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Nine, Liverpool don’t really play with a conventional striker and also haven’t been as clinical as they should have been partly because of that. A lot of the threat comes from our top 3, but in this form Hazard is effectively doing the same job as Mané & Salah but single-handedley (He’s that good). So I think you could pretty much argue the same case for Liverpool.
As for Klopp having more time, that true. But Sarri has inherited a much stronger squad than Klopp inherited. So whilst Klopp has had more time, he’s also had to use a lot of the time to actually build the squad.
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Very even game tonight. I think Chelsea just wanted it more when they brought Hazard on. Thought Liverpool were very good considering the changes and the new players still settling in and pretty much mirrored much of the quality of the first team. Whilst Sarri obviously deserves credit for getting the best out of this Chelsea side, I’m sorry but these comments coming out from Chelsea and the media that they’re still a year behind Liverpool and are short in areas? Chelsea have one of the most expensively assembled squads in the league!
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Current list of candidates according to Sky Bet:
Zinedine Zidane
6/4
Mauricio Pochettino
7/1
Antonio Conte
12/1
Diego Simeone
14/1
Carlo Ancelotti
16/1
Luis Enrique
16/1
Michael Carrick
16/1
Ryan Giggs
18/1
Didier Deschamps
20/1
Gareth Southgate
20/1
Roberto MartInez
20/1
Leonardo Jardim
22/1
Arsene Wenger
25/1
Eddie Howe
25/1
Laurent Blanc
25/1
Massimiliano Allegri
25/1
Rafa Benitez
25/1
Marcelo Bielsa
28/1
Gary Neville
33/1
Nuno Espirito Santo
33/1
Sean Dyche
33/1
Thierry Henry
33/1
Sam Allardyce
40/1
Brendan Rodgers
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City beating Cardiff was very predictable. There was going to be a reaction after Lyon and Cardiff look easy meat at the moment.
As for Utd, again whilst there’s been a recovery of sorts, there still looks to be a big lack of a spark there. I think the Utd board ultimately need to decide who they’re going to invest more in: Pogba or Mourinho??
Liverpool looking strong, though they’re still not in top gear yet. The upcoming Chelsea and City games will be box office.
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Hightown, just to be clear, I didn’t say Henderson was as poor as Dier, just that Chucky’s previous post to mine could be said of Henderson, i.e. that he’s useful but could well become a squad player this year (once the new midfielders are up and running), and that whilst he has many attributes, you wouldn’t necessarily say he is a master of any of them.
As for last night, I can’t not agree with you. He was very good in possession and with his distribution and there were shades of Alonso about him at times. He has certainly made the best of himself and that’s to be applauded. But a couple of points. PSG, for all the talk of their stature, just aren’t that good a side, and were all over the place last night, and there were constantly huge spaces for us to take advantage of. Whilst Henderson still played well, I think that did help him. (Why PSG let Matuidi go last year is also beyond me [probably to help finance the Neymar deal]).
Also, as I put up on TT, of the 14 goals we’ve scored this season, 11 have been scored from our front line, 2 from our penalty taker Milner, and 1 from Wijnaldum from a set play. So our midfield has contributed no goals from open play this year. That’s putting our front line, still not fully up to scratch, under more pressure. We need other players to share the burden. Now, the midfielders have played well this year and did so last night, but they are all quite similar in a way and their job seems more to service the front 3. We can get away with that up to a point, but we still need a goal scoring contribution from them. I think when Keita is (hopefully) up and running, we’ll see such a contribution then. There’ll still be a role for Henderson to play because Klopp loves that energy and work rate, but for me he’s more of a support act than a main act.
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Nine, makes you think teams like PSG will push more for a European league to replace the domestic league.
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I’d pretty much say the same thing about Henderson.
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The question is who, out of the current top 3 teams, has the edge??
I think Sarri is clearly getting the best out of the Chelsea players, particularly Hazard who looks to be in the form of his life, but they will have sterner tests ahead.
City again look like a very well oiled title winning machine, whose only enemy really is themselves and whether they can find that same drive again as last year.
As for Liverpool, whilst I partly agree with Nine that the goalkeeper has been a key signing this season – I think whilst he will now enable us to challenge, he hasn’t necessarily given us the edge we need against our rivals. I still think we’re an attacker short, though a lot of my belief that we can perhaps still get one up on our rivals is how quickly Keita can not only settle into midfield but also score goals. If he does so, a la Gerrard, I think he could give us the edge on the other two clubs because he will be both an insurance policy to our front 3 whilst also complementing them.
