To my eyes, Xavi turned into Simeone around the 60th minute. Barca started playing with eight back on defense and shifted away from what worked well for most of the match.
Matchday 10 Game Thread
- Thread starter Kliq
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It’s hard to disagree, but I’ll throw two names into the mix because our Anglophile soccer world will naturally gravitate to Jude. He’s not a household name yet but Take Kubo has been a monster at Real Sociedad and took home September player of the month honors. He can be absolutely mesmerizing at times. Also your boy Antoine Griezmann has to be in the mix. Atleti looked pedestrian last season (no offense) until the playing time shenanigans around Griezmann were put to rest and Atleti played like the best team in Spain post World Cup. That form has continued into this season, minus the awful Valencia game. Sometimes a player’s value is more evident when they’re not playing than when they are. As you note, Barca turned defensive around the 60 minute mark, and Jude was pretty anonymous until that point. He will have to be more consistently effective when the game isn’t going Madrid’s way to be considered the best in La Liga.
All of that being said, he’s really good, better than advertised, and that’s bad news for the people like us who don’t want Real Madrid to be winning.
at least not for Everton
Separately, I am requesting this thread to be re-named: Who is Dide?
Who is Dide? | Meet the rapper who plays in the Premier League
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No problem with what he did there. Kudus was play acting.
this is a boring game. Pitch is soaked, atmosphere in this stadium is a snooze
Forest hung in there for 30+ minutes keeping a disciplined low block. One little foray into the Liverpool half - breaks down, ball lost , Liverpool 3v2 and a goal. Moral? It’s easy to defend if that’s all you want to do.
Whatever Pickford said, cured Kudus. Is he a doctor?
I turned on the Everton-West Ham match on the tv in my building's gym. On three separate occasions, a woman stopped to watch with focused curiosity, seemingly invested in the match
I love how NBC Sports has Mustoe explaining City's formation in and out of possession with two graphics instead of the "opening" lineup
I also miss how PL schedule makers has these overlapping start times. Awesome as a viewer
I also miss how PL schedule makers has these overlapping start times. Awesome as a viewer
Dortmund: play a lineup with 3 guys whose best position is probably 10 and have Hummels flying into the attack.
Also Dortmund: weird, we keep getting countered and I don’t know why?
Also Dortmund: weird, we keep getting countered and I don’t know why?
That’s such a silly penalty to Var in favor of my team but I have no idea why they are awarding that it’s a nonsense call
But both ones that should have saved … Haaland headed exactly into the path of Onana’s dive.
Edit: kind of like a great glove save in hockey where it’s shot directly into the goalies glove.
Edit:2 it was still a very good save … Onana had one choice to keep the ball out and did it perfectly
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And it was a pretty poor specimen of footy. I’m delighted with the win but as an aesthetic experience it was poo.
The Pool counter is lethal this season. More than I ever remember. I feel like with Firminho up front they used guile and nous to break teams down but with the likes of Darwin it’s just bang, off to the races. Obviously they’ve always been dangerous in the Klopp era but this feels like they turned it up to 11.
The Pool defense is also leaky.
Wherever they finish it’s not going to be boring.
Early in the first half, there was a deflated ball taken out of play. It reminds me of another time when a ball was deflated on a rainy day. Will Jarrod Bowen be suspended for knowledge of these deflated balls? What type of investigation will the PL start for this serious issue? It surely hurts the integrity of the game! Will the ball boys be fired? Hammers back room staff text messages be made public and be as scintillating as Wagatha Christie? I surely hope PL seeks Roger Goodell's advice on how to handle deflated balls.
