2018/19 Europe Thread - It begins again

[TedLavie]

Looking ManU for the first time since Ole took over. Not overly impressed.

PSG did well taking out Pogba of the game with Marquinhos, who's been superb. And without an effective Pogba, ManU just lacked creativity to put PSG in danger. 

Once Martial and Lindgard went out, PSG didn't have to worry as much defensively and were able to control the 2nd half.

Of course it can be argued than Kimpembe should have been sent off. But overall, PSG was just the better side.

 

[drd23]

I only saw bits and pieces of the game, but I thought Young's shove on Di Maria was pretty dirty and was somewhat surprised that he was allowed to get away with it

[1claire]

Manchester City's Sergio Aguero took the plaudits as he equaled Alan Shearer's record of 11 Premier League hat-tricks as his side routed Chelsea at Etihad Stadium.

If Liverpool wants to claim the top spot against the citizen then they should stop this forward in creating a hat trick as they go head to head before the end of the month. 

[lomaxgrUK]

16 hours ago, TedLavie said:

Looking ManU for the first time since Ole took over. Not overly impressed.

PSG did well taking out Pogba of the game with Marquinhos, who's been superb. And without an effective Pogba, ManU just lacked creativity to put PSG in danger. 

Once Martial and Lindgard went out, PSG didn't have to worry as much defensively and were able to control the 2nd half.

Of course it can be argued than Kimpembe should have been sent off. But overall, PSG was just the better side.

 

United don't have the depth in their squad to deal with injuries to two of their front three, especially midway through a game. It's a hell of a lot different to have the injuries known prior to the game (ala PSG) so you can prepare without them, than having to suffer the injuries in the space of 5 minutes. As I mentioned, United aren't good enough to deal with those injuries and it really showed.

As soon as Martial and Lingard went off, United lost all ability to press the ball with any quality. Alexis Sanchez is a willing presser without the ball, but he does it with a reckless abandon and zero intelligence; that isn't beneficial against a team with high quality technical players at the back like PSG. Juan Mata looks like he has won a charity raffle to play for United when attempting to press. Honestly, I bet a decent portion of this forum has more athleticism than he does and that just won't cut it against top opposition. Your pressing needs to be so well timed and so coordinated to disrupt the technical ability of these players, so if you give them any time whatsoever the entire press becomes worthless.

I thought PSG were excellent 2nd half. Great shape, excellent ball retention and excellent decision making in terms of when to up the tempo of their passing. Considering he's been out injured, Verratti was at the heart of it and Di Maria/Mbappe brought the quality at the business end of the pitch. Hats off to Tuchel who moved the shape 10 yards up the pitch when Martial and Lingard went off. He knew that United had zero threat in behind from wide positions without these two, and United were simply suffocated in their own half for the vast majority of the 2nd half.

This is crazy, I know, but I actually think the injuries to Cavani and Neymar may have benefited PSG for this fixture. There is absolutely no way that their shape would've been that impressive with Neymar and Mbappe as their wide players. Obviously the threat going forward would've been far greater, but I don't think the game called for that, given the counter attacking threat they carried without Neymar and Cavani. PSG were sloppy at times in the 1st half with their ball retention so them 2 may have helped with that I suppose.

As for United - really, this game didn't tell us much we didn't know. We're still (at least) 3 players short from a Starting XI perspective from being close to the top teams (CB, RB, CM) and numerous players short from a depth perspective. It's just crippling for us that Sanchez is on such a high wage but his production is a million miles off his league leading salary.

Ole has done an incredible job to turn this team around in the way he has, regardless of this result. We were beat by a team who are better on paper, better on the night, and better in general. This is the doing of the previous 3 Managers - not Ole.

 

[BullsandBroncos]

11 hours ago, lomaxgrUK said:

United don't have the depth in their squad to deal with injuries to two of their front three, especially midway through a game. It's a hell of a lot different to have the injuries known prior to the game (ala PSG) so you can prepare without them, than having to suffer the injuries in the space of 5 minutes. As I mentioned, United aren't good enough to deal with those injuries and it really showed.

As soon as Martial and Lingard went off, United lost all ability to press the ball with any quality. Alexis Sanchez is a willing presser without the ball, but he does it with a reckless abandon and zero intelligence; that isn't beneficial against a team with high quality technical players at the back like PSG. Juan Mata looks like he has won a charity raffle to play for United when attempting to press. Honestly, I bet a decent portion of this forum has more athleticism than he does and that just won't cut it against top opposition. Your pressing needs to be so well timed and so coordinated to disrupt the technical ability of these players, so if you give them any time whatsoever the entire press becomes worthless.

