lionsden

Take a bow son

The only thing willian is better at than Moses is dwelling on the ball,slowing it down unnecessarily and killing our attacking momentum. That he's 10x better than Moses at,world class even.

Was Willian really that much of an upgrade on this guy. He wasn't worth the £30m imo and I would rather have just kept Moses. . . .they are both pacy,energetic, tactically astute , non existent/shit end product and awful decision making. one is just more hyped up than the other. I said it at the time that Willian was an unnecessary and I still stand by that.

City United Chelsea Arsenal In that exact order but position may switch between us and utd. will be surprised to see anyone finish above City tho.

It's still surreal how we managed to get £40m for him.

1)We will finish behind City and UTD in the league 2)Sturridge to win golden boot 3)Utd to lead the league in goals 4)We will only marginally improve on our creativity and continue to struggle offensively against parked defenses despite added injection of creativity from fabregas and luis. Those are my bold and not so bold predictions for next season. I'm fairly confident on numbers 3 and 4 happening.

First of all Oscar isn't a creative player. let's just get that out of the way. You basically agreed with me . There's a clear difference between having creative players and being creative. football isn't played on paper. I don't even think it's debatable that we are not a creative team tbh. we have been relying on individual brilliance for spark rather than a collective team effort as source of creativity for a long time and the only season in recent memory where you could say we played expansive,creative football was 09/10.

Not surprised at all. this is again a testament to our lack of creativity. If you feed quality/decent strikers, they are bound to put a couple away. that's basic rule of law of averages. And if we don't improve on our creativity, I won't be surprised if Costa flops. hope that won't be the case.

That's a very flawed logic that is used to justify literally every questionable transfer. . . . . ."If Liverpool paid £35m for Andy Carroll then my dog poo is worth £55m".

And he is absolutely right. that's the bitter truth and there's nothing wrong with it.

That pen looks worse than it did watching it live. No pace or placement whatsover

Answer this with absolute honesty. Do we look like a well drilled offensive unit to you? And to answer your question yes there's a solution for parked defences and that solution starts with a clear philosophy which is rigorously practised and perfected over time and even in its peak, a team is bound to come unstuck occasionally against parked defences but those occurrences are few and far between which is the reason the top teams generally beat and break down parked defences more times than they fail. we on the otherhand struggle more times, atleast from a performance pov, under similar circumstances which isn't unique to us as every other top teams in Europe cope quite fine with it. An observer looking from the outside only needs to watch just a couple of our matches against parked defences to recognise the distinct lack of tactical offensive patterns such as off the ball movements, combination plays, link up and hold up plays, fullbacks overlapping to create added width, incisive passing and so on. This isn't some random series of events, it starts from a manager having an appreciation for the creative side of football and implementing the philosophy through rigorous work on the training ground. It may not be an "ultimate solution" (Nothing is perfect) but it's a darn good one that has proven to be effective and yielded success over the years. And the most frustrating thing is that everyone knows what these teams are going to do and how they will set up against us 99% of the time yet we still can't figure out a way to overcome it.

I hope Jose sees his that way as he's already blaming the referee (s). To him we lost because of some defensive lapses and refereeing decisions and not because we played like dog poo.

Spot on.While result mean little, performance means a lot. Pre season is the time to test out new and fresh ideas, most teams use it to practise and sharpen their offensive and defensive drills ahead of the new season and even when the results are not favourable, it's comforting to see glimpses of new ideas and progress in terms of style of play from the previous season during pre season. it gives the fans something to look forward to. for e.g even If man utd had lost 3-0 to Madrid last night I'm sure their fans would have taken great positives from their scintillating performance overall with the way they controlled the game and created multiple clear cut chances.

I will pay to see what exactly it is that we do in training. I refuse to believe we practise any meaningful attacking drills with the way we play and if we do then we need to try different drills. either that or our highly paid, experienced, int'l players lack the capacity to implement the work done on the training ground in real match situations. I want to believe it's the former. we can't go into the new season with the same shit football. doing the same things and expecting different results is insanity.

We were well and soundly beaten by a far superior team on the day. kudos to bremen, They played some wonderful football at times. never looked bothered or threatened at the back.

Depressing football. No movement, link up play, combination play,incisive and quick passing. zilch creativity. Looks like we are braced for another season of dire, uncreative football especially against parked defences.

Same shit different season. I still don't see any sign of us moving towards an attacking philosophy. Van gaal at utd vs Moyes shows managerial impact on a teams offensive play. The same utd that looked devioded of ideas offensively and couldn't create anything last season, looked free flowing against madrid last night.

Huge kudos to Drogba and Cole. they made their decision post chelsea putting the fans into consideration. They could have easilyplayed for a rival as well as they both had opportunities to but chose not to out of respect and integrity.

No matter how people slice it. this leaves a bad taste in the mouth. He knew something like things was a distinct possibility when he joined a club affiliated with Man City.

Reminds me of this. http://www.theguardian.com/football/2011/mar/10/barcelona-lionel-messi-transfer-bid

I'm not too greedy, Modric will do

Again completely needless signing by Madrid. They already have arguably the best midfielder in Europe , Modric, Di Maria who was a revelation in midfield last season, Alonso and illaramendi.why try to fix what's not broken?

I remember that game as well. His biggest impact for me was a reserve game aganst Liverpool we were trailing 3-0,. he came on in the second half and inspired us to a 3-3 draw. he was unreal.