'Even allowing for inflation, this thread is not worth 198 Terry Francises' - EPL 2017-18

I was just looking at that yeah xp

Good that

didn't think we'd win that match beforehand but fuck me that was a shocking performance, toothless rancid garbage

Fellaini heat dot

not quite up there with that stevie g one but lol yeah

this is how it will go for the rest of Mourinho's time. We'll beat up on some smaller teams and be utterly outthought by the bigger ones. It'll be good enough to get in the Champions League, have the odd cup run, but the idea of a title challenge is ludicrous.

Don't care if Fellaini was injured, they were shite subs anyway. Pogba was woeful, but he was given no protection whatsoever. Should have had the guts to change it at half-time, but no, it has to be 4231 at all times.

I guess what I'm saying is...Mou out.

Fellaini heat dot

― Alderweireld Horses (darraghmac), Wednesday, 31 January 2018 21:57 (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like that line in one of the Adrian Mole books about losing the Falklands under some cake crumbs

really satisfying display, long way off perfect and puzzlingly inept opponents but the universal confidence and composure even 60 minutes in was a tonic. possibly Eriksen's best game of the season

Honoured to be at Wembley the night Marouane Fellaini was subbed on and off again within five minutes.

Ha! Also, tonight's game at Wembley was the highest attendance at a PL match ever (about 82,000). So there's that as well.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2018/jan/31/phil-jones-the-fall-guy-in-manchester-uniteds-back-line-of-pumpkins

"...Marouane Fellaini gave a new twist to the idea of two-touch football, coming on after 62 minutes, having two touches, then leaving seven minutes later with a knee injury. If it is any consolation, he was still probably one of United’s better midfielders on the night.

Paul Pogba marauded weirdly for an hour, a free radical in what was supposed to be a rigid two-man central midfield. With 66 minutes gone he could be seen jogging off, pointedly uninjured, substituted for playing like Paul Pogba.

Then there was Phil Jones: A Study In Blue. This is a footballer whose professional life has been measured out in gurning stills, caught on camera with the look of a man who seems to have taken the ill-advised decision to sneak a quick look inside the Ark of the Covenant while simultaneously challenging for a high ball at a corner..."

I love it when the "Jones is turning into decent footballer" myth gets a proper debunking

He's even worse than most centre halves who rely on fouling ppl ie everyone but ledley or sol

I think a certain kind of journo is so desperate for there to be a good English centre half that every season we're going to get the "Jones/Stones/John Terry is really developing now" and it's always going to end in laughs. secret best English centre half is Harry Maguire but oh the curse of unfashionability

It is fucking insane that a team with that much money, title winning ambitions and managed by Jose Mourinho is still playing a back four of Smalling, Phil Jones, Valencia and Ashley Young. And that the two converted wingers are the more competent ones.

Yeah young is excellent imo

wingers are bad and they would all be better if converted to full backs

TBH the whole performance was so half arsed and incoherent that I wonder if Mourinho has just skipped ahead to the usual Season 4 of Joseball but Young was easily their best player. He's been excellent all season really.

Eriksen put in one of the best performances by anyone in the league this year. Stellar.

He is a modric killer

I know people don't think he is underrated now that everyone knows he he is underrated

But he is underrated even at that

Yeah. With every passing window I'm more baffled there's not even the slightest rumour of PSG, Barca, RM etc eye balling Eriksen.

There was talk Barca were looking at him in the Summer as an option if they couldn't get Coutinho

Juventus also want him apparently.

The Makalele Paradox

sorry, but I can't give Eriksen much credit for that performance. He had a tougher time of it against Ireland's midfield

Ashley Young was not good last night either. He's been "good" this season, but he's a shite full-back at the end of the day. Shaw has been performing well in that role for the last 4-5 games, but Mourinho will never trust him when the chips are down

@NevilleSouthall

Everton had enquiries for 5 players and there’s me thinking donkey sanctuary was full

not as woke as a lot of Big Nev's recent material

sorry, but I can't give Eriksen much credit for that performance. He had a tougher time of it against Ireland's midfield

― Number None, Thursday, February 1, 2018 8:15 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He was on the ball in tight spaces for the entire game linking up with everyone, and the quality of his passes is so high. Hard, quick, in the right place. Build up for the second goal for example, all about him.

Thought Sanchez (the defender) was absolutely brilliant also. He's been an excellent buy.

He's obviously a good player (certainly on Coutinho's level or better) but Spurs scored two fairly jammy goals against an utter shambles of a team. Let's not go overboard

We battered second. In a game that mattered when frankly we would've expected to be josed

Trippier >>>>>> aurier btw

I don't think anyone's getting josed any more. Jose is josed out.

That's what he wants you to think ahead of the big arsenal move

Touché :)

You only realise how good Eriksen actually is when we're forced to play without him.

Enjoying this story about Leicester pointedly refusing to sell a player to West Ham because of a pissy article that Karren Brady wrote about them a year ago. And West Ham making a disproportionate amount of noise about signing a 21-year old from Solihull Moors with a conspicuously African-sounding name.

i love west ham at the moment, need more moyes headlines tho

Lovable bunch

Wd be great if come the summer West Ham are deluged by clubs and agents looking to palm off mediocre/injury prone/actually really bad attitude African players for way over the odds, and they're forced to sign a whole bunch of them to try and launder the stink of this affair.

Moyes just can't be doing with lads enjoying themselves, there's no place for that in football.

xp That's not to get into interrogating the whole concept of 'bad attitude' in football, what purposes it serves, etc.

I did not know there was still a football thread on ILE.

Riyad Mahrez will not play for Leicester - he is 'feeling so low that he is not in the right frame of mind'.

I can see Foxes sticking to their guns, Mahrez not playing for a month or so, fined, until he leaves in the summer, to never fully find his form again. Just like Van Dijk.

Looking through every team's transfer window outcome, the most striking thing overall is that most clubs seem to have got rid of far more players than they have acquired. A lot of squad slimming and wage trimming.

THFC have signed one player and loaned out five.

Isn't it same as it ever was there though, most youth players dissipate at the end of one transfer window or another

Riyad Mahrez will not play for Leicester - he is 'feeling so low that he is not in the right frame of mind'.

I feel very low in meself

That two months filling in for Leroy Sane is, alas, the impossible dream.

Aching Proustian nostalgia for the spring of 2016 and men with mockney accents in pubs shouting GUWAARN REEYAD! at the big screen as he skinned yet another full back

xp Yeah I don't suppose loaning Ryan Loft to Exeter will have had much impact on Tottenham's 17/18 efforts. I fear it may not have much effect on Exeter's either (this is not a comment on Loft's quality, just that AIUI he's the kind of player we've roughly enough of for the time being).

Martin Amis has agreed to loan Ryan Loft to Will Self for the rest of the 2017-18 season.