I thought PSG were excellent 2nd half. Great shape, excellent ball retention and excellent decision making in terms of when to up the tempo of their passing. Considering he's been out injured, Verratti was at the heart of it and Di Maria/Mbappe brought the quality at the business end of the pitch. Hats off to Tuchel who moved the shape 10 yards up the pitch when Martial and Lingard went off. He knew that United had zero threat in behind from wide positions without these two, and United were simply suffocated in their own half for the vast majority of the 2nd half.

This is crazy, I know, but I actually think the injuries to Cavani and Neymar may have benefited PSG for this fixture. There is absolutely no way that their shape would've been that impressive with Neymar and Mbappe as their wide players. Obviously the threat going forward would've been far greater, but I don't think the game called for that, given the counter attacking threat they carried without Neymar and Cavani. PSG were sloppy at times in the 1st half with their ball retention so them 2 may have helped with that I suppose.

As for United - really, this game didn't tell us much we didn't know. We're still (at least) 3 players short from a Starting XI perspective from being close to the top teams (CB, RB, CM) and numerous players short from a depth perspective. It's just crippling for us that Sanchez is on such a high wage but his production is a million miles off his league leading salary.

Ole has done an incredible job to turn this team around in the way he has, regardless of this result. We were beat by a team who are better on paper, better on the night, and better in general. This is the doing of the previous 3 Managers - not Ole.

 

What kind of blows my mind a little bit is I know they're build on press and counter attack but you'd think they'd start Lukaku so that way they could bring one of those 3 off the bench so they always have a fresh pace guy. 

[kempus]

The second half from Spurs last night was magnificent. Poch made the half time adjustments, limiting Sanchos space, and Dortmund didnt react. The looked lost in the second half.

Vertonghen was absolutely immense. His crossing, with either foot, is genuinely class. I know he doesn't prefer playing LB, but he has the quality to play there, from how he has played in that role in a few games this season. Son is also one of the hottest players in world football atm, genuine game changer. 

3-0 is a brilliant margin going into the return leg, especially with Kane and Alli likely to be back. Still need 100% focus and motivation though. An early goal and anything can happen.

[lomaxgrUK]

6 hours ago, BullsandBroncos said:

What kind of blows my mind a little bit is I know they're build on press and counter attack but you'd think they'd start Lukaku so that way they could bring one of those 3 off the bench so they always have a fresh pace guy. 

Lukaku just isn't a good enough technical player for a game against such good opposition. He can't hold the ball up and to be honest, he isn't quick over the first 10 yards so he doesn't offer much in the way of explosion either. I thought we'd bring him on sooner to go more direct because of his strength, but that's about the height of his use against top opposition.

That Tottenham game was crazy. They were so outclassed in the 1st half; Dortmund's movement off the ball was just too much for Spurs to handle. Poch definitely recognised the need to disrupt Dortmund higher up the pitch and they forced so much sloppy play from Dortmund's back 5 (inc GK). Dortmund must be stunned they lost that game 3-0, especially without scoring. They were made to pay for their inability to be clinical in the 1st half.

There is no way Dortmund are keeping a clean sheet in the return fixture, so that tie is done.

[kempus]

2 hours ago, lomaxgrUK said:

Lukaku just isn't a good enough technical player for a game against such good opposition. He can't hold the ball up and to be honest, he isn't quick over the first 10 yards so he doesn't offer much in the way of explosion either. I thought we'd bring him on sooner to go more direct because of his strength, but that's about the height of his use against top opposition.

That Tottenham game was crazy. They were so outclassed in the 1st half; Dortmund's movement off the ball was just too much for Spurs to handle. Poch definitely recognised the need to disrupt Dortmund higher up the pitch and they forced so much sloppy play from Dortmund's back 5 (inc GK). Dortmund must be stunned they lost that game 3-0, especially without scoring. They were made to pay for their inability to be clinical in the 1st half.

There is no way Dortmund are keeping a clean sheet in the return fixture, so that tie is done.

Dortmund had no threat to get in behind Spurs, with Gotze and Pulisic lacking pace. The high press worked superbly. They were extremely sloppy at the back. IDK if Hakimi usually plays further up the pitch? But, he was very, very poor at right back.

