Wisdom Body

Yeah, been impressed every time I've seen him. That's a good old fashioned Wenger spot there. Quietly one of the league's best defenders, weirdly living in the much inferior Musacchio's shadow. Surprised Villarreal are letting him go.

<Nee gifs> Cheers

It might just be my impression, but Eriksen doesn't get the amount of recognition/hype you'd expect for such a good player.

I'd put the compensation fee to use by trying to pay off Mainz to release the currently unemployed Thomas Tuchel from his contract.

The defending in the last phase of that move was nothing short of tragic. 4 players sucked towards the ball, Buckley completely unmarked on the right=hand side. Absolutely pathetic. We did that every time they attacked throughout the game. Everyone would swarm towards one man and leave acres of space for everyone else. Marking at its absolute worst. The result when your entire preparation for the game consists of hammering it into your players' heads to show "passion", "get at 'em", "attack them". Headless chickens everywhere. This shower actually outplayed us, one of only two times Sunderland will be able to say that this season.

This is what seemed odd to me as well, for a Dutch forward. They generally have very good shooting technique, which is why they produce so many good goal-scorers.

It's very prominent though, which is what counts.

There's actually a strong possibility of either of these happening, given that he has that invaluable "Premier League experience" that has kept the likes of Marouane Chamakh and Carlton Cole in employment. I imagine Big Sam would think it useful to have a fancy foreigner around to do them a magick in tough games. Ben Arfa would probably do better being part of the motley crew at QPR though. Despite appearances Saggy Face is still a better manager than Bruce, Allardyce, Pardew et al. He and Taarabt would get on like a house on fire.

PSG not anywhere near cynical enough to be a real threat in this competition.

I definitely don't think Unai Emery's Sevilla (team that won the UEFA Cup last season) play worse football than Man City. City have some world class players but the standard of their play doesn't match the quality of their team, hence their struggles in Europe. In Falcao's case, even ignoring his fitness problems, there can be no comparison between the perfect machine Simeone's Atlético has been to Van Gaal's Man Utd. I also don't think you should use the number of goals scored by a striker in two different leagues as a yardstick to compare their relative strengths, there are various factors that influence this statistic (teammates, coaching, acclimatisation). Michu left a lowly team in Spain, arrived in one of the English teams that actually played well and scored more goals. On the other hand there's no chance Soldado was ever going to score as much as he did in Valencia in the mess that Spurs have been since he arrived.

In Spain Falcao, Negredo and Soldado were all teams in that played much better football than the Premier League teams they've transferred into. As far as I'm concerned the standard of play is clearly better there. The teams seem to be more cohesive and have clearer ideas and the players have better technical fundamentals.

Whoever decided that Michael Owen should become a 'media personality' needs to be guillotined. An onion has more of a personality than this mannequin. Dull beyond all human understanding - he needs to be studied.

Yes, yes it's all Balotelli's fault. Some bright spark complaining that he doesn't applaud a teammate for playing a good pass, you'd think it's the first time he's watching him play. The aloofness is part of his personality. The lad's been grossly overestimated but he's now being used to deflect attention from Liverpool's tactical shortcomings under Rodgers.

Ramos and Immobile were poor again. Lewandowski is such a big loss for them (duh), pretty much irreplaceable. They've replaced him so poorly. I'd rather have Lewandowski by himself in attack, rather than those two at the same time. Better off playing PEA as centre-forward imo.

I've been dreaming about Tuchel Being NUFC manager for a while, he's a great coach. Unfortunately Mainz won't release him from his contract until it expires in June next year. I think he has an agreement with Schalke, which is why they've decided to throw away a year with the mediocre Jens Keller. Tuchel is worth wasting a year for imo. Amongst the other candidates I'd push the boat out for Moyes.

I have to say they are absolutely brilliant at set plays, sort of the anti-Newcastle United. (Atlético)

Yup. This episode is very representative of our club at the moment.

I'd say that apart from Rémy, who is at the moment clearly better than any of our current forwards (but who was never really ours), the 9 "In" are qualitatively superior to the 9 "out". Considering that Ben Arfa had been frozen out so probably wasn't going to be part of the team even if he stayed, in my opinion the factor that really hurt us this past window was loaning out MYM on the last day and not replacing him. I think too much is being made of the striker situation; I like Ayoze and Ferreyra should be given a chance to prove his worth. Even attacking midfielders Cabella and De Jong both have goal-scoring ability and instincts. If we struggle to score it will probably be because we simply struggle to create chances due to poor play. It wasn't that far off from being a good window, but leaving us with a thin defence means it has to be judged negatively.

I think he'll be booted off if we look like we're in serious trouble. The way I see it is Pardew gave Ashley the excuse of squad weakness for the poor performance last season, and in Ashley's mind our increased transfer activity this summer (compared to last) has addressed those issues. If he fails again he'll have no excuses.

No chance Pards was leaving his cushy gig here to join Crystal Palace. Here the team is good enough to 'play' his horrible brand of non-football and still avoid relegation. He would take Palace down Derby County 07-08 style.

£20 million for Lovren is incredible. You pretty much have the moral obligation to sell the player for that amount. Liverpool must still be sniffing that Dalglish glue...

Will probably play slightly behind the front three as the most offensive midfielder. Making it really a front four.

Best mid/long-range shot in the game at least. Great technique.

Good thing the stadium is full of bourgeois, otherwise could have been ugly.

The Americans have done well for themselves here. Light years technically between the two teams.