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another summer of hoping enough idiots still “dare” to dream and fork out for season tickets
But that’s the thing Banjo. You know there absolutely will be. The fans, both domestic and global are ultimately the ones driving all this. The big money of foreign owners may exacerbate things, but they are a symptom not a cause. It is us fans who are too obsessed with the game which has set us on this track of a few clubs inevitably soaking up the few best managers and players resulting in perfection which is great for them but it’s completely sucked all the fun out of it for everyone else.
As Miguel Delaney put it in the Independent recently, “This is what happens when you give a genius these pristine laboratory conditions. It has eroded the likelihood for human failure that actually enriches sport.”
(Via https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/manchester-city-guardiola-ffp-abu-dhabi-b2342593.html)
If fans weren’t as obsessed, clubs wouldn’t be quite such ruthless business machines and you’d actually have a sport again. But I don’t see how this ends now, other than fans wanting their own billionaire to help them compete.
The only alternative is to drop down a few levels and watch League 1 football. But most fans won’t do that being wedded to their own premier league club. I also suspect for most fans the chase still feels better than the destination, even though they’re kidding themselves they can ever reach that destination. But as T S Eliot said, “humankind cannot bear very much reality.” So they dream instead. Bit of a deep dive but there we go.
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It is Alfie. My fear is he’s already become a kind of cult player that the fans love because of the chaos he can bring on the pitch. But he still looks so raw for the money paid and misses a lot of chances. 50/50 for me next season what happens with him. But that in itself gives us a potential problem in not knowing because Salah is the only reliable attacker we have who tends to stay fit. So if Nunez doesn’t deliver and others get injured, that leaves us short up top.
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A game that sums up the season. But imo, it just goes to show that no matter how poor the defence or midfield, if our established attacking players are fit and in form, they always give us a chance. Indeed as I’ve said several times recently, had we kept Mané, we’d easily have made top 4 this season. He still hasn’t been replaced. We’ll have to see how Nunez does next season. Yes the priority will be midfield and defence and rightly so. But still think we need a Mané replacement.
Anyway, have a good summer all!
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Indeed Sean, must have been mixed feelings for Klopp having managed both Mainz & Dortmund to see Mainz holding Dortmund to prevent them winning the title.
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Different argument Ed about whether some teams exceeded their pre season expectations. My point would be the general standard is still poor vs the top 2.
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The standard outside the top 2 has been pretty abysmal this season. Its surely got to improve next season.
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I don’t know. I used to think big money was the cause of clubs dominating (exacerbated maybe) but obviously clubs have dominated the league since Liverpool in the 1970s. I suspect a more accurate cause of clubs dominating is the advent of the home TV set which grew and grew from the 1960s onwards, which has caused us all to get increasingly obsessed about football because it’s harder and harder to get away from it. Now we have the internet, and on it goes. And then the few managers there are that are super talented tend to walk into increasingly corporate structures with the best players carefully selected to further fine tune their performance so they dominate to the nth degree. So I think it’s more our obsession with football that has exacerbated clubs dominating because we demand that our club should get the one of the few top coaches there are and then get them to reach perfection, and that’s what we’ve ended up with. Foreign owners come in because there’s a demand for them. But they’re mainly just opportunists.
All this whilst other areas of our culture like classical music are on their knees with funding cuts. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/apr/24/simon-rattle-uk-classical-music-arts-council-england-bbc-cuts
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Bit of a damp squib in the end then. We were always going to struggle this season but I think replacing Mane with a very raw Nunez is what has cost us top 4.
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We need you to save yourselves against the other Manchester club Lucky 😁
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Whilst much will rightly be made of the defence and midfield this season, if you tend to look at our patches of poor form over the years they tend to correlate with either the poor form or injuries to the attacking players. We really need to ensure we consistently have attacking players available. Nunez has been too raw this season. I dare say had we still had Mane we’d have easily made top 4 this season even with the issues in midfield & defence.
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Well Newcastle looking dominant vs Brighton. They ain’t going to lose to Leicester at home, and even if they lost to Chelsea on the last day, they’ll still be in the top 4. And hard to see Man Utd throwing it away now. So I think that’s that for Liverpool. As I said before, you can’t just suddenly start consistently performing from matchday 30 and expect a good season.
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Just a theory as to why Pep doesn’t have the CL record he should have by now with other teams since Barcelona.
I think it’s the case that his sides are ultimate footballing sides with Pep almost micromanaging everything from the sidelines – you see how frustrated he gets with players not doing the right thing even having a go at them after the game even if they’ve won comfortably. So his teams aren’t so much about the ruthless desire to win, but the ruthless desire to play his ultimate football way (which still tends to bring lots of wins). I don’t think for example he’s like Klopp in that he wants to make the opposition feel terrible. He just demands footballing perfection (which may still make the opposition ground down) but that’s his ultimate goal. And whilst this has perhaps made him overthink certain games in the CL over the years, I think he’s now got to the point where his team pretty much has reached footballing perfection albeit aided with a few more characters like Haaland so they now look good for the CL. But I think that’s why it’s taken him this long. It’s taken that long to induce that perfection whereas maybe at Barca he had ready made players already familiar with his style.
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Beautiful from Trent.
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Indeed Lucky, when I saw their lineup tonight I thought how have they got themselves into this position?! Also, whilst he’s not the root cause and whilst he’d had experience fighting relegation, just didn’t think Dean Smith was the right appointment. It felt a backward step for them.
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Just looking at Arsenals results this season, one interesting thing that may or may not be a coincidence is that Arsenal had a very poor run of games in the lead up to both matches vs City. Before their home game vs City, they lost to Everton then drew to Brentford. And before the away game at City they drew 3 games. Had City got into their heads in the lead up to those games?
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Is it the case with Arsenal that they basically got a really great chemistry going with some players, which shot them up the league, bred more confidence in the whole team, but ultimately masked their deficiencies which were bound to limit their ambitions? As I said above, my concern as an Arsenal fan would be the amount of goals they’ve been conceding over the last few years. It’s still too many and seems to show few signs of significantly improving. But this seems to be getting overlooked.
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*Correction, Liverpool finished with 84 pts in 13/14.
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I wouldn’t so much say Arteta is a bottler, but he is now in his 4th season at a big club, has had a very healthy budget for the last few years and is still some way off the title. Whilst it will always be hard vs a great team in City, should they still be conceding the amount of goals they are with the money they’ve spent? Should they not have developed a stronger mentality by now? Arsenal currently have 81 points with 2 to go. Liverpool finished with 82 points in 2013/14. So they’re still similar seasons for me. Rodgers took 2 seasons to get there. Arteta has taken nearly 4 seasons to get there.
Also Eddie Howe may well get Newcastle to top 4 in just over one season, something Arteta has taken a lot longer to do at Arsenal.
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Lucky, it can’t, but as I say, compared to others, he’s taken longer to get there and spent quite a bit and they are still some way off the title.
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In terms of the stats, league games won, lost & drawn, and goals for and against, Arsenal have tracked close to Liverpool did in 2013/14 and it does feel like a similar season for them. They’ve arguably conceded too many goals to be title winners, though they were never really expected to compete for the title this season and very very rarely do you see a team go from 5th to 1st in one season.
So on one hand, an undoubted big improvement on last season. At the same time, Arsenal have had Arteta in place now for nearly four years and spent quite a lot over the last few seasons. Compare to Rodgers at Liverpool who got Liverpool competing for the league with a not huge outlay in just 2 years whereas it’s taken Arsenal nearly 4 years and a greater outlay to get to the same point.
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