Unpopular Football Opinions

[Danny]

On 22/05/2017 at 0:43 AM, Dan said:

Agree on all counts and trust me given the journey we've been on we have been on the end of a lot of snobbery.

I do think it's poor personally to support say, Arsenal, when you live in Preston, unless there are genuine links to the club. To deprive your own cities' club of a fan because you'd rather watch Arsenal through the TV. I honestly don't think they get what they're missing. I think it's less regular the older you get but I always used to get Man Utd & Liverpool fans rip the piss out of me at school yet I knew full well I enjoyed football more than they did.

On the subject of snobbery, just have a read of this utter nonsense.

Read the whole thread if you can. Basically it's a Wolves fan moaning about the smaller clubs in the Premier League, a Reading fan having a go at them over it and a Leeds fan backing the Wolves fan. Basically, the Reading fan is getting outnumbered by a load of arrogant idiots and shot down despite being spot on with everything they say. Fed up of entitlement culture, and I desperately hope that after witnessing what we did last season that we've learnt that entitlement isn't the way forward and that such a mentality never develops at this club.

One tweet says "you don't get it, football is about history and noise" as if that's a reason Leeds should be in the league above Reading. If Reading go up this season, then they have absolutely earned their place through being well run and well coached. Nothing to do with the past has any bearing on if Reading should be in the league or not.

I actually think this mentality runs into some of these clubs and it holds them back. Forest are another. Forest aren't a big club. Historically, they are a successful club, and I massively envy what they did under Clough, but they aren't a big club and it's absolutely cringeworthy when you hear their fans claim they're some kind of sleeping giant because they had a purple patch once upon a time, as if their 20+ years outside of the top flight doesn't count for anything. Am I being really stupid here, but does anyone else think that this "we belong there" mentality actually hinders these clubs, do people within clubs like Leeds, Wolves, Sheffield Wednesday etc... believe that they 'belong' in the Premier League and that they shouldn't have to work for it as much as someone like Reading or Brighton, for example?

That is horrific and ironically so small time. It's fans like that which stop people from missing those clubs in the top flight.

[Cicero]

21 minutes ago, LaSambadeStGermain said:

That's exactly what I said 

Iago Falque and Llajic aren't quite as good as the players playing for better teams, but they are still very good and while I'm not taking away from Belotti's achievements, he is overrated for me. He's not impressed me too much when I've seen him so when I see these headlines of PL clubs of them paying his ridiculous foreign release clause, it makes me think "is he really THAT good". 

At the end of the day, it also has to do with playing styles. Torino plays a more attacking game than Juventus and arguably Roma. In an attacking game like Napoli, its no surprise Higuain scores 36 goals a season. Put him on Torino and he'll score 20+ easily.

He scored 27 goals on a team that finished 9th, not to mention he has the 3rd lowest minutes per goal ratio.  It's OK to call him overrated but it's daft to downplay his ability in comparison to other strikers that play on a club with superior players. Belotti is a striker and scores goals. That's his job. Having Falque and Llajic as your distributors isn't the in the  same ballpark as having Callejon, Insigne, Peresic, Sandro, Salah, Alves, Dybala, etc. 

[Guest]

I said that already...

I'm downplaying his ability because I've seen him about 15 times and he's not impressed me once or done anything to convince me that he's on the same level as those 5. Again, I could be unlucky but I'm not going to say he "has this ability or that" based solely on numbers. I trust my own judgement, and if you've seen a player do poorly 15 times, then I'm not going to lie to myself.

What you see in him is something I don't, so lets agree to disagree.

[Cicero]

8 minutes ago, LaSambadeStGermain said:

I said that already...

I'm downplaying his ability because I've seen him about 15 times and he's not impressed me once or done anything to convince me that he's on the same level as those 5. Again, I could be unlucky but I'm not going to say he "has this ability or that" based solely on numbers. I trust my own judgement, and if you've seen a player do poorly 15 times, then I'm not going to lie to myself.

What you see in him is something I don't, so lets agree to disagree.

Because he scores goals and has one of the best minutes per goal ratio.  What more do you want from a striker, especially from one that is on a 9th place team? Granted this is his first big season and that is a fair argument, but you can't convince me otherwise with sheer confidence that those other 5 strikers would match his numbers and ratio whilst playing for Torino instead. 

