mcfc-mark
Well-Known Member
The one game Chelsea lost, was at our place was it not?
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But but but Pep’s way will never succeed in the PL.There's football before Pep and football after Pep. Two different sports.
Obviously i'm half kidding, there's been some very good posession based football played in all decades, but it is striking watching games even from 20 years ago and it looks much different to now at times.
I think the overall standard of football now is technically better at all levels. There's a lot of players very comfortable on the ball at all levels, not just a load of cloggers.
I think Pep has certainly had a big influence on the game.
Whether its more entertaining in general now is another conversation though.
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I would say the Jock Stein Celtic side that won the European Cup in 67 has the best performance by a British side ever in a European or Champions League final.Thing is, there are people who'll tell you down the pub that the first version is “more entertaining”, and they appear to be sincere.
It may well be that the United team of the nineties and noughties will prove to be the last iteration of that kind of football. I don't want to make out that they didn't have skill — I'm not that bitter, and these days we look down on them, in any case — but it was essentially in continuity with the kind of football that had been practiced in these islands for generations. Let's be big enough to give credit where credit's due: Wenger started to change football, Mourinho carried that on, along with Ancelotti, who played his part, and Pep has been the maestro of the sea change, if there has been one.
Will it be lasting? It's not certain. You've got to have the players to play it. Time and again last season I saw teams muck up the playing-out-from-the-keeper ploy because the defenders, and especially the keeper, simply didn't have the close ball skills and pinpoint accuracy to pull it off.
Just look at the Liverpool games of the seventies. Again, there were players who could play, I'm not going to say differently, but just on the level of tackles, crunching tackles were allowed on both sides (and by God those Liverpool teams knew how to make them) that you simply couldn't get away with today.
Draw every game 38 pts
That makes you invincible
Also relegates you most seasons
Invincible my Arse, they drew almost a third of their fixtures