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Football: Four Amigos


AncalagonTheBlack

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I was watching the game live at the gym until Arsenal scored their second.  Incredible that our complete dominance came unstuck so quickly.  Gomez is playing so well but that’s not the first time a cavalier attitude from him at the back post has cost us a goal.  And Migs must surely be finished.  Poor Mane is in terrible form, and we missed a lot of good chances  

We didn’t lose but we threw away two points. 

Arsenal were really fired up but were easily handled by Pool until they were gifted two goals.  Liverpool might be disappointed by the result but Arsenal should be disappointed by the gulf in cohesion shown today — which matters more in the long run.  It feels like they’ve been getting by on ok team play and good individual moments, especially from Ozil.  They need better all-round play and cohesion.  

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Ok, Migs has to go. That's just it. There can be no more excuses, no more chances. He lets in the three first shots Arsenal had on goal. And he nearly flubbed in that misfire from Ozil with his lettuce hands. And he lucked out when he got a free kick on that corner where he just jumped out about five miles from the ball and just waved his arms a little.

Gomez is young, he'll hopefully learn from the mistakes he's making. He's also playing really well overall. I thought Lovren was really good today for the most part, an Milner and Can both proved me wrong for doubting them in this game. 

But Migs? I'm sure he's a nice guy and all, but he needs to ply his trade with Kettering or something. Even if Karius is somehow as bad as Migs, at least he might improve. Mignolet has to go. I don't think he should play another game for the club.

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In one of those funny cosmic coincidences, Canadian international defender Doneil Henry has been released by the Premier League club I support and  signed by the MLS club I support. 

I don't think he's good enough to break into the Whitecaps starting 11, but he's still young. And he's Canadian, which I appreciate. 

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1 hour ago, Nas! said:

In one of those funny cosmic coincidences, Canadian international defender Doneil Henry has been released by the Premier League club I support and  signed by the MLS club I support. 

I don't think he's good enough to break into the Whitecaps starting 11, but he's still young. And he's Canadian, which I appreciate. 

Happy to see him come back to Canada. He had potential when he was with TFC, but unfortunately the club was pretty dysfunctional at the time.

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11 hours ago, ljkeane said:

Anyway, hopefully that's the end of Mignolet. Karius hasn't looked too bad this year might as well have the job in the league too. He might turn out not to be good enough but we know Mignolet isn't. 

 

 

I wish we could get a decent goalie in Jan but i don't think that's going to happen.I'm not even sure if an upgrade is available? :unsure:

I'm sure if we do buy someone,Klopp will get another forward (Lemar maybe?),as if we really need another forward FFS! :rolleyes:

Maybe Mane needs to be on the bench for the next game?

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1 hour ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

I'm sure if we do buy someone,Klopp will get another forward (Lemar maybe?),as if we really need another forward FFS! :rolleyes:

You will probably need another forward if Coutinho ends up leaving. There will be a bidding war with Arsenal over Lemar though and if the rumours are to be believed Liverpool will be facing competition from Man City and Chelsea for VVD.

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The wealthy clubs are narrow minded. Rarely will they spend a good amount of money to take a chance on a young but unproven player with potential. Lemar being one of the most proven young forwards is a big draw. Arsenal did agree a 90+ million deal with Monaco for Lemar so I wouldn't be surprised if they look to press forward with that deal in January given that 1) Monaco are now out of European competition altogether 2) Lemar would be eligible for Arsenal's EL campaign and 3) Sanchez has been poor and looks half out the door already.

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Another transfer window beckons, which means another rumour mill of all the big clubs going after VvD.

Seriously, am I the only one that doesn’t understand the hype around this guy? A supposed bidding war between Liverpool, Man City and Chelsea for VvD starting at 70m is ludicrous to me. One and a half good seasons in the PL (he missed half of last season and has been poor this one) and a handful of games in the CL for Celtic doesn’t make you worthy of potentially being the most expensive defender of all time.

From a Chelsea perspective, even if we were to lose David Luiz in the summer, I’d rather we just brought Kurt Zouma back than see the club waste that much money on a centre back, which is an area we are quite well stocked in. We have far bigger gaping holes in our squad than at the back. Fortunately, though, I don’t think we’d be the favourites to land him anyway.

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28 minutes ago, Consigliere said:

You will probably need another forward if Coutinho ends up leaving. There will be a bidding war with Arsenal over Lemar though and if the rumours are to be believed Liverpool will be facing competition from Man City and Chelsea for VVD.

If the plan is to replace Coutinho with Lemar then it's not too much of an issue, they can just pass the cost along to Barcelona. Although I'm not entirely convinced paying £90 million for a player with 2 goals and 4 assists in Ligue 1 is the way to go.

City going for Van Dijk makes sense, they need centre backs, and it's probably not worth getting in a bidding war with them. At this point I'd probably look to spend the rest of this season seeing if we can develop Gomez as the solution to our problems at centre back (and save shitloads of money) and if that doesn't seem to be working out identify some targets for the summer.

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Premier League proven probably adds around 20 million to the price tag. Lucky he's not English too otherwise the price would be 80-90 million. I'm surprised that nobody is in for Inigo Martinez - has consistently been one of the best ball playing CBs in La Liga over a few years now and has a relatively modest €32m buyout clause. I think this guy would be perfect for City.

