johnnythefirst

Holy shit, I was wondering why you posted the Hazard goal for a while.

Not that I believe this would happen. But the fact that Athletico would let his main striker go to keep this goalie says a lot.

Is he making progress? Any idea when he'll be ready for a loan for example?

The future will tell whether they were robbed or did a bargain.

Oh, so he lacks experience now. I guess winning the Belgian league as an 18 year old with a semi-crappy team, winning a Spanish cup, winning a European cup and supercup, practically freewheeling through the CL groupstage and winning the Spanish keeper of the year award means nothing, because English balls make different curves. I see. If you want to loan him to a team like let's say Stoke or Newcastle, he will not do it. If you loan him to a team like Everton, they will become serious contenders for a CL spot, if you loan him to one of the top teams there's a big chance you'll be giving them a title.

The crazy thing is that they're almost in the same generation. Messi is just 26. It's insane how young he still is if you look at his career.

Of course, if you would have asked 14, they would have gotten him for ten. Start high.

How do you explain the fact that most of his tactical team changes or subs actually had a big impact on the game? Putting De Bruyne in the starting eleven (his idea, was certainly not the most popular option at the time), putting Defour in the team for the match in Serbia (if I'm correct), making Witsel play as a number six, et cetera. The man is not stupid. Until now, we can't really blame him for any errors, because there simply weren't any. The fact it's not really a fast playing team is more because of the players we have than because of staff...

What makes him a good coach is that 1. He has won every important match since he was appointed and 2. His players would walk through a fire for him and would pay his new wages out of their own salary if they needed to... Getting someone else now would be mistake of catastrophic proportions...

He was a playmaker for years at standard. I don't understand why Porto doesn't play him. He's one of the few players that almost never disappoints in the Belgian team. For me he should almost always start...

That's bullshit in my eyes. We had a "capable" manager with Dick Advocaat. He did jack shit. This guy is the first coach in 10 years who actually makes them win. Ok, the team is better now, but advocaat had the bulk of the current players at his expense, be it a little younger.

How are Dembele or Defour not creative? Even Witsel could just as easily play as a 10. As I said before, the main problem is we take to long to get the ball upfront. If you play with Lukaku as the deep striker, you should go for quick counters, and not playing lateral balls all the time...

Concerning these old guys, especially Vanderelst: they're always like this. They keep criticising the current generation because 27 years ago they made it to the Word Cup semi finals with a lot of luck. If they're honest they'll admit players like Kompany, Hazard and Witsel are far superior to all of them in any way. Most of these assholes never even played in another European league, some talented exceptions aside. Concerning the goals: A lot of Lukaku's caps were either as a 16 year old in a crappy team or as a sub in the last 25 minutes. He played only two matches in this qualification session. Benteke also got a couple of caps as a youngster before he was actually good. We had an obvious striker shortage a couple of years ago.

Man Utd kinda did it in a way... (well more than most in the PL, and less in recent years) Barcelona is doing quite well with most of the team actually from their own academy... It's hard, but if you really commit to it, it should be possible. A little long term thinking is needed in football. Arsenal btw stopped winning when all of the other top teams got a rich foreign owner. Also, I'm not saying you should not buy big names anymore. Just buy the right ones and don't go spending 20 million just to expand the squad. The Ozil signing is a perfect example of that. They bought a player they really really needed.

It's not that hard to see. Him and Cech are practically equals. One will have to sit on the bench. That's a 50% chance of job suckage.

You know what would help with the financial fair play rules? Actually producing quality youngsters every year and then introducing them into the main squad. It's like... FREE players. ;-)

So Mak, are you "nothing" compared to the contract you signed with your employer? If your job starts sucking and you don't feel it's going the way you want it to go, are you just going to keep working there or are you going to start looking for a solution? The fact that football players make millions of pounds every year doesn't change the fact that it's still a job and it has to be satisfactory. Players make millions, club owners make billions.

Well, that rating difference is quite significant...

Also, if everything about football is "business" and not sentiment, as said by some in the KDB topic, why should players act different and "love their club"? Players mean business too, and rightly so.

I think he wants to rob PSG and hide their money in his ass to smuggle it over the border to Spain. Once there, he will travel to Barcelona to buy Messi with said money. He'll then procede with fingering each and everyone of Barcelona's staff. I can't be sure though, my English is far from perfect.

They must be a very small minority with eyes on their ass then. Though Atletico has great defensive players, I think Courtois is by far the most popular player in the squad by now. Loaning Cech to Atletico would actually not be a bad decision at all. Problem solved. Thibaut happy and Petr can spend his last active years in sunny Madrid in stead of rainy London.

Well I agree, I was just answering the "they will fight for their spot/he shouldn't be arrogant" people...

Or he demands it because Chelsea has a tendency to keep playing their oldskool players anyway until they practically fall apart. ;-) He just wants some guarantees, and since him and Cech are practically on the same level, this is not the case. In any case. There's not really anything to be done about it. His contract ends in 2 years. Management could be all grudgy and ruin his career for two years by not playing him out of spite. It will cause massive bad press and in the end he'll be a talented 22 year old goalkeeper when he's released for free...

It's funny to me how some people still call Courtois inexperienced...

Yeah, for a creative player, the Belgian league is more challenging in my eyes. It's been a while since we had a top scorer with +25 goals.