i gotta say so far not disappointed with this fucking prem ha ha ha

fuck you, chores.. :D

What are the odds on Jose making at least two changes at half time. MU's defence makes WH's look like Atletico Madrid's.

Awesome :) And we've still got Liverpool to come tomorrow.

im trying to do a bunch of stuff this morning so i can take a “big lunch” (1 to 3 pm, ha ha ha)

I think Liverpool will win, but Palace look decent and should make a game of it. Gonna be a good one I think.

Was right. Very tight so far. Penalty looks legit but Palace unlucky to be a goal down. Excellent game.

o man got busy totally spaced it. starting for 2nd half

--

cp looks like barcelona!

oh and there's that man with the nice suits wassisname

something with an n and a k?

i forget. he was england's coach?

--

hodgson!

son of hodge (not podge)

[i thought it was warNocK or redKNapp]

btw per my stats thing in the app cp's shots and shots on target climbing rapidly

Really great game. Score flattered Liverpool. Palace were excellent.

i fuckin hate that the ramos wannabe pushed mo salah and we missed witnessing another great goal—again!

let salah be salah

karius was exiled to turkey huh? damn harsh

yeah they have it here on amazon, just watched the first episode, it cracked me up because pep sounds and talks exactly like gael garcia bernal as maestro rodrigo in “mozart in the jungle” haa haaa haaa

Just a heads up. If you're looking for the big game next week, it's definitely Man U - Spurs on Monday night (8pm GMT). The result won't be key but if Mourinho doesn't get a performance from his players (especially against title rivals) he'll really be on the brink. But I'm having my doubts about Spurs too. Maybe it's the WC hangover but they've looked a bit stale so far. This'll be the 1st really 'big' game, I think, in terms of potential consequences.

alright i'll keep an eye on it, thanks.

especially after what i saw yesterday...

so, been watching the ALL OR NOTHING man city documentary on amazon. it's from last year's campagin (so far anyway).

first episode is about building the team (and mourinho on van bruyne), second episode about the man u rivalry (and mourinho's interviews), third episode is about their undefeated streak up to the new year’s defeat against liverpool...

and yea it's been fucking great. i'm learning a lot, seeing a lot, understanding a lot.

one of the great treats has been to see the various silva highlights-- his goals, his passes, excellent.

i also understand pep a little better now i think, seeing him speak, etc. he is clearly obsessed but seems a lot less detached into his head than the impression i had of him.

of course he is still a maniac but i appreciate him a little more. i guess that's the point of all pr/puff pieces after all. but yes. this has humanized him in my eyes ha ha ha.

now the thing is i realized that he learned something in bundesliga. which is:

at the beginning of the season when they're building the team they make a big issue of having players who can play like pep wants but who are also *physical*. and they make a huge deal out of how physical the prem is. and so you see john stones, and mendy, and van bruyne...

the thing is though, bundesliga is also very physical. and the champions league is also very physical-- like when you have to face atlético madrid for example.

anyway one of the big things that bothered me with pep at bayern is that he brought in very skilled but small/smallish men. like bernat or thiago alcántara. or gotze who had a diseas but o well. and played rafinha a lot. and then relegated physical players like javi martínez to defense. ok, xabi alonso came in for schewinsteiger, but overall there was a loss of physicality in the team with him. bayern lost that edge.

doesn't seem to be the case at man city though. that team can outmuscle its opponents as well as play passing football, and that is a great thing.

anyway gonna look at rest of schedule now...

[quote=!@#$%!]
Been watching this myself. Im on the third episode and totally loving it.



Yes! Praise the lord :D


I've always liked Guardiola. but I've a new level of respect for him now. Especially in comparison to Moanrinho who will use any situation to throw his players under the bus. Also, think you might like this... https://twitter.com/JonnyGabriel/sta...57602328604673




There was one thing De Bruye has said that he had to take Guardiola aside and explain how big the second ball was in the Premier League. That's one of the things Guardiola struggled with and it showed in the Premier League in his first season.

And Burnley and Crystal Palace would kick Madrid all over the park;)

Anyway gotta go as I'm rushing. I'll talk more later.

h ha those jumps he makes yeah. i'll say this, watching that thing: i have no idea what the fuck he's talking about when he points at his charts. zero sense. i'm like "waaaa...." .. but anyway yeah

i looked for the debruyne thing and i could not find one. could you post a link. also i'm not familiar with the term "second ball"--what is it? (makes me think of basketball rebounds)

maybe i think you meant LONG ball cuz i found articles related to that?

anyway... good stuff all this. really looking forward to watch more episodes in a bit.

oh, i remembered the name john stones, i remember seeing him before this and i google and found... he was at everton first yes? ha ha ha.

i also remember the name "joey barton" who was i think some sort of criminal. and qpr. and then i see that match. i actually saw that i remember the people going bananas in the stands.

