Futebol

That was a truly disgusting performance and the anger of fans is justified. You can't have watched that game and then see that Arsene is comfortable selling Mustafi without any replacement before the deadline and feel good about the direction of this team.

Inter, on the other hand, are looking to benefit from that stupidity to shore up their backline and have looked really good in their first two matches this season.

USMNT is hot garbage.

Fuck off Ireland! Serbia is going to this fucking World Cup and Mitrovic will elbow someone's head off.

Futebol is my one true love

jk, Giroud is my one true love

Welcome to the 100 club !! #100livier #COYG pic.twitter.com/dsjbqNucuG

— Theo Walcott (@theowalcott) September 28, 2017

chrondog wrote:

Nick wrote:They won't matter that much. Arsenal will finish 4th.

they might finish third, hard to say. it's not hard to say they'll finish higher than Liverpool though. anyone who thinks otherwise is completely delusional and i look forward to having this be the post of record 4 my opinion on that.

this post still haunts me.

i maintain that Arsenal's squad is stronger than Liverpool's in a vacuum, but last year was a calamity for Arsenal in terms of getting the best out of the players. Wenger has admitted that speculation about his future hurt the team's focus in the second half of the year. as much as no one gives you credit for admitting when you're wrong, i think he was right to do that.

since Arsenal's campaign is guaranteed to be wholly uninspiring, i look for other areas to get my football jollies. watching any Manchester City game brings me great joy. watching Milan conspire to lose to such vastly different opponents has been entertaining.

recently though, i've taken to calling Liverpool "the new Arsenal" and Klopp "the new Wenger". it's fucking fabulous. Liverpool has taken over the narrative holding pattern usually reserved for Arsenal. Liverpool are constantly panned for not being good enough, not playing up to potential, and labeled as European failures. Klopp deals in idealistic platitudes in every press conference and deflects questions about a leaky defense by blaming individual errors and calling set piece goals "sickening". you couldn't be more Wenger-esque if you tried.

Hard to argue your points! Liverpool on the attack produce some of the most exciting football I've seen this season. But the defense is so lost I legit think the opposing team can score with any set piece.

I'm most depressed by how hard this Man United team is to hate.

this dude is the truth

https://streamable.com/2jtqg

I hate watching the USMNT. I don't want them to qualify for Russia. I want T&T to score 5 more times.

Jurgen Klinsmann's WCQ results (from November 13, 2015 to November 15, 2016):

USA 6 - St Vincent 1
Trinidad and Tobago 0 - USA 0
Guatemala 2 - USA 0
USA 4 - Guatemala 0
St Vincent 0 - USA 6
USA 4 - Trinidad and Tobago 0
USA 1 - Mexico 2
Costa Rica 4 - USA 0

-Qualified for the Hex
-0 out of 6 points in the Hex (against the top 2 in the group)

Bruce Arena's WCQ results (from March 24, 2017-October 10, 2017) :

USA 6 - Honduras 0
Panama 1 - USA 1
USA 2 - Trinidad and Tobago 0
Mexico 1 - USA 1
USA 0 - Costa Rica 2
Honduras 1 - USA 1
USA 4 - Panama 0
Trinidad and Tobago 2 - USA 1

-12 out of 24 points in the Hex


Two managers, dreadful results from both. The USA struggles against both the good teams and the minnows in their groups, suggesting that the issue is preparation more than anything. How else do you 4-nil Panama then lose 2-1 to Trinidad and Tobago? It's an indictment of the whole setup, in particular Gulati who has never convinced as a real thinker on football. Firing Klinsmann was justifiable as things appeared to have grown stale, but Arena was the most regressive appointment possible and Gulati needs to fall on the sword for that awful decision. The dinosaurs have absolutely got to go.

All the discussions of youth football in America are well and good. Pay to play is a problem. Youth coaching is an issue. But despite that, this team has the players and the resources to qualify if they execute a coherent vision in team selection and play style. Unfortunately, the federation appears to still think it's 1990 and you can put a bunch of "strong players" out there with no plan and hope to win.

Klinsmann was obviously superior to previous US coaches and Arena at bringing through quality players, but similarly left them stranded on the pitch in terms of preparation. The straightforward solution to that is a two person system: a technical director in charge of recruiting players and defining a style of play and a coach in charge of drilling players.

I would like to see a new technical director be someone relatively young and given the full six years to shape the program.

I couldn't even muster the strength to get mad about that Cleverley goal. That was a pretty clear flop by Richarlison, but he is a fantastic young player and is fun to watch.