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Sean, to this day I rue our failure to sign Silva years ago. Could you have imagined Gerrard, Torres & Silva up top for us? Think that would have sealed the title for us. Unfortunately for us, the club pretty much collapsed soon after and we went in the opposite direction.
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It’s no longer a club game now, but a players one. Clubs are so paranoid about losing out to players abroad or to their rivals, they’ll pay them whatever it takes. And the players know this so they can name their price and they’ve got the club over a barrel. And the TV revenues are now making all this sustainable. So we’re the mugs that pay for it all because the clubs have got us over a barrel because loyal supporters will have to go along with it if they want to watch it all.
It’s a long way from the community football club it all grew out of. Yes, the bar has risen in terms of the quality of play but we’ve traded that off for a vastly higher price whilst also tossing our youngsters (the real heart of a team) aside so promoting a more clinical corporate type club culture as opposed to a community one. The quality may be better but the heart has long gone.
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Nine, the early kick off ain’t just superstition. We’ve played 28 early kick off games under Klopp, winning 10, drawing 9 and losing 9, so we drop points in 2/3 of these games. In fact last season the record was even worse: played 8 games at 12:30, won 1, drawn 5, lost 2.
Sean, agree fully about Keita. Think he could be huge for us this year and there’s still been more than enough signs in his games for us so far that there’s a player there. Just think it’s taking him a bit of time to settle personally at the club, which is why Klopp has hooked him a few times.
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Agree with Sean, our record is terrible in early kick offs. Had the game been late afternoon on a Sunday, or on Monday night, I’d be a lot more confident. Draw looks the obvious prediction as Nine said, but if Keita can start delivering for us, we may just have a chance to edge out a win because we’ve really missed that kind of presence and impact in midfield.
As for Man Utd, I wouldn’t say there’s a crisis yet, but even though they look to be starting to turn a corner, I just don’t see enough harmony in that side. They have some good effective proven league players and they may well steady the ship in coming weeks, but will that be enough to keep the pressure off José??
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If England want to reach Spain’s level they need to invest heavily in coaches and the grass roots the way Spain did some years ago. It was another reality check last night after the summer’s “success” (which was ridiculously labelled as success). Yes theres a few bright sparks there with England, but there always has been and such players are then put on a pedestal as though they could single-handedly carry us to glory. Rinse and repeat for each new generation.
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I know it’s only a friendly, but it really irks me that tonight’s game is only on sky and hence pay per view. England games should never be pay per view, particularly given how little live football is left on terrestrial TV.
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This video may (or may not!) help explain things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn3pWjave3A
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It says something that clubs like Chelsea and Arsenal no longer categorise their managers as managers but as “head coaches”. Chelsea seem to be showing the way in the modern era in that they do not build their teams around their managers, hence when they regularly chop and change them, there is more of a seamless transition because the club are buying the players and the manager is “simply” coaching them. So money or no money, (and to follow on from Brian’s point above) the modern coach or manager still ultimately has to work with what he has, not necessarily what he wants . That is still the main criteria of where a manager is judged because even if a club fails to bring in new players for a new season, if the performance level of the team still drops, the manager will still be the fall guy.
Moyes was sacked not because he didn’t get who he wanted but because he failed to get the best out of what he had.
Key question for the United board then, is Mourinho getting the best out of what he has?? That is what will ultimately decide his fate over the coming months. I know he came second last year, but he was helped by the fact that Arsenal and Chelsea had poor seasons and also that Liverpool got distracted by the CL.
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Spurs under Pochettino match all their rivals in many of the qualities needed for success. They are extremely solid, well disciplined and effective. But they just seem to lack an edge to get one up on their rivals. They just lack that panache and swagger to really go and grab a game. Are they too disciplined or do they just need a bit more star quality?
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Perhaps not Nine, but I’m just very impressed the way they perform so seamlessly through managerial changes, and they’re looking pretty good at the moment.
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Chelsea really have mastered the art of putting together one of the best and most robust playing squads in the league, in that regardless of whether the manager is changed, the team and new manager don’t seem to need a long transition period to settle in. There seems to be an incredible stability there that ensures they can challenge for the title on a regular basis as they don’t build their teams around a manager.
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