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2016/17 Football Season Thread


Lemonade

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bottom of the league after 4 games, witnessed the worst 2-2 draw I've ever seen today at the Abbey!

But more intriguing is strong to almost definite rumours of a Man City style but we're lower league take over at Cambridge United.  And on dodgy money according to a good source of mine!  Interesting times ahead methinks!

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Been trying to wind-up other Championship supporters with the hashtags #BigClub and #SmallLeague this season. It's not working at all. I definitely need to work on my troll game.

2 wins, 2 losses. Kinda playing like a team of strangers at the moment, but I guess that's what happens when you sign 8 players in a couple of weeks.

Still need another striker, a winger, and a left-back IMO. Paul Dummett and Jack Colback are just bloody ghastly, even at this level, which confirms my long-held theory that they're the type of footballer who gives a 5/10 performance at best regardless of the league they're playing in.

Matt Ritchie is a G, though. Marvellous player. 

Edited by Murrr
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So, what do we make of Guardiola binning England's #1 - big, brave Joe "Lion" Hart"? Lots of corners of the internet (and the real world) crying about it being disrespectful to Mr Man City, because he's a loyal servant to the club (you know, with that paltry wage he takes home) and because he was there pre-lottery win. Joey Barton has been very vocal about it, as he is often very vocal about most things.

I don't see a problem with what Pep is doing, and not sure where the 'disrespect' comes from. It's no secret that Pep is gunning for death-by-possession, and he wants his keepers to be capable of receiving the ball and quickly play it along the ground. It's also no secret that Joe Hart's only ball-playing ability is to slice the ball wildly into to touch and over the stands like a hungover sunday league centre back. It's no slight on him, not all goalkeepers are ball-players, but as has always been the case, Pep sees more value in footballing ability than just pure shot stopping. He's been ruthless, but he has his vision and he's not going to compromise it by forcing a player in to the line up who can't deliver that vision.

Mourinho is getting similar flak for binning Schweinsteiger, a player who has been at United for a year, and has been injured most of the time. FIFPro, Rummenigge and Basti's little brother Toby Schweinsteiger have been making their thoughts public, again crying "disrespect". Mourinho doesn't want him. He now has Pogba, Schneiderlin, Herrera and Carrick and seems to be making a useful footballer out of Fellaini. Apparently the dressing room were getting pissed off with Schweinsteiger not reporting for duty last season and missing rehab sessions with the other injured players, and instead followed his missus playing tennis around the world. Get rid.

Why are managers now expected to keep players who they don't think will fit to what they want to deliver, because of their reputation of length of service? It's nonsense. There's no time for sentimentality. If you stand still and clamour over a player because they're popular and/or have been there a while, you end up with a fat Wayne Rooney who can barely run as your £300k p/w undroppable captain.

 

Good on Pep, I say. Hart's been ludicrously overrated for years. Won a few Golden Gloves from having a very good defence infront of him for a number of years. Can't kick for shit, has several howlers up his sleeve, but he's pretty good one on one which seems to make the world believe he was top tier. Hope he ends up at Sunderland with David Moyes.

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14 hours ago, Soda van Jerk said:

So, what do we make of Guardiola binning England's #1 - big, brave Joe "Lion" Hart"? Lots of corners of the internet (and the real world) crying about it being disrespectful to Mr Man City, because he's a loyal servant to the club (you know, with that paltry wage he takes home) and because he was there pre-lottery win. Joey Barton has been very vocal about it, as he is often very vocal about most things.

I don't see a problem with what Pep is doing, and not sure where the 'disrespect' comes from. It's no secret that Pep is gunning for death-by-possession, and he wants his keepers to be capable of receiving the ball and quickly play it along the ground. It's also no secret that Joe Hart's only ball-playing ability is to slice the ball wildly into to touch and over the stands like a hungover sunday league centre back. It's no slight on him, not all goalkeepers are ball-players, but as has always been the case, Pep sees more value in footballing ability than just pure shot stopping. He's been ruthless, but he has his vision and he's not going to compromise it by forcing a player in to the line up who can't deliver that vision.

Mourinho is getting similar flak for binning Schweinsteiger, a player who has been at United for a year, and has been injured most of the time. FIFPro, Rummenigge and Basti's little brother Toby Schweinsteiger have been making their thoughts public, again crying "disrespect". Mourinho doesn't want him. He now has Pogba, Schneiderlin, Herrera and Carrick and seems to be making a useful footballer out of Fellaini. Apparently the dressing room were getting pissed off with Schweinsteiger not reporting for duty last season and missing rehab sessions with the other injured players, and instead followed his missus playing tennis around the world. Get rid.