I'm really excited about the Derby della Madonnina tomorrow! Juventus dropped points at home to Lazio after Dybala had a penalty shot denied, for the second week in a row, just before the final whistle. There might finally be some parity at the top of the Serie A table.

Icardi though.

These are the two passes of the season from De Bruyne:

https://streamable.com/y5w8b
and
https://streamable.com/xek50

Football has never been more beautiful. I love them and I love Pep.

I want and need them to destroy Mourinho and make Chelsea look stupid. They are the heroes of football. Us Arsenal fans are just happy to be part of their footballing fiefdom.

Remember last season when Pep critics said the Premier League was proving to be too much for him?

last season Pep stuck to his system instead of setting up more pragmatically to grind out results. they didn't have the talent and the knowhow to win the league in his system last year, but the dedication to the system is clearly paying dividends now. Pep is all about the project over the pragmatism.

he's head and shoulders the best manager in football and if you disagree you don't understand the game. being the best doesn't mean he will win the league every single year and any club, but he is one of the few coaches that actually improves top players once they're already at the top.

not selling Alexis Sanchez to City this summer was blindingly stupid from Wenger. they only reason he didn't was an antiquated notion about the bad PR form selling to a "rival" (Arsenal aren't actually City's rivals, to be frank).

he has a killer eye for goal, but doesn't play well within the team structure and is playing with less discipline than ever. he's not resigning and his minutes should be going to a player for development purposes.

THE BALANCE OF POWER IN NORTH LONDON HAS SHIFTED

I wasn't able to watch the Arsenal - ManU game. It was one of the first games I have missed all season too. The final team statistics are fucking insane given the scoreline. I did see the highlights and De Gea was unreal.

None of that really matters to me right now though because Inter remain unbeaten and sit atop the table going into the Derby d'Italia this Saturday.

While I enjoy watching Liverpool play and watch them every weekend, I’ve moved onto marking off the days until the World Cup starts.

i hated the Manchester United-Arsenal game last weekend. i'm not willing to give too much credit for a "spirited performance" after the lackadaisical nonsense that led to the first two goals. the game was over after 15 minutes. Arsenal could've had 50 shots and not won, as United barely turned the jets above 75%.

i do believe in viewing the game holistically and not reducing everything to pure "results", but it seems silly to dismiss "individual errors" as something that are mystifying and uncontrollable. the manager and the team are responsible for the structure and the mental preparation that avoids individual errors. the first two goals in this game were the fault of everyone on the pitch and the way they set up in the game. it was bad.

that being said, Arsenal could get 4th this year if we get lucky.

Nick wrote:While I enjoy watching Liverpool play and watch them every weekend, I’ve moved onto marking off the days until the World Cup starts.

I didn't know you supported Liverpool. Other than that awful second half against Sevilla in the Champions League a couple weeks back they've had some solid results but I haven't watched many of their games. Similar to Arsenal they have a nauseating narrative that seems to hang over the club. How do you feel about Klopp? There was a lot made about how his win-loss-draw totals were exactly the same as Brandon Rodgers after 100 matches with the club. Is that actually an unfair comparison?

Also, why the fuck don't they just sign more defenders? It still doesn't make any sense to me that they would pay for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (who wasn't even able to fit into the Arsenal midfield) but they couldn't find anyone other than Virgil van Dijk to improve their horrendous backline.

They're a really entertaining team to watch and I'm looking forward to the Merseyside Derby this weekend.

Klopp is doing the same thing at LFC he did at Dortmund which is assemble a team that plays wonderful, attacking football but is shaky at the back. He did better in the German league because I think the Prem is overall stronger & therefore difficult to get by with his style.

I do like Klopp though and think he’s brought in some amazing talent. I wouldn’t be surprised if they made it to the Champions League semis. But no one is touching City in the league & I honestly don’t know of another manager that could come in & change where they are in the table.

Mo Salah is a joy to watch. Each time he gets near the ball I feel like he’s going to score or create a chance for someone else.

Suarez had a stretch like that as did Torres when he was peaking. Neither had Salah’s pace.

Yeah. I'm really glad I don't have to deal with Salah being at Roma anymore. His pace was particularly problematic for Inter's lackluster fullbacks. It's really funny to go through the list of Chelsea rejects who are tearing it up both in the Premier League and throughout the continent. Mo Salah, Kevin De Bruyne, Lukaku, Cuadrado, etc.

In a few years time Arsenal's Eddie Nketiah will be added to that list.