HJ

Well he did win at Turf moor. Only team this season to win there Didn't notice that :oops: Well can we at least hire him after we've played the Spurs then..

I know you mock - but he still managed to get his team to totally out play us this season. Oh thats right, sign him up quick now that he's probably available.

I'd love it if Scharner came out and admitted he cheated and said replay was the fairest solution.

You should have said Redknapp now, maybe the lightning strikes twice..

The forward thinking Martinez has come up with with this amazing defending scheme that doesn't even require defenders to move, keeps them fresh throughout the season. I'm sure under him we wouldn't have totally shit results like 1-1 away vs. Burnley playing the worst football on the planet ever.

What? Who on earth has thought Petrov is defensively poor? His defensive play combined with not wasting the ball is the whole reason he won player of the year last year for gods sake. Yeah he's good zonally marking, last year he just dropped in front of the defence and intercepted passes, physically that's not hard and requires a good brain, which Petrov has, and then he didn't waste the ball and picked good passes to our extra men in the midfield. A perfect position for him. But He's playing in a 4-4-2 where you need to get tight to your man in the midfield which he's not very good at doing, He drops off their midfield far too much which allows the opposition to carry the ball forward and put pressure on us. He needs to get into their faces, run around more but physically he's not capable of doing that for 90 minutes. The amount of time teams have when they play against Petrov is stupid because he doesn't like to close people down, he invites pressure. Its very difficult if not impossible to play a DM role perfectly in 4-4-2 though, NRC himself talked about it during the 07-08 season. Petrov does have problems with runners although I don't think his closing down is as bad as you suggest. For NRC the problem was that he was sometimes too keen to run around and make the defensive plays and broke our shape and left the defenders without support where it should have been, that and him running in to dead ends giving them counter attacking chances although he's improved in that aspect since. That's the thing though, if you play a 4-4-2 and you have two Out and out wingers, your first pick in midfield surely has to be a holding midfielder who defensively is very good. That is Reo-Coker. Then you pick around that, personally I'd like to see Delph, he gets around the pitch well, he is a forward thinking player and with freedom to get forward will get goals and create chances in my opinion. Petrov doesn't really fit in a 4-4-2 style that we play to me, because he isn't an attacking creative midfielder, nor is someone who will break up attacks, consistantly get around the pitch and do all the dirty work, He's a luxury I don't believe we can afford. Well I have seen NRC in 4-4-2 enough to think that the difference would not be significant in my opinion, he has his own weaknesses.

What? Who on earth has thought Petrov is defensively poor? His defensive play combined with not wasting the ball is the whole reason he won player of the year last year for gods sake. Yeah he's good zonally marking, last year he just dropped in front of the defence and intercepted passes, physically that's not hard and requires a good brain, which Petrov has, and then he didn't waste the ball and picked good passes to our extra men in the midfield. A perfect position for him. But He's playing in a 4-4-2 where you need to get tight to your man in the midfield which he's not very good at doing, He drops off their midfield far too much which allows the opposition to carry the ball forward and put pressure on us. He needs to get into their faces, run around more but physically he's not capable of doing that for 90 minutes. The amount of time teams have when they play against Petrov is stupid because he doesn't like to close people down, he invites pressure. Its very difficult if not impossible to play a DM role perfectly in 4-4-2 though, NRC himself talked about it during the 07-08 season. Petrov does have problems with runners although I don't think his closing down is as bad as you suggest. For NRC the problem was that he was sometimes too keen to run around and make the defensive plays and broke our shape and left the defenders without support where it should have been, that and him running in to dead ends giving them counter attacking chances although he's improved in that aspect since.

What? Who on earth has thought Petrov is defensively poor? His defensive play combined with not wasting the ball is the whole reason he won player of the year last year for gods sake.

