England

[rgk_lfc]

21 hours ago, AyeDubbleYoo said:

His control and link play is unreal, even when he’s being hassled. Always manages to get something on a ball and flick it or bring it down. Fantastic player. 

 

To be fair in the Kane - Lewandowski comparison, Lewy had the opportunity to continuously develop under some of the finest minds in the game. I think his managers were Klopp, Guardiola, Ancelotti, Heynckes, Flick, Nagelsmann. You cant play under these guys without developing an allround game. I am not giving the credit entirely to the managers also, it is Lewy's hardwork, commitment, and talent which led him to be an elite striker.  But if you are an attacking player who is looking to refine and evolve your skills, you couldn't pick a better set of managers.

 

With all due respect to Spurs managers, outside of Poch, Kane did not have the opportunity to work with a similar level of managers.  And as highly as I rate Poch, just from a purely attacking point of view or from the perspective of developing attackers, I would rate Klopp and Guardiola slightly above him.

 

I feel that if Kane was in Lewy's setup and Lewy was in Kane's setup, by setup I mean the entire career path - Dortmund, Bayern,etc., Kane would be putting up Lewy numbers but Lewy would most likely not be matching Kane. 

 

Again, not trying to downplay Lewy's achievements which are incredible. It is more from the point of view of how highly I rate Kane. 

 

 

Edited September 9, 2021 by rgk_lfc

[joeyt]

 

[Foluwashola]

He does look, and came across, extremely racist tbf so I'm going with guilty. 

[Abacus]

16 hours ago, tgarve said:

Awful comment- Pickford is miles above the other keepers and been great on pens

 

I think Pickford was a liability yesterday, and not just for the blunder that very nearly gave them a comical deflected goal.

 

He is a good instinctive shot stopper, so can be good at pens, that's true.

 

But he loses his head and every now and again he has the awful distribution skills of Yodel. He's either spanking the ball miles up the pitch to no purpose and giving a decent chance of it coming right back at us, or on at least one occasion making a short pass to the wrong player that played our defence right into trouble.

 

The distribution point is exactly why we brought Dubravka in and suddenly, after I was wondering why we were prioritising a GK when we had the likes of Darlow who is similarly a decent shotstopper, it made sense. Particularly when we seemed to have much more glaring problems.

 

Not saying he is perfect but it became obvious that suddenly we had a keeper that could find a player up the pitch without a 50-50 headed battle, and that's why Rafa has brought him in. Suddenly, you've not quite got an extra sweeper, but you at least have another footballer. And suddenly, the pressure is off the rest just that little bit. Now, a keeper can't just be a shot stopper.

 

I do wonder how long he'll put up with Pickford at club level.

 

The other thing is that he really doesn't command the box, just runs about looking panicked, and that can't give the defence much confidence.

 

Of course it's an unfair comparison, but the likes of a David Seaman would leave their line at a corner or a cross and serenely gather the ball most of the time. They're intimidating in the way Pickford is not and never has been.

 

Whilst it doesn't help that Pickford is no giant and with arms that can barely reach the top of his head, also watching him scurrying about glued to his line unable to catch anything can't fill anyone with confidence in the last few minutes of a game when you just need to hang on and the air raid sirens are going off.

 

Where I do agree with you, however, is that I don't know what better options we have. But Southgate has a few matches now where we have the opportunity to experiment instead of just picking his favourites. And I do think this keeper is a weak link at the top level, so he should.

[Guest HTT II]

11 minutes ago, Abacus said:

 

I think Pickford was a liability yesterday, and not just for the blunder that very nearly gave them a comical deflected goal.

 

He is a good instinctive shot stopper, so can be good at pens, that's true.

 

But he loses his head and every now and again he has the awful distribution skills of Yodel. He's either spanking the ball miles up the pitch to no purpose and giving a decent chance of it coming right back at us, or on at least one occasion making a short pass to the wrong player that played our defence right into trouble.

 

The distribution point is exactly why we brought Dubravka in and suddenly, after I was wondering why we were prioritising a GK when we had the likes of Darlow who is similarly a decent shotstopper, it made sense. Particularly when we seemed to have much more glaring problems.

 

Not saying he is perfect but it became obvious that suddenly we had a keeper that could find a player up the pitch without a 50-50 headed battle, and that's why Rafa has brought him in. Suddenly, you've not quite got an extra sweeper, but you at least have another footballer. And suddenly, the pressure is off the rest just that little bit. Now, a keeper can't just be a shot stopper.

 

I do wonder how long he'll put up with Pickford at club level.

 

The other thing is that he really doesn't command the box, just runs about looking panicked, and that can't give the defence much confidence.

 

Of course it's an unfair comparison, but the likes of a David Seaman would leave their line at a corner or a cross and serenely gather the ball most of the time. They're intimidating in the way Pickford is not and never has been.

 

Whilst it doesn't help that Pickford is no giant and with arms that can barely reach the top of his head, also watching him scurrying about glued to his line unable to catch anything can't fill anyone with confidence in the last few minutes of a game when you just need to hang on and the air raid sirens are going off.

 

Where I do agree with you, however, is that I don't know what better options we have. But Southgate has a few matches now where we have the opportunity to experiment instead of just picking his favourites. And I do think this keeper is a weak link at the top level, so he should.

Very good analysis, but he’s the best we have and the least of our problems which even then we have so few problems that drawing away to Poland needn’t be played as a  disaster which some circles are painting it as. We need to recognise this is a very young team that is evolving and getting better and better and only ever going to get better, Southgate is in that bracket too as a relative rookie. He’s achieved more than any England manager other than Sir Alf Ramsey and more than more esteemed and experienced managers at international level. It’s all good, we just need to tweak things here and there. 

