The question now is who do you want to see face each other in the semis? The obvious thing would be to at least hope Bayern and Barca can be kept apart in the hope that they meet in the final. But anything can happen in a final so maybe the more definitive match up would see them facing each other, home and away, over two legs, in the semis.

ootah... to paraphrase van gaal, what i want is irrelevant, ha ha ha. i have no control! i'll take whatever's good.

i want to see barcelona up close which i haven't really-- this will be a good chance since either way the semis are going to be 2 individual dates (mondays? weird...)

maybe it will come down to who will be more rested and who will be struggling in their leagues, exhausted & spent. maybe??

we gotta take a look at those tables...

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ps - okay, what i want-- i want the 2 la liga contenders to eliminate themselves in the semis so we can have a transnational final.

I didn't see Juventus tonight but just looking at who they were facing in terms of Monaco's attackers, I have to wonder if their defence will hold out the same way, especially over two legs, against either Bayern's, Real's or Barcelona's.

Bayern always seem to have a bad game in them. Their quality over two legs, though, makes me think they'd be too much for either Juve or Real in the semis. Against Barcelona, their inconsistency might be less forgiving. They can't afford to be misfiring up front given that it's almost impossible to stop all of Barcelona's forwards. If they have a bad night against Messi, Suarez and Neymar, they'd likely be punished far more than they were by Porto in that first leg.

A Real v Barcelona semi would be cagey as fuck. Both teams know each other almost too well. I think Barcelona are better but I wouldn't want to call it.

Personally I'd like Bayern to meet Barcelona in the semis, so we can see how they deal with each other over two legs, rather than in the slightly artificial intensity of a final.

oh, yes!! i didn't think about that... that would be great.

but if that's the case then let juve beat real. i can't stand to see cronaldo's punchable face in a final.

true what you said about the quality of monaco's attack. still, seemed razor-thin margins to me at times. but yes, lewandowski/suárez they're not.

the ping-pong bayern did yesterday was insane-- and very effective this time. what does it take for them to make it work? is it just psychology? they truly baffle me. when they work they work fantastic and when they fail they're just stuck in the mud. zero or hero-- no midway. what's the key?

As huge a fan of Pep as I am, I think it's true that his tactical experiments do sometimes backfire. So I suppose the key is with him. I'm not saying that even if he gets everything right, they're necessarily good enough to beat Barcelona, but if they fail in the semis against either Real or Juve, then I think the bulk of criticism would rightly be directed squarely at him.

Even Ronaldo couldn't bear to watch anymore!on the real though I can handle a match like this one..

9 saves? 29 shots? 14 corners??

Sure Atletico got their ass handed to them but Real Madrid clearly showed up.

Still I obviously would have much more enjoyed Porto getting straight beatdown by Bayern. Here is a highlight from the match ;)

The stats make it look more exciting than it was. I wanted Atletico to win but I gave a sigh of relief when Real scored in the last couple of minutes and put an end to the prospect of more of the same in extra time.

Oh, one of those fuckers? Definitely would have preferred the Bayern match then..

i know but... the lineup was *the same* as the first round except for badstuber... and yet they were dead one week and firing on all pistons the next one.

incomprehensible.

maybe beckenbauer was right and they were all on sleeping pills...

You'd expect such a young team like Porto's to crumble down mentally after an early goal. And then there’s Lopetegui’s inexperience(he’s also a young manager), inability or even reluctance perhaps to set up the game defensively.

Yeah but we know Pep gives key players multiple roles, even when they appear to be in the same position on the pitch. That makes it almost impossible for opposing teams to work them out but does come with its own risks.


Would love to have seen how spectacular Heynckes' last season would've been if he'd had to deal with an injury list like Pep has this season.

Five world champions, Bernat and a genius like Thiago. Hardly a shite team.

Far from shit, obviously, I was just saying that, relative to Heynckes' last season, Pep's injury list has been massive. Taking nothing away from Heynckes but I'm not sure he'd have achieved what he did with the likes of Robben, Ribery, Alaba and Schweinsteiger all side-lined.

oh yes yes... i had been expecting porto to park the bus... they did no such thing (and if they did i didn't notice because bayern was *everywhere*).

the ones who crumbled down mentally were bayern the previous week. i did not see porto give up... they were just overwhelmed by bayern's teleportation skills, but they did not throw the towel (just got increasingly more violent).


which are?


a huge hypothetical considering it's a different team now, post-champions win. would he have gotze and lewandowski?

i don't know that it would have been "spectacular" but i think it would have been solid.