Why are managers now expected to keep players who they don't think will fit to what they want to deliver, because of their reputation of length of service? It's nonsense. There's no time for sentimentality. If you stand still and clamour over a player because they're popular and/or have been there a while, you end up with a fat Wayne Rooney who can barely run as your £300k p/w undroppable captain.

 

Good on Pep, I say. Hart's been ludicrously overrated for years. Won a few Golden Gloves from having a very good defence infront of him for a number of years. Can't kick for shit, has several howlers up his sleeve, but he's pretty good one on one which seems to make the world believe he was top tier. Hope he ends up at Sunderland with David Moyes.

I think the Joe Hart arguments mostly show a chronic lack of understanding of what the sport is in 2016, or an overly-romanticised notion of what it should be. It's a results industry, not a loyalty or "respect" industry. Pep Guardiola's job is to bring success to his club, nothing else, and if he feels Joe Hart is detrimental to that success then he's more than entitled to shift him. It's that simple, but people's naivety is astounding in situations like this. It's almost like they're completely incapable of seeing the club's POV.

The "disrespect" argument is ludicrous. I keep hearing "he's such a good servant" getting bandied around. Really? He's been paid very handsomely to perform on the world's biggest stage for one of the world's biggest clubs. Joe Hart probably has a brilliant lifestyle, and multiple generations of his family could live-off the money he's earned through his career. Where's the hardship? Why does this mean he's entitled to a contract for life? It's ridiculous to me, honestly. He's an employee who's being paid to do his job, that it.

Their argument falls flat on so many levels. It's a mercenary industry, and yes, it'd be absolutely beautiful if football was based entirely on loyalty and sentimentality, but it's a big business now, and big business is cutthroat. It's like when people complain about over-inflated transfer fees: a basic lack of understand of how the world works. More money coming into the game = more money to spend on players. Simple.

Quite aware that I'm coming-off like a cold bastard here, but people get so fired-up over things like this and it's silly. I've done my fare share of it myself when certain Newcastle players have moved-on, so I recognise that it's a tough pill to swallow, but it's just the game. This is what it is.

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Nothing cold about that. When you realise that you're developing some sort of emotional attachment to a millionaire who doesn't give a shit about you, it's time to reevaluate.* Like you say, it's a mercenary business, and it works both ways. Players will jump at the chance of signing for a big club for loads of money, but they're aware of the risk that they can get binned at any moment when their value has run out. Joe Hart is facing the cold, unforgiving hand of the opposite end of the spectrum.

Too bad, Joe. You should have learned to kick a football, and spent less time washing your hair.

 

 

*Patrice Evra excluded. The best guy.

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It's not even just that it's a cutthroat business nowadays, it's that it's a soap opera too. Does anyone think that the Sheiks and the suits got together around the board room at City and decided that Pep Guardiola was the soundest investment they could make to ensure long term success at the club? Did they fuck. They've thought 'Pep's a big name. I want him so noone else has him'. It's like panini sticker collecting only it's real-life and there are less shinies. A sports team is about 50% business, 50% play-thing for these big cheeses.

Pep's come in and his changes will be as much tactical as ego-driven. He's just as bad as the owners and the players.

The heart was ripped out of football long ago and the Asamoah Gyans far outweigh the Matt Le Tissiers nowadays.

Like you say, the upside is insanely inflated salaries for all involved. As much as i'm sure money isn't everything in life for the Hart family, i doubt he'd stay at City if they dropped to the championship so yeah, it goes both ways.

 

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Agreed on football now being soap-operatic - is that a term? Why not.

Off-topic wildly (though in-line with the soap opera that football has become), the Pogba transfer was one of the most ridiculous things to happen in football that I can remember. It was being totally manipulated, and the puppeteer was not United, Juve, or even Pogba. It was Adidas. During the summer, Pogba's agent was waffling what appeared to be nonsense. He kept uttering to the papers the term "Enough of the blah blah blah". Pogba then got in on this and posted similar on his social media accounts. Then Pogba's agent prattled on about journalists being "parrots". Not really a common phrase. It was bizarre, assumed to be broken translation. 

