Blue Smarties
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 10 Aug 2008
- Messages
- 26,985
Probably why we’ve canned them from next season.None of them look happy wearing that either.
Did somebody win a bet ?
Probably why we’ve canned them from next season.None of them look happy wearing that either.
Did somebody win a bet ?
What channel or radio station was he on out of curiosity, Was it TalkSport?Stuart Pearce last night said it was the best exhibition of football ever
Correct,and some of his past performances in the Champions league have somehow gone under the radar..v psg few seasons back springs to mind.Just goes to show Phillip Walter Foden was ‘world class’ before last night.
Over rated and over hyped diving **** .Fucking disgrace.Can't believe Bellingham didn't pick up a yellow in that game
Still Taylor should have booked 6 or 7 of em, because he didn’t it carried on
It’s amazing that the fact that Phil started on the bench for the final last season is being used as evidence he was not yet world class.Correct,and some of his past performances in the Champions league have somehow gone under the radar..v psg few seasons back springs to mind.
Watching YT clips from two years ago and I caught Rio Ferdinand and lescott both purring over his performance ,both saying world class, and Southgate just has to find a place for him at centre mid...then along came bellendham...and of course the great 18 match wonder kid mainoo. At least Henderson doesn't get a look in nowadays....bonus.
By giving a yellow card very early to the Real Madrid player — straight off the bat, no warning, the way it should be most of the time — the ref stopped much (but by no means all) of Real's fouling. I couldn't help thinking if the same had been done to those thugs of Atlético for that first bodily assault on Kev, it would have been a better match and we would have won it more conclusively.
I think most of our first half issues came down to both Bernie and Rodri uncharacteristically repeatedly making poor decisions and executing poorly on the decent ones. Rodri gave away the ball through poor passes more in that half than he likely did in total over the course of last season (and was out of position for several RM attacks) and Bernie continued to try to dribble through the RM press instead of leveraging triangle advancement (which is not only our normal mode of attacking but a much safer way to go about it), often losing the ball with his back to their goal. Both setup most of the RM counters we saw.
This isn’t heavy criticism, this is just an acknowledgement of what occurred.
Any side in the world is going to struggle when their DM (and arguably their most important player) and the player given the most expansive ‘possession & progression’ role are struggling to retain the ball, often due to bad decision making.
They both tightened that up substantially in the second half and, along with several other tweaks, we actually asserted ourselves over RM much more regularly and authoritatively.
I agree with many analyses of late that a lot of our defensive woes this season comes down to our forward play not necessarily being as fluid as it was last year, which puts more pressure on Rodri and our back four.
Fortunately for us, apart from the last few matches, Rodri has largely been able to compensate.
But now that we are in the latter part of the season, and Rodri’s fitness is being stretched, we are going to need to find ways to help him, especially against sides like Arsenal and RM, who like to press centrally and exploit the wings on the counter.
Him and Rodrygo were a nightmare when the ball broke and they countered. The big takeaway is we went to the Bernebau without a fit Kdb and Walker with Ederson sat on the bench and didn’t cave in. As a team they have matured from the one two years ago which let a lead slip in the dying moments of a game. Real couldn’t get a two goal lead against us last night and then crumpled when their tactics stopped working. It shows how far we have come when they are gutted with a three all draw and are shitting it coming to the Etihad next week.Have to say if I could sign one player in World football it would be Vinicius Jr. What an absolute superstar, I normally love watching him play, last night was giving me chest pains every time he got on the ball. Full of pace skill and effort.
Brilliant winger, if he ever gets sick of being racially abused in Spain and fancies Manchester I'd pay whatever the cost.