It'll be a bit weird, I think, if Fabinho doesn't actually start playing regularly soon. Is this a wise plan to help settle him in, as seems to be the general opinion, or is Klopp just a melon to not be using a very good player?
It'll be a bit weird, I think, if Fabinho doesn't actually start playing regularly soon. Is this a wise plan to help settle him in, as seems to be the general opinion, or is Klopp just a melon to not be using a very good player?
Robertson didn't play until about December (and look at who he had in front of him). I think Klopp likes players to settle into the way the team plays (as he seems quite particular about a lot of things). The last expensive Monaco defensive midfielder was straight in and then straight out at Chelsea, so maybe acclimatisation is a better idea.
Fabinho would have had to spent the summer eating thirty bowls of Frosties a day to have a worse first season than Bakayoko. That was a peculiar case; I'm not sure him being from Monaco is a reason to be cautious, if you were suggesting that. I wonder what makes Klopp decide whether to phase a player in slowly (Salah, Alisson, Mane all straight in).
I was more thinking coming from a physically less competitive league.
I think there's a bit of him wanting players to properly learn what they are doing, midfielders in particular (Chamberlain took a while to get a proper go in the team) and also a bit that if the incumbents are playing well, then the incomer has to earn their way into the team.
Goalkeeper and forward positions are much more individualistic so you can chuck them in sooner, I guess. There's also the issue of necessity. Some players can't be eased in too much due to force of circumstance. Alisson obviously ha to play, and I'm not sure there were credible alternatives to Mané or Salah at the time. Was Coutinho sulking at the start of last season?
He had a “back injury” didnt he?
Seems that Ramsey will go to Liverpool or United. I'm not sure why Liverpool want him tbh, he's a great player but he's another off-the-ball player. He'd just get in Firmino's way. On top of that, I don't think any player has been dribbled past more than him this season so I can't see how jurgenpressing will work out for him.
United would make sense if the rest of the midfield wasn't already a mess.
We've got better than him on the bench. No thanks.
Ramsey at this point, I don't think he will get better or reignite his old form. He will just meat the homegrown quota if he goes to any of the teams who have finished above Arsenal over the past two seasons.
He'll go abroad. Juventus is my guess.
Maybe I've just caught him at the right times, or been swayed by some brilliant goals he's scored, but is Ramsey not really, really good? Is he crap defensively (like that phonics stat might suggest) or have I missed something else? He was anonymous for much of the Chelsea game to be fair but not sure no10 is really his position.
If he was called Ramzicchio, etc etc.
What is it with Belgium being the dodgiest place on earth? Match fixing and other massive corruption, paedo-rings, Muslamics, it's chocked full of the wrongest of the wrong ostensibly, which is some going for such a seemingly bland bunch.
Great idea to put Montenegro vs Serbia in the same group for the game tomorrow.
I can't believe Paco Alcacer is 25. He looks at least mid-30s.
It's the weak hairline. It ages people.
This is turgid.
This England match is so bad I got to 29 minutes in and couldn't even bare holding out at the pub till half time and left.
Barkley is shit. In fact, they are all shit.
I see we also have the silly suspension thing, too.
How are 2 yellow cards over 180 minutes worthy of a 1 match ban?
Sandro needs a haircut according to my dad.
Seems like we're back to being shit. Or rather, still shit.
The grief I got for saying we weren't actually that good....
Lads, we drew against World Cup finalists.
*buys a dozen waistcoats*
Looking back on when we first met,
I cannot escape and I cannot forget,
Southgate you’re the one,
You still turn me on,
Football’s coming home again!
Looking back on when we first met
How many chat tokens will another grand get?
Can't bear to log on
Just like my step-mum
Scamming cunt Ukrainian
We are wank though. It's a fairly inescapable fact.
At least he got away from the 5 defender shitfest yesterday.
Anyway, in other news Terry Henry is the new Monaco manager. Wasn't that Jardim chap the new doyenne of modern football? What's happened there (beyond them selling all their players)?
And I remember Yev turning around the Colombia game. He definitely enjoyed it, but like most of us just saw that we were taking advantage of a decent draw.
The World Cup briefly made me give a shit about International Football/England again. It was great for that reason alone.
Yeah, proved that even after over ten years of cynicism we can still get behind and properly enjoy a team that offers something.
Isn't it just enjoying your team doing well? I still watched when we getting Nordiced and tanked by ze Germans.
Speaking of of the world beaters.
Duffy is probably the best attacking threat.
It was obviously fun to be in a semi-final, but ultimately we were as crap as ever and blew the best set of circumstances possible, so it would be terrible if we come to romanticise it like we do the nineties tournaments where we at least gave the good sides as good as we got.
I don't think we blew it, though. We just reached our limit. There was a bizarre efficiency to us that was fascinating to watch.
'Blew it' is harsh. Croatia were a very good team.
And we definitely weren't as crap as ever. Completely different, taking the most awful and apt example, to the side that crumbled against Iceland. Like those mugs would have got past Colombia and Sweden.
They were knackered and couldn't defend set pieces. If we knew how to manage a game properly (and didn't start clearly injured strikers to miss sitters) we would have seen it out. 2016 was obviously a low point, but we were no better than 2012 or 2014.
James McClean as a left wing back and Cyrus Christie in midfield.
Agent O'Neill.
We lost to two better teams and weren't particularly terrible (as a team at least) in either match.