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Football: the winter break


Iskaral Pust

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15 hours ago, Consigliere said:

The bolded actually surprises me. You and I have completely different takes on this. Firstly, Dalot played at LB and had a good game (even provided an assist). Young, otoh, was 100% rubbish. Lindelof was solid but Jones was Jones, which is to say he looked like Bambi on ice - the bloke is a total liability. The moment Smalling is fit again, he needs to be brought in for Jones.

He did provide an assist, but at some point I had the feeling that almost every ball that came on his side of the pitch was lost in a few seconds. Dude missed a lot of passes, albeit it wasn't crucial losses because we often managed to recover quickly the ball by high press (1st half especially).

I actually don't blame him, a RB does not simply play at LB. A pity we don't have a back-up for LB, I hope there is nothing ill for Shaw at the moment.

As for Jones, I agree that he's not our new Vidic. In his recent games, he hasn't shown himself guilty of big mistakes though. Which doesn't make him a great CB, surely. Damn, our CB situation may be horrific for us to actually hope for a Smalling return.

PS: I have to sustain, Sarri is a wank. And I'm gonna state it as long he's unable to update his tactics.

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1 hour ago, Ser Glendon Fireball said:

He did provide an assist, but at some point I had the feeling that almost every ball that came on his side of the pitch was lost in a few seconds. Dude missed a lot of passes, albeit it wasn't crucial losses because we often managed to recover quickly the ball by high press (1st half especially).

I actually don't blame him, a RB does not simply play at LB. A pity we don't have a back-up for LB, I hope there is nothing ill for Shaw at the moment.

As for Jones, I agree that he's not our new Vidic. In his recent games, he hasn't shown himself guilty of big mistakes though. Which doesn't make him a great CB, surely. Damn, our CB situation may be horrific for us to actually hope for a Smalling return.

Dalot is fully capable of playing both fullback positions - he actually made more senior appearances as a LB  than a RB at Porto. The team as a whole became sloppy around the 65th minute. It looked like the players ran out of steam and not for the first time. Overall, Dalot was much, much better than Young. Solskjaer should have swapped Young and Dalot's positions. In the system we play now, the RB is given much more attacking licence than our LB. Dalot is properly quick, dribbles well and is the best crosser out of all our fullbacks - he should have been given the attacking fullback role on the right while Young could have played more defensively on the left which he has done successfully before on many occasions. 

 

As for Jones, the guy is a calamity and should never be mentioned in the same breathe as Vidic. Vidic on one leg was twice the player Jones is on his best day. Just observe him during a game - he is very unsure of himself and regularly looks nervous when the ball gets near him. He also has one of the worst tackling techniques I've ever seen. Whenever he makes a tackle, there's at least a 50% chance that he ends up injuring himself and a number of injuries he has suffered came about as a result of his poor technique. 

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3 hours ago, Ser Glendon Fireball said:

Damn, our CB situation may be horrific for us to actually hope for a Smalling return.


Smalling gets a lot of stick but in fairness when he's fit he's a really fucking good defender. You just can't rely on him to be.

I always felt Jones was hard done-by but he's almost fallen into being the player he was always said to be. Like, he was always awkard but did make up for it with recoveries, but the more injuries he has the less he can rely on that and he becomes more of a liability. But I always felt he shouldn't have been a CB anyway. His movement was always that of a midfielder- part of the problem as he over-relies on his partner to cover- and I never thought he got enough of a chance in that position, though likely for us he'd not quite have been good enough anyway.

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42 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Smalling gets a lot of stick but in fairness when he's fit he's a really fucking good defender. You just can't rely on him to be.

Yeah, agree with this. Smalling is not top class but he is a solid defender and much better than Jones - his positioning, reading of the game, tackling, aerial ability and physicality are all better than what Jones offers. Smalling gets a lot of shit because he is poor at playing out from the back - this wasn't a big deal when we signed him but the game has since evolved to where that has become an essential trait needed in a CB. 

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23 minutes ago, Consigliere said:

Smalling gets a lot of shit because he is poor at playing out from the back - this wasn't a big deal when we signed him but the game has since evolved to where that has become an essential trait needed in a CB. 

I'd rather say that the guy fears more about playing the ball with his feet than he fears injuries and these sorta things. Like, I'm aware the game has evolved, but please. Even when he doesn't pass to De Gea (and it doesn't happen frequently), he manages to set his CB partner in mess by passing him the ball either on his weak foot, or slighty behind him. It's so frustrating to watch him play.

But yeah, he can be a real soldier on his day. And sometimes he scores.

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3 minutes ago, Ser Glendon Fireball said:

I'd rather say that the guy fears more about playing the ball with his feet than he fears injuries and these sorta things. Like, I'm aware the game has evolved, but please. Even when he doesn't pass to De Gea (and it doesn't happen frequently), he manages to set his CB partner in mess by passing him the ball either on his weak foot, or slighty behind him. It's so frustrating to watch him play.

