Danny

That was a very nice leaving do for Klopp. It’s not always gone as planned for Liverpool but he’s won everything he could win which is all you can ask for really. Made a massive impact on the league as a whole, I hope his next club is an interesting one. Would love to see him manage in Spain at some point.

Carragher is so bias it’s beyond parody. Refers to Klopp’s fist pumping as no other manager would have the balls to do it so early on at a club but thought Arteta was smalltime for celebrating a goal. Sky Sports in a nutshell 

I saw who we had starting in defence today and I wasnt confident lol, is what it is, we’re on holiday and they have Europe to play for

West Have been lumped 4, 5, 6-0 multiple times this season. This is their level and tbh it is why Moyes is leaving, they are never proactive when they need to be.

Clear win for Usyk, bad form from Fury to blame the Ukrainian war

Interesting as I read a piece from their CEO or someone who was mentioning how whilst De Zerbi has made a lot of public demands, behind the seasons he understands the clubs position etc etc. Seems like that may not be the case?

From an outside perspective I think he wanted more investment than there has been, if you look at their net spend on transfers over the last two seasons they've made about £150m. Of course Brighton have their model, are happy where they are in the league, will recruit again and go again, but it seems like De Zerbi wants more, I couldn't imagine Brighton wanting to sack him, especially with no Europe next year so they can just concentrate on the league.

I don't think Brighton will struggle too much it has to be said, though they will want to be wary of changing managers too often now as this will be 3 managers in 2 years.

Now my beautiful Baggies are out, really you’d rather Leeds up than Southampton. Feel like Saints have a bit more about the structure of their club and will make a good go over the long term of staying in the league whereas you just don’t know what will happen with Leeds.

The favourites are favourites again

14 minutes ago, Stan said:

No, you've twisted my words. I believe it's been exciting. Just not the most ever. 

I've not called it shite by the way. 

Can’t believe you called it shite tbh

8 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

I can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing with my point .

My point is that, one way or another, the Premier League have allowed City to drag it out and obfuscate for so long that they will have crowned them champions twice before that process even properly starts. It's no good for the league and it leaves a massive asterisk hanging over everything that happens at the top end of the table until all the facts come out and we know whether or not, and how much, Man City have broken the rules and gained advantages they should never have had.

Disagreeing. It's not that they've allowed anything. City have purposefully challenged multiple parts of the Premier League's charges to give them more time, the challenges have meant the PL are unable to do anything because they have had to wait for multiple court decisions.

7 minutes ago, Rucksackfranzose said:

Than byou believe something wrong. Source: http://statista.com/statistics/275359/largest-cities-in-the-united-kingdom/

Comparison: Dortmund has an inhabitance of 593K Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dortmund

Those particular statistics might support your argument but I know for a fact that the city of Borussia is a lot smaller than say, a small town in England such as Swansea

12 hours ago, Rucksackfranzose said:

To be frank: I'd take articles concerning German football from media, that isn't even available in German, with a pinch of salt. Two occurences from top of my head. An English football reporter said in English TV Dortmund would be a small town after the CL first leg, although there's only 3 British cities (London, Birmingham, and Glasgow) that are bigger than it. BBC wrote in their article Bayern's loss in Saarbrücken had been their first cup match this seaon, although Bayern eliminated Preußen Münster from the first round. Mentioning it to give you an impression which kind of Germany experts even serious British sports journos are.

I'll have you know we are very well informed when it comes to the ins and outs of German football and Germany cities, I believe there are more cities than just London, Birmingham and Glasgow in the UK that are bigger than Borussia.

1 hour ago, RandoEFC said:

You know what I mean though. Their actual hearings haven't started.

Because City took them to court multiple times to prevent it from starting

11 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

While we're all right to bemoan the boringness of it, what's actually a bigger issue here is that the Premier League will have crowned City champions twice since levelling 115 charges at them for breaking the rules and City are yet to set foot in a courtroom to defend themselves. In the meantime, two other clubs have been fast-tracked (one of those twice) and Leicester have been pretty much told they'll have a points deduction next season when they come up.

It really shows who's governing things here. If the Premier League had an ounce of integrity they'd stop making excuses about how complicated City's case is because they broke 114 more rules than anyone else and get on with it. Start with charge 1 next week, if City refuse to turn up to the hearing then they get sanctioned. The case isn't going to get any less complicated the longer they wait. Get the fuck on with it. And if it's that complicated to do it as one case then offer to have 115 different hearings for them and see how they like the threat of having to fight each one in the courts with a constant drip feed of points deductions over several seasons ruining their chances in the league.

