosmos on friday 5th at 19:30.

When is the Scholes testimonial?
 
BaZ87 said:
Interesting to see Johnson at RB today. Unless we sign a LB in the next 10 or so days, he's got to be favourite to start the season at LB for us. In which case I'd have thought it would be better for him to play these last couple of pre-season matches there.
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Enrique will probably sign this week?
 
An 'interesting' set-up from us so far. We've started with a 3 man midfield and then Downing playing further forward on the right hand side with Kuyt and Carroll both playing fairly central and nobody on the left :/
 
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