[Lush Vlad]

Can we call him Lewy and not ‘Lewa’, please. Lewa is his wife’s name. 
 

I’ll also except King Lewy or The Polish R9. 

[midds]

11 minutes ago, Lush Vlad said:

Can we call him Lewy and not ‘Lewa’, please. Lewa is his wife’s name. 
 

I’ll also except King Lewy or The Polish R9. 

Surely it's just L9? 

[Lush Vlad]

Robert? Or just that I’m comparing him to one of the best ever. 

[midds]

20 minutes ago, Lush Vlad said:

Robert? Or just that I’m comparing him to one of the best ever. 

Ahh, fair enough. Call him what you like tbh, he's very, very good and in an era not dominated by Messi and Ronaldo he'd have won many many more individual awards imo. 

[Lush Vlad]

56 minutes ago, midds said:

Ahh, fair enough. Call him what you like tbh, he's very, very good and in an era not dominated by Messi and Ronaldo he'd have won many many more individual awards imo. 

Oh for sure. I was mostly just arsing about, TBH. But I’m sure I read somewhere his nickname is Lewy and his wife is Lewa and doesn’t like being called that. He’s awesome, either way. 

[Ben]

I think after reading Wengers proposals I might be coming around to his idea

[Rod]

15 hours ago, Abacus said:

 

I think Pickford was a liability yesterday, and not just for the blunder that very nearly gave them a comical deflected goal.

 

He is a good instinctive shot stopper, so can be good at pens, that's true.

 

But he loses his head and every now and again he has the awful distribution skills of Yodel. He's either spanking the ball miles up the pitch to no purpose and giving a decent chance of it coming right back at us, or on at least one occasion making a short pass to the wrong player that played our defence right into trouble.

 

The distribution point is exactly why we brought Dubravka in and suddenly, after I was wondering why we were prioritising a GK when we had the likes of Darlow who is similarly a decent shotstopper, it made sense. Particularly when we seemed to have much more glaring problems.

 

Not saying he is perfect but it became obvious that suddenly we had a keeper that could find a player up the pitch without a 50-50 headed battle, and that's why Rafa has brought him in. Suddenly, you've not quite got an extra sweeper, but you at least have another footballer. And suddenly, the pressure is off the rest just that little bit. Now, a keeper can't just be a shot stopper.

 

I do wonder how long he'll put up with Pickford at club level.

 

The other thing is that he really doesn't command the box, just runs about looking panicked, and that can't give the defence much confidence.

 

Of course it's an unfair comparison, but the likes of a David Seaman would leave their line at a corner or a cross and serenely gather the ball most of the time. They're intimidating in the way Pickford is not and never has been.

 

Whilst it doesn't help that Pickford is no giant and with arms that can barely reach the top of his head, also watching him scurrying about glued to his line unable to catch anything can't fill anyone with confidence in the last few minutes of a game when you just need to hang on and the air raid sirens are going off.

 

Where I do agree with you, however, is that I don't know what better options we have. But Southgate has a few matches now where we have the opportunity to experiment instead of just picking his favourites. And I do think this keeper is a weak link at the top level, so he should.

Spot on!

[Guest HTT II]

8 hours ago, Ben said:

I think after reading Wengers proposals I might be coming around to his idea

Link?

[Shearergol]

Arsene Wenger's World Cup Plans

 

 

Edited September 10, 2021 by Shearergol

[Guest HTT II]

6 minutes ago, Shearergol said:

Arsene Wenger's World Cup Plans

 

 

 

I’m still against, Wenger’s priorities are at least right, but you know the money won’t go to where it should go, so nah fuck that, mind I’d happily watch competitive international footy over cartel PL/CL footy any day of the year.

[Yorkie]

42 minutes ago, Shearergol said:

Arsene Wenger's World Cup Plans

 

 

 

 

I read all that and still have absolutely no idea what the supposed positives are of increasing the frequency of the World Cup, or indeed how it's supposed to address player fatigue. Wenger is one of those elder statesmen whom I'd normally feel enthused about having a key role at FIFA because he's a bit of a legend and extremely intelligent. But fuck knows what he's going on about here.

 

I want to know more about it because we shouldn't be averse to change in some form and, like I say, his view carries weight; but it'd take a massive amount of persuasion to convince me this wasn't just another attempt at trying to make more money, plain and simple. The World Cup is an intense global spectacle which captures in the interest of - presumably - billions of people. Of course they're going to try and multiply the financial receipts by two. 

[Thorpinho]

The 'those in support' section of that article on the BBC is amazing. Literally the best they could come up with was Tim Cahill would Australia to qualify quicker and he would also like to see Oman given a turn. 

[Yorkie]

5 minutes ago, Thorpinho said:

The 'those in support' section of that article on the BBC is amazing. Literally the best they could come up with was Tim Cahill would Australia to qualify quicker and he would also like to see Oman given a turn. 

 

that's literally it. 

[54]

 

[54]

Pretty awesome.

[Guest HTT II]

4 minutes ago, 54 said:

Pretty awesome.

Just hope they are all fit

[Super Duper Branko Strupar]

Andorra's stadium on fire. 

[Rafalove]

 

[Super Duper Branko Strupar]

 This National Anthem is a shables. 

[cookidge]

Would be mint to get ward-prowse