City literally took them to court multiple times in the build up to this...hence the complications

7 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

Is it allowed to question De Zerbi's reputation? I find it weird how it's just accepted that he's linked with jobs like Liverpool and Bayern. From what I can see, he took over a Brighton side on the up, completed their journey to European qualification, fair enough, but they've been average at best this season and slipped into the Bournemouth/Wolves/Fulham tier of mid table. Think he's pretty overhyped if that's allowed.

7 hours ago, Stan said:

I think so. 

For all the praise they get, they don't really seem to move forward in the league. Credit to them for getting into Europe, and their transfer/recruitment model is decent, but De Zerbi will be questioned even more you'd think if they don't start next season well. 

They’ve had a large number of injuries to key players this season, during key parts of the season, whilst playing in two competitions, whilst having to replace the great players they lost in Mac Allister, Caicedo and Trossard.

I think his work this season is more nuanced than just where they sit in the table, they just don’t have much star quality to push them over the line like they have had in previous seasons.

10 hours ago, 6666 said:

Goals being disallowed isn't a new concept.

And VAR era incorrect decisions are nothing compared to how things were before. 

A penalty being given for a foul outside the box, the wrong player being booked, a dive with no contact, an unseen handball. It'll at least be fun to see how many times these forgotten things turn back up and it'll be a nice experiment to see how long everyone stays happy without VAR.

But you can’t have the technology that allows you to categorically see what is wrong with a call on the pitch and then consistently have refs who fail to use it correctly. It is a mind blowing level of failure. At least in real time decisions can be difficult to see and that is why a lot of decisions are called wrong, yes there will be a lot of negligence, but at this point the refs do not know how to use VAR. That is bad, that is worse than getting a call wrong in real time, that they consistently do not know how to use the technology. And who suffers the most? Fans at the game, because the passion is sucked out of it so we can watch negligence on a microscopic scale.

I think if we can get the semi-automated VAR offside calls through then use that, I think its been shown that the refs manually using VAR don’t have the correct frames to make correct decisions, decisions being made after a ball is hit and not as the ball is hit. That level of failure to be precise so we can sit there for 5 minutes waiting for a call just cannot happen.

Personally I would rather someone gets away with cheating than a referee looks at any number of the incompetent decisions we have seen this year and decide they are the opposite of what they see on screen. At least with cheating it's part of the game, it's part of getting one over on your opponent, a clattering foul, a dive, whatever, I would much rather that than watch referees go to a screen, see the answer is A and come away and award B. Not only are they getting decisions wrong that they have no excuse for getting wrong, but they are also ruining the match day experience. The flow of the game, the celebrations.

Honestly can't help but think people are living with a bit too much nostalgia. From a competition standpoint the Premier League was absolute dogshit through the 00's, it was strangled in the 90s and the feelings people have for almost not being able to escape Pep and City were the same for Fergie and United. The only difference really is that Fergie had to compete with a coach in Mourinho who redefined how clubs should defend and train in England and was backed to the hilt, Klopp came in and redefined how to press aggressively but has done it at a weaker club financially than Chelsea. But still, it was difficult to better Ferguson and really the only man who has completely outplayed him is now doing it for City.

Personally I grew numb of this a long time ago, I would say when Chelsea first won the Champions League, that was a real turning point that showed that it didn't really matter if you had a historical pedigree in the competition (Liverpool, United) or no pedigree in it (Forest when they won, Villa when they won, Arsenal when they reached a final), what mattered is that you could bankroll your way to success regardless. It's very rare that you could see a team win the competition based purely on great coaching, scouting and academy intake.

It's very telling that the only time in the league where a complete surprise occurred in my lifetime in Leicester winning it; Liverpool, Chelsea, Man Utd and Man City all sacked their managers that season. Not to discredit Leicester, but the facts are that the reason they had such a good run at the title whilst competing with Spurs of all teams was due to complete and utter mismanagement of 4 of the traditional top 6 in that season and the season before. We hadn't seen mismanagement like that from those powerfully rich clubs as a whole in decades before and we haven't seen it since.

