![]() | #1066 | |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: Mumbai
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| Re: The Football Thread Quote:
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![]() | #1067 |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: Mumbai
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| Re: The Football Thread Just saw the goals from the Tottenham vs Norwich game. I have to say this - Gareth Bale is a rising star. He has the pace, strength, skills - everything. Redknapp has a good talented bunch of players at his disposal. Spurs really deserve to be in the top 3. I think Bale started playing good from last season onwards. Before that I never saw him playing that good (Correct me if I am wrong here). One thing - Whenever Bale scores he has a standard way of celebrating - he shows a heart kind of a sign - What is that? ![]() |
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![]() | #1068 |
Distinguished - BHPian ![]() ![]() | Re: The Football Thread An informative article on how a transfer window works. Former Liverpool director Christian Purslow: buying and selling in transfer window is tough - Telegraph And it looks very likely that Henry will join Gunners on loan in Jan. ![]() |
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![]() | #1069 |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: Mumbai
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| Re: The Football Thread What the hell is happening in the Premier League? I missed the matches yesterday as I had gone out but was expecting the usual results. But when I came back home and checked the results – I was stunned. Of course I was happy to know that Arsenal had won but the others – Chelsea/Man Utd/Spurs – what the hell happened? I saw the highlights today morning. The Chelsea match was shocking. I never really liked Lampard. I have never seen him create a magical move but he always seems lethargic on field and short of creativity. I think his mistake cost Chelsea the 3rd goal. Ashley Cole has also been performing inconsistently. AVB will be under serious pressure now. I do not think he will be fired because what Chelsea need is stability in the manager department and a few new players. For Man Utd – Feel sorry for De Gea. He seems to remind me of Almunia. Of course he is better than the Spanish waiter but yesterday the error he made – it reminded me of Almunia. Overall it was a disastrous birthday foe SAF. It will be interesting to see if he will do any business in January transfer market as I think he has been playing a patched up team with the all injuries and stuff. I think the most consistent team in this league until now has been Man City and that is the reason they deserve to be on the top. I am not saying they are perfect but in my opinion they are quite consistent compared to others. I think this will be a great opportunity for them to win the league with the other clubs really being careless. |
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![]() | #1070 | |
Team-BHP Support ![]() ![]() Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: S'pore/Thrissur
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| Re: The Football Thread Quote:
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![]() | #1071 | |
Senior - BHPian Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Bangalore
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| Re: The Football Thread Quote:
its just incredible how many of our first teamers are out injured at the moment! Practically entire defense and midfield!!! Still joint top of the league. Although I dont think we will win the league this year. It will be Man City. Their first team is better and their bench is also much better. Saddens me really but its blunt truth. fergie doesnt hve the money to compete with the likes of Barca, Real, City and Chelsea. Thanks to our parsimonious owners, we are resigned to compete for basement bargains with the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool etc. If only Fergie had the incredible resources of City, I am sure he could have built a team capable of competing with the likes of Real and Barca. | |
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![]() | #1072 | |
naughty001
Posts: n/a
| Re: The Football Thread Quote:
the United way is not to really splash the cash around to buy a team of Galactico's, whilst yes they will buy a star player or two they usually try and get younger players to train from the ground up and thats always been Fergies way ie the fledglings for the future is not something new also a method that they employ is to not keep too many star players ie they will have a squad built up of one or two star players as the focal point but they have willing workers and suppliers around the star who do not want to win attention hence those players will play for the team solely whilst the stars demand the focus has to be on them city is just buying stars - and for a while this will tend to work but in the Premier league eventually teams will get tired of losing to you - so when they fear you they will set up to play as two banks of defensive lines and play against you on the counter - and thats exactly what happened during City vs Sunderland Sunderland defended in a manner that was hard to break down (Martin O Niel is an experienced manager) and they attacked only on the counter (easily evident from possession stats) The main reason that United have always been so successful over the years is that teams will always have an undercurrent attitude that they have a chance to beat United, and Fergie always has a squad that allows other teams to cultivate that attitude which means that lots of times teams that are mid table are going to play attacking football against you and leave the space for your one or two excellent players to always open them up and score This is why it is essentially unwise to just buy a bunch of superstars because every team you play will use negative tactics against you and you have to land up having wave after wave of attacking play being repelled by defensive and negative tactics where teams will let you have the ball in your own half and down the flanks but they wont allow the ball anywhere near their goal so they will totally defend narrow So Fergie is the one person who is best at looking at the squad he has and identifying where the weaknesses and strengths are and when he needs to change tactically - thats why his 25 years at United have made him the greatest manager thats ever lived and even Mourinho and Guardiola have to go a long way to reach his level of awareness even though they may be better than him at certain aspects of