CHOULO19

Sell him! No forget that..

Really?! That's great, I love Stepanek!! :ya:

That was terrible

أهلاً وسهلاً Don't think we've had a member from the KSA before. Hope you're enjoying the forum so far. Stick around and get into the discussions

Loaned back to MK Dons till Jan. I guess the club are playing it safe because I'm sure we can find him a championship loan if we want.

Luke Shaw

What a match that was, completely worth staying up till 4:00 am. Brasil played with so much heart. Spain never got into the match and Luiz saved their only chance to get into it. Cassillas was rubbish, should have saved all three goals. Del Bosque is an idiot. Neymar was good but MOTM has to be either Cesar or Luiz.

Torres' wage is about 9.5 million pounds. No one is buying him from Chelsea till his contract expires..

Oh I thought you could get similar images for any player. We'll talk more about the movement when you write the second part and I'll attempt to explain to you why I think Rafa did a good job...an alien concept, I know.. Regarding Rami's finishing, I still think he is vastly underrated in that area. First because, no one can produce the finishing that Rami does at the speed that he does it at. It is insanely difficult. Second, because when I say finishing, I mean how he finishes the shots from inside the area not all his shots. I am well aware that his shooting is terrible, especially from outside the area but when I say finishing I mean his ability to finish off a move created by someone else for him after just one or two touches of the ball. Maybe if we can get a stat to see how many shots he's taken from inside the area and what is his conversion rate from there the point would be clear. But even over all, his conversion rate in the PL last season was pretty impressive for a midfielder (14.3) compare that to our strikers Ba who had a conversion rate of 4.35% and Torres who had 11.76% (from whoscored.com). PS: I am sleep deprived atm, so I realize that the above may not be very coherent. Sorry.

Was thinking the exact same thing. They could have easily played 4:00pm like most of the games in this tournament have been played. They lost A LOT of viewers I reckon with this kick-off time. Very stupid decision.

It's 1:00 am here. I should be the one moaning about it!

Great work Barbara. A few points I'd like to raise, though: - Lampard was by no means our first choice for the pivot last season. True he got a lot of game time, but in the vast majority of the 'Big' matches he would be on the bench and we would go with Rami-Mikel in the pivot. Indeed, even our biggest performances the past season (Tottenham at the WHL, Arsenal under Robbie, Manu in the FA cup) have come with a pivot of Ramires and Mikel. - Funnily enough, I honestly think Ramires is the best finisher in our squad, by some distance as well. True he does not have great 'traditional' technical ability when it comes to shooting, but his ability to finish off moves at full pace is unmatched by any midfielder I've ever seen (even his ability to deliver the final pass at full speed). He is criminally underrated in that area, but if I had to choose one of our players to go one-on-one with the keeper, I'd choose Rami. - About the DLP, although I completely agree with the points you've raised about our predictable attack and slowness to move the ball, I don't think that buying a DLP would solve that. The problem is not with the passer, imo, but rather with the receivers. For example, it'll be hard to find a better long ball passer than Frank, but even he, rarely made successful long balls this season compared to Jose's first stint here for example. The reason for that is not his inability to play long balls but rather our attacking system and player movement or lack of them to be precise. So, we can sign Pirlo himself and play him the pivot and our ball movement speed and tempo won't pick up unless we can get our front 4 moving and running better off the ball and build an attacking system around that.

I literally laughed out loud when I read this. Thanks for the laughs, mirror

^^ @, Omeruo can cover at RB too. In fact, he's played exclusively at RB for his club this season. I think it'll be between Kalas and Omeruo to join the first team next season. Not sure where Wallace comes into the equation as well..

What I meant with "pure winger" is someone who hugs the touch the line and constantly sends in crosses into the box (not to mention that Moses is our best winger at tracking back and defending). All of our other options for the wings like to cut inside or make off the ball runs into the box which makes our attack narrow and that could be a problem, especially against teams that pack the box with defenders.

Would be awesome if you could somehow convince our opposition to never attack..

Here is a prediction that is at least 10 times more likely than Shaaraway to Chelsea: El Shaaarawy will NEVER become anything special in football.

See? I told you all that Jim was not a mere human being!

Everyone knows that everyone on the internet has a penis! ..Or was it that everyone on the is a penis? Can't remember..

No, I only know that I know nothing

I think the way you can include everything in it is by adding 'weights' to everything. For example, losing possession or missed pass in defense should have, let's say 5 times, the weight of losing the ball in the final third. So may be you could have a point system for every thing, kind of like fantasy football points but much more 'technical' and advanced. Like a goal could be worth 15 positive points while a red card 20 negative points. The trick would of course be to find the fitting weight for every action. You'll probably need a program to implement this, though.

Brilliant stuff mate. I have suggestion, what if the stat is 'per zone'. Meaning the stat to be divided into first, middle and last third. Because obviously losing the ball in the final third is not as bad as losing the ball in the middle or worse in defense. But that will take very accurate stats.

True that he is 40, but he is a goal keeper, so stamina and pace don't really come into the equation for him. Regardless of his age, he is still a much better keeper than Federici who is incredibly error prone. No idea who that other guy is, though..

Well enlighten us then instead of using sarcasm. Who would overtake Schwarzer in the Australian NT of he did not play regularly next season?

Exactly, he doesn't even have any competition in the Australian NT. If we're going to spend 10m on a homegrown GK, I'd much rather we get someone who could actually retain his price if we want to sell him when Courtois comes back from loan. Someone like Boro's Steele who for me is much better than Buttland.