The Footie Thread

[irip]

It’s a shame we didn’t have either of the strikers fit as I think it might have been a different results

But Arsenal had their finisher on the pitch and he was nowhere near the box , the Rice ball was perfect for a decent striker to get on the end off and he wasn’t there

I said in the summer that Sesko would have been a better fit for Arsenal and he showed the other night that give him chances he will get on the end of rhem

Gyokores is showing why he wasn’t that great in the Championship

Gyokores doesn’t strike me so far as a natural goal scorer, I may be proved wrong.
How many goal poachers are there now though?
It seems like a dying trade, maybe like the long throw it will reappear in a few seasons

 

[irip]

I hope not, odious little man.

I was more thinking of his style of playing football than his character.

However not my cup of tea either

 

[Arthur Wedge]

I don't get how AFTV can make Arsenal unlikeable because, surely, nobody would watch AFTV unless they were an Arsenal supporter.

Their clips get shown across other accounts

 

[Hobbit]

My take on last nights game was do teams need to go back to the old fashioned goal poacher?
Do they even exist anymore.
Give either team Ian Rush or Ian Wright and they win the game.
Have teams gone for players now who get more involved in the build up than getting tap ins?
I accept Haaland might be classed as one but in general most teams don’t seem to have one.
Or do the likes of Gary Lineker not exist anymore?

The Martinelli incident was something of nothing in my opinion, we often see players go down off the pitch and roll back on and that’s what happened last night, I thought a booking was fair enough.
Feel sorry for Bradley and hope it’s nothing too bad

Middlesbrough are dominating teams & creating a hatful of chances every game but need a sniffer Clark. The build up play is excellent but they’re not scoring, and then losing too often to the odd breakaway goal.

 

[Arthur Wedge]

Gyokores doesn’t strike me so far as a natural goal scorer, I may be proved wrong.
How many goal poachers are there now though?
It seems like a dying trade, maybe like the long throw it will reappear in a few seasons

I don’t think you can be just a goal poacher anymore - playars need to be involved more than just waiting for chances

 

[irip]

Middlesbrough are dominating teams & creating a hatful of chances every game but need a sniffer Clark. The build up play is excellent but they’re not scoring, and then losing too often to the odd breakaway goal.

It seems to me a lot of sides are like that but the top prem sides who often face a team with 10 behind the ball don’t seem to have one and can afford to buy the best in the world.

Why did nobody go and get Harry Kane when it was obvious he was leaving Spurs is beyond me

 

[irip]

I don’t think you can be just a goal poacher anymore - playars need to be involved more than just waiting for chances

That seems to be what managers want but we always hear the hardest thing to do is score goals, then nobody buys a goalscorer?

 

[Hobbit]

It’s a shame we didn’t have either of the strikers fit as I think it might have been a different results

But Arsenal had their finisher on the pitch and he was nowhere near the box , the Rice ball was perfect for a decent striker to get on the end off and he wasn’t there

I said in the summer that Sesko would have been a better fit for Arsenal and he showed the other night that give him chances he will get on the end of rhem

Gyokores is showing why he wasn’t that great in the Championship

For me, the jury is out for Gyokeres. He’s more than a goal scorer, not shy in laying the ball off to a team mate in a better position. 5 goals in 19 matches looks a bit thin but he missed most of Nov. I don’t think he’ll set the world on fire but he’s not a write off, yet.

 

[pendodave]

I don't get how AFTV can make Arsenal unlikeable because, surely, nobody would watch AFTV unless they were an Arsenal supporter.

Haha
AFTV are the least of Arsenal's unlikeable problems. Surely most people only watch it when they lose, in which case it's 5 minutes well spent.

It starts and ends with Arteta for me. Maybe he's a lovely chap in real life, but comes across as a compete dick on the touchline and inbues his team with the same snide and unlikeable characteristics.

Sadly, it seems inevitable that they win the league this year. Hey ho, it's only football, it can't hurt me

 

[Red devil]

I hope not, odious little man.

Knew where the net was though

 

[Arthur Wedge]

That seems to be what managers want but we always hear the hardest thing to do is score goals, then nobody buys a goalscorer?

Goals are coming from other areas as well now

Most of Liverpools goals over the last 8/9 years have come from wide forwards - Salah , Mo , Mane , Diaz , but now we are looking for more from a central striker

City are heavily dependent on Haaland

Arsenal have struggled to find a consistent goal scorers over the years

 

[Arthur Wedge]

It seems to me a lot of sides are like that but the top prem sides who often face a team with 10 behind the ball don’t seem to have one and can afford to buy the best in the world.

Why did nobody go and get Harry Kane when it was obvious he was leaving Spurs is beyond me

Don’t think many Prem clubs would be willing to pay £100mil for someone over the age of 30 and not sure if Kane would have moved to a Prem Club

 

[irip]

Goals are coming from other areas as well now

Most of Liverpools goals over the last 8/9 years have come from wide forwards - Salah , Mo , Mane , Diaz , but now we are looking for more from a central striker

City are heavily dependent on Haaland

Arsenal have struggled to find a consistent goal scorers over the years

Is there a place for the goal poacher though. I think if either team had one last night they win the game.
Maybe it’s the Messi/Ronaldo factor as I wouldn’t describe either as a poacher particularly in their prime.

