Madmax

Happy birthday.

Need to get Mata on the ball more, methknks. Malouda doesn't look like he can create one. Ramires has had a good first touch so far, surprisingly.

Freedom from shite articles being posted everywhere!

Not going to judge the team in a technical sense, considering it was mostly a bunch of fringe players, no-hopers and full debutants thrown together. Hardly anyone of them would have been match fit, so lasting 120 mins, 73 of those with a man less is credit to the players. Individually speaking, Josh, Malouda and Lampard stood out for me. Oriol and Ryan looked alright, Lukaku could have (should have...) done better but it's easy to forget the lad is just 18. Alex was poor imo, yes he put in a couple of last ditch tackles in the first half but that masks the fact that he put himself in those nervous situations in a bid to scramble back to the goal having allowed the runner to get goalside in the first place. Glad Cech and Studge will be back for the next one, delighted we got through a fucking shootout for once.

Not going to judge the team in a technical sense, considering it was mostly a bunch of fringe players, no-hopers and full debutants thrown together. Hardly anyone of them would have been match fit, so lasting 120 mins, 73 of those with a man less is credit to

Didn't do well when on the ball. Almost always made the wrong decision between shooting or passing and thus a few moves broke down. Needs a better first touch but when playing with his back to goal it doesn't matter that much because his strength is unreal.

Anchorman in midfield.

^ For being a racist cunt.

Ten sports or ten action?

Aye. I'm calling him Goldilocks from now on

He's a natural born killaz, dude. A technique killaz as well.

Welcome!

One more Neymar thread?

Before this weekend, 9 out of 15 had been missed. That's 60%.

:541: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1oO92cKLms

You used to follow Mirror and that little turd Lipton? You should be shot!

Yep, everything works fine on Firefox. Chrome =

Where's my rep you bitch?

We could use this one for most of your posts.

I expected real analysis when I read the title, Blionheart is great at that. My 2 cents - 1. I was very impressed with the pressing. We gave them next to no time or space on the ball. No surprise then that they couldn't play their high tempo passing game. If you see the match again, you'll find Rooney has to drop deeper and deeper as the game goes on because they couldn't get him on the ball. But there are a few individual culprits here. Sturridge and Bosingwa didn't close down well enough on the right and it allowed them to shift flanks with long diagonal balls. While most of the blame for their second goal has fallen on Mata, Meireles and Terry were the bigger culprits imo. They should have been breathing down his neck but allowed him to continue his run and Nani took his chance. 2. I wonder if it would be beneficial for Sturridge and Mata to exchange flanks. Once Sturridge picks up the ball on the right you know he's going to cut inside, makes it predictable. Mata on the other hand can drift inside or beat his man on the outside. 3. I picked up on this pre-match and it was validated yesterday - Ivan shouldn't be a CB. He is reckless and has a tendency of going to ground to easily. Him and JT will be exposed by pace all day long so makes no sense to pair two identical defenders against the paciest forwards in the league. 4. Meireles yesterday had too much of his game taken away from him in the first half. He did alright in that position against Sunderland but he needs to be played in a slightly advanced role if we're to get the best out of his attacking talents. Ramires for all his industry and enthusiasm is shocking on the ball. Mikel is more suited for that DM role but he was little more than a slow paperweight after he came on yesterday, doing his cause no good. Yoiu could see Meireles was immediately more threatening and influential as soon as we switched to 4-2-3-1 at HT. 5. If there's one criticism that I can think of against AVB yesterday, it would have to be the Lukaku substitution. I expected us to go 2 upfront but Lukaku was stationed on the right wing and he looked awful. 6. We did our best to get Torres firing yesterday. Balls played between their centre-half and full-back which Nando used his pace to latch onto (twice - for the Ramires chance and the goal). Nice to see.

Rubbish. Great report otherwise, as usual.

Since when are clean sheets the primary indicator of a good gk?

Torres, by far. I wasn't extremely impressed by Mata tbh. He had his good moments, especially in the first half, but went missing a bit in the second when we switched to 4-2-3-1.

I'd like to post a screenie Alex, but can't. Only reason i can even post is because I'm using that other editing mode (top left icon). I can't post in the normal mode, I can't post pics, I can't quote posts either. Maybe this has something to do with Chrome, I'll try Firefox tomorrow.

I think there are moments when human emotion transcends football and any decent bloke out there would feel sorry for Nando today. He was nigh on excellent for 90 mins and we saw what a difference he can and will make at this club. He's getting there, be sure of it.