manpe

Okay so you're calling him a cunt and telling to fuck off to China already, so it's reasonable to assume that you have a solid source for this fact. Please do share with us.

Not completely true. It was selective with him, some underperformers kept playing no matter what, others were ostracized after one mistake. His decisions made no sense. Good game, solid performance. Didn't see the 1st half very much, but 2nd looked convincing.despite not going out of 2nd gear. Alonso impressed, MOTM.

How good is Pedro eh?

Antonio sending a firm message to the whole squad by dropping Diego altogether.

When we were linked to both Allegri and Conte, I said I preferred Allegri. This just proves how stupid I am, I kick myself every day for having unsubstantiated opinions.

Hell knows, but the fact that several clubs are finding colossal sums instead of just one or two, suggests it is all political. Government money and political reasons makes most sense.

Diego had a hard time adjusting to life in England coming from Spain, he still can't speak English. Imagine going from England to China, he would die.

Yet you recognized yourself In all seriousness though, do you have some beans to spill from your source regarding this story?

Worry not, Llorente is here to save the day.

Imagine being Conte. You lift the guy's career to new heights, make him an absolute superstar in world football after he was reduced to nobody after last season, make the team around him play championship winning stuff, make him a golden boot candidate, praise and protect him on every way... and then the guy comes out and spits on all of it by saying he wants to go to China. IF that is the case then Diego can go fuck himself, but I can't stress enough how important it is not to pounce on somebody because of a few articles. We all know how the media works, they like to make a mountain out of a molehill.

If we have our own snitch right here in the forum with secret club news, then you can bet serious newspapers have too.

Wtf man, go easy on the joint.... Anyway, I very much doubt that he is looking for a move to China, but IF he is then we'll have conclusive evidence on what kind of sportsman he is.. not an ambitious one. But when I look at him I see incredible drive and hunger, no way he is considering China at the peak of his career, at least I hope not. Being in a fight with your coach is nothing new. He'll get disciplined and eventually get over it.

The fuck is club whereabouts?

Ulloa? Lol, that can't be true. Such an average player, below average even.

Maybe earlier in the season? I don't know, I took those figures directly from premierleague.com.

Good post and I very much understand your POV. I was more contesting the claim that crossing is "rock bottom last" attribute. Good crossers are hard to come by these days and they often seem wasteful, because as you said most crosses won't achieve anything directly, but a dangerous cross can cause a situation where you destabilize the opponent and carve out an opportunity to score eventually. Using this logic you can also say that shooting is not important, because most shots will not go in or even be on target. How many consistently good crossers I remember? None honestly. During the time I've watched us we have never really been a team with great emphasis on wing-play and crossing like Man United for example, we have mostly been a battering ram through the middle. What attributes are important for wingbacks? Speed to get up and down quickly, stamina for sure to be able to do that throughout a game. Tactical sense and positional awareness (City has shown us what happens when they are lacking that). Obviously defending skills like marking and tackling, because first and foremost they are still defenders and need to be competent at that. Those would be the attributes I would look at the most when evaluating a WB and you are correct, crossing ability is not that important in the list mainly because we rely more on combination play (yay!) and quick breaks. It's still a fine weapon to have knowing your WB can whip in a worldie when provoked to do so, instead of under- or overhitting 9 times out 10. This will be especially useful when we are facing teams that clog the middle and force us wide. Which attributes rank below crossing? I will say long distance shooting and crazy dribbling skills, but beyond that I'm actually struggling to think of any. Considering the opponent you are facing and the type of game you're in, crossing ability can be of vital importance or completely unnecessary, but overall it's far from being among the core attributes required for a wingback that I agree with. Writing this post while giving it some more thought I realized that I might have overestimated the importance of crossing.

What can we do? Some people are thick. No team, especially teams with CL/title aspirations will sell their best players in January. This is just how it is... we are in a good enough position now to settle for backup players to get us over the line.

Rock bottom is an exaggeration. Wide players need to be able to cross, especially if they are playing on their stronger side (i.e. left-footed LWB and right-footed RWB). Remember Bosingwa and how many attacking chances he ruined from good crossing positions? Or Ivanovic from last season? Modern wide defenders aren't that good at defending anyway, so they better have some useful tools going forward and crossing is 100% one of them. Alonso for example is a decent crosser, he's created many dangerous situations by putting in good crosses and it is one detail that has contributed to our much improved performances this season.

Yeah, we simply don't know and speculation is futile.

Actually I think there was only one guy stating that, rest of the posts were simply critics which is fine.

Matic has 29 interceptions, he's 55th in the league and 3rd in the team behind Kante and Azpilicueta. He has 36 tackles. That makes him 46th in the league and 3rd in the team behind Kante and Azpilicueta.

No solid proof of course, but I've read from several places that Michy was scouted and pushed to be signed by Emenalo.

He will be our Giroud. We are lacking a proper target man, he'll provide some further tactical options (i.e. when we need to play hoof ball or defend set-pieces). I welcome any signing sanctioned by Conte and he would obviously be his choice.

*tears* Top post

Please use him in games then. It would really be a pisstake to take him away from a team where he plays every game just to make up the numbers.