Village Idiot

Rivaldo's stock is, imho, hurt by the fact we were never successful in Europe during his time with us, and possibly because of *that* dive, too.

I'm not saying that Messi et al have no flair, mind, just that they are more direct and chose simpler options than other greats did. In part one of the reasons Messi is a better player than, say, Rivaldo, is because of this.

In general, I get the impression football is currently moving away from flair players and going towards sheer effectiveness, which probably make sense but makes me just a little bit sad. The two generally acknowledged best players in the world (Cronaldo and Messi) have crazy statistics but - if you allow me to say this - aren't as beautiful to watch as the likes of Van Basten, Romario, Rivaldo or Ronaldinho were in the recent past.

That's ridiculously cheap given where his stock was one year ago, and not sure Sevilla would let him go for such a low price given how have they bargained for their players in the past. Perotti's individual technique is excellent and is a good crosser of the ball. He only needs to learn to play more intelligently to become a fearsome winger.

We are susceptible to counterattack. Every tactical setup does have a weakness. Spain played the "not vulnerable to counters" version of our tactic (two deep lying mids, less overloading of the final third) and it was considerably less effective going forward. Give some, get some.

He'll get way more mileage off Maxwell than Alves. Maxwell gets forward as much and doesn't have Alves' pace or stamina to retrack. Alves is not poor defensively at all. A bit of a myth really.

Don't really think we were complacent, we were tired. Arsenal only broke us down in the last 15, although we looked shattered by then. Still going to be a very hard tie. I don't think Arsenal won't score to be frank, so I expect that we'll need at least 3 goals to get through.

Like Messi's new position this season? As a deep lying nine, in between the two lines of defenders, aiming to take them out of position while our wingers cut inside and take the striker position themselves. We have also switched to 442 and 424 against teams sitting deep. All managers make mistakes, even the best, but certainly Pep does way more than just cut and paste lineups from the previous weeks.

Also (obviously) pleased to see Osasuna tonk Espanyol 4-0 and doing it with style. Osasuna have way too good players to play the dreary shit that they played under Camacho. Nekounam with a brace.

At times.

It's a bit of a myth that Madrid didn't press during the 5-0 win. Watch the match opening moves and you'll see that they were obviously ordered to do so (why wouldn't they?) they just aren't used to it and their positioning on that regard was dreadful.

The penalty sums up why I don't think Busquets should play in defence, he isn't a good tackler.

GTFI Very good keeper and then he goes and does that. Legend. Piatti scored a beauty in the same game, but everybody will talk about Aranzubia's goal, shit luck to him

Should I...? Nah.

Barça "fans" at Nevada were insufferable, ended up going to a Spanish place in Astoria, much better atmosphere. I remember when I first moved to the US and there wasn't nearly a single Barça fan in town that wasn't a Spanish emigrant like me. Cue a treble later and you couldn't get rid of them.

I really need to start watching more Bundesliga, but it's hard to get it down here. Love the apparent randomness of it, with teams going from hit to s*** in a single season.

Miquel was playing in pretty much a pub team when they picked him up, now that was scouting.

Toon Army NYC are great bunch of lads (was one of them till moving to Miami)- meet in Legends now on 33rd street, so easier i coming on PATH train from NJ. Quite a few of them often watch in NJ - should connect on forum at least on www.toonarmynyc.com Thank god you don't meet at Nevada Smiths like the Barça supporters. Absolutely loathed that plastic coven. I went to watch some WC games at legends and found it a decent place.

Very rare I would guess. It's also confused me by having both 4th and 5th round matches during the same weekend. The FA Cup is such a glorious mess, I love it.

While women's football is an afterthought around here, it is very big in the US.

Good enough that if we don't get past Arsenal, it won't be Pinto's fault. Valdés wasn't particularly brilliant in both of Arse's goals tbf (good save in the first half though).

Valdés out for today and likely will miss the next month due to knee injury. Pinto's decent, but those corn rows FFS.

It would be quite a feat if WBA manage to get relegated given where they were a couple months ago. Still see them pulling a Hull and barely scraping it.

Valencia have a couple of quite good strikers in Aduriz and Soldado. Adding Gameiro to the mix would be very good for them. Now if they started playing with more than 1 striker away from home...

That said, I hope the yanks get pissed off enough at FIFA that they go all Department of Justice on them, like they did to the IOC.