vs Sevilla FC (H) (CL) 13/03/2018 - 19.45 GMT

[redcase]

Mar 14, 2018 22:44:59 GMT Carbon said:

Mar 14, 2018 20:10:52 GMT redcase said:

Has ANY matchday thread ever reached 50 pages?

yep

republikofmanc.proboards.com/thread/26522/man-citeh-10-12-gmt - Vs Man citeh - (H) - 10/12/17 - 16:30 GMT

republikofmanc.proboards.com/thread/26381/ajax-uefa-europa-league-final - Vs Ajax (N). UEFA Europa League Final. 24/05/17 19.45 BST

republikofmanc.proboards.com/thread/26193/vermin-league-mon-17th-oct - vs The Vermin (A) League - Mon 17th Oct - 20:00 KO

republikofmanc.proboards.com/thread/26166/city-premier-league-10th-sept - Vs Man City (H) - Premier League Sat 10th Sept 16 - 12:30

republikofmanc.proboards.com/thread/26021/west-ham-10-05-bst - v West Ham (a) - 10/05/16 - KO 19:45 BST


To name a few.

Some of the comments in these

[Deleted]

What's our goal of the season so far?

[Rustin Cohle]

Mar 15, 2018 7:39:57 GMT @ausred88 said:

What's our goal of the season so far?

Tony V vs. Everton maybe?

[Rustin Cohle]

Mar 15, 2018 0:25:21 GMT WhatsTheMata said:

Mar 14, 2018 23:00:05 GMT Stew said:

In the early days the shout box was used for matches, so the threads rarely went past 10-15 I think.

Why don't we use the shout box more often? We could close the thread during the match and use it.

Mobile users could use the desktop version on their phones.

Ugh no, using the desktop on a mobile is shite. And personally I quite like having the match threads open. They get very active and lots of likes and quotes are used, so I think its worth keeping it as is.

[Deleted]

Mar 14, 2018 23:00:05 GMT Stew said:

In the early days the shout box was used for matches, so the threads rarely went past 10-15 I think.

yeah I remember that

[Deleted]

Mar 15, 2018 0:25:21 GMT WhatsTheMata said:

Mar 14, 2018 23:00:05 GMT Stew said:

In the early days the shout box was used for matches, so the threads rarely went past 10-15 I think.

Why don't we use the shout box more often? We could close the thread during the match and use it.

Mobile users could use the desktop version on their phones.

Back in the day the shoutbox was more of a chatroom than what we have now.

[Deleted]

Mar 15, 2018 0:25:21 GMT WhatsTheMata said:

Mar 14, 2018 23:00:05 GMT Stew said:

In the early days the shout box was used for matches, so the threads rarely went past 10-15 I think.

Why don't we use the shout box more often? We could close the thread during the match and use it.

Mobile users could use the desktop version on their phones.

[Karma]

Mar 15, 2018 7:39:57 GMT @ausred88 said:

What's our goal of the season so far?

Rashford against Pool (1st one)
Matic against Palace
Lingard against Chelsea
Young against Watford

between those for me.

[Deleted]

Goal of the season so far is Matic hands down. Not for the finish but because of the importance of it.

[WhatsTheMata]

Mar 15, 2018 9:04:40 GMT Rustin Cohle said:

Mar 15, 2018 0:25:21 GMT WhatsTheMata said:

Why don't we use the shout box more often? We could close the thread during the match and use it.

Mobile users could use the desktop version on their phones.

Ugh no, using the desktop on a mobile is shite. And personally I quite like having the match threads open. They get very active and lots of likes and quotes are used, so I think its worth keeping it as is.

Seriously? Works just fine here, I'm just a lazy fucktwit for not using it.

Fair point, this way we can quote each other as well.

[Deleted]

Mar 15, 2018 10:51:32 GMT WhatsTheMata said:

Mar 15, 2018 9:04:40 GMT Rustin Cohle said:

Ugh no, using the desktop on a mobile is shite. And personally I quite like having the match threads open. They get very active and lots of likes and quotes are used, so I think its worth keeping it as is.

Seriously? Works just fine here, I'm just a lazy fucktwit for not using it.

