Championship thread 24/25! (24 Viewers)

[Ccfcisparks]

Rafinha and Thiago are pretty good.

 

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[David O'Day]

Pure ultra coached positionalism as per Pep's teams seems to be on it's way out. You can still win like if you have the best players in ther league but City don't at the moment.

Even Barca under Flick have moved away from this and added a lot more verticality to their player and quickened up the tempo a lot.

The current "hipster" football coaching philosophy is "Bilbaoball", tactics influenced by Bilbao's traditional play that ahs allowed a team who only sign players from the Basque country to be successful.

Iraola is one of the these coaches and it is much more directly, faster and more transitional.

 

[clint van damme]

Can't think of the last EPL team I'd go out of my way to watch.
Would fo so to watch Fergusons United or Wengers Aresenal
May be Spurs now, but only because they're a fucking circus.

 

[TomRad85]

Can't think of the last EPL team I'd go out of my way to watch.
Would fo so to watch Fergusons United or Wengers Aresenal
May be Spurs now, but only because they're a fucking circus.

Wengers invincibles is a very good shout, that was my favourite team to watch personally. Just thinking about Henry, Pires and Ljungberg is making my trousers twitch.

 

[Liquid Gold]

I think the issue with modern football is that the conditioning has made sure every single player is a pure athlete and left the mavericks to one side.

That along with the tactics having every player a midfielder to some degree means there is no space to do something brilliant or unexpected.

 

[Sky Blue Harry H]

I think the issue with modern football is that the conditioning has made sure every single player is a pure athlete and left the mavericks to one side.

Yeah - would the likes of Stan Bowles ever have graced a football pitch at the top level today. Probably got booted out at academy level for 'attitude' 'discipline'.

 

[Tommo1993]

That era of Arsenal has it mathematically wrapped up by March in todays league. What a team.

 

[shmmeee]

I think the issue with modern football is that the conditioning has made sure every single player is a pure athlete and left the mavericks to one side.

That along with the tactics having every player a midfielder to some degree means there is no space to do something brilliant or unexpected.

You just have to look at the reaction to Hamer on here. Guy is probably the most entertaining player I’ve seen at City in twenty years and all anyone can talk about is how if he just cut his entire personality and spent all day worrying about protein intake he’d be 3% better. Yeah but he’d be dull as fuck.

 

[Gynnsthetonic]

Can't think of the last EPL team I'd go out of my way to watch.
Would fo so to watch Fergusons United or Wengers Aresenal
May be Spurs now, but only because they're a fucking circus.

Newcastle under Keegan would of been enjoyable. Some great flair players in that side. Gillespie, Ginola, Ferdinand, Asprilla spring to mind and numerous more

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

I saw a thread the other day about overrated players back in the day and apparently looking back using various 'stats' the likes of Joe Cole and Jay-Jay Okocha were 'overrated'. Again i'm not going old man on this but if that's the conclusion you come to then sometimes its just good to put the stats in

Go back further. The Brazil side of the late 60s/early 70s and the Dutch ‘total football’ side of the 70s both played football that was entertaining and largely successful.

Pep sucked the fun out of it, but as I said it hopefully looks like outrageous concepts like going for goal more directly and at higher tempo are coming back in fashion.

 

[Liquid Gold]

Anyway, back to topic.

MOT come on super Leeds.

 

[Terry Gibson's perm]

I wonder if a team went full crazy gang wimbeldon or John Becks Cambridge how they would do today, basically bang the ball upfront to at least one giant centre forward and sometimes two and put pressure on the opposition defence, I know a lot of centre backs just flop over like Lati and get lots of free kicks.

 

[SonofErnie]

MOT come on super Leeds.
[/QUOTE]
A 4-0 win for them would do nicely. Then it's over to Preston!

 

[Skyblueweeman]

If we win on Saturday, would we rather finish 5th or 6th?

 

[Terry Gibson's perm]

If we win on Saturday, would we rather finish 5th or 6th?

5th but at this point I will be happy with either.

 

[Macca1987]

We would have to beat 2 teams to go up, so just a play off place will do me, then it's anyones game