OH, and who was the bands that like city? i kinda dont know that guy or his colleagues.

but good soundtrack too at times btw. ha ha ha.

but yeah if you know the bands that guy says... he only sez first names

Essentially the same thing but in a long ball or punted up context. I wouldn't be surprised if early on in Pep's time at city they conceded goals to teams who were good at winning second balls - most obviously Leicester in their title winning season.

Or to make life easier, this ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfkkRLrrHw4

ah, yeah, okay! thanks

so what the fuck is a carabao cup

i know i can google, but i mean— why??

the schedule is so brutal it boggles the mind

also, how is bravo doing now?

haaaa haaaa haaa just watched the episode for the original source footage

could not stop laughing

Sorry, I got my names mixed up. It was Xabi Alonso which makes more sense. Here's the quote

Tell me about it. I'll say this, watching with subtitles helps a lot for me.



*sigh* yeah he was. Sure he regrets leaving Everton everyday.


Johnny Marr (the guy talking)was in the Smiths, Noel and Liam Gallagher Oasis of course, the rest were nothing bands. Badly Drawn Boy you might recognise his face and had a few hits in the early 00's, Blossoms are a new whatever band. Funny that Marr misses most of the famous Man Utd fans :D
[/quote]


Urgh. That cup has had so many names throughout history. It's better known as the League Cup. However, I like to call it the Milk Trophy cos I'm a flithy hipster. It's one of thse trophies where no one wants to win it and it just clogs up the fixture table. Except the team who does win it gets to say "YEAH! WE WON A TROPHY! IN YOUR FACE!" and everyone else looks and goes "Mate, it's the fucking league cup no one cares".


Tell me about it. By the time January finishes I'm worn out I'm just watching it!

The Caribou should be rebranded as the League Cup again. Let the FA take the financial hit. It'll still always be the poor man's fa cup but it'll at least have an identity. Personally I'd be in favour of scrapping it all together but I know clubs in the lower leagues rely on it for revenue.


He makes cameo appearances at Caribou Cup games.

So Symbols, too soon for any concrete judgments but 1st impressions of the prem?

first impressions plenty, first one being: it’s a world cup every matchday! as patsy stone would put it (ha ha ha) “names, names, names”. lol

then it’s the insane parity/unpredictability of the thing. e.g., i could not believe that a team with pogba and lukaku in it could be so thoroughly punked by a nowhere team, but there you go. same with the monday liverpool game being so tight.

and i do not remember this prem. maybe i was looking at it wrong but i do not believe it was the same quality 5-6 years ago. i remember liking man city who were then champions but they were not this. i remember trying to like liverpool at the time, and same thing. klopp >> brendan rogers, and their current forwards... wow. i remember also trying to like arsenal and being thoroughly bored with them—pass, pass, pass, fail to score... there was no team for me to love. now there are several.

i dont know if it’s the tv money or a change in my perspective, or the new foreign managers or what, but this prem is a different prem than i recall. very different. or maybe i changed.

—

@h8kurdt: i understand his words! i just dont get what he means ha ha ah.

and thanks for clarifying all the rest!

I'd say the intensity and unpredictability have always been there but the quality has definitely improved. While it still struggles to attract the very top tier of players (although I think that'll change) it has the monopoly on real quality managers. Even forgetting about the top end, the fact West Ham have Pellegrini, or Newcastle have Rafa is pretty insane, and just not something I see in other leagues. At least not to this extent. There's always 3 or 4 teams each season that collapse but I'd say all the others are capable of giving anyone a game, which may in part be down to the generally high quality of managers throughout the division.

i dont know about failing to attract top quality players. most of the best ones are there already

the one hurdle i see for someone highly valued i suppose is the insane amount of games they must play, and the abundance of injuries that can ruin a career.

would you? i wouldn’t. it’s fucking nuts. borderline abusive. a darwinian experiment i guess.

can’t ride a ferrari like a delivery truck though

as for managers, yes, they make all the difference. i think before you had the ones who played english ball and the ones who copied the europeans (arsene, rodgers). now you have everyone from everywhere doing real innovation right there.

still cant believe conte was let go. i know theres a story behind it but—fucking conte!