Fair point, this way we can quote each other as well.

Yeah deal with it bitch

[Rustin Cohle]

The Banega stat at the start says it all really.

www.football365.com/news/champions-league-winners-and-losers-25

Champions League winners and losers

Winners

Ever Banega

The most chances any player has created against Manchester United in the Premier League this season is eight, by Christian Eriksen. The most chances any player has created against Manchester United in the Champions League this season is 17, by Ever Banega. That’s absolutely bloody ridiculous.

Losers

Jose Mourinho and his narrow margins

The money
This is why the argument from some that elite club management is somehow easier than lower league management is such a nonsense. It is not easier, just different.

Mourinho is right to assert that Manchester United’s squad needed improvement when he joined. There were gaps and flaws, and there are still gaps and flaws. But when you buy the two most expensive players in English football history over the course of your first two summers, those players will naturally come under the spotlight’s glare. When you add four other players for more than £30m and also recruit the highest-paid footballer in the country, the same applies.

Pep Guardiola has produced an extraordinarily good team this season, and even he is subject to criticisms that he is a chequebook manager. For Mourinho to have spent close to the same money and failed to even compete with Manchester City in the Premier League can only be classed as failure.

To have limped out of the Champions League in the manner they did should be considered calamity. Seven of the eight last-16 ties were won by the more financially powerful club. Manchester United are the exception.

This does not just matter for our assessment of Mourinho’s present and recent past, but the future too. Over the next three months (in fact, over the last three months too), he will leak information to the press that he requires certain players in certain positions in order to compete. He has become Mr One More Window.

That’s acceptable to an extent – United have given him a contract extension and there is money to spend – but we are permitted to ask questions of exactly when the performance level of this team is dragged up to meet that spending. At an elite club such as Manchester City or Manchester United, you will be applauded only for achieving style and substance in tandem. So far, only one manager in Manchester is nailing that demand.

The personality
Mourinho will claim that his manufactured personality is part of what makes his teams work. He is dedicated and obsessive in all aspects of his life, but saves his prickliness for his media persona.

Mourinho is clever enough to know how the media works. Give them a memorable soundbite and you get to write your own headlines. In taking ownership of this process, Mourinho creates a siege mentality around himself, and a bubble around his players. Do a pre-match press conference, and make sure the pressure is piled upon the manager rather than those on the pitch. React after the game, and again it is you who will be the focus of media attention.

Yet there is another reason for Mourinho’s media spikiness: he cannot abide criticism. To accept personal criticism is to accept weakness, and to accept weakness is to allow water to seep in between the cracks. Cracks become opened up over time, and suddenly you’re drowning. This is man allergic to three short words: I was wrong. Concede that, so his theory goes, and you have provided the rope with which the media can hang you.

When all is going well, that strategy is easy to maintain, but when things go awry ignoring all criticism quickly begins to look like propaganda. When significant setback arrives, and criticism cannot be ignored, Mourinho switches up to his next level: pointing the finger at others. Referees, physiotherapists, key players, the media, injuries and supporters have all previously been subject to Mourinho’s blame game.

On Tuesday, Mourinho made a significant misstep. By pointing out that he had twice knocked Manchester United out of the Champions League, and so exit to Sevilla was no huge shock, he dramatically misjudged the mood. Having stifled his team against a lesser opponent, Manchester United supporters were not ready to hear about how successful their manager used to be. Mourinho was subject to ire that he has rarely encountered in his career.

Criticising referees for defeat is one thing, but blaming the entire recent history of your football club (and pointing to two exits under Alex Ferguson) is several bridges too far. After all, Mourinho was supposed to be the coach that altered this under-performance, not sustained it.

This is the reality of life under Mourinho. Such is the strength of his personality, he brings an entire club into his orbit. To support a Manchester United managed by Jose Mourinho is to support Jose Mourinho. Those who had previously frowned at the mention of his name were forced to buy in to his vision. It’s him against the world, and so it’s you and your club against the world.

When that vision starts to crack, the fallout is therefore messy. We saw it at Chelsea (twice) and at Real Madrid, and we’re beginning to see it now. Woe betide anyone who gets in the way of a smarting egotist. Mourinho is prepared to battle even his club’s own supporters for supremacy.

