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I do think the whole Sancho saga has been quite pivotal in all this CM. He definitely has friends in that dressing room and Ten Hag’s hardline approach is both what the club desperately need in the long term and potentially very dangerous in the short term. Ten Hag’s football relies on a lot of intensity and when you don’t have everyone on side, it can be disastrous.
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Yeah completely agree Threeps.
If he does something big on the International stage again, by all means, he should be up for the award but it’d be a travesty if his achievements in the French league alone saw him win the Ballon D’or. I’m not sure you can ever really separate personal achievements from team achievements.
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He (Antony) really is Sean. Could put up with it if he produced on the pitch as well but he’s been terrible.
That’s it Sean, about Liverpool. Look how many were writing Liverpool off last season and saying it was the end for Klopp etc then one midfield overhaul and they’re “back”. The answer no doubt lies somewhere in between. They weren’t as bad as was being made out last season and they’ve improved this season but far too early to say they’re back yet. Nobody is catching City, let’s face it.
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What would Mbappe win it for, though? Winning the French League with PSG is hardly a big achievement. He’d be in with a shout if France win something again or they win the CL but he shouldn’t be anywhere near it if all he’s won in a season is the French League.
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In fact, there was very similar hype around Conte when he came to Spurs. They’d turned a corner and were being tipped to win the title under him. So, yes, I have a tendency to want to wait a bit before believing any corners have been turned 😄.
Things such as this 🙄:
Are Spurs’ Hopes of Winning the Premier League Title That Outlandish?
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That’s all very good Foxy. I don’t think anyone is saying otherwise. I just think we, in football, tend to go overboard on hyping things up prematurely. I fail to be swayed by 10 or so games into believing anyone has turned a corner. There have been so many promising manager spells which start great, the fans hype them up like crazy then the inevitable collapse happens. I think all some of us are saying is let’s see where they are this time next season.
A mere 6 months ago, the roles were reversed for Utd and Spurs. Utd were heading into their second cup final and Spurs were being torn apart by Conte and a team who their best player couldn’t wait to leave.
Spurs is a much easier place for a manager to go also. Hence why it suited Poch so much (who has struggled since with the weight of expectations at bigger clubs). At Spurs, you can get away with playing some nice football and challenging for a top 4 place. Overachieving is not a huge stretch. At Utd, if you’re not challenging for a title, you’re not good enough. All while under probably the most scrutiny of any club possibly anywhere.
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No I get what you’re saying Mikus. I just think you’re giving Spurs way too much credit for basically stumbling upon what so far seems to be the right fit. It seems like you’re suggesting Utd should have known they needed someone like Ange. Even Spurs didn’t know Ange would work, hence why he was far down the pecking order there, too. If he was such an obvious choice, I think there would have been a queue for his signature, which there wasn’t.
It’s great with the benefit of hindsight and the benefit of a new manager bounce to say “Utd keep going for the wrong managers. If only they’d gone for Ange”. Nobody could have predicted their good start (and that’s all it is so far). If they could, you can be sure there would have been loads wanting to bring him in. The fact he’s almost 60 and only just coming to prominence tells you everything you need to know about his position in the game. The overhyping of his first 10 games is bizarre in my opinion.
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It’s the exact same thing I was saying to you Sean when Klopp was moaning about his defence during that appalling run you had. Klopp had even been there for a good few years by then so it was totally his side. Ten Hag can’t moan about injuries. If he’s chosen to waste all that money on Antony, Mount, Casemiro etc when the playing style is supposedly so reliant on ball playing defenders, he has no excuses at all. Of course he’s going to struggle to build up with Evans and Maguire and Lindelof playing LB but that’s his fault for not identifying that weakness.
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Spot on Threeps also about there being little time to adapt. I like what I see in Hojlund so far but I questioned the wisdom of putting so much reliance on a promising 20yr old with little senior support if he didn’t hit the ground running and I’ve seen nothing since to change my mind that it was a wise investment. Still, I don’t think he’s the problem. Just that he’s not the solution either. Not at present anyway.
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I really do find this Postecoglu hype quite funny. That Spurs have suddenly become an example of how to get it right is laughable. Their managerial appointments have even worse than ours even. Going drastically from one style to another, nowhere near winning anything. All of a sudden the shotgun approach seems to hit the target and after 10 games, they’re suddenly an example to the rest of us. If nothing else, it shows how quickly a club’s fortunes can change.
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I don’t disagree about Utd’s signings Threeps. I think Ten Hag has been given way too much control over transfers. Head coaches in the modern game tend not to get that kind of control. I questioned Mount at the time and I’ve yet to see anything from him to suggest it was money well invested.
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Ange has worked around the world in different cultures and succeeded. Even if the standard wasn’t as high as here, that proves his credentials as a good communicator and man manager
He worked mostly in Australia, Mikus. Australia. That, and Japan, for a bit before going to Celtic, another very low standard league. It’s hardly working around the world at any kind of respectable level. Find me anyone who ever said Ange should get a big job before he came to Spurs and I’ll find you a liar. He wasn’t even Spurs first choice. They went through a lot of names before they landed on him. Pure luck that it’s worked out (so far). Celtic were rubbish in the Champions league under him. Even Stevie G looked a world beater in Scotland.
As for Klopp, he nearly relegated Dortmund in a 2 team league. He’s been fantastic at Liverpool but his spell in Germany is very comparable to Ten Hag’s in the Netherlands, much more so than Ange’s in the poor Australian league. It’s also worth pointing out that Klopp had a very highly respected recruitment team. A team who ensured he got the likes of Salah coming in despite him wanting otherwise. Where would Klopp be now without that structure? We’ll never know but I suspect they wouldn’t be as good. You talk about Klopp’s innovation leading to Bayern copying them without mentioning Ten Hag was personally requested by Guardiola to join him at Bayern because he was so impressed by him, later tipping him to take over from him at City.