I've probably waffled on about this before, but what I would love is a global system in which all clubs regardless of where you are have to compete within the same type of wage/transfer restrictions. Then we would get to see a true Club World Cup, imagine if Brazilian clubs or Argentinian clubs could keep their best players, imagine how many opportunities there would be for young players knowing that the academy systems would be more important than ever as you have to supplement your big spends with great academy finds as everyone operates under similar transfer constraints. I realise it would lead to less quality in the league as a whole in England or Spain, and there would also still end up with concentrated levels of talent in certain areas, but at least it would be down to how well you operate as a club rather than how much money you can make from tv money, prize money, global sales or just a randomly rich benefactor. A yearly, proper, real McCoy Club World Cup would be phenomenal. Fuck the Champions League, Europa, Conference, just create a global version for each one, short group stage/knock out style.

1 hour ago, Dan said:

The points tally this season to win the league wasn't actually 'that' high. Man City have raised the bar to an almost depressingly unattainable level but then at the same time I think they had a bit of an off year, first half of the season especially and they've still ended up almost certainly winning it.

I don't think topping them was impossible this season despite the fact they have raised the bar. The others let them off the hook this time.

Arsenal in December shot themselves in the foot, I think judging by the points tally they will likely win the league on, you can't blame them for being so good because they dropped enough points that they could be beaten. It's just that Arsenal dropped points too, except the bad thing for Arsenal is that they were just shit, whereas City just had injuries...wait until City are fully fit next season.

Prem has been like this for decades now. Wasn’t long ago we had the cemented top 4 and then everyone else, only reason that got broken was because of City’s oil money.

European football as a whole needs to be revamped and its been needed for a long time, the European Super League is an example of how bad football is now because the only teams who have made the final in the last 16/17 years have been teams invited into it.

Tbh I get the complaints when City win the league by 100 points, 98 points, but in 20/21 they won it on 86 points, this year it will be 91, yes you have to be very good, but you don’t always have to be perfect to win it.

If Arsenal hadn’t of fucked around in December losing to Fulham, West Ham and Villa they‘d probably have won the league. You can talk about how good they were from January onwards, but thats how good you have to be to win the league. That goes for pretty much every team that has won the league, they are all that good. The only time we have ever seen monstrous levels of performance were the 3 times Pep and Klopp pushed the 98/99/100 point mark.

What makes Pep great is his ability to get City to do this every year, that is phenomenal. But their points tally this year? The only people Arsenal have to blame are themselves for dropping silly points early in a title race.

Thomas Frank being linked with the United job today. I feel like it's just a case of pick and choose a random coach on a random day to manage a random top 6 team for the media. Liverpool, United, Chelsea...whoever else. If not Frank then it's De Zerbi, or Alonso, or whoever lol.

Think Frank would do a great job at United with the backing of the club, his record against the top 6 during our first 2 seasons is pretty incredible and even when we don't win, we've outplayed a lot of them whilst still drawing or losing. No doubt he'd be able to make them tough to beat whilst also implementing a fluid attacking game.

But I don't think switching from ten Haag to Frank is worth it for United, still don't think he's had the chance to fully try to implement a style at United because of how much of a shitshow they've been behind the scenes.

Whoever they employ it needs to be the right coach because there are a lot of contracts ending this Summer and next, and the last thing United want to do is replace those players with more players that don't fit a cohesive style.

16 hours ago, LFCMike said:

I feel like people have gone way overboard on their criticism of Liverpool the last few weeks. It was always meant to be a transitional season but the desperation to win the title and more in Klopp's last season has skewed opinions I feel. 

I think it’s just the nature of how fickle narratives in football can be. It’s a long, gruelling 38 game season with 3 Cup competitions thrown in too. You were so good in 2023 and mostly because you had a strong starting eleven that was rarely injured. But then you accrue injuries to Salah, Jones, Trent, Allison, sure some others too, but your best players are suddenly out at different points, have to come back and build up form and confidence in the hardest part of the season. You’re then expecting players like Mac Allister, Szobslai and Endo to step up even though it’s the first season at the club, in a new aggressive style with 2/3 having never played in England before.

I think you were always going to struggle if you suffered injuries to key players at key times because you don’t have the squad depth, and then on top of that last season City and Arsenal were competing for a title whilst you finished outside the top 4. It’s a massive jump to make. And I’ve not even mentioned the jeopardy of Klopp leaving.

That look Evans gave Casemiro, said it all. I’d like to give credit to Havertz and Trossard but honestly that was entirely down to Casemiro just not caring, just created an easy 1v1 for Havertz to slide across goal

1 hour ago, Storts said:

Oh yeah fair play to Leverkusen, and German teams in Europe this season. Great performance 

Don't be a cuck, dig in and embrace ignorance