Men's Soccer (Football) Thread [ARCHIVED] Soccer • Page 462

Oh yeah that 5 minutes pissed me off massively haha. I was thinking the exact same about Williams initially.

 

I don’t even think they’re bad defenders (well Williams is a bad defender but he’s young I guess?) but our shape defensively is wrong at times. We’ve actually had a very good defence this past season but they way we set up, with no proper defensive midfielder and two wingers who aren’t great at tracking back means we’re quite vulnerable and prone to costly mistakes. Because of that, when we give up chances it’s usually because of players mistakes and being pulled out of position because of the general lack of protection.

it’s no coincidence that we were better defensively when Matic came back into the first team mid way through January. But that wasn’t an Ole masterstroke, he reluctantly put him back in the team after freezing him out.

 

Love this stat:

United has 33 chances over the QF and SF matches. They only scored two penalties.

 

Sabitzer being linked to Spurs is weird because it isn’t a position of need, but I’d be very happy with him.

 

Pep didn’t put his team in a position to succeed. And when shit changed for the better the guys didn’t get it done. I honestly feel like there’s some doubts at times from players.

 

I’m also tired of City fans going on and on about VAR or anything else. It’s clear that this team is not as good as they want to be/think they are.

 

Bale linked to Spurs return pretty heavily. Feel like that would be a HUGE mistake for Spurs.

 

I don't believe it though. We are linked every window haha

I think he's still a really good player and I'd love to have him. His wages are just not realistic for Spurs at all.

 

I can see why they're annoyed with the second Lyon goal. A player doing a step-over, while visibly offside, is interfering with play to me. But in general, City only have themselves to blame for losing that game. They were so wasteful.

 

Did not see this coming but makes sense. I think he'll be our 3rd keeper.

 

In the heat of the moment I posted this last night. But watching back, fuck. The keeper didn’t even have to do anything out of the ordinary. Shocking finishing. At least against Copenhagen we made the keeper work.

 

I have never seen this called as offside.

 

It's borderline. He didn't touch the ball, but I can see in some cases it being classed as interfering with play because of course it impacts the reaction of the defenders and goalkeeper.

I think it should be allowed but I would have understood had it been disallowed.

 

it's an interesting one, he didn't touch the ball and made no attempt to touch the ball. Just let it run by him. It's a different situation to a player standing in the way of a keeper and interfering.

It's similar to when players walk/run past the ball to let their teammates get onto the end of a pass. I don't think it was offside, but yeah I wouldn't complain if it was called offside.

 

It's down to the subjective nature of the rule. In my opinion, a player in that position cannot be doing anything other than interfering. Which is why I've thought for a long time we should go back to the old offside law.

 

I think the distance from the goal also plays into determining interference. Both players were beyond the defenders enough that they couldn’t be interfered with

 

Exactly yeah. They were a good 30+ yards out, it not as though they had no time to react.

 

I wonder if putting on Ighalo before the 91st minute of the second game might have helped.

 

Lol this is reminiscent of the beginning of the season waiting til the 85th minute to make your first change. I didn’t watch the match yesterday but seems like my time was better used anyways.

 

The tweet sums it up really. We played well. They were a bit better in the first half, but we were much the better team in the second. Two defensive lapses and a lot of poor finishing. We should have won but ah well. I thought we were going to be much worse.

 

In case you’re bored. I rather enjoy these little videos.

 

I don't think I've ever seen one quite like that. Normally a player who knows they're off does something to suggest they're not going to play the ball (stop running or make some exaggerated movement around the ball). He keeps running and lets it pass through his legs, then he stops. City have pretty much stopped defending by then.

Obviously, City should have played to the whistle (which might have made no difference anyway), but I can see the frustration about that one. Not VAR's fault though, because that's the rule they have to work with.

 

1. Setien has been fired.
2. Abidal has most likely been fired.
3. Suarez is reportedly asking to go to Ajax.
4. Messi is reportedly asking to leave. (See: 6)
5. Neymar is tweeting this:

6. Bartomeu is still refusing to step down or call early elections for his replacement.
7. Ronald Koeman has been named the new coach, reportedly. The club is afraid of Poch backlash from the socios due to his previous comments.
8. Only squad members not up for sale are supposedly De Jong, ter Stegen, and Messi.

Barcelona rumors/reports flying out of the board meeting like crazy right now.

9. Oh, and Arthur crashed his Ferrari drunk driving (but he's not technically Barcelona anymore) this morning.

 

Allardyce was better for Everton than Koeman (and Walsh). But yeah, I wish Barca well.