Will having a VARiety of threads work? - televised football 10-12 Aug 2019

[Nocturnal Submission]

How far is george mc Eachran from the first team?

Quite some way, I think. He's made the bench once or twice but I don't see him getting much of a chance until he's been out on loan for a couple of years.

Of all the Chelsea youth team players I've seen in the last 10 years, the ones who stood out were Mount and Hudson-Odoi with Swift, now at Reading, not far behind. Even a football duffer like me could see their quality. McEachran hasn't really caught my eye but we'll see.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

How far is george mc Eachran from the first team?

Wolves are a right bunch of bastards to play against. They're extremely disciplined, and very difficult to pry open. Man utd managed a couple of times, but not very often. Jesse lingard needed to do a lot better with that chance and obviously Pogba should have taken a better penalty. But Those two goals were beautiful in two very different ways.

They seem to have had some kind of melt down because man utd leave it up to rashford and pogba to decide between them who takes penalties. last week rashford won the penalty and pogba let him take it. This week Pogba pulled the penalty out of his arse with a brilliant piece of play. So He was going to take the penalty. The thing is, that man utd not having a set penalty taker had the square root of fuck all to do with pogba missing, because paul pogba was the designated penalty taker last season and took 10 in the league, scored seven and missed three. The first time I ever saw paul pogba play for any extended length of time, he got sent off taking a penalty. He is well able to miss a penalty.

This is one of these things that annoy me. Had Paul pogba scored that penalty it would have been Paul pogba, who scored seven penalties last season with no reference to the three he missed. But he missed so they talk about the three he missed as though paul pogba taking a penalty was on a par with Phil Jones muscling his way in on the action. Both of these are wrong. But the thing that is weirdest about the whole thing, is that the problem seems to arise because pogba missed the penalty. If Man utd had a set penalty taker, it would still have been pogba. and it would be reasonable to expect a 30% chance of him not scoring based on last season.

The whole thing is incredibly stupid.

[Nocturnal Submission]

1-1 draw at home to Leicester and the Foxes far and away the better side in the second half. I suppose that is to be expected to some degree given the 120 minutes on Weds.

FWIW I think Lampard got his subs wrong today, bringing Abraham on at the 60th minute when Leicester were in the ascendancy, would have been better to have left Giroud on and have brought on someone to shore up the midfield. So far this season Chelsea look vulnerable on the counter attack every time they cough up possession.

It was a slightly odd game. Chelsea came flying out of the blocks, were all over Leicester in the first 20-25 minutes, paused for a bit of a breather and were on the back foot thereafter. But Leicester were very good and their athleticism astonishing. I can't remember seeing a side press for so long and so hard against us. Right to the end of the game.

As for the substitutions, you might be right. Leicester's defensive line was very high so perhaps Lampard thought that Tammy would best exploit it. But keeping Pedro on when he had run himself into the ground, and picked up a knock, was odd.

I thought we needed more muscle in midfield. We were getting knocked off of the ball too much. Loftus-Cheek's return will help in that regard. And Azpilicueta isn't looking anything like the player he was. I don't think that they rate Zappacosta but they might look at James.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I'm sure I was told there would be a new armchair thread each week.

[Patrick Thistle]

Oh God, he's just appealed to "common sense".

[Patrick Thistle]

Fucking hell, Cahill, are you stoned or something? Finish a sentence without pausing.

[Lang Spoon]

I've never seen anything so far to suggest otherwise. He's a bit of a model professional - never appears to dive, rarely gets booked, doesn't get involved in backchat, and generally seems very humble. Whether that changes over time in the Premier League is another matter, but I get the impression he's a bit amazed and bewildered by it all.

Which begs the question, where the hell has he been until last summer? But then there's a few Norwich players whose careers have been reignited by the current coaching regime, so he's not alone.

He was a massive flop at Celtic a few years back.

[Patrick Thistle]

Tim Cahill has a very stilted delivery.

With pauses.



Long pauses.

[Patrick Thistle]

Are we having new TV threads even week hobbes ?

Anyway, Leicester's pink and black kit has made me think of licorice allsorts.

[Arturo]

Watching MotD. Teemu Pukki seems like a lovely guy.

I've never seen anything so far to suggest otherwise. He's a bit of a model professional - never appears to dive, rarely gets booked, doesn't get involved in backchat, and generally seems very humble. Whether that changes over time in the Premier League is another matter, but I get the impression he's a bit amazed and bewildered by it all.

Which begs the question, where the hell has he been until last summer? But then there's a few Norwich players whose careers have been reignited by the current coaching regime, so he's not alone.

[hobbes]

Yellow card for NS. Wrong thread, we're having a new one every week now.

[Nocturnal Submission]

And what a gorgeous goal by Douglas Luiz for Villa.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Watching MotD. Teemu Pukki seems like a lovely guy.

I'm not sure that the lighting on the new set is doing the lads any favours. It's aged Lineker by about 10 years and made Shearer and Murphy, with their hairless pates, look uglier than ever.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Haha!

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

well I for one can't get enough of Phil Neville.

[Jah Womble]

It's exactly that, but it's making for a somewhat claustrophobic viewing experience. I don't see much value in having identical opinions on every channel.

[Ray de Galles]

I appreciate that yer so-called experts turn up on a variety of shows upon various channels, but hosting rival programming seems to me fortuitous in the extreme. (I mean, like Brian Moore would ever have tipped up on MOTD...)

