ponsaelius

Boakye looked guff against Cologne the other night but his record is good since he crash landed there.

The 4-4-2 thing is an absolute mystery. Last season we never, ever played 4-4-2. I think it occurred for the last 20 minutes a couple of times but never from the start of matches. It was extremely frustrating because like in 09/10 I think if we'd wanted to we could have got at teams a lot more and used a more expansive set-up to win more comfortably. However the saving grace was that Rafa was probably planning for the top flight where we'd need to be solid and well-drilled in a system ready for a struggle in the PL. Early few weeks of the season it seemed that way. We were shite but we didn't concede many goals and looked good enough to stay up. Since the terrible display at Burnley we've been playing 4-4-2 (and 3-4-3 at Chelsea) and looked massively open because of it. It's really odd. Now we're stuck in a bit of a hard place because the side have absolutely zero confidence, and reverting to type might dent it even further rather than sure us up. I think we have to do it though. This is fucking car-crash at the moment.

Fucking hell this is miserable stuff.

Really, rage-inducingly terrible how often they misplaced passes or made passes that didn't need to be accurate when they were coming up with ideas and yet still found themselves in shit loads of space. Organisation that Rafa had earlier in the season has almost completely gone. Dunno whether it's down to chopping and changing the formation, or the inevitable result of simply bad players being exposed for what they are.

That was like a training match for Leicester for the most part. Really worrying just how bad this team is. Definite relegation as it stands, touch and go with a few signings.

Another point on the way the CL is going with it's changes. I think the manner in which it's structuring towards the big clubs is an attempt to copy (and even compete with) the PL's branding and television model. However I really think like this could be a bad move in the long term. Unlike the PL, the Champions League is an impossible sell to both Asian and American markets. A Wednesday 19:45 kick off in London is 14:45 in New York and 4:45 in the morning in Seoul. Even the most hard core supporters aren't going to watch at these times, never mind tune in as neutrals. It's really important for UEFA not to lose sight of the fact that European supporters, and viewers, are the most important thing. At the moment people tune into the CL more than ever, but I really believe there will be a saturation point in the near future where there's simply too much of the same thing. Alienating the ideals of what the Champions League was, a pan-European competition of national champions, in an attempt to pursue the best quality television could in the long term be a case of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. And a final side point - I think the ever expansion of the CL is killing the Europa League as a once respectable trophy. By incentivising the winners with a CL place, and allowing CL teams to drop into the last 32, it's doing the exact opposite of what is intended. It's turning it into a feeder league for the main event, with ever decreasing credibility and prestige.

Time for some insomnia posting Strongly disagree personally. In my opinion it's arguably already overly represented with having 4 places. And your suggestion is coming from a point of view of ignoring the coefficient system which determines how many European spots each league gets. UEFA wouldn't just increase the places for England randomly, because the PL is currently the 2nd ranked league (by quite a distance) behind La Liga based on cumulative scores over the last 5 years. They have actually just changed the distribution of places so that the top four leagues ranked on coefficient (currently Spa/Eng/Ita/Ger) will from next season receive 4 guaranteed group stage places. Before this season the coefficient ranking between 2nd-4th (Ger/Eng/Ita) had become quite close which threatened the possibility of the PL losing a place if it had fallen to 4th. This move seemed at the time to me like a switch from UEFA to protect the position of the major leagues, particularly the Premier League's big clubs. Since then the English clubs have strengthened the coefficient ranking, and Serie A has also moved ahead of the Bundesliga, so it is actually the latter which will in fact benefit most from this distribution change. Everything about the way the competition is structured is leaning more and more towards supporting an oligopoly represented by major clubs from the biggest countries. The seeding system keeps teams from the same countries apart not just in the group stages, but in the last 16 too. It's why every year we're presented with the same teams playing each other in Groundhog Day ties. It's why it's been 4 years since an outsider of some kind (Galatasaray) reached the quarter final stage. Now this is not entirely the fault of UEFA and the Champions League. Collective bargaining of TV deals and the brand exposure that brings means that many teams have a fundamental advantage purely because they happen to be geographically located in a larger country. It's why Crystal Palace are now far richer than a club like Ajax - for example - it's simply being lucky enough to have guaranteed membership to an elite club so long as you aren't shit enough to be relegated from that club. The result is that it means big clubs from smaller countries are getting poorer relatively, and becoming feeder clubs to smaller clubs from bigger leagues (let's see for example Jairo Riedewald from Ajax to Palace's bench). This means that national champions and former European giants such as Feyenoord, Benfica, Celtic, Anderlect etc all being brushed aside in Europe and putting in dysmal campaigns like what we've just seen this year At the moment, the way European competitions are being structured is moving to reinforce the gap rather than help it. There's no doubt the 5th and 6th place English teams would be competitive in the CL, they're wealthier and stronger than many champions from other countries. They'd bring in more viewers too, particularly in terms of the global television markets. However I think it'd be quite a bad thing on principal, and it's another step towards killing off what the European Cup/Champions League was originally about. Some may disagree, many in fact, and would argue that the best teams should be involved and the current reality of modern football should be embraced.

