The_Rev

Did the Germans ever do anything to upset the people of the Netherlands?

Dutch fans are so Jekyll & Hyde. Everybody’s best friend when they follow the national team but absolute animals at club level. It’s been going on like this for decades.

It still blows my mind that just over three years ago he was a relatively obscure squad player who'd been loaned out to half a dozen clubs and spent his time on the bench at a lot of those places. He's now a bona fide star player, one of the most famous footballers on the planet and a national hero. We see how infectious his personality can be and I wonder if a lot of that is him just loving every minute right now because he had to wait so long for it to happen.

I think that's a tactical choice made by the manager. We play a high line so there's always the risk of an opponent getting in behind and testing the keeper but clearly Unai backs Emi Martinez to excel when he's one on one with a forward. The up side of playing the high line is we squeeze the pitch and deny whoever we are facing a lot of room to even play in the final third. We caught Chelsea offside ten times yesterday, this is clearly by design and it means Konsa isn't going to be blocking shots on the line or making tackles in the area, our identity is to basically stop the opposition even reaching that point.

Digne I’ll give you, but Zaniolo’s shot was from a corner routine. It was a deep cross to Kamara standing beyond the back post who cushioned a header back towards the six yard box for the shot. It was a very well worked set piece.

It was very even in terms of chances created and getting the ball into dangerous areas. The saves Sanchez made from Digne and Zaniolo were as good if not better than anything Dibu had to do.

Joyce’s strategy to avoid the straight left hand which won the first fight was to circle away from it and hope Zhang was too stupid to realise this meant he’d be walking into right hook territory.

I’ve tried, but damn this game is boring. How could it be so incredibly boring?

Central midfield is the real problem here.

Nerdy stuff:

It's well documented now but that was all the talk after Villarreal's run to the Champions League semi finals. He was going to be the man who would replace Sergio Ramos at Real Madrid or he was going to Bayern Munich. The real big boys decided not to pull the trigger for reasons we've all seen during his month in England. At the moment I'm not sure we are a better team with Torres in it than we were before he signed. It is a difficult comparison to make on such a small sample size, especially considering we've lost Mings and Moreno to injury from that water tight defence that ended 2022/23, but I think we are fools if we don't expect opposition sides to target Pau as a weak link over the course of the season. Unai Emery has got enough credit in the bank with me that I'll believe he's got a plan to deal with it, but it's a glaring hole right now.

It’s got ‘part of the pre match video montage of amazing goals’ written all over it. I suspect we’ll be seeing it on the big screens at Villa Park for years.

The team is worse with Pau in it than we were last season with a fit Mings and Konsa.

Basically the same week as he joined Villa. (source) He’d done the dual role thing with Midtjylland and Northern Ireland before he did it with Villa and Scotland so clearly he’s comfortable in working that way. As for the game? Men against boys. Big wake up call for Scotland who might have found out they aren’t as good as they thought they were. Hopefully we see the back of Henderson and Maguire from the squad now but I’m still fully on board with this team.

Sourness reminiscing about the time when Scotland won 0-0 at Wembley during the Euros.

Losing 4-1 at home to Japan will do that for you.

He’s gonna do the dirty on Katie Price?

Ah. That’s Hajj which is on a prescribed date every year (it moves by 11 days because lunar calendar) and the biggest hassle in getting that is getting a visa from Saudi Arabia because they need to control the size of the crowds, which are roughly limited to two million. This was umrah, a minor pilgrimage, and probably no more difficult to organise than a long weekend in Dubai or The Caribbean.

How do you mean? Going to Mecca would be pretty straightforward at short notice for someone of El Ghazi’s means. He could decide the day before and jump on a plane from Amsterdam.

Darwin is having a field day vs Pau. We should totally have scored though.

High line isn’t the way you play here.

Liverpool’s era of dominance probably goes under appreciated by some football fans. In the fifteen years between 1975/76 and 1989/90 they were Champions of England ten times, Champions of Europe four times (and banned from Europe for five years within that period!) FA Cup winners twice, League Cup winners four times and UEFA Cup winners twice. I’ve omitted trophies from the list too, including a league title a couple of years earlier and an FA Cup a couple of years later because that 15 year spell was just ridiculous. Manchester City can do something similar but they’ll need to sustain what they are doing until about 2030 and pull their socks up in Europe.

Just adding to the consensus but we tilted that day. The injury to Buendia two days before we traveled would have affected our preparation, the injury to Mings would have messed the players up on the day yet we were still in the game until Konsa’s individual error for 3-1 which deflated us. Everything that happened after was just a case of them kicking us when we were down. Now they are perfectly entitled to do this and of course the result was emphatic but at the time some of us (smug mode activated) said there was no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water as we were doing a lot of things right and it was more of an ‘on the day’ thing rather than a systematic failure. Newcastle would have felt the same way after the 3-0 at Villa Park.

Not their style. More likely they’ll cut his head off and stuff the body into a suitcase.

There's probably an embargo for the highlights. They're up now: https://youtu.be/OraULZ4h7TM?si=CbKslpu4KO1RiOYS (and you don't know how tempted I was to Rickroll you here)