Also, I know he is young and hasnt played much this season, but Pulisic was completely out of his depth. He was clueless. Chelsea paid a lot for him, will see how that turns out.

[kempus]

Arsenal losing to BATE is genuinely hilarious. Emery has a serious job on his hands. It genuinely looks like they have regressed this season. Is his job under any threat? Sarri is definitley in trouble.

[Madridista]

On 2/15/2019 at 8:54 PM, kempus said:

Arsenal losing to BATE is genuinely hilarious. Emery has a serious job on his hands. It genuinely looks like they have regressed this season. Is his job under any threat? Sarri is definitley in trouble.

Arsenal love keeping people around longer than they should. That said, I don't think they should be moving on from Emery after 1 season. 

[BullsandBroncos]

If Lacazette and PEA don't ball out, they just get throttled lol.

[lomaxgrUK]

Arsenal are facing the same issues most low budget (compared vs City, United, Chelsea) face - you don't get much money to spend so if you spend it poorly, you're doomed. 

Has there ever, in the history of the Premier League, been a team that has bought so poor in one unit (Defense) as what Arsenal have the last 15 or years or so? It's simply astounding how bad the purchases have been. Eventually, that is going to catch up to you and we've seen that in how long it has been since Arsenal mounted a title charge.

When you compound these defensive issues with sub par performances from high earning players, you are going to see the results we've seen under Emery. I feel for the guy - he had no chance with that squad to do anything of note really, and I would say they massively overperformed before their recent slump.
 

[Dr LBC]

On 2/15/2019 at 5:54 PM, kempus said:

Arsenal losing to BATE is genuinely hilarious. Emery has a serious job on his hands. It genuinely looks like they have regressed this season. Is his job under any threat? Sarri is definitley in trouble.

In fairness, Emery hasn't really had an actual transfer window of his own yet - though, in fairness, he was brought in as a coach not and out and out manager, Sanllehi is the one doing the buying and the club are in the process of appointing a Technical Director (hence the falling out with Mislintat who thought he'd be given the job, but wasn't and evidently the final straw for him was the brain trust appointing a Spanish coach - which he didn't want because it made it clear that Sanllehi had more clearly more stroke than he did).  Sokratis and Lichsteiner were bought before Emery was even appointed.

And then because the previous Wenger/Gadzidis brain trust left us categorically in shambles in terms of letting contracts run too deep with either extension or sale (basically not being cutthroat enough and too loyal to players - which has always been a fault of Arsene's) and then saddling the club with contracts to players that they didn't deserve (which made it all the more difficult to sell them on - sometimes even to loan them out) dating al lthe way back to making Theo Walcott a 100k/wk player.  Then when you throw in that Kroenke's not an owner that's going to sink his own money into buying players like Mansour, and Arsenal and Emery are in a position where they have to purge before they can reload.  I'm expecting the worst (mostly so I don't get my hopes up and then busted up) but there has been talk that if Monchi is unsettled at Roma that he's the guy Sanllehi has in mind for Technical Director.  And fortunately, though it also means we aren't going to get any sell-on fees for them, we have a glut of wages coming off the books in the summer (some of the bad or mediocre contracts).

[Dr LBC]

14 hours ago, lomaxgrUK said:

Arsenal are facing the same issues most low budget (compared vs City, United, Chelsea) face - you don't get much money to spend so if you spend it poorly, you're doomed. 

Has there ever, in the history of the Premier League, been a team that has bought so poor in one unit (Defense) as what Arsenal have the last 15 or years or so? It's simply astounding how bad the purchases have been. Eventually, that is going to catch up to you and we've seen that in how long it has been since Arsenal mounted a title charge.

When you compound these defensive issues with sub par performances from high earning players, you are going to see the results we've seen under Emery. I feel for the guy - he had no chance with that squad to do anything of note really, and I would say they massively overperformed before their recent slump.
 

A lot of those bad purchases were misuse of players too, even by Arsene despite him saying that they player's future probably lay at another position.

