soccer soccer soccer

[wolf stansson]

this clip is pretty much nothing but stay to end to hear Wes chime in with a key correction that, imo, we need more Americans to reinforce every chance we get.

 

 

[wvcbxl]

No last minute surprises for the CL semis - City vs Real will be the one to watch; the Milan derby could be ... interesting.

[Banedon]

 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Smart thinking of Wrexham to pick a megaclub as an opponent so it doesn't hurt their rep too much when they inevitably get housed.

[stitchface]

1 hour ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

Smart thinking of Wrexham to pick a megaclub as an opponent so it doesn't hurt their rep too much when they inevitably get housed.

funny to have a picture of pulisic on the promo

[stitchface]

I really didn't think Jordan Morris had it in him . . . what a cross! Awful game (and I only watched the second half)

[wolf stansson]

Lmao whipped in cross from the left with the outside of his right foot. That man will never need his left.

[soccer10k]

Arsenal wilting. Third straight draw. City can now tie the game against Arsenal, win the rest of their games and win the title. If City wins that H2H matchup Arsenal will be in big trouble.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Bayern are now 2-2-1 in the Bundesliga and got wiped out in Champions League since they fired Nagelsmann, an incredible self-inflicted wound.  They no longer control their ability to keep their Bundesliga title streak going either.

[stitchface]

9 hours ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

Bayern are now 2-2-1 in the Bundesliga and got wiped out in Champions League since they fired Nagelsmann, an incredible self-inflicted wound.  They no longer control their ability to keep their Bundesliga title streak going either.

yea, the tuchel experiment hasn't gone well . . . though don't think you can blame him. 

[stitchface]

On 4/21/2023 at 2:08 PM, soccer10k said:

Arsenal wilting. Third straight draw. City can now tie the game against Arsenal, win the rest of their games and win the title. If City wins that H2H matchup Arsenal will be in big trouble.

they're already in big trouble - only a shocking win saves them now.

[stitchface]

On 4/20/2023 at 6:49 PM, wolf stansson said:

Lmao whipped in cross from the left with the outside of his right foot. That man will never need his left.

not sure that was "whipped in" but it was inch perfect . . .

[soccer10k]

LOL Spurs. Blow it up. Hard reset time. Everyone can go.

[stitchface]

9 hours ago, soccer10k said:

LOL Spurs. Blow it up. Hard reset time. Everyone can go.

Getting a mint for Kane seems like a savvy start. Son too probably. I agree with you though. they are the premier league's version of caught in mediocrity.

[soccer10k]

2 hours ago, stitchface said:

Getting a mint for Kane seems like a savvy start. Son too probably. I agree with you though. they are the premier league's version of caught in mediocrity.

It comes down to if Kane is willing to stay or not. If he’s unwilling to sign a new contract, you have to sell him. If Kane goes, you find an up and coming manager and give him the keys for a couple years like they did with Poch and like Arsenal did with Arteta. Give him time to evaluate the squad, ship out players that don’t fit and bring in the players to fit the system he wants to play.

I’m also fairly pessimistic in that I’m not sure they’ll be UCL regulars again anytime soon. Man City and Newcastle have F you money and ManU is close. It’s pretty likely at least two of them are better than Spurs every year. Chelsea still can spend a ton of money too. So then you’re fighting with Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool for one, maybe two spots if you’re lucky, and they all spend a ton more money than Spurs do.

They caught lightning in a bottle with a great young manager and they hit on a number of players. Combine that with a couple teams being in transition around then and it was a perfect formula for success.

[stitchface]

26 minutes ago, soccer10k said:

It comes down to if Kane is willing to stay or not. If he’s unwilling to sign a new contract, you have to sell him. If Kane goes, you find an up and coming manager and give him the keys for a couple years like they did with Poch and like Arsenal did with Arteta. Give him time to evaluate the squad, ship out players that don’t fit and bring in the players to fit the system he wants to play.