But yeah, he can be a real soldier on his day. And sometimes he scores.

Smalling is still a better option than Jones though. Ideally we need to sign two quality CBs, another RB and LB and get rid of Jones, Rojo, Smalling, Valencia, Young and Darmian. Our entire transfer budget + player sales needs to be spent on the defence (knowing us though, we'd probably sign another left winger). We are now paying the price for not properly replacing the likes of Evra, Rio and Vidic despite having the resources to do so. Instead we were happy to persist with vastly inferior players. 

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3 hours ago, ljkeane said:

Yeah, that challenge on Sterling was a stonewall penalty. 

Watching City games against sides in the bottom half hoping they’ll drop points isn’t a whole lot of fun.

ETA: And there’s the goal. Game over already I suspect.

You were three for three there. 

Sane looks back to his most dangerous in recent months and the City blip didn’t last long. 

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Fucking Fulham. Their goalkeeper was totally naive. 45 seconds on the clock, common sense says that he takes his time, allows the defence to push out running down the clock in the process. Instead he takes his kick quickly and Spurs come straight back and score. Amateur hour right there. 

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1 hour ago, Consigliere said:

Fucking Fulham. Their goalkeeper was totally naive. 45 seconds on the clock, common sense says that he takes his time, allows the defence to push out running down the clock in the process. Instead he takes his kick quickly and Spurs come straight back and score. Amateur hour right there. 

Not to mention he was rooted to his line for both crosses.  For Alli’s goal, the defender ducked because he expected his keeper to come for the cross. 

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21 hours ago, Consigliere said:

Smalling is still a better option than Jones though. Ideally we need to sign two quality CBs, another RB and LB and get rid of Jones, Rojo, Smalling, Valencia, Young and Darmian. Our entire transfer budget + player sales needs to be spent on the defence (knowing us though, we'd probably sign another left winger). We are now paying the price for not properly replacing the likes of Evra, Rio and Vidic despite having the resources to do so. Instead we were happy to persist with vastly inferior players. 

Are you posthumously agreeing with Mourinho?

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47 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Are you posthumously agreeing with Mourinho?

Well it's pretty obvious that there is a lack of quality in our backline. The problems with Mourinho on this particular issue was that he wanted reinforcements without selling anyone - having 6 CBs while playing a back 4 isn't smart squad building. Another issue was his targets - Boateng seems to have been his prime target and the guy is simply no longer worth it. He has declined a lot and Bayern were taking the piss asking for €50m. Bonucci was an impossibility since Juve wanted him as well, Godin is 33 and Maguire is overrated and not worth anywhere near 75m. Alderweireld is a tough one - he would have definitely improved us but Levy would have demanded an exorbitant amount and the existence of his release clause meant that nobody was going to pay even 50m for him.  If we were going to get rinsed then might as well get rinsed for players like Skriniar or Koulibaly and offloading Jones and Rojo to offset the cost somewhat.

 

The problem goes beyond Mourinho as well. When Ferdinand and Vidic left, we were happy to persist with Jones and Smalling, signed another average, injury prone player in Rojo, signed Blind to be a wing-back only to convert him into a CB. With the resources at United's disposal, the club should have been targeting the best players we could possibly get. We did a piss-poor job in replacing the loss of two world class CBs.

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Mislintat confirmed gone first week of Feb. Two of the three people who chose Emery gone. And now Arsenal being run by a guy used to unlimited budgets for a team that has limited funds to spend. Not sure how Arsenal are going to unearth any young, cheap talent now. This summer will be real interesting.

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If you had bought Van Dijk imagine the swing of points for Man Utd and Liverpool. 

Never understood why clubs will spend so much on centre forwards and scrimp on centre halves.  Apart from anything else a dominant centre half seems to lift the play of all those around them in the defence. 

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14 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Mislintat confirmed gone first week of Feb. Two of the three people who chose Emery gone. And now Arsenal being run by a guy used to unlimited budgets for a team that has limited funds to spend. Not sure how Arsenal are going to unearth any young, cheap talent now. This summer will be real interesting.

Just to be clear, Mislintat seems to have plenty of issues. I just don’t love what I see of the path forward. Hoping to be pleasantly surprised though if the deal for Denis Suarez is accurate, I don’t think I will.

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Reports saying that AC Milan have reached an agreement with Genoa for Piatek (€35m + Jose Mauri). He is expected to complete the move tomorrow which means Chelsea will be given the go ahead to complete their transfer for Higuain on loan and Morata will join Atleti on loan as well with a €50m option to buy. 

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KPB is being talked about as if he is Choupo Moting or something. He’s been very good for his last few seasons across three leagues and a variety of positions, so as a cheap short term solution to add squad depth it is not too irrational a move from Barcelona. He’s been at big clubs before and was integral to Milan’s scudetto a few years back, so should be able to adapt from the midtable sides he has been at recently.

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