Edited May 24, 2017 by Cicero

[Hugh Jass]

When players have received abuse from the opposition fans,  I personally have loved it when they have 'given it back' and made fun of those fans after scoring a goal against or beating their team. I probably shouldn't, but I just can't help it. That's regardless of whether it has been David Healy taunting our fans at Deepdale after he had moved to Leeds and was given all sorts of stick, Rooney doing it to the Liverpool fans in the Kop at Anfield, Walcott doing it to the visiting Spurs fans who made fun of him getting injured at the Emirates, Adebayor doing to it the visiting Arsenal fans at Man City after the vitriolic abuse he had received that day etc.

Some of those idiots in the crowd like to dish out the abuse to players, but can't take it and turn into a bunch of over-sensitive, hypocritical wimps when those players give a bit of banter back. 

Of course I'm not condoning doing an Eric Cantona style karate kick on abusive fans, although that Palace fan in question was a nasty piece of work (check out his criminal record) and deserved it. 

 

Edited May 28, 2017 by Hugh Jass

[Dan+]

I remember when we played Spurs at home on boxing day in 2014 and Harry Kane was getting booed. It was embarrassing watching some of our fans moan about him cupping his ears to us when he scored after 2 minutes. I most likely booed (although I'm personally pro anything that makes it more hostile) but no complaints at all with what he did.

[HK85]

It's the players that don't get abuse and still do it that grates most. Agbonlahor used to be the worst for it. 

[Hugh Jass]

5 minutes ago, Dan said:

I remember when we played Spurs at home on boxing day in 2014 and Harry Kane was getting booed. It was embarrassing watching some of our fans moan about him cupping his ears to us when he scored after 2 minutes. I most likely booed (although I'm personally pro anything that makes it more hostile) but no complaints at all with what he did.

Yeah exactly. I think there was a West Brom-Leicester game at the Hawthorns last season when Vardy was getting heckled and abused by the some of the more vociferous Baggies fans all game, and he celebrated his goal in front of them and taunted them a bit. He did absolutely nothing wrong there. No West Brom fan that heckled him had any right to turn into a delicate flower and be annoyed at or offended by his celebration. 

[Dan+]

1 hour ago, Hugh Jass said:

Yeah exactly. I think there was a West Brom-Leicester game at the Hawthorns last season when Vardy was getting heckled and abused by the some of the more vociferous Baggies fans all game, and he celebrated his goal in front of them and taunted them a bit. He did absolutely nothing wrong there. No West Brom fan that heckled him had any right to turn into a delicate flower and be annoyed at or offended by his celebration. 

He did the exact same again this season. Deliberately ran to the exact same bit of the ground bloke's such a cunt but it's hilarious.

[Guest]

I said this in the Liga MX thread. It could end up being of interest

Chivas are champions!

I am so happy for them. I obviously wanted to see Monarcas win it to see Ruidiaz and Polo win something in Mexico but my second choice was Chivas as I'm a big fan of clubs having a lot of home grown players which is basically what Chivas' philosophy is. They've done the double and you can even say they've done a treble. Aside from this, they've also won the Copa MX and the U20 Liga MX. They're back, and they have been superb this season. Fair play. 

Foreign rules have completely killed the diversity in high quality leagues and while I do agree on freedom of players, its definitely had a huge impact on the game. Particularly in North and South America.

[Beelzebub]

All these English here who say that they would rather see their club win the league then England win the WC would dance naked in the streets if England does win it 

[Dan+]

It's only in retaliation to the Scots who dance in the streets naked whenever England get knocked out.

[Guest]

25 minutes ago, Azeem98 said:

All these English here who say that they would rather see their club win the league then England win the WC would dance naked in the streets if England does win it 

I agree to an extent, although when it comes to fans of clubs like Leicester, Stoke, Sunderland and even Liverpool and Everton, I'm sure they'd rather win a major club trophy.

The English aren't too keen on international football and part of it has to do with the people being really negative about their own nation. I'm not saying this about the whole population of course. 

[Stan]

3 minutes ago, Cannabis said:

To be fair the Scottish are an absolute embarrassment when it comes to supporting football. Their jealousy of England is quite difficult to put into words.

where's Weird World when you need him ?  

[The Artful Dodger]

Jealous of what? There's nothing to be jealous of.

[The Artful Dodger]

Just now, Cannabis said:

Other than the fact that they have to sit at home and watch us qualify for major tournaments year in and year out? The best was the past Euros as the whole of the Home Nations qualified with them sitting at home watching on the TV screen. There's lots for them to be jealous about and they prove it time and time again with their embarrassing obsession with us.

