2014/15 Association Football (Soccer) thread

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HBK

Subtlety is my middle name
Haha City's strongest XI (excluding Kompany and Hart, maybe Zabaleta) losing to a second string Newcastle side. That second goal was fucking brilliant. Must feel great to be a Geordie atm.
 
so much rage from Newcastle fans with that Lineup.

Pardew trollage :D

if a 2nd string Newcastle side and Stoke can win at the Etihad.. Sunday will be fun :D
 
Newcastle win
my Bet on Newcastle to win doesn't go through, as the money is still in my account... while my accumulator doesn't
will be furious if Spurs fail to win now.
 

destinyunknown

Banned deucer.
Ayoze Perez 2 goals in 2 games against Spurs and Liverpool. He was the best player in Spain's 2nd tier last season, the future looks bright for him!
 
Is there a better midfielder than Luka Modric in the world atm.

I mean cesc has been more decisive this season and Di maria was last season but he has easily been the best midfielder, and again today was out of this world.
this Madrid team in general has been so good reCently.
Bale is going to have to work to hold down a spot in this team with everyone pulling their weight.


Cesc had a poor game...Cahill has been at his best this season and diego looked rusty but oscar has been getting better and better and hazard decisive as ever.
Well any win in November is a good victory.
 

HBK

Subtlety is my middle name
Schürrle really needs to learn to be consistent, quite like Oscar; brilliant goal from him, absolute class. Expected Costa to score, but I'm not really disappointed, he did just get back from injury. Games against QPR are usually tight for us, and I'm just glad that we picked up all three points. In other news, I'm watching the German El Clasico, and Dortmund are leading through a goal scored by Reus early in the first half. This would be a huge win for them, they've been absolutely dreadful in the league this season but have performed surprisingly well in the Champions League.
 

Imanalt

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Holy fuck this dortmund munich game has been good so far... dortmund outtacticing the fuck out of munich so far letting them control despite being on the road, allowing for even more energy in this game
 

HBK

Subtlety is my middle name
Amidst reports of Bayern planning a bid for Reus, I just want to come out and say that, while I recognize that Lewandowski and Götze are talented players, I have absolutely no respect for them; I think that it was absolutely disgraceful and traitorous of them to leave Dortmund to join Bayern.
 

Imanalt

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aaaand klopp never adjusted to the halftime changes from munich, rip dortmund

Penalty was maybe a bit questionable, but overall deserved to lose after that thrashing in the second half
 

HBK

Subtlety is my middle name
Klopp should've kept Kagawa, and brought Immobile on. Bringing Ramos on earlier would've worked too. Subotic was really sloppy though.
 

destinyunknown

Banned deucer.
First game of Bayern-Dortmund was excellent, really even and enjoyable throughout. But Dortmund were terrible in the second half, they were ran over and didn't seem to stand a chance, they looked like a completely different team to the one of the first half...
 

HBK

Subtlety is my middle name
What the fuck is Oliver smoking? That was a CLEAR PENALTY and Rojo should've been sent off for that challenge smh.
 

Imanalt

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I really hate to be that guy, since i had a shitton of respect for pochettino coming into this season, but what he's been doing with this team is absolutely unacceptable. The summer was very poorly done, and whether thats pochettino's fault, levy's or baldini's i have no idea, but the end result is we have no players who can play in our band of 3 behind the striker in our standard formation other than the starters, and with our starters playing, we end up wasting lamela because he gets tasked with playing the much more supporting almost wide midfield role that is crucial to pochettino's system. And now we get to what pochettino is doing so wrong. Never did he make any adjustments to deal with the fact we had a right back playing because of injuries who couldn't hack the position, and he continually refused to do anything like play a wing player who can offer more defensively (lennon) or try someone else out at rb (lennon, chiriches, or walker-peters from the academy). And all of this is before we get to today's mess. Pochettino's apparent strategy today was that Villa was so bad that it didn't matter if we were outnumbered in midfield, or if we had anyone defending other than our two centerbacks, so he played basically a 4-2-1-3 with three out and out strikers up front (much as chadli has been nominally called a wide player this season, he's really playing as a second striker who provides nothing but late runs into the box, a la rodriguez for southampton last year). Unfortunately, villa put up more of a fight than he expected and (probably predictably) overall dominated the midfield at the start of the game, forcing eriksen to drop deeper in the first half (he completed 8 more passes than any other player in the first half). Our defense was also continuously exposed because all of the width in the lineup was expected to be naughton and rose, so with no covering player ahead of them anytime we did manage to possess for a little while when we lost it villa was routinely breaking 2v2 or something similar. And this is ignoring the fact that getting outnumbered wide was allowing villa to pump crosses into the box, especially earlier in the game. And yet pochettino allowed this to continue, with his only change before the 70th minute in a relatively like for like change with lamela replacing eriksen in the 10. The only real result of that was that he didn't drop into the midfield as effectively, so we struggled even more to possess effectively, and we no longer offered the same threat on set pieces. And although finally bringing on the one striker who shoudl be statring gave a very temporary spark, i see very little evidence this game wouldn't have finished 1-0 or worse if benteke hadn't gifted us a man advantage. And even with this man advantage it took terrible marking on a corner and a lucky deflection to score.

Oh and all this is ignoring the most blatant thing that adebayor has been one of the worst players in the league while kane has whenever he gets a chance looked exceptionally good, but ade continues to start almost every game while kane is very clearly considered our third striker.

Basically fuck pochettino. He absolutely refuses to adapt from his week 1 lineup even when there are clear problems. And fuck whoever screwed up so badly over the summer, whether it was pochettino, levy, or baldini. Everyone involved in this complete bungling of running a team needs to go unless they show very very quickly that they are actually competent
 
^lol

I feel like Spurs have no balance to the team. Chadli, Eriksen and Lamela is a great attacking trio but it needs better quality than Capoue and Mason behind them. It wasn't working and Pochettino decided to drop Lamela for Soldado and it looked even worse. The key is the two holding positions because when you try to play possession football and dominate the whole pitch you don't want the all action type of midfielders that Spurs have (such as Dembele and Paulinho and Sandro and Bentaleb and Mason) but you need two very intelligent, technically gifted and disciplined players with plenty of patience. Capoue is their hardman but he's not disciplined enough, and you really want someone like Gerrard or Alonso or Modric or what Fabregas is doing for Chelsea right now beside him and Spurs don't have anyone like that. They've spent too much getting rampaging box to box mids who look great on highlight reels but aren't suited to dominating matches which is what AVB and Poch were both trying to do. Funnily enough, Sherwood threw that out of the window and played 4-4-2 which suits his players and it worked fine for him!

Some managers might have a great vision and philosophy on how best to play football but I still believe a manager has to work with what he's got and as soon as Spurs weren't getting Schneiderlin Poch should have readjusted his strategy until he can get his own players in. If I was him I'd stick Adebayor and Kane up front like Sherwood did and set up two banks of four and tell them to keep it simple. When he gets Walker back and someone like Schneiderlin in, he can try to shift to the 4-2-3-1 and adjust accordingly. Right now it's a case of square pegs in round holes and the midfield and defence is barely hanging together.
 
I don't think i've ever been more depressed after a football game. Genuinely, the decision making from Benteke made me wonder whether he was 13 or 23. Mason should have been sent off as well, but we lost our cool and weren't able to close out the game. I don't see Lambert keeping his job for the month of December.
 
no
and Cahill at his best this season? haha what have you been smoking mate
lol meant he hasn't been at his best and really has been the worst player out of our bacK five this season so far.

If you could please name that player who plays in midfield better than modric has this year. Yaya? give me a fucking break.
 
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