You'd be surprised what I'd do for a prem player's wage.



Two words that should explain all: It's Chelsea

True in the case of Rodgers but harsh in terms of Wenger.

i thought it was you who had told me that wenger was basically a halfhearted follower of fashions with his possession game, but maybe i misremembered

then again i never saw him during his 4-4-2 golden era circa 2000. i had been abducted by aliens at the time and remember little football, or sleep for that matter.

anyway i did a post search here and at least since 2012 it was all “arsenal a shambles” and talk of replacing wenger, so maybe that’s why i see him in this light, as i witnessed only his long decline.

BUT ANYWAY

zidane or conte in for mourinho? ha ha ha ha

I dunno the leagues are cyclical in terms of footballing power (for want of a better term). Right now Spain are still flourishing. However from 2004 to 2013 England had at least one team in either the Champions League or the Europa league. Then it flipped to Spain dominating. It's a disservice to say that English teams just played "English ball" and not recognise how brilliant some of those teams were.

Personally I suspect Spain's dominance is the wane within a coupla years. Then another country will dominate. My money is on Scotland.

And hopefully neither Conte or Zidane. Longer Mourinho stays the better!

ive only been watching intl. leagues since 2009 or so, only increasing gradually, hence i cannot tell before, but during this period i would not say english teams lacked power but they lagged behind in tactics and some skills and the coaches were always the same fucking musical chair names.

i grew up appreciating skill more than power so first time looking at global leagues my eyes wandered to barcelona, beating man u at the champions league a masterclass. i just saw the final that year.

could not find la liga to tune in to, so ended with fox and bundesliga and a bit of prem. somehow bound to bundeliga cuz following bayern and dortmund around 2012 was a joy. much more so than arsenal or liverpool those same years. or even man city.

lately things have stagnated a bit with the germans and my greedy eye brought me back to yr country.

like i said again i dont know decades before, but from 2012 to today i see much more interesting english teams in terms of tactics AND skill. i also know more players than i did before.

e.g. the chelsea that beat bayern at the champions i had nothing to like about except maybe drogba? at least the match i saw.

but look at them now, jeezus frekkington lopez

man city? that show has fans saying “weve been good but never like this”

and this liverpool so much more entertaining. it’s like dortmund used to be, but with more money—and the talent!


ha ha ha

yes. with gordon ramsey coaching?

ha ha ha ha

anyway re: spain’s waning dominance, no, i’d say they’ve conquered you in footballing terms. not nationally: culturally i mean. what nation has the culture does not matter to me. what matters is the culture itself. what have the romans ever done for us?

man city’s record is the spanish game. or should i say, the catalonian game.

but it’s mutated to thrive in your soil

even the injured are shipped to barcelona for repair haaa haaa haaa

so, yeah... i’d be glad to absorb all that. aren’t you?

now where is conte, to do his thing.

if you can assimilate italian football into the prem, as a culture....

circus fucking maximus, or the apotheosis of globalization

it’s like when the honored matres return to dune, lol

—

ps i gotta read the latest michael cox now, “the mixer”

wait: BIELSA is at leeds???

where do i watch the championship

:D :D yeah he's killing it there too. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the players are burnt out after Christmas. Less him.

i don't know but i'd like him to do great and stick around so that i can watch him in the prem next season

getting championship games here is a total mess and more subscriptions i think-- no way!

but wow.

---

ETA - finished the man city show

... i dont hate pep anymore haaa haaa haaa

he's a very nice guy! i don't mean nice as a softie. i mean he's a good person, good for the team, very passionate about his job.

i'm still sorry that things did not work out with him at bayern. i mean in europe. too much tinkering, wrong purchases, i don't know. people fail, learn, who knows what happened. i ultimately don't so i can't really say, only see results. but yeah. uff.

anyway, circus maximus. yeah...

in truth it is dutch football not spanish. proof of etc.

Me too, but it is Bielsa. Although it's surely only a matter of time before the Leeds shop starts selling replica Bielsa Buckets.



There's already a t shirt

haaaahaaaaahaaaaa wtf lololo

The saddest thing of all is I want one.

wait... jack reynolds, original revolutionary ajax manager, was from...

manchester

and he first played for....

man city

(wikipedia sez 0 appearances 0 goals, lol)

but still...

what has manchester ever done for us?

You should definitely read The Mixer. You'd love it.