Delusional. England are the biggest embarrassment going in terms of international football, culture, fans, style of play and get routinely humiliated. Anyone jealous of England football team has a serious personality disorder.

[HK85]

Wouldn't even raise a smile.

Fuck England.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, The Artful Dodger said:

Delusional. England are the biggest embarrassment going in terms of international football, culture, fans, style of play and get routinely humiliated. Anyone jealous of England football team has a serious personality disorder.

The delusional one is you. Or at least this post shows you don't know much about football outside the U.K.

As a Peruvian, I am completely jealous of your football culture. It gets annoying to see them believe everyone think the same, but I would love to travel across the country just for the sake of watching my team play.

Annoying fans? There are annoying fans anywhere. Mexican fans are the worst for me, followed by American and Canadians. African and Asian fans are also worse. England are closer to the best fans more than the worst. 

International football can be seen as embarrassing but it's no worse than Mexico or a Peru. Both teams that are hyped up beyond what they are actually capable of. I'd also say USA is worse with this whole "we're going to win the World Cup bollocks" let's not forget to mention how many nations try their best to be footballing nation and ultimately fail. Africa is the biggest victim.

The only thing I'll agree with is style of play. Hilariously outdated, but when most English people love a wind up, the amount of jokes can make it easy to believe that it's embarrassing when it's really not.

[Dan+]

I generally agree there is very little to like about England but no matter how bad England are Scotland always manage to be worse.

[Hugh Jass]

Probably a very unpopular opinion, but here goes. Generally attacking players are just better players than defensive players.

Statistically it is far more difficult to score goals than to prevent the other team from scoring. Even if Bayern Munich or Real Madrid win 4-0, they'd probably have created another 15-20 or so goal-scoring opportunities in that same match which they hadn't been able to convert. Generally a very small percentage of goal-scoring opportunities actually result in goals.

Also as kids far more people aspire to be attacking players or forwards than defenders, defensive midfielders, goal-keepers etc, as those positions have more prestige, glory and glamour. So being one of the best attackers in the world is more impressive to me than being one of the best defenders, as an attacker would have beaten off more and tougher competition right from their school and junior days to get that far.

Also, I think that generally a lot of attacking players would have found it easier to adapt to other positions than vice versa. For example I think that a lot of centre forwards like Drogba, Shearer etc could easily have become excellent centre-backs had they trained for it. However I think a lot of defensive players would have found it far more difficult to excel as attacking players. There will be exceptions to that hypothesis of course. 

 

 

[Dan+]

I think there are too many variables but I can see your point. Was going to make the middle paragraph as a point myself - how many players actually start out as defenders and focus on that for their whole footballing development? I'd guess nowhere near as many as attackers, hence you're likely to have a better standard.

I think ultimately though being a midfielder is the hardest, and possibly even full-back nowadays.

[Dan+]

1 hour ago, Azeem98 said:

All these English here who say that they would rather see their club win the league then England win the WC would dance naked in the streets if England does win it 

Oh and for what it's worth England winning the World Cup wouldn't top last year for me. I'm far more connected to Leicester than I ever will be England.

[Guest]

Brendan Rodgers is a great manager when given a good team. However, he is awful on the transfer front.

[Smiley Culture]

English national team fans think Scottish national team fans care more about England than they really do. 

But I echo the points above that England are one of the most embarrassing International sides to grace the planet. I'd put some absolutely tiny European nations out there as sides who've performed better than the England sides. 

[Inverted]

A big part of the culture of mediocrity in English football is to do with a perennial satisfaction with doing better than Scotland, a country a tenth the size with an even smaller fraction of the investment in football, very few decent academies, and an even more disastrously mis-managed FA. 

It's not healthy to think of a nation with every conceivable disadvantage against you as your main rival, but it offers a kind of weak gratification that can't be had from comparing yourselves to Germany, France, Italy or Spain. 

We invented international football together, and you've won a single major trophy more than us, think of it that way. 

Edit: the "rivalry" probably has a big part of the blame for our shiteness as well. Our "biggest" match is a fixture that we statistically should be expected to lose. Our whole psyche is based on making an underdog effort for a few key matches, rather than consistently performing against teams on or below our level. 

 

Edited June 7, 2017 by Inverted