The College Dropout

Prime Jose would’ve made one sub by now. Laporte it’s not your fault.

City being rubbish is as much a key to this. They’ve bottled it. It’s the club. A good Liverpool team in Europe is a massive threat. Everyone at the club knows what to do. City are playing like a club without this pedigree.

And Raheem is undroppable for me.

Laporte at FB has backfired tremendously. Salah is absolutely rinsing.

Reminds me a bit of Dortmund vs Real. The 4-0. Overwhelmed. Too fast. Too much quality. This is a great Liverpool performance.

Liverpool have been excellent. Good to see Milner, Ox, the fullbacks playing well

City look rattled.

Liverpool know how to do European nights like no other English club imo.

Marcelo is still a small bit underrated I think. Been absolutely unbelievable in every big CL game in recent years Better than Carlos... and Felipe Luis.

It does, but it’s Iniesta. Tbf he scored the winning goal in the WC final. Any less would be ungrateful.

Why? A genuine all-time great has just scored a goal befitting of the legend. Sometimes you have to step back and say wow...

Big difference between Larry Robert and Perez like. Robert genuinely had plenty of ability but was also fairly lazy. He got credit for quality and criticism for laziness. Sometimes he would be off. Perez on the other hand is a grafter. It’s the quality that is in question.

I think it is a bad thing. If we are a club that the England manager refuses to call up our good players then they must leave to secure a place.

They play well for large periods then implode. At both ends of the pitch they aren't good enough. The young defenders sometimes crumble and uptop Morata isn't Diego.

Think he rotates a lot in the mid season so he can play the strongest side down the backend. Someone like Ayozr Who has been fit pretty much all season has only started 21 or so games. Only handful have started 25 or more games. Lascelles, Yedlin and Ritchie. Shelvey and Diamé have both started less than 20 PL games so far.

We would have to sign a very handy fullback. A left sided Yedlin would probably be benched.

Perch is slightly different. He was always a championship player and he was making a big jump up. With confidence and acclimatising to the league he improved into a decent squad player. Diamé on the other hand just looked like a spent force. I didn’t think he was that bad before but it seemed his legs would fall off after an hour and he looked to barely move.

Doesng get enough credit in the media imo. IN our last 4 PL seasons we finished 16th, 10th, 15th and 18th. We are on track to finish lower mid table. And it’s only because of the manager.

Refereeing in PL is immeasurably better than La Liga tbf. It’s one of he biggest differences in the game.

£15m might land them Mitrovic. But the captain? LMAO.

You're talking bollocks. Since the1970's there are only 2 more European nations that have been so consistently competitive. Their competitiveness is not natural, it has been systemic. We all know the philosophies and system that has helped foster this production line of talent. They have a small population but the system they created meant they were still able to consistently produce quality players. They have now missed 2 tournaments in a row because they are plain old bobbins. That hasn't happened since the 80's. If this continues for another 4 years, it will have been the system that has stopped working - not some fluctuation in quality due to a low populace. And saying the Netherlands have not been a footballing powerhouse is up there with the most rubbish i've ever read on this forum.

Since 1974 The Netherlands have been to: 3 WC final 3 WC semi 3 Euro semi Won Euro 88 Thats 10 semi-final appearances in 30 years. But not a powerhouse. That's certainly more SF appearances than Spain. More than any European nation outside of Germany and Italy I would guess.

Claiming Netherlands have not been an international powerhouse is absolutely absurd. I'm talking quality of player. WC appearances doesn't tell the whole story. 2002 team would've had Reizeger, Stam, Seedorf, Zenden, Kluivert, Davids & Makaay all in their 20's. Would've had RVN and Robben in the ranks too. They didn't miss out due to a lack of quality. The following Euros they got to the semi's - that team was excellent on paper. They won the Euros in 88. 1986 was before my time but again, I can only assume the reason for not making the previous World Cup - again - was not down to a lack of quality. This past 4-6 years they haven't developed any quality. This is the first time that's happened - in my lifetime and maybe can only be compared to the early 80's rut. From 1974ish to 2014 - the Netherlands was seemingly never more than 1 tournament away from challenging. Apart from maybe a 3-4 year spell in the early 80's. 35-40 years of consistently producing top quality footballers is a result of some systemic phenomena. That's not an outlier, a purple patch or punching above your weight. 40 years - that was their level. This isn't a regress to a mean or where they should be. They've fallen off and unless they start to produce players again soon, we might be seeing a historic shift. What your saying might apply to Croatia, Greece, Uruguay or Belgium. For periods they have punched above their weight and have gone long periods of time being pretty poor (maybe Croatia have always been pretty handy actually).

I don’t entirely buy the population thing. Suriname is a nation of half a million with a wider diaspora. For 20 years straight Surinamese (is that right?) descendants have been good footballers as a disproportionate rate. Now it’s stopped. The a mean was the previous output imo. This is a slump not a return to the mean. Netherlands overall were a top nation for 30-40 straight years more or less. They can’t be compared to Belgium. Netherlands have been good for too many generations.

Genuine question. Are you more interested in just contradicting me or do you actually rate Janmaat - specifically regarding his time at NUFC as a fullback?