I’m also fairly pessimistic in that I’m not sure they’ll be UCL regulars again anytime soon. Man City and Newcastle have F you money and ManU is close. It’s pretty likely at least two of them are better than Spurs every year. Chelsea still can spend a ton of money too. So then you’re fighting with Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool for one, maybe two spots if you’re lucky, and they all spend a ton more money than Spurs do.

They caught lightning in a bottle with a great young manager and they hit on a number of players. Combine that with a couple teams being in transition around then and it was a perfect formula for success.

I wouldn't even try to re-sign Kane. He has more value as a sale than as a player at this point. 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

European club soccer is a fairly efficient market.  You can outperform your spending but to do it consistently requires threading the needle and a fair amount of good luck on top of that.  Tottenham do not spend like a Top 4 club, and while they briefly struck gold with having several things break right, they are getting the results they can reasonably expect.  If the level of investment isn't going to change(and if it doesn't there ought to be some Poor Joe Lewis memes given the new stadium and level of competition), then it's not really fair to call Tottenham in crisis, they're just getting what they should expect for their investment.  Considering Arsenal and Newcastle look primed to make Spurs a more distant 7th in spending, they ought to reconsider what the ceiling for that team can reasonably look like(Top 4 if they get several things to break right).

[soccer10k]

1 hour ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

 then it's not really fair to call Tottenham in crisis,

They just faced 5 teams in the bottom 8 and picked up a total of 5 points, they just gave up 5 goals in 21 minutes in a complete capitulation and once they hire a manager for the 23-24 season, it will be four different managers to start the last four seasons (Jose in 20, Nuno in 21, Conte in 22, new manager X in 23). They finished fourth last If that's not crisis, I don't know what is.

Clearly money isn't everything otherwise ManU would have more than 2 top-2 finishes in the last decade in the league. Of course there's Man City on the other side of things.

I'm not delusional to think that Spurs should be challenging for a title pretty much ever. That there was even any talk of that coming into this year was nothing short of ridiculous. But I don't think it's crazy for them to be competing for top-4 year in and year out. They do spend less than the other big teams but they're not that far off in terms of player salary (it's really the last couple years the top four has put some distance between them and Spurs). I looked at transfer fees but just looking at those year by year doesn't seem super helpful (this year Spotrac has West Ham in third, Forest in fifth and Man City in sixth).

[Transmogrified Tiger]

16 minutes ago, soccer10k said:

Clearly money isn't everything otherwise ManU would have more than 2 top-2 finishes in the last decade in the league. Of course there's Man City on the other side of things.

I'm not delusional to think that Spurs should be challenging for a title pretty much ever. That there was even any talk of that coming into this year was nothing short of ridiculous. But I don't think it's crazy for them to be competing for top-4 year in and year out. They do spend less than the other big teams but they're not that far off in terms of player salary (it's really the last couple years the top four has put some distance between them and Spurs). I looked at transfer fees but just looking at those year by year doesn't seem super helpful (this year Spotrac has West Ham in third, Forest in fifth and Man City in sixth).

Money doesn't guarantee individual team success, but when 4-6 teams are outspending you it's very hard to consistently to outperform the majority of them.  And they're not particularly close, using Spotrac as a broad estimate, Spurs are closer to 12th in player salary than they are to 4th.  When you toss in that it's inevitable that someone else outside the big spenders will have a great year(e.g. Villa & Brighton this year) it becomes extremely difficult to consistently make Champions League.  But if 'competing for Top 4 year in and year out' is what you want, they're doing it!  Even with the managerial instability they've been in the 4-7 range and a handful of points off that line when they didn't reach it, this is what that looks like.  I'm not gonna tell you it's business as usual to lose 6-1 or have a Conte managerial stint end in sorrow(well actually that part is normal), but at the macro level they're not playing below their station as a club.

[soccer10k]

Overall yes, the past few years Spurs have largely played to expectation or bettered it. As a whole, the past 8 seasons (starting with 15-16) have been great.

