Men's Soccer (Football) Thread [ARCHIVED] Soccer • Page 2254

I think this is exactly the same for us all lol

 

Love him.

 

Tbf this is admirable, sure. But they 100% played into Chelsea’s hands here.

Chelsea have fast players like Mudryk, Sterling, Jackson, who want to run in behind. What they can’t do is break teams down. They’re genuinely abysmal at it. If you sat deep, you’d have at worst got a draw from that game, I think.

 

Yeah, I get that argument too. But we also had a backline with three FBs and Eric Dier so I think any team in the prem would break that down tbh

edit: actually, we had a backline of Porro, Emerson, Dier and Hojbjerg. So two FB, a DM, and an Eric Dier. Any team will break that down.

 

VDV might be the worst possible injury for this team tbh. His pace is another reason I never sweat the high line. He recovers and makes the stop nearly every time. Without his pace, that style definitely becomes more risky. But I’d still rather stick with it for now.

 

Sorry for the bombardment of posts…but another Ange quote worth sharing.

 

Ange is an extremely likeable guy. Definitely a few other managers who could take a leaf out of his book. Some of them even work pretty close by.

 

Chelsea were so unbelievably shit. Spurs were so naïve playing that way against a team with a lot of fast players, but Chelsea’s incompetence almost worked for them. It seemed like a coin flip. Play the high line and hope Chelsea keep missing, or go low block and hope Chelsea keep being terrible at breaking teams down.

FWIW I’d be praying Spurs would play a high line against United in the same situation.

 

I'm very upset with the Sunday and Monday results.

Sunday completely fucked my FPL (multiple Villa and Liverpool players) and Spurs ruined my fun. I was hoping Chelsea would be 17th by December!

 

Losing my triple captain on a 6-1 City thrashing where Haaland/Alvarez do nothing but then also getting THIS lucky on three automatic substitutions and benching Udogie kinda evens out the slate… but yikes.

 

Richarlison is getting surgery apparently

amazing how everything crumbled in one day lol

 

The most amazing part of yesterday for me was the fans singing after Chelsea finally scored. And then still singing when they scored again.

We lost 4-1 to the team we hate most who have our old beloved manager. And in the process we lost two of our best players to injury and two due to red cards. Yet the morale was still sky high. And I think it’s all because of Ange.

I know a lot of people are tired of the Ange praise. And I get it. But what’s he’s done in just a short time, both on and off the pitch, it’s amazing. Our last two managers came in and consistently told us we aren’t good enough and always made it seem like they were doing us a favor by gracing us with their presence. It led to a lot of dark, angry times from the fanbase.

Ange has come in and immediately became a father-like presence for the team and even the fans. It’s incredible.

 

The first 10 minutes yesterday, the only normal part of them game, we looked really good. It’s a shame it played out the way it did. But the ways we lost this game are correctable. If it was 11v11 the whole time I think we win fairly easily.

 

And lastly, as far as the high line with 9 players thing. Yeah, definitely not the smartest tactics. But I think Ange did it partly because he’s stubborn, but also partly because he wants this ingrained into his players heads. He’s said it since day one. The style of play is non-negotiable. I think this kind of thing can be beneficial to the project. We lost, but not because we played the high line.

 

I think the praise he's had has been proportional. It's very similar to what we saw Howe do with Newcastle. Arrived in very negative circumstances, with a team who was demotivated, badly coached and without any identity or style. He hasn't pointed fingers or complained about the state of some of the players he inherited, instead he's imprinted a style and got the team buying into it.

I didn't see the game, but the Football Ramble mentioned that, even with 9 men, the team stuck to their task and their high line, where the natural thing is to want to hang back and avoid a beating. It says something that in such a short time, the players are either very clear in what their roles are or trust him enough to just follow instructions in a tough spot.

It'll be interesting to see how that plays out long term and whether he can maintain that positivity and team spirit. Also be interested to see if he can coach being a daft bastard out of Romero.

 

I hate to post anything even tangentially related to Keys, but this is kinda scary

 

Not to downplay it, but that sounds awfully familiar to how American sports deal with the TV partners. And I think Americans are just kinda numb to it. But it really sucks that TV pundits aren’t allowed to have a go at the league they cover.

 

Shipping three goals whilst playing with nine men for 45 minutes (10 minutes of added time) is not bad at all. And not only that, but Spurs created scoring opportunities.

The reasons he maintained the high line were probably not entirely pragmatic but it made sense. They could keep playing the type of game they train every day for. It pushed the game into midfield and Chelsea's own half, away from the Spurs goal. Less pitch to cover, shorter distances to run and press the ball.

Counterintuitively, it made more sense to play that aggressively with nine than with ten. Playing slightly more closed off would have protected Udogie on a yellow instead of leaving him isolated when they were stretched. Nine men leaves you an almost impossible task and requires a more extreme risk.

 

Can someone explain why Reece James wasn’t given a red for his elbow? Is it because having your arm up when jumping is a natural motion? Does that logic not apply to Romero’s leg after kicking a ball? And James wasn’t even really close to the ball when he made the contact.

 

The precedent set by the elbow in Newcastle-Arsenal probably

 

The likes of you and me have their hands tied here, really, as there will never be enough people to boycott Sky/Football itself for any changes to occur. The best we can hope for is vicarious folks in the media who refuse to toe the line. Keys, as bad as he is, has done wonders reporting this. He has an obvious anti-Sky agenda due to his history but still!

 

Anthony Taylor in charge of Chelsea v City! That's right, they get a demotion for one week and then they are back in charge of high profile games. I believe Taylor awarded a dodgy penalty in The Championship while he was there, too.

 

lmao