Leicester than zero? - Premier League 2018/19

[Toby Gymshorts]

I know, you silly sod. Hence the stupid face reference at the end.

For what it's worth I've been talked into doing the same thing. Had an excellent falafel wrap the other night which was so tasty and filling I genuinely never thought that it would be better with some dead animal in it. Which I think is progress of sorts.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Oh wow, I hope that the last minute injury to harry kane, just as son heads off to the asian games, doesn't have an impact on spurs' results and get in the way of Pochettino finishing ahead of OGS and getting the Man utd Job. I'm sure that it was every bit as unfortunate a coincidence as man utd taking 2 minutes to restart play every time it went dead. I'm not sure what got into them.

[Third rate Leszno]

Thought this would be the day that the Man U revival stalled, but De Gea more than made up for the incompetence of his defence. All those pundits wanking on about how the top 4 was definitely out of reach will be eating their words by the end of the season, except they won't because none of them ever get pulled on the shit they spout and will just carry on bowking up the same mindless drivel every week.

Just got a pass for Paris in the CL because, let's face it, we're going to win the thing.

I've got a Hi-viz you can borrow if you need one.

[DPDPDPDP]

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr C. Wanker :

[URL="https://twitter.com/danielstorey85/status/1084204614994612225?s=21"]https://twitter.com/danielstorey85/s...994612225?s=21[/URL]

Excellent, quality response from Colin W, up there with some of the finest comments made by the likes of Churchill and JFK.

[elguapo4]

Another complacent pensioner for whom Brexit is just some theoretical nonsense, and a cunt of course.

[Amor de Cosmos]

De Gea makes more saves with his feet than his hands. Like how I play in goal at five a side level.

He's an excellent NHL goaler. Just doesn't know it.

[tee rex]

De Gea makes more saves with his feet than his hands. Like how I play in goal at five a side level.

Ditto. But played, not play, not for years now. Still, it's the one football fantasy that can endure - the keeper who just gets in the way. Can't run five yards, or jump five inches, but reflexes are still there. And the fantasy is helped when players don't unsportingly put the ball a yard either side of you, as Spurs demonstrated.

Really fun game to watch, that was.

[Patrick Thistle]

My favourite stat of the weekend was that Shane Long's last 4 goals for Southampton have come under 4 different managers.

I mentioned this on the matchgoing thread, but at the Barry Town game on Saturday evening I met a groundhopper from Munich who had been at the Cardiff v Huddersfield game in the afternoon. I asked him what the game was like and he grimaced and said it was terrible. He then said "I'm sorry to say this, but those teams should not be in the Premier League." He has a point. I've seen half a dozen Cardiff games this year and honestly I think the quality hasn't been much better than what you can get for £7 down the road in Barry. The exceptions were Arsenal (who managed to let Cardiff score two goals against them so defensively are suspect) and Spurs who shut up shop after 25 minutes when they were 3-0 up, and helped deliver one of the most boring second halves ever. I've also seen Leicester play this season and they weren't much cop either. Yes, that was a second string, but it just shows if you scratch the surface the quality isn't very deep.

[Sean of the Shed]

Cardiff should be made to relocate to Brussels just to piss Colin off.

[Patrick Thistle]

If that game highlighted anything it was the importance of having a goalkeeper who always stands in the right starting position. I'm not sure what lloris was doing for the Rashford goal, .

He was pegging it back across the box trying to close off the goal because the play had been so brilliantly switched by Pogba. There's a reverse camera angle from behind the goal, and he scampers across to the left hand post, running diagonally from the edge of the area. He literally went one step too far, expecting Rashford to do the sensible thing and fire quickly at the near post. Instead Rashford did the unexpected and placed it across the goal into the far corner, and Lloris couldn't reverse his direction, take a step and dive quickly enough.

He seems to be getting blamed for the goal, but it was a sudden attack prompted by a beautiful ball over the top and Rashford is a very good striker and he had the legs on the defender who was supposed to be marking him. I think Lloris did well to get a hand to it, considering where he was standing when Pogba lofted the pass forward.

[Patrick Thistle]

Cardiff should be made to relocate to Brussels just to piss Colin off.

Some Cardiffians have pointed out on Twitter that Cardiff voted Remain.

I'm not sure when he came out with that Brexit comment. But it seems to have distracted everyone from another utterly dire performance against fellow relegation fodder.

[marsupialman]

He's an excellent NHL goaler. Just doesn't know it.

I think De Gea has made the decision to not even attempt to dive for low shots that are close to his body. He stays upright and will look to save with his feet, rather than follow the conventional technique of leading with your far hand an collapsing your far leg, in order to hit the ground as quickly as possible. Good example of this 'traditional' method might be Pickford's save v Sweden (at 0.38).

It makes sense. Goalkeepers concede a lot of goals by leaving their feet when facing this kind of shot, not getting their hands down in time and then seeing the ball go through the space which their feet just vacated.

Maybe De Gea's technique will become the standard?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

He was pegging it back across the box trying to close off the goal because the play had been so brilliantly switched by Pogba. There's a reverse camera angle from behind the goal, and he scampers across to the left hand post, running diagonally from the edge of the area. He literally went one step too far, expecting Rashford to do the sensible thing and fire quickly at the near post. Instead Rashford did the unexpected and placed it across the goal into the far corner, and Lloris couldn't reverse his direction, take a step and dive quickly enough.

He seems to be getting blamed for the goal, but it was a sudden attack prompted by a beautiful ball over the top and Rashford is a very good striker and he had the legs on the defender who was supposed to be marking him. I think Lloris did well to get a hand to it, considering where he was standing when Pogba lofted the pass forward.