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3 minutes ago, Consigliere said:

Premier League proven probably adds around 20 million to the price tag. Lucky he's not English too otherwise the price would be 80-90 million. I'm surprised that nobody is in for Inigo Martinez - has consistently been one of the best ball playing CBs in La Liga over a few years now and has a relatively modest €32m buyout clause. I think this guy would be perfect for City.

I’m constantly seeing Man City linked with Martinez. I was surprised by his age. For some reason, I thought he was incredibly young but he’s actually 26 and seems relatively experienced, having played around 200 games in Spain’s top flight. For less than half the price of VvD, it would be a no brainer to most, but money isn’t even an option at Man City. 

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2 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

Although I'm not entirely convinced paying £90 million for a player with 2 goals and 4 assists in Ligue 1 is the way to go.


Exactly. Even just in Ligue 1 you're loaded with loads of players who have similar (or better) records, they've just not yet been seen in the CL much. Heck, even Memphis has eight goals and five assists so far.

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2 hours ago, Consigliere said:

 Lemar would be eligible for Arsenal's EL campaign

Would he? How does that work?

2 hours ago, JordanJH1993 said:

 One and a half good seasons in the PL (he missed half of last season and has been poor this one) and a handful of games in the CL for Celtic doesn’t make you worthy of potentially being the most expensive defender of all time.

He had 27 European matches at Celtic. Bit more than a handful.

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12 minutes ago, mormont said:

Would he? How does that work?

IIRC, UEFA regulations state that a club may register one player who would otherwise be cup tied provided that the player did not represent his previous club in the same competition. Since Monaco finished 4th in their group, Lemar would be eligible to play for Arsenal in the EL. If Monaco had finished 3rd in the group then he would not.

 

This has been a typical Real Madrid performance this season. Start off well>create chances>fail to take advantage>grow increasingly frustrated as the game goes on>lose discipline>concede.

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19 minutes ago, mormont said:

He had 27 European matches at Celtic. Bit more than a handful.

Maybe if, as usual, you weren’t in such a haste to prove me wrong, you’d have read I said ‘CL games’ which is an abbreviation for ‘Champions League’. In the 2014/15 season, Celtic didn’t play in that competition, they played in the Europa League, so some of those 27 games don’t count. Minus the qualifiying rounds from the remainder of his European games at Celtic and I’ll still stand by my statement ‘a handful of games in the CL’.

Nice try, though, @mormont. Until next time, old pal!

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18 minutes ago, JordanJH1993 said:

Maybe if, as usual, you weren’t in such a haste to prove me wrong, you’d have read I said ‘CL games’ which is an abbreviation for ‘Champions League’. In the 2014/15 season, Celtic didn’t play in that competition, they played in the Europa League, so some of those 27 games don’t count. Minus the qualifiying rounds from the remainder of his European games at Celtic and I’ll still stand by my statement ‘a handful of games in the CL’.

Nice try, though, @mormont. Until next time, old pal!

I think you vastly overestimate how much I care about proving you wrong. You need to take things less personally in life. Or at least, on the internet. ;)

I know that you were referring to CL games. I simply couldn't easily find a specific figure for CL games. But I assumed it would be a safe assumption that the majority of those appearances will be in the CL. On closer analysis, in fact, 17 of them are, although that does include qualifiers. Oh, and two of the EL appearances were, of course, against Inter, so I'm not sure that they should be dismissed from van Dijk's CV as unimportant either. Even games against RB Salzburg and Dinamo Zagreb aren't to be sniffed at.

ETA - I mean, it would be kind of weird to say 'yeah, this guy has 63 Premier League appearances for Southampton but we can't count the easy games against Brighton or the like'.

van Dijk's CV isn't bad. Whether it's £70m worth is a question only the clubs can answer.

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4 minutes ago, mormont said:

I think you vastly overestimate how much I care about proving you wrong. You need to take things less personally in life. Or at least, on the internet. ;)

I know that you were referring to CL games. I simply couldn't easily find a specific figure for CL games. But I assumed it would be a safe assumption that the majority of those appearances will be in the CL. On closer analysis, in fact, 17 of them are, although that does include qualifiers. Oh, and two of the EL appearances were, of course, against Inter, so I'm not sure that they should be dismissed from van Dijk's CV as unimportant either. Even games against RB Salzburg and Dinamo Zagreb aren't to be sniffed at.

ETA - I mean, it would be kind of weird to say 'yeah, this guy has 63 Premier League appearances for Southampton but we can't count the easy games against Brighton or the like'.

van Dijk's CV isn't bad. Whether it's £70m worth is a question only the clubs can answer.

Well, I did sign it off with more light hearted/sarcastic line at at then end, but that didn’t really come across over the Internet, either!

No game in European football is easy, whether it be CL or EL, especially at a club like Celtic, but when we are applying 70m price tags to players, in my opinion, they need to have had experience playing at the top level, whether that be at international competitions for the Netherlands or Champions Leagues. VvD has limited experience in either, so in that case, you’d expect the player to have some kind of special talent way above the general standard, which, again, I don’t think VvD has. Overall, I’ve no idea why Southampton think he is worth that much, nor do I understand why teams are willing to pay that for him.

 

Anyway, Big Sam has done a job on us today. Prior to the game Conte’s Chelsea had played four times against Everton (3 in the league against Koeman and once in the League Cup against Unsworth) and had won all four with a GD of 12-1. This Everton team won’t play the most exciting football under Allardyce, but at least they are staying in these games against top 6 clubs. Surely you’re happy with that, @Rorshach?

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