spectacular/solid --- that's what i'm talking about pep's bayern this season-- they're either spectacular or they crumble. i wanna know what causes that-- concretely and specifically i mean. what makes it work that way.

i'm not saying anybody has the answers. with other teams you can say that-- e.g. we've x-rayed dortmund's failings to exhaustion at this point. they're comprehensible. but there's no x-ray for pep's secret sauce, is there? this does not cease to puzzle me. and of course it's a good thing when people do not understand your tactics. it confuses me to no end.

i mean, after losing 3-1, you'd think they come back to win 2-0, but no, 6-1, and at this stage of the competition. wtf. yes, teams win, lose and tie, it's part of the natural order of things-- but it's not the averages that puzzle me here-- it's the extremes.

They did. Fabiano for example, had a good deal of blame for 2 or 3 goals.

Porto were playing a team 10x their budget and the absences of Danilo and Alex Sandro were major setbacks for them (much more than Robben and Ribery for Bayern), don’t get me wrong, they died standing.

I think it wasn't so much of an outer-worldly exhibition by Buyern but that the way Lopetegui set the midfield verged on suicidal. With four midfielders he basically set a red carpet for Bayern on the wings and cut off Porto’s attacking depth. And Reyes on the right was a pretty poor choice.

Are you saying that Guardiola was right to be a cunt to their team doctor of 40 years?

that was the big bayern news all week and it was seen as a power consolidation move on pep's part. not sure what to think of it-- i don't have the facts to judge really, just the media reports.

funny thing that he plays with the same injured squad and proceeds to win though.

so while he could conceivably be blamed for injuries, the loss itself wasn't the doctor's fault.

No, I think it’s a perfectly normal and understandable reaction. It’s just that Pep himself and some of his partisans in the press have created an image of Guardiola (stainless, immaculate, etc.) and often use it as some sort of moral high ground when comparing him to the other top manager in world (the evil one).

I don't know why, other than to point to Pep's inbuilt urge to experiment. Not saying it's a virtue but so far it's hardly proved a massive obstacle. They've won the Bundesliga without breaking sweat and got to the semis of the Champions League. Hardly a crisis.


I don't know the backstory there. Maybe Pep is more guilty than it seems. I don't know.


I don't see him as some kind of footballing saint and have no interest in those who do. I just think there's a kind of reverse logic with some people who want to knock him down because he's not perfect. To whom I'd simply ask, who is?

The problem I find with some Bayern fans is they expect every game to be a cakewalk. They look at Heynckes with rose coloured glasses because he won them the CL and destroyed Barcelona along the way, while at the same time forgetting that that same year they came very close to going out in the quarters against Arsenal and could've easily lost to Dortmund in the final. That's not criticising Heynckes just saying that, at that level, the top teams/managers have their ups and downs.

like i said before, it's not the averages that concern me but the extremes-- particularly, the lows. a table position is won by averages. a cup is a different story-- one extreme failure and you're out.

when wednesday's game got to 5-1, martinez got lively and there was a risk of a 5-3 and porto wins on away goals. of course that risk is everywhere always. pep was smart enough to pack in some defenders (rode, dante, wieser) to tamp that down.

seems to me, mulling this over, that his collapses tend to be defensive. it's not just a dante thing.


right, but again, it's not the averages-- it's the total collapses that concern me. they don't lose 1-0 or 2-1. They lose 3-1, 4-2, 4-1, 4-0. like last year vs. real madrid.

Not uncommon on big clubs, isn’t it though?

Real Madrid, Man Utd…
They like to see themselves as a more demanding crowd, fans of humbler teams tend to see it as a shitty attitude.

i love to think about these things outloud because eventually the answer comes up. not discovering the wheel here but finally a pattern. obvious maybe but i wasn't seeing it. this explains at last:

april 23, 2014
http://www.fourfourtwo.com/news/guar...toppable-break

april 30, 2014
http://www.zonalmarking.net/2014/04/...unter-attacks/

...

january 30, 2015
http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/3275/...counterattacks

feb 2, 2015
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/foo...thrashing.html

partial analysis:
feb 8, 2015
http://www.bayerncentral.com/2015/02...ounterattacks/
he mentions the need for flexibility-- i tend to agree

--
eta: i fixed the jan 30 link

I can't speak for any league outside the Prem but yes, fans of top teams like MU, Chelsea, etc, are more critical, but even they seem to accept that upsets aren't that unusual, so long as they don't suggest a deeper decline.