Mustafi is a fullback not a centerback.  He tackles like a fullback, he drifts forward into the opposing final third like a fullback, he has the awareness and mentality of a fullback.  But Wenger played him at centerback (because as a fullback he was cheaper than an established centerback - and also, likely, because Wenger was remaining loyal to Mertesacker).Mertesacker was a good buy.  Holding was definitely a good buy (may well actually turn out to be the best back line buy of Wenger's twilight) - this knee injury just sucks right now and God willing doesn't hurt his development.  Callum Chamber - honestly who the hell know?  Wenger had even said early in his Arsenal tenure that he  thought his future was more likely as a central midfielder (granted, it was hard to take Arsene serious in this because he said this about A LOT of players), but you look at where Fulham's deploying him as a box-to-box mid and he's looking the best he has in his career.  Carl Jenkinson is bang average - not a bad squad player per say, but was a prime case of Wenger being too loyal to his players (which ironically also had him hurting Jenkinson and his development which I'll get to in a second here).

The other thing that almost never gets discussed and it was a massive criticism of Wenger I had which is only now becoming as apparent because it's exposed more now: For all the talk in the lean years of Wenger getting the most out of young players, he did squat really to develop the young players who were playing out of the 1st team reserves because they frankly just didn't get enough minutes to aid in their development unless injuries hit (and then their lack of development became an issue).  Arsene loved having a smaller size team.  He also loved playing the exact same lineup as often as possible, which in it'self isn't terrible until it's done to excess the way he did and you're not giving some of these younger guys run-outs against bottom-of-the-table opposition and not just in the pre-semi-final rounds of domestic cup competitions.  Throw in Arsene's penchant for often not substituting until the 65th, 70th, or later minute and some of these players were lucky to get 20 minutes of playing time every 3rd week (because it was the Wenger favorites or the veterans who had recently lost their starting XI spots like Gibbs, Rosicky, Podolski who were being brought into the match).

[lomaxgrUK]

8 hours ago, The LBC said:

A lot of those bad purchases were misuse of players too, even by Arsene despite him saying that they player's future probably lay at another position.

Mustafi is a fullback not a centerback.  He tackles like a fullback, he drifts forward into the opposing final third like a fullback, he has the awareness and mentality of a fullback.  But Wenger played him at centerback (because as a fullback he was cheaper than an established centerback - and also, likely, because Wenger was remaining loyal to Mertesacker).Mertesacker was a good buy.  Holding was definitely a good buy (may well actually turn out to be the best back line buy of Wenger's twilight) - this knee injury just sucks right now and God willing doesn't hurt his development.  Callum Chamber - honestly who the hell know?  Wenger had even said early in his Arsenal tenure that he  thought his future was more likely as a central midfielder (granted, it was hard to take Arsene serious in this because he said this about A LOT of players), but you look at where Fulham's deploying him as a box-to-box mid and he's looking the best he has in his career.  Carl Jenkinson is bang average - not a bad squad player per say, but was a prime case of Wenger being too loyal to his players (which ironically also had him hurting Jenkinson and his development which I'll get to in a second here).

The other thing that almost never gets discussed and it was a massive criticism of Wenger I had which is only now becoming as apparent because it's exposed more now: For all the talk in the lean years of Wenger getting the most out of young players, he did squat really to develop the young players who were playing out of the 1st team reserves because they frankly just didn't get enough minutes to aid in their development unless injuries hit (and then their lack of development became an issue).  Arsene loved having a smaller size team.  He also loved playing the exact same lineup as often as possible, which in it'self isn't terrible until it's done to excess the way he did and you're not giving some of these younger guys run-outs against bottom-of-the-table opposition and not just in the pre-semi-final rounds of domestic cup competitions.  Throw in Arsene's penchant for often not substituting until the 65th, 70th, or later minute and some of these players were lucky to get 20 minutes of playing time every 3rd week (because it was the Wenger favorites or the veterans who had recently lost their starting XI spots like Gibbs, Rosicky, Podolski who were being brought into the match).

Regardless of where you play him, Mustafi isn't good enough for a top 4 team. 

I fail to see how Mertesacker was a good buy. He was the constant bull boy against all of the top teams, and once again - how many top 4 sides would Mertesacker have gotten into when he was at his best at Arsenal?

Holding is still to be determined, I agree.

Chambers isn't good enough. Why is this still a debate? He's 24 and has played over 100 games now. He's been below average in that midfield role for a pretty awful Fulham side. You could make an argument to say he was the worst player on the pitch against United (him or Seri).

Jenkinson isn't good enough.

I think if anything, all of these names pretty much backup my original point - Arsenal's defensive purchases over the last 15 years have been historically bad. If they are to make any significant progress as a squad then this needs to change. It's crazy because there is sooooooo much talent that comes out of North London. You would've thought in that time at least one local kid would've been good enough to give them some rotational ability at CB.