Then Adidas release a weird teaser video on their Twitter account. It's got "Stormzy" in it, a UK grime artist and known United fan. At the beginning of the video, it has animated origami birds (the parrots) made out of tabloid newspapers. Pogba appears in plain clothes and looks up at a billboard that covered in "blah blah blah", then it just sort of ends. A week or so later, United announce the deal with the full video appears, though Pogba is wearing United colours, and Stormzy does a rap in United colours, again with the parrots and the "blah blah blah" appearing. United announced it at midnight, to coincide with the start of the day in the far east, and evening prime time TV coverage in the USA. United hired a POGBA BODY-DOUBLE to look like Paul Pogba but to also have a devil dyed in his hair, which appeared in all the promo stuff. Paul Pogba didn't have a devil in his hair.

Here is Paul Pogba meeting his body double:

3708A02C00000578-0-image-m-97_1470746581

"Hi Paul. I was hired to look like you but to sport a hairstyle that even you weren't tacky enough to have"

It was just one big Adidas advert. That's what it has become. Utter madness. It's some WWE shit. Real Madrid's stadium unveiling ceremonies have come under criticism on occasion, where the player comes out, walks about on a podium and does a few tricks with the ball, but none of those unveilings were anywhere near the level of cringe that the Pogba announcement was.

When transfers involve 3rd party hype machines, player agents reading from the hype machine script, and BODY DOUBLES, then something has gone horribly wrong. The enormous fee was FAR from the worst thing about the deal.

 

He's good though, and he's going to kick the bollocks off of the Europa League.

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Absolutely agree with the comments about Joe Hart, if the manager doesn't like him then he has every right to get rid.  What a load of nonsense about loyalty and disrespect!  Hart is vastly overrated and is much more suited to Prem League plodders such as Sunderland!

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Seems like no-one really wants him now, which is a shame - I think he's a good 'keeper! Problem is a lot of the clubs that would potentially be interested have good goalies. Aside from the 'big clubs' (De Gea, Courtois, Lloris, Cech), even 'mid table clubs' have reasonable options (Forster, Butland, Schmeichel).

Liverpool should be all over it IMO, but they won't. Hart's best move may be abroad now.

Edited by Adam Easy Wishes
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Hart seems hellbent on staying in the Premier League, quite rightly because PL money is insane. He's turned down Sevilla and Dortmund already, apparently. Everton have just signed Stekelenburg who is a decent keeper, but it sounds like Hart is set to go there. That'll give them great depth, but it'd suck to be Stekelenburg. No chance he'd be #1 ahead of Hart. 

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I think he's a very good goalkeeper. Definitely a level below the best 'keepers in the league, but a very sturdy option between the posts despite his flaws.

England has a nasty habit of crucifying its goalkeepers as soon as they make a mistake, particularly at a major tournament. Scott Carson, Robert Green, Paul Robinson, etc. etc. All very capable goalkeepers until the media jumped at their throats and sucked the life out of them. No position is more reliant on confidence and concentration, and I don't think it's a coincidence that these players started fading away when their mistakes made national press.

I don't think the dogpile's been as bad for Hart, but he's certainly fallen victim to the same irrational shift in public opinion. 

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The media will be the media, they are gruesome and perverse. I don't think it's just English players either. Remember the absolute battering David De Gea got in his first season. The Mirror dubbed him De Howler, and used it in just about anything mentioning him. Even in ACTUAL match reports, because they are horrendous at actual journalism, and turn everything in to a cartoon. Every punch was a failed catch, every clearance put in to touch under pressure was because he's rubbish with the ball. It was madness. The media were desperate for him to fail.

In general, I think the media are desperate for lots of players, managers and clubs to fail, because failure sells. The media love a flop, and love to bang on about a flop.

 

That said, I still don't rate Hart all that much. He's solid one on one. One of the best even. But his positioning is pretty woeful, and he's garbage when the ball is played to him. And he's got more howlers in him than most. He's mid-table level, IMO. I think it's actually quite miraculous that he's not really taken much of a beating from the media at all in his career, despite his high-profile mistakes and being the national team's #1. 21 year old debutant De Gea was still significantly better than Hart at his worst.

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Hart is the goalkeeping equivalent of Andy Carroll. In the seaman and schmeichael days of shot blocking and smothering he'd be up there with the world's best. Just as clubs would be clambering over having a big target man up front like AC. The game has moved beyond the skill set. 

Nowadays a goalie needs to take care of his line like Richard Bacon in a wind tunnel. When to come off it, when to move laterally along it to support the outfield players, etc. Watch a barca game and half of ter stegen's touches are out near the corner flag. Hart doesn't have those smarts I reckon.

Still, he's always been top 3 shot blocker in the world for me. 

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