 

[irip]

Don’t think many Prem clubs would be willing to pay £100mil for someone over the age of 30 and not sure if Kane would have moved to a Prem Club

I think Kane would have gone to one of the top prem clubs, he would have gone on to be top premier league goalscorer and probably got the medals he craved.
I think he would of been a great player for Liverpool

 

[PaulMdj]

Is there a place for the goal poacher though. I think if either team had one last night they win the game.
Maybe it’s the Messi/Ronaldo factor as I wouldn’t describe either as a poacher particularly in their prime.

The problem for a modern poacher is the way teams set up, Lpool 2nd half dominated Arsenal
and kept the ball, VVD & Konate were sometimes 10-15 yds inside the Arsenal half, the Arsenal defence was about 0-5yds outside their penalty area, so you had 20 players squashed in to a 20-25yd part of the pitch at times and the ball just keeps going sideways as Lpool probed.

I think with about 10 minutes to go the commentator said Lpool had had 3 shots in the 2nd half up till then and all 3 had been shots from outside the box by Sobz….

I poacher for either team last night would of been wasted.

 

[Orikoru]

My take on last nights game was do teams need to go back to the old fashioned goal poacher?
Do they even exist anymore.
Give either team Ian Rush or Ian Wright and they win the game.
Have teams gone for players now who get more involved in the build up than getting tap ins?
I accept Haaland might be classed as one but in general most teams don’t seem to have one.
Or do the likes of Gary Lineker not exist anymore?

The Martinelli incident was something of nothing in my opinion, we often see players go down off the pitch and roll back on and that’s what happened last night, I thought a booking was fair enough.
Feel sorry for Bradley and hope it’s nothing too bad

The general change of formations has done this. When everyone was playing 4-4-2 you would have one striker who would hold up play or create chances, and the other who was a pure goalscorer - think Quinn & Phillips, or Crouch & Defoe, Heskey & Owen, etc etc. When everyone started playing 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 you needed your striker to do both of those roles at once, so you end up with a Rooney or a Kane type of player if you're lucky. But those players are few and far between so you end up with a lot of 'Jack of all trades' type forwards, I think. Like a Richarlison - half-decent at creating & holding up play, half-decent at scoring the odd goal, not really excelling in either.

 

[Orikoru]

I think Kane would have gone to one of the top prem clubs, he would have gone on to be top premier league goalscorer and probably got the medals he craved.
I think he would of been a great player for Liverpool

It's debateable - I think it was genuinely hard for him to leave Spurs, and he was only going to go somewhere where trophies are guaranteed - which at Bayern, they are (despite the blip in his first season that gave the media a chuckle). City wasn't an option and no one else in England is really guaranteed to win something like Bayern are. Was a shame that he'll likely miss out on the goals record though, I think it was pretty much 99% likely he would've got it if he stayed in England.

 

[Swango1980]

What irritates me is that pundits and fans are so narrow minded, that they get obsessed with one way to play when it comes to being the best team. They essentially just look at how the current best team plays, and then assume that is the only way to play for any other team to actually challenge them.

Pep comes along with his high possession, technical football and suddenly that is the way the best teams must play. Klopp has his high pressing football from the front, that is what everyone must do. When Utd brought in Ronaldo for the second time, the amount of people that said there is no place for him because his playing style will not allow him to cover every blade of grass out of posession (and yet he still scored lots of goals for a generally poor team).

There is more than one way to skin a cat. There are many ways in which a team can win games, and many of those ways would also tick the entertainment box. And I've no doubt many of those ways would cater for an out and out goal poacher. You just need to find the right blend of players and tactics. Some really good teams can even have very different playstyles in different games. I'm not sure about today's Ronaldo (I don't watch Saudi Arabian football), but I bet many potentially highly successful teams could have used him as an out and out striker when he was in his mid to late 30's. He was still as fit as a 28-32 year old, and probably the best goalscorer on the planet still. And yet many of those teams would never consider him, because they are thinking Pep or Klopp style football is the only option to become successful. And many of those teams would fall away, because even if they improve, they probably won't get quite as good as Man City or Liverpool at the time.

 

[irip]

The problem for a modern poacher is the way teams set up, Lpool 2nd half dominated Arsenal
and kept the ball, VVD & Konate were sometimes 10-15 yds inside the Arsenal half, the Arsenal defence was about 0-5yds outside their penalty area, so you had 20 players squashed in to a 20-25yd part of the pitch at times and the ball just keeps going sideways as Lpool probed.

I think with about 10 minutes to go the commentator said Lpool had had 3 shots in the 2nd half up till then and all 3 had been shots from outside the box by Sobz….

I poacher for either team last night would of been wasted.

I would respectfully disagree, a couple of occasions balls were whipped across the front of the goal 6 yards out with nobody attacking it, a real poacher would have been there to tap it in.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing necessarily but it’s something I have noticed that a lot of teams are looking for different attributes from a forward

 

[Steve Wilkes]

Yeah. Even a the time, before the apology, it was definitely the reaction of a player reacting to time wasting, not a serious injury.

I remember when he was doing it, but after Neville had already called it as a potential nasty injury, I was thinking Martinelli is probably going to feel mortified when it dawns on him Bradley was actually injured.

We can blame Martinelli, but it is also symptomatic of football in general. So many players time waste these days, that these heat of the moment reactions become more and more regular. And more often than not, fans are cheering on the player doing what Martinelli did, because the enemy is the time waster

And here in lies the problem, If I watch MOTD, I reckon there are 6 to 10 instances in the show where a player goes down like there isn't a bone in their body not broken, and if by magic almost without exception everyone of them are running around unscathed once the play gets restarted. And these are just the ones shown in the hour of highlights.