This year though has been nothing short of disappointing. They finished 4th last year, spent a bunch of money and took a big step back. They could realistically finish as low as 8th behind both Villa and Brighton. 538 has them as the 12th best team in the EPL. One Elo rating I found has them 7th and another has them 8th but they’re closer to 11th/13th (depending on the ranking) than they are to 4th. So the fact that with 6 games to go they basically have no realistic shot of finishing 4th is very much an underperformance. And the league isn’t particularly strong either. There’s a clear top 2 but both Liverpool and Chelsea are down. Newcastle is on the come up but they’re not a finished product yet. Same goes for ManU under ten Hag. 3rd/4th was there for the taking and they’re not going to come close to it.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

3 hours ago, soccer10k said:

This year though has been nothing short of disappointing. They finished 4th last year, spent a bunch of money and took a big step back. They could realistically finish as low as 8th behind both Villa and Brighton. 538 has them as the 12th best team in the EPL. One Elo rating I found has them 7th and another has them 8th but they’re closer to 11th/13th (depending on the ranking) than they are to 4th. So the fact that with 6 games to go they basically have no realistic shot of finishing 4th is very much an underperformance. And the league isn’t particularly strong either. There’s a clear top 2 but both Liverpool and Chelsea are down. Newcastle is on the come up but they’re not a finished product yet. Same goes for ManU under ten Hag. 3rd/4th was there for the taking and they’re not going to come close to it.

 

I have a theory about this that goes beyond Spurs, and it's that the Premier League has so much money and therefore quality even at the bottom of the table, that it's extremely hard to compete in the Champions League and stay high up the table unless you are both well-run and have nation-state money.  This year that's basically only Man City, and it strikes me as not a coincidence that the Big 6 clubs struggling the most this year(Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs) are the ones who had to gear up for a bunch of midweek Champions League games they couldn't rotate for.  Each of those teams have their own unique issues too, and the winter world cup certainly plays some role(even if teams didn't have a bunch of WC players the fixture congestion/injury risk surrounding it matters), so I'm curious how much that pattern holds next year too with a completely different set of teams joining City in UCL.

[soccer10k]

I definitely agree with you on that. It was the Europa but your point still stands … a few years ago post Bale but before Spurs were in the UCL, I looked up their record in league games directly after Europa games vs no midweek game. Unsurprisingly it was noticeably better when they didn’t have a midweek fixture. I haven’t gone through game by game but the year Spurs finished second to Chelsea I know they got off to a slow start (when they had UCL games) and basically crushed it in the second half after they got knocked out in the group stage. They did have two Europa games in the spring but that’s it. And not coincidentally, Chelsea had no European games at all that year.

[wvcbxl]

9 hours ago, soccer10k said:

I definitely agree with you on that. It was the Europa but your point still stands … 

It's something that isn't proper to the EPL - the same has been observed in other European leagues: midweek European games lead to points lost in the weekend.
The richest clubs with the strongest benches can get away with it through rotating, the rest can't - which is also why EPL teams run out their B-side in the Caraboa cup (except maybe for the semis and the final)

[stitchface]

3 hours ago, wvcbxl said:

It's something that isn't proper to the EPL - the same has been observed in other European leagues: midweek European games lead to points lost in the weekend.
The richest clubs with the strongest benches can get away with it through rotating, the rest can't - which is also why EPL teams run out their B-side in the Caraboa cup (except maybe for the semis and the final)

This is a pretty well known and documented phenomenon. However, I do think the physicality of the premier league makes it a bit worse for those teams. One curious thing about the influx of money is that I think it will actually make the premier league less physical as the bottom teams bring in more talented players. It looks less and less like 10 skilled teams and 10 teams of big, physical players.

[wolf stansson]

As a neutral, I’m glad arsenal is struggling. I don’t think they’re worthy champs if they can’t beat City at least once.