Kimbo

The pressing has killed us. That’s a long term problem.

I’m not sure, I need another couple of minutes to make my mind up.

Welk they’ve got Van Dijk going around clouting people in the head any way he can. He should’ve got half a dozen red cards last season.

I’d take Pope over Given. Given might be the better shot stopper, but Pope is pretty great too. When it comes to dealing with corners and crosses there’s no comparison really.

We’re talking semantics now, but to me elite and world class would be interchangeable, and that means being among the top few in your position. He was never that in my book. Was he top 10 at times? Possibly yeah.

I’m not saying he’s a bad player, he was clearly a very very good player that could be a match winner. But if we’re talking about the elite CM’s, which is a group many people rate him in, he was too selfish too often for me.

Not in the same way that players like Modric and Xavi ran games. Gerrard was a very dynamic and athletic player and was always looking to force the ball forward and get a goal or an assist. It could be devastating or he could keep pinging long diagonal balls out of play. It was perfect for a Liverpool team which wasn’t the best, but if you tried to put him in a team like the one Xavi played in he’d look very average IMO.

I’m sure they have, they got a lot of plaudits. There’s subjectivity to this but the likes of Lampard and Gerrard didn’t run games the way players like Modric, Xavi, and Pirlo did. They racked up goals and assists and were better playing in free roles or behind the striker, but as actual CM’s I didn’t think either was particularly good. Gerrard in particular was often very wasteful with the ball IMO, which is a big negative to me. Scholes could run games from CM, but obviously had big flaws without the ball.

Scholes flaws showed when he didn’t have the ball, with it he was up there with the likes of Xavi (not Iniesta, that’s another step IMO).

I think Scholes, Lampard and Gerrard all get hyped up by their supporters due to the argument about who’s best, to elevate them above the other two. Scholes is my preferred option of the three but it’s reasonable to say they all had major flaws and weren’t really among the best midfielders in the world.

We’re all against time wasting apart from when an ESL club concedes a goal. Absolute bollocks.

Both of those would be out of our price range IMO. I’d say Anderson, but realistically it’s neither.

I don’t really have an issue with the current offside rule, the only very minor change would be to look at the feet rather than the armpit or whatever else. If we improve the technology to the point where we can get quick reliable decisions then it’s sorted.

I would expect it to result in defences sitting deeper.

I take it he didn’t rate Patrick Vieira much. Silly list.

It’s another one that you should only need to see a couple of times.

I think they probably should’ve just bought the arena site.

The nerve of the bloke to do a media tour talking himself up after he’s just been binned (again) by Blackpool.

I have to say I think both teams have looked pretty shit. It’s quite entertaining but low quality.

Awful performance from Alexander.

They’ve just subbed their midfield?

Amad did nothing wrong there.

Apparently he’s mates with the Greek from his time at Olympiakos. Still seems stupid move though.

You might be right that he’ll never change, and eventually that could become a real problem for me. I don’t think trying to outrun teams for 50-60 games a season will work anymore, even the worst teams in the league are really athletic at the moment. Right now I trust Howe to realise that and try to address it though.