Men's Soccer (Football) Thread Soccer • Page 30

Revisiting this post to say Villa have been great. Emery has done a fantastic job turning Villa into this type of team, especially at Villa Park.

 

Nice to see Jimenez back in the goals. Two tonight for Fulham.

 

The quality on display in the Man Utd v Chelsea game is terrible from both teams, misplaced passes, poor control, terrible crossing, can't dribble. Almost feel sorry for the fans of these teams.

 

Nah.

 

Bailey delivering around Christmas time. How fitting.

 

I love Darwin and Szoboszlai

 

Chelsea spending a billion on a midfield just to get outplayed by McTominay and Amrabat is peak

 

Absolutely gutted, that’s Matip’s LFC career over almost assuredly as his contract is up in the summer. I personally wouldn’t have minded a year extension pre injury if Matip wanted but hard to see that happen

had been outstanding this year, and a truly excellent LFC tenure. Came in on a free, won everything, and was a great partner for Virgil

will miss his usual once per game line breaking run through midfield

CB depth chart is now:
Virgil
Konate
Gomez
Quansah

with Gomez deputizing at RB and LB, Konate being a bit injury prone, and Quansah being young and inexperienced at a high level (but very exciting so far), a CB has to be a focus for an early January transfer

Endo could fill in probably in a pinch (have heard he’s played CB before) and Bajcetic is a recent midfield convert from CB, but these are break glass in case of emergency options

 

Funny to think the two clubs played a Champions League final against each other 15 1/2 years ago.

 

Saarbrücken continued their killing spree in the DFB-Pokal today and eliminated Frankfurt. And Stuttgart threw out Dortmund.
And the HSV meme also delivered again. Hamburg was leading 1-2 at Hertha until Hertha equalized in the 90th minute. Then they took the lead again in extra time, only for Hertha to equalize again in the 120th minute. Needless to say Hamburg lost after penalties.

 

The box score for the VIlla / City game is insane.... like no one would believe that that's not backwards...

 

United level on points with Spurs despite all the hype is quite funny.

 

They’ve a game in hand to be fair. 3 points behind City though lol. Shows how pointless draws can be at the top end of the league.

 

Villa have Arsenal at the weekend and then Liverpool not long after. They could be shaping the title here or even making themselves the dark horse.

 

I think they have to be included as title contenders right now. Pretty much regardless of the result in those games (and I think they will win both).

 

Yeah, if they're still in the mix by January, I think you have to consider them as contenders. They just have a much tougher situation to work with, as they could concentrate on a cup or the Europa Conference (which they are extremely well placed to win). Realistically, they probably need to sack off the other competitions to concentrate on the league, if they want a chance of keeping up. That's a harder choice when you're not typically in the running for something.

 

Unai Emery is such a great coach with solid results/trophies at pretty much every club he’s been at. Obviously Arteta is doing fine, but Arsenal does stand out on his resume as the one place he hasn’t won since breaking through with Sevilla.

 

Villa will definitely be up there come season end, especially considering how good their home record is. They're already through to the next round of the Conference League, so that trip to Bosnia in a few weeks doesn't look too daunting anymore. Boro away in the FA cup is tricky, though, they'll need a strong XI to overcome that.

The funny thing for me is they don't even use the likes of Jacob Ramsey, someone I had down in this very thread as being my predicted choice for young Player of the Season. I guess what I'm trying to say is they may have slightly better depth than some realise.

 

His final run at Arsenal was hilariously bad, and the matches before that involved literally zero control or game management, but tbf he managed to get us to a European final and we just totally collapsed ha.

Emery was handcuffed at Arsenal though. He wanted Zaha, but Raul bought him Pepe (in a deal that totally wasn’t a dodgy way to take millions out of the club). He wanted new centre backs, they got him an aging David Luiz and a 17 year old unknown. Arsenal fans really like Unai and always wish him success, because we recognise it wasn’t his fault, it was the clubs.

 

On the subject on Emery, watching Villa's "Emery cam" on YouTube is a treat. Dude is so animated.

 

All it took was a laundry list of players to go out all at the same time

 

I hope the season stays like this. 11 pts between 1st and 8th at almost midpoint (29 pt gap last season).

Im basically just gonna root for chaos at this point.

 

Which is exactly what United have had all season. Turns out when your best players are injured, teams struggle.