Reading the articles Symbols linked, they just seem to reflect an obsession with Pep: over-scrutinising his every move. Bayern came unstuck against a very good Real side last season. Not making excuses for it but it happens. Same with their loss this season to Wolfsburg. Yes, Pep's system leaves them vulnerable to certain kinds of opponents but 90% of the time he still gets a result.

Every fan wants their team to be the best they can be but reading some Bayern fans online, they talk as though each game is almost an inconvenience, to be won and gotten out the way in order for them to simply move onto the next victory. Fortunately for them that's usually how it goes (especially in the Bundesliga) but it does seem to mean that any rare but inevitable blips that occurs along the way get blown out of all proportion.

Anyway, Bayern fans might have to just accept Pep's eccentricities cos he may be there for some time:

http://www.theguardian.com/football/...anchester-city

CL Draw just in:

Real v Juve

Barcelona v Bayern

my concern was not with insane fan demands but with the soufflé quality of pep's tactics. either they rise magnificently or they fall completely flat. bayern scores 6 goals or gets 4 scored-- no 1-0s.

what the articles showed for me is the vulnerability to counterattacks. two of those articles are pep's admission of that fact, in different years.

in 2014 pep returned with a new system that was meant to be more counter-proof. that has worked against easy teams when bayern dominates them *completely*

but when bayern doesn't achieve total domination the expressway to the goal becomes wide open. wide wide wide. hence the massacres. the zonal marking article linked actually mentions how under heynckes this vulnerability did not exist (that was at the end of the prior season though. pep has made changes since them).

i don't know why i feel like my thoughts here are being conflated with those of megalomaniac fans, but i don't want bayern to win all the time-- in fact i've preferred to follow other teams like poor dortmund this year because something like bayern vs. stuttgart is no contest at all.

my "defenestrate pep/draft heynckes" outburst was not about wanting them to win all the time--henynckes certainly didn't do that. it had more to do with heynckes transparency and apparent good sense, rejecting what appeared to me like unreliable and unpredictable experiments. but that was more about my cognitive limitations than about pep's actual tactics.

a few posts afterwards and with some reading i think i do understand pep better-- it's not an experiment, and his system is not inherently unreliable either. it's that the limits of bayern only show up under certain conditions-- rather than being a gradual slope it's like wile e. coyote running off a cliff. it's suddend and brutal. it makes you think something is amiss.

but now after some reading it's easy for me to understand-- the achilles heel is the lack of pace of the central defenders (dante, benatia, badstuber on the mend, a mature alonso in front of them) that leaves a chunnel in front of the goal when bayern can't overwhelm the oponent.

it's a chess problem-- and a really interesting one once it's detected. and it's hard to detect because there aren't many situations where these conditions appear-- it's not like a weekly issue with bayern. hence some commentator called the porto game "a black swan" (a term from economics)-- a strange unexpected catastrophic event. but it's not strange or unexpected once you understand it-- i'm sure it wasn't unexpected for lopetegui and he planned it that way. others will do that as well.

that central wormhole won't be fixed until at least javi martinez gets mended, badstuber recovers his full form, and maybe dante (who really seems like a pleasant person) gets replaced by someone quicker. in the meantime, that's the path for the knife.

hey, maybe bayern can purchase david luiz at discount. say what you want about him, at least he's quick, ha ha ha ha.

I understand what you're saying. I just think it happens so rarely that it isn't an issue. For me Pep isn't a 'safe' manager. He plays things at the edge. What's remarkable is that his teams aren't more vulnerable than they are.


They're not. At least not by me. I'm talking about fans I read on football sites who try to pass off critcisms of Pep's methods with what i increasingly think a thinly disguised dislike of him personally.


Completely get that. And it just comes down to preferences. I love that experimentalism but I can completely understand why other people don't. Remember my team is run by a manager for whom pragmatism is all, and i hate it. I'd far rather we lose a game with some style than to draw one by playing things safe.


I suppose, while for you that's a problem, for me it's just the price paid for what he does in other areas. At Barcelona there was always that sense that if a team could really get at their defence they had a real chance. It just seems like a quirk of his philosophy. Equally, people have worked out that if you back off against a Mourinho team, they don't really know how to cope. They're not especially comfortable taking the initiative. Although Mourinho's addressed that a bit it's still there.