management but as a total manager no-one has and will come near him YET. Even if Fergie was offered billions to rebuild the team just to have a better team on paper than city's he would refuse it cos he knows he can beat them by being cleverer than they are What lots of people also need to realize is that Uniteds debt is easily sustainable because each year the Glazers are purchasing back those bonds they issued - and the bonds are only due in a long time from now - by then they would have purchased all those back and the club will not be in any debt at all and in the meantime if Fergie asks for a player if he (not anyone else) feels is needed to strengthen the squad then he will get that money ... remember that United has a constant cash reserve of 150 million pounds at the bank (most of which is the money from selling Christiano Ronaldo that they can draw at any time) and they have been showing pretty decent profits in the last few recent financial quarters (profits that they keep using to buy back bits of their bond issue) Also dont forget that soon the Financial Fair play rules will come into effect and no team will be able to overspend and straight away it becomes a disadvantage to have lots of 30 year old superstars in your side because the wages are a problem in terms of the rules and also if you have a lot youngsters they grow together as a TEAM so you dont need to keep buying stars So honestly theres absolutely no need to panic over whats happening at City - it wont last long - they wont be able to keep buying the Premier league or champions league unless they begin to think properly and stop just buying star players to just discard when they dont need them Last edited by naughty001 : 2nd January 2012 at 17:45. | |
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![]() | #1073 |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: New Delhi
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| Re: The Football Thread I agree with most of what you say naughty001! However everyone could see that we had issues in central midfield with lack of ready replacements for Scholes and Giggs. This should have been addressed over the past couple of years and either youngsters like Cleverly and Pogba should have been eased into the team sooner or if they were not prepared for that, then a couple decent midfielders bought to fill this gap. I totally agree that Fergie has always had money to spend when he has wanted and this summer's splash was another evidence of that. He has made mistakes in the transfer market (who doesn't) but I won't hold them against him one bit. BTW, the cash pile is down to well below a 100 mn quid after the recent buyback of bonds. I also agree that the current debt is manageable but I'm still awaiting answers to questions about where the PIK's have vanished from the books? Glazers surely didn't have the money to pay them off straight. I had commented on a United forum earlier in the year that us United fans will need to be patient with this team for atleast a couple of years and my exact words were that we would need to be prepared for some embarrasing moments along the way (couple have surely arrived with the City thrashing and UCL exit). But this team will get better as we go along. It will be a fun ride for sure as always! Hop on!! |
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The following BHPian Thanks nkapoor777 for this useful post: | joslicx |
![]() | #1074 |
Senior - BHPian Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Bangalore
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| Re: The Football Thread @naughty001 Your long post makes me believe you to be a fellow Utd fan ![]() Appreciate your thoughts and your time taken to write what you have, but actually if you look at our past, we have had our fair share of mega buys! Man Utd (and I mean SAF here) repeatedly broke UK transfer records with purchases of Roy Keane, Andy Cole, Rio Ferdinand, Fabien Barthez, Ruud Van, Juan Veron and one Wayne Rooney. Dimitar was a club record buy but not UK record (Robinho had that honor at that time). Point here is, upto a specific point of time (that time is Glazer takeover), Utd were the top dogs on the land, in every respect! We were the best, we competed for best players and we regularly signed the biggest names. Sadly that is not true anymore. Theres a saying in football. Its your defense and attack that wins you games, and its your midfield that controls your games! We have a fantastic defense and we are pretty much great in attack as well (thats why you see us where we are), but we are woeful when it comes to our midfield (thats why you see us struggling to control games even against minnows! All top teams regularly beat us in the midfield area, for years now!) There was a time when our midfield boasted of the likes of Becks Scholes Keane Giggs! Compare that to what we have today!!! Hardly the same class. Why has SAF been ignoring this vital area and for years now?? Look at Barca midfield - Xavi, Iniesta, Busquests - all world class! Look at Real midfield - Diarra/Khadiera, Alonso, Ozil/Kaka - all world class/or at least international class! Even at Man City - Toure, De Jong, Silva, Nasri - all really good players (Toure and Silva are arguably world class) But there is no world class player in Utd's midfield!!! Thats amazing. How did we come down from Scholes/Keane to now_who_are_our_midfielders??? SAF is a legend and a great manager but it doesnt mean supporters have to be blind and cannot question him. We dont even see him attempting rebuilding the midfield!!! And the reason is pretty simple. He doesnt have the money! If he had, he would spend it. He has done it in the past (Rio, Veron, Rooney etc are examples). But now he doesnt. So he buys youngsters (because they are safer buys. if they dont click, you can still sell them and recoup most of your money). SAF doesnt spend any money on quality midfielders as they will cost a fortune that he doesnt have, and he doesnt want to buy lesser players as they would hardly improve things in there for us! Give you an example - Utd were after Sanchez but they got Young instead as Sanchez turned out to be out of their reach (This is for Giggs replacement.) And you can very well see the difference in quality of the two. We simply could not afford Sanchez (would have needed a bid of 30m.) The Fergie of late 90s/early 00s would have moved heavens to get Sanchez! Its incredible a club that boasts of annual profits of 100m+ cannot spend 30m now on one player! Since Glazers takeover, united have spent 400m+ to service loans/bank fees etc. Thats 400m of money in drain (This money was not spent on squad or any infrastructure improvements!) In the same time both Barca and Real and also Man City spent nearly the same amount of money and collectively they have signed the likes of Fabregas, Ibrahimovic, Sanchez, Villa, Ronaldo, Kaka, Benzema, Ozil, Alonso, Toure, Silva, Aguero, Tevez! Its simply mind boggling. (BTW all figures are in UK Pounds). In the last game we played with a midfield of Rafael and Park!!!! What more to say!!! |
