capriccioso

Or perhaps we should go the whole hog, call out Mr. Guardiola as a technical director and ask him to set up a stupidly attacking 3-4-3 for us.

It's hardly a massive change, though. Lampard et al will enjoy the move back to that basic formation, because he knows he has plenty of cover. Given that the players have played a mildly similar structure before, it doesn't require a huge jump for them to play like that again. Di Matteo needs to have the bollocks to try something like that though. The main problem being the dearth of world class left backs in general. Cole isn't equally good in attack and defence. We'd have to purchase Lahm to fill that role, and such a lopsided formation can't work unless you have an LWB motoring up and down that flank.

But it's not a standard 4-2-3-1. When we have the ball, it's a 3-3-1-2-1; when we don't, it's a 5-2-1-2. It's not symmetric either, the bulk of the wide attacking will come from the right hand side with potentially a 3 on 2 vs an opposition winger and right back. We can also switch the ball to the left wing back who will have acres of space assuming the other team reacts by keeping a compact defensive width, as most teams usually do. A quick one-two with the slightly left of centre AM and we can get to the byline.

Can't we just invent a new position to play for Ramires? Right winger who doesn't cross sounds good. Tactical innovaters . Seriously though I think he'd do great in a 4-3-2-1 that looked like this, when we have the ball: And like this when defending: Effectively giving our right winger a free role, clearing him from any defensive duty at all. Would be great for Hazard/Marin as they aren't really the type you can ask to track back often. It also gives us 7 at the back rather than 6 as we would get with a 4-2-3-1.

From that link: :D

The shame I forgot it was Independence Day today.

I don't think you're a good student. Why, you ask? (please ask). You haven't learned to stop overusing troll faces!

Churchill and Roosevelt's roles in the European theatre of WW2 are a little bit overrated, I think. Stalin basically won the war in Europe, they were inactive until they realised that he could go all the way to the French coast if he was bothered and then promptly launched D-Day to ensure part of Europe remained out of Soviet hands. They also started the Cold War. Stalin was a very paranoid person, they shouldn't have antagonised him by making it seem like they wanted the Red Army to take the bulk of the casualties and fighting on the European front. That was the way Stalin (and I) read it, that the two tried to limit the damage they would take and forcing the USSR to fight solo. They promised they'd invade France in 1942, they didn't; they promised that they'd invade again in 1943 and they didn't do that either. You can't really blame them too much though, it was sound foreign policy; the British were licking their wounds from Operation Sea Lion and the US were too involved in Asia to contribute a significant amount of the war effort until 1944. You can't trust a snake like Stalin.

On the subject of India, has Partition really worked? I don't think so. We saw a civil war in Bangladesh in the 70s, eventually they seceded from Pakistan. India still has a Muslim population percentage of around 15%, more or less the same figure it was in 1947. We still see religious riots in India. Imo, all that's come of it have been several wars. I think South Asia would have been better off if it stayed as one massive India and then Sri Lanka at the bottom, rather than Pakistan-India-Bangladesh-Burma.

If you look at him from a purely political perspective, it doesn't really. His racism never crept into his politics (he was always very supportive of Muslim-Hindu unification, tribal peoples and the Untouchable's in India), aside from a regrettable early couple of years in South Africa. Didn't he spend a night with that niece, with both of them sleeping naked- publicly- to dispel those rumours? Anyway his sex life didn't impact on his politics. As I said, all it does is remove the Mahatma image, which I don't think anybody aside from perhaps Mother Teresa types should be granted.

I'm half-Indian and while I like Gandhi and am grateful for everything he did for India, I don't buy into the image that's accepted worldwide, that he was some kind of saintly figure who was flawless. A Mahatma, as it were (pun intended). Yes, his main work in South Africa came from indignation that Indians were treated the same as Africans, who he felt were below Indians. Really? Most of his work in the newspaper Hind Swaraj seems to be very critical of Western civilisation because of the capitalist turn it had taken. The reason he dressed the way he did in front of everyone, even Winston Churchill and King George V (or VI, forget which one exactly ) was to show that he rejected Western theory on civilisation, which basically meant industrialised, and therefore more or less capitalist. He admired/approved of pre-capitalist Western civilisation, like the Romans and the Greeks. As far as I know he was pretty emphatic in his dislike for modern Western culture; he thought it forced decent people into degenerates because of the economic pressure heaped on everybody who wasn't a blue blood. It was purely an economic and cultural thing though, he quite liked the education system, 'equality' of Western states etc. and for a long time thought India didn't deserve to be independent until it fixed its society up to a less stratified/segregated scheme. While that's true, it doesn't take away from his achievements. It takes incredible balls for a man wearing a nothing but a loincloth to bring down the largest and most powerful empire in the history of the world, without shedding a drop of anybodies blood. It makes a nice contrast to the usual blood crazed warlords that dominated the 20th century like Hitler and Stalin. What it does take away from is the saintly image people have built up of him. He was no Mahatma, he had as many flaws as any other political figure of the early part of the 20th century, but all that gets airbrushed away.

Even the best can sometimes have bad days. The article itself would have been great, but the title promised something else. Gandhi had it right back in 1908 with the idea that we're still slaves, except instead of enslaving ourselves for subsistence, we're enslaving ourselves for consumer goods.

We don't need a playmaker. This whole thing would be a lot simpler if we played the ball high and bypassed the midfield entirely. So they would only be involved defensively, where I'm sure we can all agree they excel at.

A large proportion of his shitness is caused by the lack of a DM partner who has an ounce of common sense in how to play there (hi, Frank). Not even Makelele could hold down an entire midfield by himself.

It's a poor article which featured more on Kumantjayi Perkins and his Freedom Rides than the real issue, which is that unless they play Aussie Rules/Rugby League or Union, Aboriginal athletes were marginalised. The statistic of 1% having the same access to training equipment etc. is utter bollocks. Unless he surveyed 1200 unemployed, countryside living, Olympic sport practising (rather than a team sport) Aboriginal athletes, there's absolutely no way that can be true, especially as Aboriginal sportsmen tend to do extremely well in the two codes of rugby and AFL.

Man City are a great club who never asked for the money. They sold out Maine Road regularly even down in League One. To wish destruction upon their fans is pretty harsh.

I've heard a lot of things about Mikel but never have I seen someone with the audacity to act as though he is at fault for the failure of the pivot rather than Frank "I attack when I want" Lampard. If anything, Lampard should make way to save Mikel from being outnumbered all the time, rather than Mikel's one-off poor passing game being cited as a reason to try someone new with Lampard.

He'll be done after a drink of alcopop

Please, that was because he didn't need to peak. Salomon is above such earthly descriptions like "good" or "outstanding" or "God's gift to football". No, he is much, much more than that. Also this doesn't make for pretty reading: Can't remember the last time we lost 4 in a row.

They did to Spurs (lol), who were a fellow top 4 team.

Aside from the fact that he's North London scum, a blue chip striker for competition is the last thing Torres needs right now.

On the plus side: Completely fooled De Jong there.

Not that it was possible anyway, but after losing the Community Shield we can't beat Barcelona's haul of 6.

Alright we need a striker. I'm thinking a loan deal for a player who won't threaten Torres. Adebayor, if we can arrange a 50-50 split in terms of paying his wages.

Terry was worse in the Community Shield, he should be dropped as well. I really hate how the armband gives players an automatic entry into the team regardless of form.