I've always presumed it's a consequence of making the "talent" freelance rather than centrally contracted to the BBC (in order that their remuneration isn't directly seen as BBC salary - not that that's worked on a PR angle) meaning they can't be forbade from working with ostensible rivals.

[Jah Womble]

Loads of pundits appear across a few channels now. Ian Wright is usually on ITV for internationals. Gary Lineker is on BT Sport. Danny Murphy tips up any and everywhere. Pundits that are only on one gig are either a) loyal, b) lucky to have the one gig because they are rubbish, or c) lazy. Or in Alan Shearer's case, all 3.

I appreciate that yer so-called experts turn up on a variety of shows upon various channels, but hosting rival programming seems to me fortuitous in the extreme. (I mean, like Brian Moore would ever have tipped up on MOTD...)

Her weekends are going to be frantic once Strictly starts.

Ha.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Zouma got a 10-match ban not because that's what the disparate elements of the incident added up to but because the French FA had a policy at the time, and possibly still do, of huge bans in the event of serious injury to an opponent.

I'd like to make clear that my fondness for Zouma has nothing to do with how cute his little lad is. When my daughter was a Chelsea mascot a few years ago and we were billeted in the players' family lounge, we spent half of our time making sure that Zouma Jnr. didn't hurt himself as he toddled around the place and on the steps down to the pitch-side box, Ms. Zouma favouring the light-touch approach to parenting.

[Simon G]

I watched the EFL highlights on Quest on Saturday and for the first time in what seems like ever they decide to mention Cheltenham in their little piece after the goals round-up. How good of Stephen Warnock to talk of Michael Duff being a good young English manager – the same Michael Duff who was born in Belfast and has 24 Northern Irish caps.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I've hated mourinho since that game against porto and his celebration. It was weird to see a manager take all the credit for the goal. It turned out that that was only the beginning of his fucking madness. Also he hasn't changed. He's still a toxic shit talking cunt who spent his time rubbishing the club and his players to protect his own reputation, and he shows no sign of stopping now.

Well at least now he can spend more time with his family now.

[Patrick Thistle]

Also I love how The Awesome Berbaslug!!! still vehemently hates, hates, hates Mourinho.

[Patrick Thistle]

As an aside, I note that Alex Scott is now hosting GOS. She's fine, but how has she managed to wing both that and the Football Focus gig?

Loads of pundits appear across a few channels now. Ian Wright is usually on ITV for internationals. Gary Lineker is on BT Sport. Danny Murphy tips up any and everywhere. Pundits that are only on one gig are either a) loyal, b) lucky to have the one gig because they are rubbish, or c) lazy. Or in Alan Shearer's case, all 3.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Yes, I saw that the other guy was badly hurt and the tackle was reckless but he was reaching for the ball and got it. I don't think you'd get 10 games for a deliberate leg-breaker in England - Keane only got an initial three-game ban for the Haaland assault. Many would say the French have got it right, of course.

Here, I'm not expecting you to defend him or something. That's a really insane tackle. He got the ban because Its a straight red card in three different ways at the same time. He's going way too fast, He's flying through the air, and he does all that damage with his non-tackling leg. (Zlatan got sent off for a very similar tackle against chelsea a couple of years ago, but nowhere near as forceful.) In his defence, he is 18 at the time, and doesn't have any reputation for that sort of thing now. looking at soccernet, he picked up one yellow card in 37 games for stoke, and 1 yellow in 37 games for everton. He did however pick up two yellows and a red card for mithering the referee after a game against watford, though he claimed not to see the first yellow card, and would have stopped if he had. He seems to have been very popular everywhere he's been, and there are a bunch of interviews involving him that kind of reinforce my suspicions that young footballers today are considerably more well balanced than their counterparts 20 years ago. (I'm looking at you golden generation, and you class of 92)

Mourinho was on pouring poison. He had a little dig, when punditing on a series of situations where luke shaw is left two on one because the forwards are staying up the field, Suggesting that Maguire should get used to covering for shaw, "(which will happen a lot)" I found myself thinking, You absolute cunt. firstly You're blaming a player for not receiving any cover, (something he loves doing with shaw) and secondly of course maguire will be covering for shaw a lot. he'll have to change position every time shaw or wan-bissaka goes up the pitch. It's been a part of football ever since full backs started venturing beyond the halfway line on a semi regular basis. People watch it happening thousands of times a season. This is not a weakness unique to shaw. It's not a weakness at all.

Then he had a go at zouma for the penalty (as a way of running down rashford) saying it was a lack of preparation, because essentially marcus rashford always wants to cut in on his right foot, which is true, apart from all the time that he burns players on the outside and crosses. But that aside, Mourinho is engaging in the sort of bullshit analysis that Roy Keane likes to indulge in. something bad happened therefore someone made an obvious mistake and must be blamed. But the thing that this sort of bolloxology kind of analysis fails to consider is that zouma had no good options there. I'm struggling to think of too many defenders who would have done any better in his position. He has to race across to try and cover the unmarked rashford, get in front of him, and turn around to face him while slowing down, And while he's in the process of doing that, he's completely off balance, so can do very little if rashford waits for this precise moment to change direction. His reward for desperately trying to get back to save the situation, is to get blamed for the bad situation in the first place.

[Hot Orange]

As an aside, I note that Alex Scott is now hosting GOS. She's fine, but how has she managed to wing both that and the Football Focus gig?

Her weekends are going to be frantic once Strictly starts.