Agree. And one of the things i love about watching these top managers, with very definite ideas, is the way other managers try to counter them. Even if they don't succeed, because they maybe just don't have the quality of players to do it, I still like seeing tactical victories, even if the result doesn't quite reflect them. Giving Sam at West Ham his due, he completely out-tactic'd Jose this season, even if, at the death, Chelsea grabbed a winner. Tactical superiority is one thing. Eden Hazard is another.

thank you. communication is a pain in the ass, especially in the internets.

i have to clarify though-- i have stopped thinking that pep's schemes are "wild experimentations". i see that they're perfectly rational systems with some flaws. but just because they are difficult to understand and the flaws are hidden and burst only at critical points it doesn't follow that they are arbitrary-- i see that now. i didn't before.

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anyway, games about to start! tomorrow a good one lined up-- wolfsburg vs. gladbach.

...

eta - dortmund beat frankfurt 2-0 in a nice, balanced game--just a bit too many fouls maybe. reus mended, came off bench for a bit. bayern/berlin starts later.

* * *

and we have a 1-0 after all! bayern beats hertha berlin while testing a bunch of subs. game started with 9 germans! (historic, it seems).

there was almost a goal down "the dante chunnel" in the same vein as all the rest, but neuer saved (in the same vein as all his saves).

weiser is pretty great! he's merely 18 and bayern's goal was his creation, running/dribbling up the right, and a great cross, finished by schweinsteiger. and he's a defender! well, i'm footballed out now.

H8Kurdt will be a very happy man today

:D Everton totally deserved that win. What's frustrating is that this season has seen some of the worst highs and absolute lows in a long time for Everton. Performances like today's and the general Europa league campaign showed they can be great, yet they've thrown so many points away from stupid mistakes.

Meh well, hopefully they can build from it for next season then possibly, maybe, we'll see, build onto fighting for a champions league place or at least a cup win somewhere. Hmm, we'll see though.

Stones' header will have to rank as one of the best headers all season too.

holy shit! i just saw why

==

less epic perhaps but wolfsburg/gladbach starts in 15'

wolfsburg is 2nd, gladbach is 4th, both beat bayern by 2 goals recently.

if wolfsburg doesn't win then bayern is already champion

Not sure if I'm right here but your while your performances in the Europa cup were good your league performances only really started to improve after you were ejected from it. Breaking into the CL next season will be incredibly difficult and the far greater likelihood is that you simply end up qualifying for the Europa again. And so the cycle will continue, for you and every other decent upper-mid table side.

Also, PFA team of the season announced.



How Coutinho made it in there is a total mystery.

Nah looking back on the results after Europa games they never did that bad. Well more at the back of it all they didn't. Earlier on they were just awful as you said (I wish I can forget that 2-0 loss to Hull *shudders*).

Coutinho had a coupla good games and scored a few screamers, other than that I can't see why he should be there either.

Just watching Barca/Getafe game now. It was 6-0 by the 47th minute, whilst it has slowed down I wouldn't be surprised if there's more. I can see a Suarez, Messi, Neymar Ballon D'Or final three already. It might be too controversial to happen though.

Watching Liverpool lose at the moment.

Weird how they've just collapsed in the last couple of months. Although even when they were doing OK, it still doesn't make sense to have Coutinho in that XI - especially given that was when when Fabregas was on fire.

I'd go something more like this:

Aguerro, Kane
Sanchez, Fabregas, Hazard
Matic
Azpilacuta, Terry, Clyne, Ivanovich
DeGea

Manager: Koeman



You might be onto something with a Messi, Suarez, Neymar Ballon D'or. Wandering if that's ever happened before: all three finalists coming from the same team. Although I reckon Hazard might be in with a shout, not to win it but maybe to get to the final three.

Not enough Chelsea players.

Jose agrees with you

http://www1.skysports.com/football/n...en-all-chelsea

Great player but Ronaldo's response to Arbeloa's goal last night just confirms what n absolute prick he is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4ekhGD0ccs

im disappointed we won't be able to watch bayern's best vs. barcelona in the next champions round.

lewandowski had a concussion and a broken jaw. rummenigge promises his return, but how do you play well w/ a fucking broken jaw and some kind of batman mask.

then robben had a calf injury and he's kaput for the year. yeah. damn.

To be fair he'd had 12 shots by that point. Frustration gets the better of people sometimes. And he is one guy who takes everything WAAAYYYY too serious.

Except when he's having fun

On one level I admire his honesty. I roll my eyes every time I hear other strikers say their goals are less important than their team's success. It is, but I don't believe any of them really think it. But Ronaldo takes that selfishness to such an extreme that it's impossible not to feel at least a bit put off by it. A shame because I really do have a massive amount of respect for him.