We know your point of view and you are entitled to it but dear me I've never heard someone say same thing so much. This Making up for the constant critiscism of Sidwell but not Petrov. It just fustrates that a player who does absolutely **** all still gets praise. He was abysmal today and did absolutely nothing both attacking and defensively yet I'm the only person who actually has said this. Do people just turn a blind eye to his performances and instead critisicse others? I mean for **** sake, he's got 6 man of the match votes and he was dreadful? I just don't understand why we didn't keep the same team as a 5-1 win. He made some tackles, interceptions and played a 50 yard diagonal to Ash in 1st half and a 40 yard pass to Carew in second. He didn't have a great game but he was average today, just like NRC vs. Bolton. I have no idea how you can praise NRC and yet think Petrov was abysmal today. Because Petrov defensively was taken on so many times today, the amount of times in the first half, someone went past him then you see him walking back is unbelievable. He touched the ball about 5 times in the first half and when our full backs get on the ball, shouldn't he be demanding the ball and playing passes forward to create things, which is what he's meant to do. He doesn't do it regularly enough, You say Reo-Coker is average but what do you epxect him to do, he's a driving midfielder who won alot of 50/50's, won alot of second balls, was first to the ball, stopped attacks regularely, noone ever really gets passed him in the middle. Did you notice the result last week and the result in games Petrov has played in a 4-4-2? Regularly were dropping points and regularly because we get played through in the midfield. That doesn't happen with Reo-Coker. Honestly even the person from BRMB said what does Petrov to do. How many attacks more does NRC stop than Petrov? NRC makes has 4-5 won tackles per match and Petrov has about 3-4, on top of that Petrov is one of the best in the league for intercepting passes. You are really exaggerating how many times people run past Petrov. How many times exactly do you think it happened in 1st half? I can see a replay of the game later and count it actually. And players do go past NRC as well. Although he's easily better at covering runners than Petrov he's not some sort of a superman, did you watch 07/08 at all when our defense was under all sorts of pressure in every match? I could even see it vs Bolton. Add to that how NRC loses the ball a couple more times per game and makes worse passing decisions and weighs his passes poorly so that even when they are completed the receiver is under pressure. Overall they both have their uses and weaknesses but to me Petrov is a bit better footballer, I really can't understand how you can think there is some sort of a gulf in performance between the two.

We know your point of view and you are entitled to it but dear me I've never heard someone say same thing so much. This Making up for the constant critiscism of Sidwell but not Petrov. It just fustrates that a player who does absolutely **** all still gets praise. He was abysmal today and did absolutely nothing both attacking and defensively yet I'm the only person who actually has said this. Do people just turn a blind eye to his performances and instead critisicse others? I mean for **** sake, he's got 6 man of the match votes and he was dreadful? I just don't understand why we didn't keep the same team as a 5-1 win. He made some tackles, interceptions and played a 50 yard diagonal to Ash in 1st half and a 40 yard pass to Carew in second. He didn't have a great game but he was average today, just like NRC vs. Bolton. I have no idea how you can praise NRC and yet think Petrov was abysmal today.

When Downing came on he went left, Ash right and Milner played behind the strikers.

At least watch the match if you are going to commentate, Heskey was never at RB. Baffling.

Fair point, both sides had chances and took one. Considering their home record its okey if a bit disappointed. Dunne and Carew were poor, rest of the lot were average.

Man of the match :lol: I can understand why Petrov gets in front of him but I have no idea why Sidwell keeps getting picked all the time and NRC barely gets a look when there isn't much between them.

Beye would play CD before Warnock but I think Clark would be in front of him anyway.

here By his own standards he's been quiet for at least a few days! Usually players go on international duty and make comments about their teams, instead Harry waits for his players to go out of the country and then bitches about them! He really doesn't like Bentley does he.

No matter how you set up the replay scheme it would inevitably lead to situations that are as damaging to football as these hands of god or dives for penalties. Also, plenty of situations would be debatable enough that one side or the other would feel cheated no matter what the video judge decided. And its the final whistle, Villa win the FA cup! No wait, stop the celebrations, Spurs are challenging something that happened before the whistle. Hold on a few minutes.. Any replay/challenge system that happens during the play would inevitably lead to a metagame around it which shouldn't have any place on football pitch either. Teams trying to foul / kick ball out of play to get a to get a replay while other team tries to keep the ball in play or a team using a challenge to stop a 2v1 counter attack and rubbish like that. The best way to help the officials would be to enable retroactive punishment for cheaters. It's already difficult enough to ref a game and then the modern players act like words removed cheating and trying to get opponents sent off etc. If they knew they'd get in trouble afterward I think it would cut down cheating, and less cheating = easier to ref the game. As it is now, cheating carries too big rewards for little risk.

1. Team A's player blocks a goal on the goalline with his hand, referee doesn't see it 2. Play goes on for 3 more minutes without stoppage 3. Team A scores a fantastic goal 4. Team B challenges the incident that happened 3 minutes ago What then? Team A's goal doesn't count and team B gets a penalty? What happens to the 3 minutes that was played but doesn't count? It'd be rubbish IMO.

Lennon is in very good form and has been for a good while, I think he's more effective nowadays than he used to do. Defenses have trouble dealing with him, he might not be the best at picking a great pass when he gets to a good position but often something comes out of it one way or the other because he stretches defenses.

link

Download a MOTD torrent.

I don't think the centre midfield pairing had a lot to do with the result today tbh.

Judging how often Fergie does play players out of position, no I don't think he has considered this radical approach. You really haven't followed his team selections at all have you?

Can't blame him, he and Gabby have to play with whole different rules than Davies. Davies didn't have a single whistle against him though he was up to the exact same tricks with pushing and climbing above people as our strikers.

NRC and Sidwell in the middle means it won't be an impressive display of passing today.. And since we are playing Bolton, it's going to be like watching tennis.