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Football - Stolen Taxi for Pardew


Philokles

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1 minute ago, JordanJH1993 said:

It was already a painful enough watch in the two minutes before they had scored. Might as well turn it off now.

I'm rooting for Chelsea tonight as the plucky underdog (for the first time since Mourinho first arrived there*), but I hope their performance is more like the first leg than the abject surrender to City.

*Remember when Chelsea were a likable team playing nice football with Zola, LeBouef, Petrescu, DiMatteo, etc?  That seems like a long time ago.  They've obviously been a more successful club since but when your success is based on players like Terry, Drogba, Lampard, Robben, Cole, Essien, Ballack, Ivanovic, Matic, Costa, etc you've basically traded entertainment for grinding out wins through physicality and shithousery.  They're not devoid of entertaining players but that's incidental to the central identity.

I'm sure opposing fans had similar thoughts about Graeme Souness at Liverpool but we always had an exciting style over all, even when we were like a machine grinding down opponents.

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Well, Isk, this performance certainly hasn’t been as abject as the City one, but we are already 2-0 down. We sit back and back against City and keep the score down. In this game, we actually responded quite well to going 1-0 down, but another comedy of errors unfolds at the back and we concede a second.

I’m not sure if the powers that be at Real Madrid will be that convinced by Thibaut Courtois if they are tuned into this game.

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Defensively Chelsea have not been as sound as in the 1st leg but they've responded well. Hit the woodwork three times now in this tie. If they end up going out, at least they go out to one of the top sides in Europe and can hold their heads up. While Conte has set the side up to be compact, they have still shown attacking intent over both legs and gave Barca a few scares. 

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I’m no goalkeeping coach, but I’ve noticed before that Courtois gets far too low when he sets himself to save shots. It’s like he drops into a squat position, so when a striker hits the ball clean like Dembele did, it almost goes over Courtois. It was a good hit from Dembele, but a keeper of Courtois’ height and frame should not be beaten by that.

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1 minute ago, Horse of Kent said:

You would've hoped if Courtois is setting himself too low, he would at least be able to cover efforts hit low and hard.

Well, no, actually, because he’s so tall he has to open his legs that wide to be able to squat down as far he does that he also leaves himself open to nutmegs.

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15 minutes ago, JordanJH1993 said:

Well, no, actually, because he’s so tall he has to open his legs that wide to be able to squat down as far he does that he also leaves himself open to nutmegs.

Sort of my point. If you are sacrificing one thing, you should at least get some benefit for its opposite. I'd not looked out for what you said about Courtois before, but judging from the three goals tonight it seems true and is the worst of both worlds.

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