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![]() | #1075 |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: BLR
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| Re: The Football Thread A seperate thread for the EPL is in order i say. Unrelated, on 10th January India is having a match with the mighty Bayern Munich (ie Half the German team + Robben + Ribery among others) at the Jawahar lal nehru stadium. Tickets available at Audi Football Summit 2012 |
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naughty001
Posts: n/a
| Re: The Football Thread okay lets look at all your points one at a time Quote:
Please note that im not claiming that we do not need some reinforcements in midfield merely stating though that the reasons are different from what everyone claims Quote:
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the chances are there that City can win the league but the chances are there that they can also have a major blip and go on a 5 game losing streak allowing us to race ahead of them. Alternatively the chances are there that we could get a few more injuries and we likewise go on a major losing streak but rest assured we wont really wait for title number 20 because i still see it happening within the next three seasons even if not this season. The thing though starting like a house on fire is one thing but maintaining that is difficult and like any sport you have to peak at the right time so to me right now City being praised for their football is like that scene in the fast and furious where the guy in the white Jetta pressed his Turbo boost too early and as he ran out of steam the other guy went easily past him Quote:
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1) the cash was not all spent in one go - we purchased players over a spread period of time - so its not a case of not spending - its all about the balance of the squad at any given time 2) players with ambition will still want to come to United players who want a big payday will land up going to city .... besides for the Carlos Tevez saga Mario Ballotelli and Edin Dzeko already want to leave so who says we cannot attract big players anymore. The bigger question is do we want them Quote:
i am not convinced that we need more than fletcher, anderson and Carrick when those guys are all fit ... they are good enough to do what we need done in that area Quote:
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My main point on all these big arguments i am making against these players - spending on midfield players will not help as much as you think it does - as long as there are disciplined organized players there and they keep the shape we play with then even novices will do for our purposes because all we need is someone who can keep passing to a winger who will then start an attack or a counter Quote:
City for all their current cash have one trophy in the last 30 years ie and that is last seasons FA cup so something tells me that they wont be as hard to beat over a season as everyone thinks even with all their galactico's and glamorous scarf bearing managers Quote:
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Imagine if Evans was in defence and Carrick was in midfield and Rafael was in his usual full back role - then imagine Gibson joining Carrick in midfield instead of Park playing there and between the three strikers who started if one of those was benched and Wayne Rooney started instead ... what would have potentially happened then - this was not about having the players etc available or injured - we lost that Game because Fergusson had to show those guys who is the boss and drop them for going out boozing and coming in to train with a hangover okay enough from me on the subject now ... I am going to watch Liverpool vs City and for once i am going to be an honorary temporary scouser and hope that "King Kenny" orchestrates another moment of embarrassment for City ![]() | ||||||||||||||||
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![]() | #1077 |
Distinguished - BHPian ![]() ![]() | Re: The Football Thread
I second that. Coming back to FA cup, Henry rolled back the years, didn't he? ![]() The way he opened up his body and scored with trademark sidefoot, all too familiar. ![]() Arsene, pls extend his stay for the N.London derby. |
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![]() | #1078 |
Senior - BHPian ![]() Join Date: May 2009 Location: Atlanta, GA
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| Re: The Football Thread Woohoooo! Awesome to watch Thiery Henry play again for Arsenal after years. And that trademark goal! Amazing. Recorded the whole match hoping he'd score. |
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![]() | #1079 |
Senior - BHPian Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Bangalore
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| Re: The Football Thread Should have been curtains for Arshavin long back! Why is he still playing for Arsenal? The poorest player in the league (or maybe even Europe) really. Good win for United though, this one, over Arsenal. No CL for Arsenal fans next season ![]() |
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![]() | #1080 | |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: Mumbai
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| Re: The Football Thread Quote:
Frankly speaking I myself do not know what I am angry about. It is foolish of me to expect this team to win matches and be title contenders. When you do not have the team, the tactics and the players it is absolutely stupid to expect big things. I am not saying that the players are bad but then Wenger is not able to tap the entire potential of players or something is wrong with the tactics of the team. No words about today’s match. A draw was a realistic expectation – Arsenal had their chances but they blew them again. I am sure Wenger will not sign anyone – He is banking on players returning from injuries (as usual). Arsenal will surely crash out of Champions League against AC Milan. BTW I missed the City-Spurs match - How was it? All the goals came in the 2nd half. Must have been a thrilling match. Last edited by Saanil : 22nd January 2012 at 23:59. | |
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