ponsaelius

Giroud is tit but that was a terrible decision to take him off. You don't bring on Walcott when you've got a team pinned back ffs.

This is good, but I still not sure about Sissoko out wide personally. Like I said his best spell was his first few games against Villa/Chelsea etc through the middle.

Actually, swap the wingers there. Want dat natural service into Mitrovic.

Where's he gonna play when he comes back. Easy to forget his great impact when he first joined was playing as a #10. Mitrovic Perez Sissoko Thauvin Anita Wijnaldum Might be decent. Or perhaps just have a solid 4-3-3 with the same personnel.

And although Debuchy was better going forward, it was more in a high-energy sort of way that would get us further up the field. Think Janmaat is actually a better crosser of the ball.

My only memories of Debuchy are getting sent off against Liverpool and West Brom like a cunt. Similarly the only things I can recall right now about Janmaat are his red cards last week and against Leicester, again for being a cunt. Both decent, but reckless. Debuchy slightly better going forward, Janmaat better defensively. There's no way Debuchy was considerably better for him to be an obvious choice over Janmaat.

Rafa is such a shite appointment for Madrid, and I like him as a manager. They were onto something good with Ancelotti, about as suited as you could get for Real, indulged the egos and let them off their leash tactically every week. It only went tits up because Modric got injured at a key time and they literally lost everything in the space of a couple of weeks. They'd have probably challenged Barca again this season and definitely won some more trophies. I mean they still might, but I just can't see it working that well personally.

Anybody watching Madrid game? Are they shite under Rafa already?

Tiote was great for 2 years 2010-2012. He's been utter shite since then, but thats besides the point. Who displaces him? Anita? Colback? Perch? We've played trash in midfield consistently for a while now.

Carpi getting bummed to death by Samp

Aye + 11 out of 13 for Argentina and as far as I can remember he's on 4/4 from shootouts. It's not good but he takes fucking loads, half of them in games where they're taking the piss at 5-0.

So much for that injury then. Looks like we were always trying to do the deal for Thauvin.

It is, but he hardly even took that many really to test it.

He's taken about 80 though. At least he scores when the pressure's on in shoot-outs, unlike the Portuguese gimp.

Mad how Murica is supposed to at least be able to produce good keepers and yet their best one is fucking shite.

Yep, the Everton whinge. It's very notable. Almost as much as the Chelsea "wheeyyyy" when they score a goal.

Owen should joint bottom with Smith for shagging horses.

No.

They spent beyond their means under Bates in the 90s/00s and got bailed out because they happened to have fucking billionaires on their doorstep. Historically (considering football also existed before 1993), both clubs had very similar levels of success. Infact City were probably the bigger club before the PL era. You realise Chelsea were getting 12k crowds in the late 80s and early 90s right?

OP to blame for confusion

"Post-relegation"

Smith is the biggest shitcunt of them all. If you really wanted to make a worst XI you'd clone him 10 times and play them all at once.

Alnwick Khizhanishvilli Campbell Williamson Perch Pancrate Smith Gosling Obertan Kuqi Riviere

if we'd kept a team resembling this side rather than constantly pick it apart and buying shite/nobody and not had a shite manager it could have been a very reasonable era. Good squads being put together here.

Man City are the bin man that won the lottery. Chelsea are the rich kid who went to a top private school, fucked up his grades because he was thick as fuck but ended up CEO of a company anyway because his dad pulled some strings. It's easier to stomach with Chelsea. When you're walking around the streets of NYC and you see City tops, it's really pathetic and I'll never get over it. Chelsea under Jose are deplorable though. Not really sure where your argument comes from here. Both clubs had very similar levels of success before the injection of recent money. Man City at least as a fanbase represent a decent working class stock. Chelsea fans have a history of being NF thugs. Chelsea owe postcode and the economic structure of wealth in this country. Their improvement in the 90s and then 00s is because they had people living locally who were very wealthy. If they'd been located in a working class city rather than Kensington they'd have gone the way of clubs like Leeds. Man City are an accident that probably should never have happened, and I don't particularly like that way of gaining success, but its a fair bit more easy to stomach than bourgeois clubs like Chelsea, PSG, Monaco etc.