UEFA Champions League/Europa League ** Spoilers ** [25th - 27th November 2014]

The serbs are out of control they need to be kicked out of europe for a couple of years in all international and club competitions


lets face it would ya miss em?
 
Its desperate watching this. I have a ticket for Everton at home this weekend tbh I am not sure I can be bothered to go
 
Ronaldo's gone rubbish, 26 mins into the game and he has one assist and no goals..... :p

EDIT:- finishes 2-1, Ronaldo with two assists, Bale with a nice turn of pace and a strong finish. Really nice header from Santa Cruz in the last couple of minutes, dominated in the air but didn't get much delivery. Ronaldo highest assister in the squad... horrible team work from the guy though, utterly selfish and relies on everyone doing everything for him ;)


Vela got a great hat-trick last night on Moyes home debut. Not the usual Sociedad at home, pretty tame by their attacking standards(not the result but style of play) and the home fans though supportive weren't quite at their usual fever pitch. One of the reasons Sociedad have had such a brilliant home record in the past 3-4 seasons is just relentless attacking. They went 2-0 down to Real Madrid and beat them, they've done that time and time again in the past 4 years.

They'll improve because they are a top 6 squad that was badly mismanaged and really just needed someone a bit more professional in charge. But to be at their best Moyes really needs to get the home crowd buzzing on insane attacking football at home longer term.
 
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Yup, though the board likely would have impressed the importance of attacking football. The examples of, well, himself being fired last year while Martinez made Everton better by being willing to attack and getting the best out of new and old players. You then have the likes of Fat Sam being also forced to attack and finding the team vastly improved as a result.

I think a lot of managers would have been conservative for a short time to steady the ship though it helped that the team won a game before Moyes even took over and against Atletico Madrid, a huge win and a great performance. The question will really be if Moyes can adapt, given a lot of examples in how improving the attack benefits a club, the attitude of the players and the fans, I hope he will for the sake of Sociedad. I think a semi competent manager will have them top half easy and he's got a fairly short contract and with Sociedad money, won't be on a huge wage. So if he sucks they can limp home this year and bring in someone willing to attack next year if required, another incentive for moyes to attack more.
 
Dortmund lost again, 2-0 to Frankfurt.

Not good, starting to turn into a longer really bad run that they can't seem to break free from now.

I did think they'd won last weekend and didn't till the Arsenal game realise the other team had equalised. I saw the scores probably at half time or something and presumed, new boys 2-0 down, game probably over but actually was a bad result dropping 2 points from 2-0 up against a first time ever in the top league team.

That followed by a poor performance against Arsenal and a 2-0 loss today. As much as they support him 5 games from now if they haven't gotten a couple of wins he might be facing losing his job. It's not like they are 10th or even 15th, they are rock bottom. :(
 
How much time do they give Klopp? They need to give him until Christmas at least, but the problem isn't always the Manager. The players need to take most of the responsibility!
 
This is turning into an epic implosion at the moment! Klopp, who has been argued as one of the best out there is now fighting to keep hold of his own job.
Frankfort going into this game had lost their last 4 games on the trot and come out with an easy 2-0 win.
I'll start to believe Arsenal might come out on top of this group ;)

Be interesting to see how they play out the rest of the year. Hope they can turn it around as have always thought highly of Dortmund/Klopp and what they've been achieving together.
 
It's turning into a bit of Newcastle almost relegated season.. on about the same wage budget. Too many games and too many injuries, I actually thought they might put in a bunch of youth players against Arsenal and just screw the game off completely but they didn't do that.

I think regardless of the players after 60+ games a year you eventually burn out. Messi had a bad 18 months after literally years of remaining almost completely uninjured, it will catch up with even the best and most seemingly uninjured players around. Where as Barca/Real had a pretty deep squad Dortmund just don't have that.

I think some of it has to be Klopp, there aren't THAT many injuries. But I think what comes in to it is although there are really only 3-4 first team players out right now, though some key players, it's the number of injuries in the past 18 months is huge, many players have missed 1-6 months and have lost form. Again like Newcastle it wasn't just the long term injuries, there is a point where the team is different every week, people miss two months, they come back into a team not in form and find it hard post injury to get back into form.

I think that is what Klopp/Dortmund need but with cl games, world cup, international breaks their squad hasn't had a recovery period. They don't have the money to really add squad numbers with the quality they want to cope with more games. To a certain degree they should have found a way to increase their income after several extremely successful years and decent profit in the transfer market. An extra 30mil in commercial income would mean another 4-5 players which used effectively in the past 2 years may have prevented many of the injuries in the first place. That may or may not be down to Klopp, how he's used the money he has, the wages.

Would be a shame for him to go out on such a low but it's actually not rare for top managers to have multiple great years then the team drop into a steady decline. Managers who succeed for longer than 4 years at the same club is a stupendously small list. Chelsea were getting worse when Mourinho was fired, Real were worse under Mourinho in their final year, barca were on the wane when Guardiola did the Mourinho thing and jumped ship at just the right time to seem a genius ;)
 
Hasn't Klopp spent a not insignificant amount of money on that squad? I know he's lost a few good players to Bayern but if he's spent 200 million+ he should be able to cope with a few injuries.
 
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