LLoris is a good keeper, and in years gone by he would have been considered a god, but there are a few positional niggles in his game, and being a top end Keeper is about never really making those mistakes any more. It's like when we were discussing the Allison save against Roma. If you watch De Gea, or any of the big tall keepers who spend most of their time doing nothing while playing for a big club, right up until the second they're needed, they all seem to do much the same thing. I don't know how they think about it in their head, but when they're getting ready for a shot like that. It's like they Draw a line from the centre of the goal. (where the striker is usually aiming for) to the point where the forward is going to be shooting from, and they advance along that line until their 'cage' (the circle of space around them they can reach with their arms and legs) is blocking off most of the goal. so as you're bearing down on goal at top speed, there's very little of the goal for you to aim at.

Lloris doesn't always do this. The Keeper he reminds me most of is Barthez, who made the same sort of occasional blunder that lloris does, for much the same reasons.

[Kevin S]

I guess it's one of those practice-makes-perfect things. Like how a rugby player knows the optimum distance from goal to place the ball when they go for a conversion - the geometry becomes instinctive:
http://chalkdustmagazine.com/blog/ho...-a-conversion/

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

He's an excellent NHL goaler. Just doesn't know it.

I wouldn't be sure about that. The amount of cross disciplinary "pollination" among coaches is becoming obvious in a variety of sports, and if it isn't NHL, he could have been influenced by field hockey goalkeepers. Schmeichel invented modern goalkeeping, for the post backpass age, by simply importing most of his techniques from handball. Guardiola is always having dinner with some Handball coach, and talking endlessly about tactics. Gaelic Football changed from a kick and run style game to a possession based, handpass game, when a load of players started to play basketball. The Overlap between preparation in Rugby and football is incredibly obvious when you look at the varied careers of this sort of specialist at premier league clubs.

[Patrick Thistle]

LLoris is a good keeper, and in years gone by he would have been considered a god, but there are a few positional niggles in his game, and being a top end Keeper is about never really making those mistakes any more. It's like when we were discussing the Allison save against Roma. If you watch De Gea, or any of the big tall keepers who spend most of their time doing nothing while playing for a big club, right up until the second they're needed, they all seem to do much the same thing. I don't know how they think about it in their head, but when they're getting ready for a shot like that. It's like they Draw a line from the centre of the goal. (where the striker is usually aiming for) to the point where the forward is going to be shooting from, and they advance along that line until their 'cage' (the circle of space around them they can reach with their arms and legs) is blocking off most of the goal. so as you're bearing down on goal at top speed, there's very little of the goal for you to aim at.

Lloris doesn't always do this. The Keeper he reminds me most of is Barthez, who made the same sort of occasional blunder that lloris does, for much the same reasons.

It could have been very different if he had started on his goal-line. All De Gea's saves were from a starting point of his own goal-line as Spurs lined up and took it in turns to have a shot for 45 minutes. Lloris's starting position was the 18 yard line and he was running across goal. There was no way he could make a 'cage' because he was running towards his goal as well. He just had to beat the ball to that near corner which is where any half decent striker would be looking to put it. But Rashford saw him coming and sent it the other way, wrong-footing him.
I guess you could say Lloris shouldn't have been on the 18 yard line, but did anyone really anticipate Pogba dropping in a pass like that? None of the Spurs players saw that coming.

[Jah Womble]

Well, obviously not - because it shouldn't have been coming. It was a completely unforced error that presented Pogba with the opportunity.

[Toby Gymshorts]

COME ON WOLVES YOU USELESS SET OF BASTARDS.

Thought I'd get that in early.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

It could have been very different if he had started on his goal-line. All De Gea's saves were from a starting point of his own goal-line as Spurs lined up and took it in turns to have a shot for 45 minutes. Lloris's starting position was the 18 yard line and he was running across goal. There was no way he could make a 'cage' because he was running towards his goal as well. He just had to beat the ball to that near corner which is where any half decent striker would be looking to put it. But Rashford saw him coming and sent it the other way, wrong-footing him.
I guess you could say Lloris shouldn't have been on the 18 yard line, but did anyone really anticipate Pogba dropping in a pass like that? None of the Spurs players saw that coming.

hmm, No it doesn't make it any different. Sure Lloris had to rush back, but all goalkeepers who play in a team with a high line have to do that. It's just part of being a goalkeeper. They don't all lose their bearings in relation to the centre of the goal though. Lloris got back in plenty of time. He was just standing a little too near his front post, and left too much of a gap at the other side. Also I don't know about the bit where a striker would try and put it to the near post. Most strikers shoot across the goal, because the target is bigger, and if the keeper saves it, it's probably a corner.

I'll put it to you this way, I would have been very disappointed if De Gea had let in that goal. But these margins are all very fine. Goalkeepers get it in the neck because any mistake they make is so incredibly costly. Lloris made a couple of great saves, but those things don't get to cancel out unfortunately, in the way that Craig Cathcart managed at the weekend.

[Toby Gymshorts]

COME ON WOLVES YOU USELESS SET OF BASTARDS.

Thought I'd get that in early.

It's going well.

[hobbes]

Boly sent off (rightly) for a less dangerous tackle than Kompany got away with the other week.

[Toby Gymshorts]

I imagine that Alan Shearer et al will be incandescent at Sterling "winning" that incredibly soft penalty.

What's that? Oh.

[Jah Womble]

I'm not the only one who thought it soft then.

I'll be interested to hear what the pundits have to say about that at half time. (Well, 'quite' interested.)

[tee rex]

Man City going top on goal difference. Well, minus some points.

Gritty one-nil away wins at Brighton won't cut it. Need to hit four or five next time.

[Toby Gymshorts]

I'm not the only one who thought it soft then.

Nope. Let's see (hear, I suppose?)* what mental gymnastics await to condone it.

*I've got the sound off. I don't even want to know.