Absolute bollocks about the manager decisions. They brought in LVG, one of the most decorated managers in football, they turfed him and blamed him. Then they turned to Mourinho another modern coaching great, he openly stated what ManU’s problems were and they did nothing about it, letting cancerous players dictate proceedings. They turf him, so what do they do?
Lvg and Mourinho were both once greats of the game but the emphasis is very much on the past tense. If Utd were so wrong to blame them and we actually let 2 great managers leave, they’d have surely proven that in their next roles, right? Nope. Imagine how bad Mourinho must have made things inside the club for Spurs to sack him right before a final. Lvg? Couldn’t get another club job after Utd. Not a single one of Utd’s post-Ferguson managers has gone on to prove Utd were wrong to let them go. The managers have been poor choices AND the structure is non existent. Both can be true. They’re not mutually exclusive.
Ten Hag likely won’t work out in the long term at Utd. Most managers don’t at the top. If that’s the case, he’s far from blameless but I maintain that he was the best option available to us and one who was definitely worth giving a chance to.
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So, who, is this manager Utd should obviously be going out to get Mikus? Because it’s fine saying Utd just need to go out and get a manager like Ange who incidentally fits one of the very profiles you suggest we mistakenly keep making in “either hopeful long term figures who have little to no experience of big clubs…” People would have thought Utd were absolutely mental going for Ange Postecoglu when Ole went and rightly so. That he’s started well is simply a stroke of good fortune by Levy, who has made as many, if not more, mistakes than Utd over the last 10 or so years. Let’s maybe see where Ange is in a year or so before suggesting Utd need to just go and get someone like that who’s had a decent start, that’s all.
It all sounds so simple in terms of how to fix it. Before, it was “Utd need Conte”. He flopped big time at Spurs and can’t get another job. Before him, Poch was the answer. He’s now in his own crisis at Chelsea. Now it’s Ange. Utd may well be able to find some available charismatic manager to come in and lift the place but that’s so much tougher than it sounds. Charisma doesn’t win titles. I genuinely think the players have stopped playing for him now and changing the manager merely feeds that behaviour and allows it to win. He’s made some awful mistakes in the transfer market but that will continue to happen until there is a proper structure around him. He may not make it at Utd and that’s fine. But, getting rid now and bringing in a completely new face, whoever that may be, is dangerous in my opinion.
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Yeah I don’t disagree Gjblues.
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Gjblues, it hasn’t been massively covered in the media so understand if you haven’t seen it but it’s very strange when you read into it. I don’t think today was a controversy per se but it does need looking into.
Manchester City. Less well known is that the UAE Football Association has held talks with City Football Group chief executive Ferran Soriano about a “framework of joint cooperation” and that the UAE Pro League’s main sponsor is the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), whose board members include City chairman Khaldoon Al-Mubarak.
In that context, allowing a group of PGMOL officials to fly to the UAE last week to take charge of a match between Sharjah and Al-Ain — Oliver as referee, Stuart Burt and Cook as assistants, England as VAR — looks inadvisable in the extreme. Not because of doubts about integrity among the officials or the authorities in the UAE, but because having referees on the payroll of another league, with close links to the ownership of Premier League clubs, inevitably brings an extra level of scrutiny that match officials really could do without.
From
https://www.google.com/amp/s/theathletic.com/4922732/2023/10/03/referees-var-diaz-liverpool/%3famp=1
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Utd looked completely devoid of ideas and the the midfield and defence just looked lost. It’s clear Onana is being told to go long, simply because the defence,in the absence of the likes of Shaw and Martinez, completely lack the ability to get a foot on the ball and progress the ball despite being pressed. So we were just giving them the ball back time and time again, making it easy for them. I do have some doubts about Ten Hag bit now is not the time for a reset, for me.
When I think back to how bad Liverpool were when they had their injury problems in defence and how they kept faith with Klopp despite calls for his head, I think we have to take inspiration from that and let Ten Hag continue the job he’s started. No idea who we’d turn to anyway if Ten Hag did go. There’s no obvious alternative and, with the potential of a new structure coming in under Ratcliffe’s leadership, it would be pointless making a change now before all that is in place. It’s a mess, as has been the case since Ferguson departed, but we must resist the temptation to push the panic button for now.
Congrats to the City lads, enjoy.
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Fair play Adlab for admitting it wasn’t a pen
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Yeah I think he’s both Adlab. Definitely always has a mistake in him. That penalty has taken away any chance we had I think as City will be happy just keeping the ball now. It’s a soft pen, the type we never get but that’s football. It’s the inconsistencies that are frustrating.
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City having to come out yesterday and apologise because a group of their fans were filmed singing songs about Bobby being “in a box” after his passing? Seriously, what is wrong with people?!
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Check out the kid in the middle of the picture in the white top. How does a kid grow up with so much hate for a fellow human being based solely on the colour of their skin?
Aquí se ven bien los gestos racistas hacia Vinícius en el Sánchez Pizjuán. Y aquí hay niños… Estamos permitiendo que la sociedad española sea reconocida mundialmente como una sociedad racista. Y esto solo se arregla de una forma: con sanciones y con educación. ¿Hasta cuándo? pic.twitter.com/SE4YUUmy6A
— Virtudes Sánchez (@VirtudesSanchez) October 21, 2023
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