Meanwhile in France, Marseille fans attack the Lyon bus, breaking the windows and injuring Lyon’s manager. The Marseille ultras have been over the top for a while now. Several of the team’s matches have been suspended in recent years due to fan violence.
https://x.com/cpasdeslol_x/status/1718707833493958686?s=46&t=XvGOrrWIyL-5CHVVL_0JYQ
https://x.com/erreur455769746/status/1718707073771352496?s=46&t=XvGOrrWIyL-5CHVVL_0JYQ
https://x.com/loax242/status/1718707797481721913?s=46&t=XvGOrrWIyL-5CHVVL_0JYQ
https://x.com/cpasdeslol_x/status/1718707833493958686?s=46&t=XvGOrrWIyL-5CHVVL_0JYQ
https://x.com/erreur455769746/status/1718707073771352496?s=46&t=XvGOrrWIyL-5CHVVL_0JYQ
https://x.com/loax242/status/1718707797481721913?s=46&t=XvGOrrWIyL-5CHVVL_0JYQ
It's going to be fun watching them blame this 100% on the manager and then wonder why all the same players start to look mediocre again 10 months into the next manager's tenure. But they're all getting paid a lot and some of them are academy lads, so it can't be their fault.
The captain is one of the most petulant and whiny children I have ever seen. Look to your leadership, guys.
The stories from the leaky sieve that is the United dressing room are coming out in full force, poking at ten Hag now instead of Sancho.
Can you link them? I see no credible stories coming out that the players are turning on Ten Haag.
I’m not saying he isn’t to blame, but I do wonder what other teams would look like with all of their first choice defense injured. It’s been a brutal year so far.
That’s true but what I find demoralizing about Utd is the lack of identity, especially in attack. I’ve seen this movie before with Everton- the expensive collection of players assembled by a rapid fire succession of managers with no common Style or philosophy. Except that MU are a bigger club with more money and much, much more pressure, and no realistic expectation of being able to reload with the likes of a Dyche to go back to basics.
I don’t know what they’re trying to do when I watch them. But I have a hard time blaming TH, he’s stuck with the detritus of lots of bad decisions, including the hires of both Jose and Ole IMO.
I think the big problem is that Rashford is hilariously overrated and can't score outside of counterattacks. He's a centre forward who wants to play wide because he doesn't like doing the parts of the job that are hard work. Bruno also can't seem to create much outside of long balls to Rashford behind the back line either.
They're struggling to move the ball from the defence to the forwards because they're missing Martinez and Shaw, who were really the only two defenders who can do that well. The thing is they've been quite good at stealing the ball back from the middle of the pitch and further up, they just can't do anything with it in the final 3rd, again largely because Bruno and Rashford are failing miserably there.
I think the problems are higher than the manager. They need to admit that most of the squad is still only suited to the deep/mid block counter attacking style that Mourinho and Ole used and that if they want to stick with the big clubs in the top 4 they need to turn over the rest of the roster and get in some players with the right sort of skillset.
It seems like the upper management is just too risk averse to actually turn over enough of the squad to implement a more proactive playing style. Just buying 6 new players and expecting someone to change everything around with half the players on the pitch unsuited to the new style and no depth anywhere is never going to work.
They're struggling to move the ball from the defence to the forwards because they're missing Martinez and Shaw, who were really the only two defenders who can do that well. The thing is they've been quite good at stealing the ball back from the middle of the pitch and further up, they just can't do anything with it in the final 3rd, again largely because Bruno and Rashford are failing miserably there.
I think the problems are higher than the manager. They need to admit that most of the squad is still only suited to the deep/mid block counter attacking style that Mourinho and Ole used and that if they want to stick with the big clubs in the top 4 they need to turn over the rest of the roster and get in some players with the right sort of skillset.
It seems like the upper management is just too risk averse to actually turn over enough of the squad to implement a more proactive playing style. Just buying 6 new players and expecting someone to change everything around with half the players on the pitch unsuited to the new style and no depth anywhere is never going to work.
Rereading the article I was thinking about (https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/38778770/man-utd-staff-fear-missing-top-four-finish-source) I probably jumped the gun based on
Not a lot, I’ll admit, but that “dressing room” was also very publicly concerned about OGS under coaching, the “dressing room” seems to have a lot to say about Jadon Sancho, etc. There’s a chunk of that club that prefers to try and sort itself out in the papers rather than on the pitch.
After ten games, it seems like the three promoted clubs, Sheffield United, Luton and Burnley, are going back down. Sheffield United looks really, really bad. They have a -22 GD and a -16 xGD, easily the worst marks in the league, although you could argue those are disproportionately hit by the 8-0 loss to Newcastle and the 5-0 loss to Arsenal. They have just one point, a draw with Everton, and they have lost their last six matches, being outscored 3-22 in the process.