The aesthetics
At his best, Mourinho is a pragmatist. That is occasionally mis-sold as Mourinho being a defensive coach, but that is unfair. Pragmatism is identifying the most likely strategy to achieve victory, and using the likelihood of victory as the basis for utilising said strategy. If that happens to be playing conservative football, so be it. If that means shutting down top-six opponents and only playing expansively against the rest, so be it. Last season, that is exactly what Mourinho did, and it worked in cup competitions.

Unfortunately, pragmatism is an increasingly difficult trick to pull off. With rising ticket prices, football sold as televisual spectacle and elite club managers given ever-growing piles of broadcast revenues to spend on new players, supporters (and the media) are expecting entertainment to complement success. Winning ugly is considered sufficient for the comparative underdog, but not the richest club in the world.

Mourinho’s problem here is two-fold: 1) He is managing the richest club in the world, and 2) his pragmatism is not working effectively. Manchester United have a fine group of exciting, attacking players (Romelu Lukaku, Alexis Sanchez, Anthony Martial, Marcus Rashford, Paul Pogba, Juan Mata), but Mourinho failing to get a tune out of them as a collective. They are being suffocated by a safety-first approach that is really starting to grate.

Were one or two players not performing to their potential, we might question the individuals. When five or six are not, having done so at other clubs under other managers, we question the system. This is Mourinho’s problem, not theirs.

When pragmatism is harder to pull off, it narrows the margins. Were Manchester United in the quarter-finals of the Champions League and four points behind Manchester City while grinding out results and still playing with the handbrake applied, there would be far less cause for complaint. But the suspicion is that United would actually be far more effective in the hands of another, more expansive manager

Like Guardiola, say. And that’s what will really smart the most.

Ray Wilkins (and those like him)

“I don’t think it’s tricky but I don’t think it’s anything that should really stand in the way is it?,’ Wilkins told talkSPORT before the first leg of Manchester United vs Sevilla. “You know, where would Sevilla be in the Premier League? Bottom six? Probably?”

It’s that final word that sticks in the throat most: “probably”. It revealed more than Wilkins would like, namely that the pundit had precisely no idea how good Sevilla were, nor how they would get on in the Premier League.

Instead, he was working on hard-wired instinct. And that instinct was that foreign leagues were not as good as the Premier League. The rest of us knew that Sevilla were a strong team, albeit one in weak form and with an unreliable defence that Manchester United should look to exploit.

This is not just about Wilkins. He was merely the person to shout loudest this time. But the voices of the reasonable are continually ignored in favour of those prepared to talk loud and proud about things they know little about. And the home ground of this type of pundit is that British is best, while foreign leagues, players and managers are something to be either derogatory or suspicious of. It stinks.

Paul Pogba

A nod to the wonderful slam in the Mailbox on Wednesday morning: ‘The £1.5m Sir Alex Ferguson got from Juventus for Pogba is starting to look like a good bit of business.’

Pogba’s confidence looks utterly shot, eroded by injuries, poor form and a perceived lack of trust from his manager. Mourinho’s famous siege mentality used to bring his clubs’ key players close to him, with the rest of the world looking in. Now those key players are on the outside, looking at a siege mentality of one. Still, happy 25th birthday fella.



Alexis Sanchez, ridiculously bad

Our early loser , and he deserves it too. Mourinho recently insisted that Sanchez was bought six months ahead of schedule and thus can be given a free pass until the summer, but that’s a nonsense argument when you continue to pick him for every match despite his form.

Sanchez was not recruited from South America or continental Europe, and thus requiring time to acclimatise. The reason for his extraordinarily high salary is that Manchester United were buying a readymade star, one who knew the league and, at 29, would hit the ground running. So far, it has been a bloody disaster.

Daniel Storey

[Karma]

Mar 15, 2018 10:35:35 GMT Paul said:

Goal of the season so far is Matic hands down. Not for the finish but because of the importance of it.

It was like going back to old times with the comeback and late winner which is another reason for it being so good.