It's practically sacrilege to mention such an idea but it's surely got to be a matter of time before the medium-sized European countries start considering the idea of clustering into larger leagues. Benfica 0 points, Celtic 3 points, Feyenoord 3 points. All winners of their leagues and former champions of Europe, but miles away from being competitive at this level. Quite sad, and the coefficient system has been changed this year to give Eng/Spain/Italy/Germany even more of a grip on the CL.

Was one of my favourite footballing moments of the last 10 years tbf

The Emirates is a beautiful modern stadium that looks amazing from inside even moreso from the outside as you approach. I think most people were very impressed when it was first built. However it becomes quickly clear any atmosphere gets lost in bowl-like stadiums and the more that get built in a similar mould the less impressive it is. Even Atletico fans who could make the Calderon a cauldron are struggling to carry it over to their new place which is built very much in the Emirates style.

He's looked genuinely shit to me like. He was as poor as this for Bayern as well. Strange because shit players don't usually go for 40 million euros or whatever it was. It wasn't as if he was signed based on his performances at the Euros either, since Bayern signed him in May.

Great poster.

They've looked more organised since they changed up the manager, but their side is absolutely dreadful. Made up of Serie C players and loans they've scrambled together this season. Plus everything that could have gone wrong has done. Their captain got a ban for doping 2 weeks into the season

For the first time as our manager he genuinely looks a bit fucking clueless. Not a good sign when the squad is piss poor.

Team #lovethebooing

Deserved boos.

Said it the other week but this is probably the worst team I've ever seen us have on paper. It's truly miserable.

Not necessarily. Looking at the last couple of seasons the points tallies for teams just outside the relegation zone after 18 games are broadly similar to this year. Edit: Last 4 seasons for example 21st place has always been on 18 points at this point. Basically it's only Birmingham who are keeping them in touching distance, and they have a game in hand.

Their squad is extremely stretched at the moment. Half of their matchday 18 today are genuinely League One standard at best.

Bolton are unbeaten in 7 including this one. Pretty much been in play-off form since Sammy came back into the side.

RIP Duncan Watmore BA

They're an injury to Grabban away from being doon like.

It might. That's always a possibility. However I'd say it's more likely that you get somebody who would have a 'think big' approach to developing the club and expanding revenue, especially with the amount of sums involved in purchasing us outright. Either way it's got to be worth rolling the dice.

Haydn makes a good point with regards to UAE and Man City as well. It gives leverage and legitimacy to states with significant problems in terms of human and civil rights. The benefits of enormous financial investment for a state in a football club may not seem apparent at first hand but they are numerous. These people aren't blowing hundreds of millions on football clubs just for the craic.

I wish I fully understood either of these things. To what extent does owning a PL football club protect a company's financial assets? Do they take all their investments out of whatever they're in, and shove them in the club because it's theoretically more sustainable? And how does owning a PL club represent a state and how does it effect political power? Wealthy individuals invest their money all the time. It is rare and often not beneficial to just have money sitting in a bank. One of the most common examples of investing is in property - as the saying goes an investment in land/property is generally regarded to be as 'safe as houses' in developed anglophone countries. This is why you have so many properties across London sitting empty under the ownership of foreign buyers where house prices will continually inflate or in a worst case scenario not depreciate. An other example is to invest in a business portfolio and expand wealth in this manner. A Premier League club right now represents a worthy place to invest money because with the TV deal and exponential growth of the sport you're unlikely to see a loss for your investment. It's a safe and sustainable place (in theory) to stick your cash. On the second point it's all about promoting a country's wealth and power to the world. There is no doubt that Abu Dhabi's investment in Manchester City has brought the UAE to the knowledge of the world. It has pushed the Emirates as an international airline and Abu Dhabi/Dubai as tourist resorts. It's a dick waving contest essentially, a way of showing off wealth, but also potentially being to the long term benefit of a country like the UAE which only has so much oil to rely on in the long term. Qatar is much of the same. Same reason they bought the World Cup, same reason they signed a deal with Barca, same reason they bought PSG. It shows off Qatar to the world, but also attracts investment, tourism and whatever other things. How much of it is wasteful extravagance and how much is sensible long-term branding in light of limited oil wealth is open to individual interpretation.