Optimism for Kompany's Burnley side seems to be vanishing. They have just four points and a -17 GD, with their only win coming against fellow bottom-feeder in Luton. It's been a complete disaster for a side that many people picked to finish mid-table.
Luton did not have such optimism, as many people felt they'd be overmatched by the Premier League. I think because of that, their situation feels less dire. They have a less-awful GD of -11, and I think a lot of people would have figured they would have statistics similar to what Sheffield United have produced. Still, it's going to be a struggle for them to score goals and keep other teams from scoring as the season goes on.
The rest of the lower-half of the table feels like a lot of mediocrity, but no one quite wretched enough to threaten the bottom three as it currently stands. The one exception is Bournemouth, who are just one point clear of Luton and have both a worse GD and a worse xGD. They have only scored eight goals this season, with only Sheffield scoring fewer.
The other teams seem content to eek out draws against one another, which might keep them all up if the teams below them continue to lose with such frequency. Everton are bad, but look like they will be able to score just enough to beat some bad teams and stay afloat. Forest have underperformed, but have the fire power to score goals. Palace and Fulham have struggled to score, but are both well-coached sides and Palace at least you would expect will be more potent once Eze comes back. Wolves were a trendy dark horse to go down, but have seemingly figured out how to score after only scoring 31 goals last season. Neto leads the entire league in assists with 7, and Hwang Hee-chan has scored as many goals (6) as last season's team leader, in only 594 minutes played.
Optimism for Kompany's Burnley side seems to be vanishing. They have just four points and a -17 GD, with their only win coming against fellow bottom-feeder in Luton. It's been a complete disaster for a side that many people picked to finish mid-table.
Luton did not have such optimism, as many people felt they'd be overmatched by the Premier League. I think because of that, their situation feels less dire. They have a less-awful GD of -11, and I think a lot of people would have figured they would have statistics similar to what Sheffield United have produced. Still, it's going to be a struggle for them to score goals and keep other teams from scoring as the season goes on.
The rest of the lower-half of the table feels like a lot of mediocrity, but no one quite wretched enough to threaten the bottom three as it currently stands. The one exception is Bournemouth, who are just one point clear of Luton and have both a worse GD and a worse xGD. They have only scored eight goals this season, with only Sheffield scoring fewer.
The other teams seem content to eek out draws against one another, which might keep them all up if the teams below them continue to lose with such frequency. Everton are bad, but look like they will be able to score just enough to beat some bad teams and stay afloat. Forest have underperformed, but have the fire power to score goals. Palace and Fulham have struggled to score, but are both well-coached sides and Palace at least you would expect will be more potent once Eze comes back. Wolves were a trendy dark horse to go down, but have seemingly figured out how to score after only scoring 31 goals last season. Neto leads the entire league in assists with 7, and Hwang Hee-chan has scored as many goals (6) as last season's team leader, in only 594 minutes played.
Everton are not bad with a healthy squad. Even with Calvert-Lewin and others still out, they outplayed Fulham and Wolves but got beat when the keepers for those teams turned in two of the highest rated individual performances in the league this season. They did turn in a stinker against Luton, and were trounced by Villa, but then beat Villa at their place handily in a cup game with both sides playing close to a starting lineup. Recently Toffees have beaten West Ham away 1-0, Brentford away 3-1, and Bournemouth 3-0 at home. Calvert-Lewin, Garner, Onana, Branthwaite, McNeil, Harrison, Pickford, that’s a very solid young core. Mykolenko doesn’t attack well but he is a shut-down defender, he limits opposing wingers like Saka, Salah, and Bowen to table scraps. The depth is not there, the club off the pitch is still a circus, but after a tough start they’ve been solid- over the last six, an xG of 8.59 (10th) and xGC of only 6.53 (5th). If they can stay healthy, top half is a better bet than the drop zone.
Bump. Hope those fans enjoyed tonight. Kaiserslautern Into the German cup final.