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Football: End of the seasons, start of the dramas.


A Horse Named Stranger

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There's no comparison between Lucas Moura and Pogba imo. Yeah, his time at us has been a massive failure in the end and you can make the argument that even if he's being misused he should have been better than he has, especially the last two or so seasons- but Lucas was a flashy dribbler who never developed beyond that because he's got bad game IQ, whereas Pogba's been key for both Juve and France in huge successes for them. Not to mention that Lucas when he isn't firing on all cylinders is mostly giving the ball away whereas Pogba for a lot of the time wasn't firing on all cylinders but was still clearly the most useful passer in the team. 

I don't think the argument that Pogba needs to be indulged really holds up when his best form came under Conte. He needs to be protected, sure. But most creative midfielders need that at some level. 


And yeah, it's questionable whether he can get re-find that form, but he wouldn't be the first player to wilt in a situation that was bad for him and flourish when he left it. Usually in these moments players (or sometimes the manager) move on faster so there's less time being bad to look at and worry about, but Zlatan didn't become a bad player because he couldn't fit in at Barca. Kante took a while to re-find his mojo after Sarri's questionable ideas on how to use him but he got there. Even in this current United team, Shaw went from being brutally bad under Jose to recovering form under Ole till his injuries resurfaced. I'm not sure I'd recommend City getting him, but I think there's a decent chance he'll be a good signing for whoever picks him up.  


Whether generational is the right word... I mean, that probably is too strong because he wasted what should have been his best years, whatever the reasons for that were. But for talent? He's way above the Lucas's of the world.  

 

 

 

All that is also why I want to see what Ten Hag can do with Maguire before I flip out that I never want to see him for us again either, like a lot of twitter and that is. We've got a broken system, almost all of our players look worse than they should. Some of them might never recover from that, but some will, whether it's for us or elsewhere. 

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I think today is the first time I've ever actively rooted for Steven Gerrard to win. 

He'll probably screw it up, then.

ETA: I'll continue posting this kind of messages if Danny Ings scores right afterwards.

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Just now, Consigliere said:

Lol.

Chelsea not looking as secure as they should be in the top 4.

Tuchel has massively underachieved in the league this season.

How many other teams are operating under the same conditions as Chelsea though? The team looked dominate for the first two months or so, then injuries started to happen, and if you didn't hear, the owner was sanctioned to hell and now the whole situation is messy as fuck. You can't pretend that didn't have a huge impact.

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Other teams have had to cope with injuries too. How did Abramovich getting sanctioned materially impact Chelsea? It's not as though they couldn't sign who they wanted or were forced into selling players. At the end of the day, given the quality and depth of the squad at his disposal, Chelsea should be around 10 points better off than they actually are.

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Chelsea in many ways for a time could not function at 100% capacity. That impacted the club at every level. Just for example, don't you think in affected the coaches and players and their long term decision making process? I'm sure many people involved have had one foot out the door for a while now. That's not to exonerate Tuchel, but the circumstances he's working under are pretty unusual.

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I'm choosing to believe that this fully validates my claims from the start that he's an overrated manager who wasn't going to lift Chelsea to Pep/Klopp levels and who we were right not to try to get coz he wouldn't have lifted us. Even though it'll need at least another season of this for that to be really proven.

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I don't think he's a bad manager, and I don't think he's done all that badly really, it's just that Chelsea have typically been pretty ruthless with their managers.

The biggest issue he has is going to be replacing what sounds like quite a few outgoings, and fixing his forwards, without a sugar daddy.

 

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Bristol Rovers have secured promotion to League One in dramatic fashion. They started the day level on points with Northampton but with a worse goal difference of 5 goals. Northampton won 3-1 while Bristol Rovers won 7-0 to level up the GD but finish ahead by virtue of goals scored. When Newcastle loanee Elliot Anderson scored the 7th goal, Rovers fans invaded the pitch which led to a delay - Joey Barton and Rovers owner had to get on the mic to appeal for calm as the referee threatened to abandon the match if there was another pitch invasion.

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