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He’s effectively been a caretaker manager, but such was the damage done during the post Fergie years, there’s been a lot of caretaking to do. If he can oversee the next year or two with some more sensible signings then it will be mission accomplished for him and the club. The fans being back will add pressure compared to last season when it all felt a bit less serious.
If Pogba leaves it will be a big test in terms of how they replace him, and they need to make sure it doesn’t cause them to have another rush of blood in the transfer market. Those days should now be firmly behind them though I think a big problem facing Ole is that the new transfer setup is still in its early days so whilst signings should now be better thought through I’m not sure he’s going to be able to completely rely on it yet. So weighing all this up, it’s hard to shake off the feeling that Ole may have already peaked at Man Utd. But in some ways that doesn’t matter. I think we know the general feeling is that he’s there until a more suitable successor can be found. It’s similar to the Brendan Rodgers era at Liverpool.
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“Assuming we get a CB in and Pogba goes, we’re probably still 2 midfielders short of a challenge.”
Doesn’t this just sum up how long it can take to rectify a poor transfer legacy? Whilst Pogba may not have been a disaster at Man Utd, you’ll struggle to find anyone I suspect absolutely desperate for him to stay. But if you do let him go, you’re then missing a midfielder. So even though years later you’re trying to put right those years of poor transfer planning, those transfers are still holding the club back, even today. Because they were never really quite right in the first place, so you always knew you were going to have to replace them. So it’s kind of one step forward, one step back.
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Sorry Ed, didnt read properly that you said Bayern should move for Haaland *next* summer. However, as Nine says above, I think Lewandowski is almost considered royalty at Bayern and I just couldn’t see them letting him go just to help them land Haaland next year. As you also allude to in your last paragraph, Haaland just doesn’t seem the right kind of player for Bayern in terms of his wages. Bayern are a very traditional club who would rather not get involved in this kind of thing even if it means they miss out on such a talent. And when you look at their record, they rarely get these things wrong.
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Obviously things can change, but this was said only back in May. I think Bayern are the kind of club that likes to strengthen from a position of strength. They wouldn’t really want to lose the reliability of such a huge figure in Lewandowski and replace him with a youngster, even if he is a highly rated one, which is what this quote seems to allude to.
Bayern are not going for Erling Haaland this summer.
Oliver Kahn confirms to Bild: “A package that costs over €100M is unimaginable for us now. We’ve Lewandowski, he has a 2-years contract here. Just for that, we don't have to think about Haaland today”. 🔴 #Bayern @imiasanmia
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) May 12, 2021
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Amazing how normalised we become to football inflation. White would probably have cost half of that just a few seasons ago.
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I think that’s largely right Lucky, Southgate did it his way and it did actually work. However, I’m afraid as you say, he messed up the end game with regards to penalties and the decisions he made. Thanks in part to Pickford, the shootout was there for the taking. Putting on players who had barely kicked a ball to take high pressure penalties is like asking a rested golfer to drive off with no warm up or even a practice swing. They’re almost inevitably going to shank it.
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I seem to remember a psychologist/journalist who was sent to report on a friendly football match between Italy & England in Rome. When he saw all the chanting of obscenities by the English fans towards the Italian ones, he asked one of the fans why they had travelled all that way to do that. The fan replied “Well, you’ve got to let your hair down.” Whilst such actions are not of the same order as physical violence or storming stadia, they are still rooted in a belief that a lack of self restraint can be healthy and by getting things out your system it can be like an act of cleansing. Now yes, fans around the world can be guilty of these things, but we clearly have a problem. You don’t have to walk far down the streets of this country now before you hear bad language and bars around city centres at night can often see violence. To change things requires a much deeper cultural change than a twitter hashtag.
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I think if teams can’t win the game in 120 minutes of football, then you deserve the fate of a penalty shootout, which itself can still be managed to some degree and it’s still a test of mental strength. I thought Southgate said something odd before the game in a pre match interview when he said
I think, “I’m done now, it’s over to them. I’ve said my bit.” To which I felt like saying, well you might as well leave the stadium & go home in that case Gareth. Yet after the game, he said “It’s all on me.” There’s consistency for you._____________________________
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I think if Southgate was going to beat Italy, it was always going to be on penalties because we were never really going to take the game to them in our approach. And the really frustrating thing that’s been overlooked is that Pickford had a very good shoutout and the shootout was there for the taking. But we messed it up bigtime and shot ourselves in the foot mainly because of bringing on two young players who had barely kicked the ball, though I take the point about the stuttering starts – do these players stutter their starts in every practise as well?
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Agree Foxy, the tournament has proved England have a lot of good ingredients there. The system just needs some more tuning as well as more belief. It sounded a bit like Southgate is considering his position after the game. It would be a shame in some ways for him to lose the experiences he’s gained. But then, can he really become the manager we need him to be to play more dominantly and positively? Eddie Howe could be that guy and would probably be a frontrunner if Gareth does decide to stepdown.
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“Conservative approach will only get you so far.”
Indeed Sean. Sancho at least should have come on way earlier.
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Sorry, but bringing on two subs to take penalties in the last few mins who have barely even touched the ball is far from ideal. Have sympathy with Rashford & Sancho.
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Yeh Sean, we should have made a change earlier. But as always we wait to concede before reacting 🙄
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Been coming that. We’ve drifted out the game. We have to offer more going forward and get a grip of the game.
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Crucial time in the game right now. Need to be careful of drifting back too deep.
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That was superb by Shaw, not just the finish, but the start deep in his own half when so many times in years gone by a player would have just booted it up field when pressured. But he kept the ball cleverly, and started the whole movement. Fantastic.
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Yes agree generally with that Sean. We have to be bolder tonight. Italy will be more difficult to breakdown. I’d have swapped Mount for someone like Sancho. But we’ll see what happens.
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For me, I find it better to look at it from the Danish point of view. They were getting progressively deeper in the game which is always a risk. You’re inviting pressure on yourselves, allowing more attacking opponents to run at you. And then you have to almost sandwich a player off the ball in your own box to try and stop an attack. Sorry, but that’s the risk you take in such things. We may not like this going down too easily malarkey. But given everyone does it and this is now the culture, bizarrely that does make it somewhat fair. So I’m sorry, but if you decide to hedge your bets, try and defend deep to get to penalties and invite pressure on you, I’m afraid you’re open to these risks. That’s the culture now. Everyone knows it. They just don’t like it when they’re on the receiving end of it, rather than gaining an advantage from it. That’s really the problem here.
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Foul or not, if you find yourself in a position on the pitch where two of your defenders are having to almost sandwich a running attacking player off the ball, you’re asking for trouble in this day and age.
Sterlings right knee gets clipped followed by a hip barge from the other side….how is that “not touched”? try staying on your feet while sprinting with a ball and that happens pic.twitter.com/6LsSVxkaJd
— Kevin Doyle (@KevinDoyle1983) July 7, 2021
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I think Brian made the good point that if Spain had had better strikers/finishing, they would have beaten Italy, maybe even quite comfortably after dominating the game. England aren’t quite as good in possession as Spain are, so I don’t think we could quite dominate the game as they did. So you’d expect a more cagey affair between the two sides in the final with a similar air of caution about them. But we do need to better turn the screw in the final third, particularly against a more resolute side in Italy. Sterling has been incredible, but we are in danger of becoming too reliant on him.
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