Just now, Scott Harris said:

I have seen that new penalty system twice this season now, and both times i have hated it. It's crap, i think it makes it disjointed and takes a bit of the edge out of penalties.

I agree!! All the drama and tension associated with the shoot out is reduced to nought with this new system!! 

I hate that penalty thing ABBAABBA - just seems to suck all the tension out of a penalty shootout. Basically if you miss 2 in a row as Wolves did just now you're buggered and everyone knows it's over. Crap.  

11 hours ago, hutchslongthrow said:

Did you see who scored for Arsenal?  17 year old by the name of Eddie Nketiah.  Came on as an 85th minute sub - first team debut I believe and scored with his very first kick.  Prolific in the youth team by all accounts.  Why do I care?  Apparently RELEASED by us at 14 years of age and immediately snapped up by Arsenal. 

You can't win them all I guess, but is already looking like someone got something wrong big time!

Remember Federico Macheda? He scored on his bebut too. So yeah, lets not go jumping to conclusions. We've let go much better players than this lad in the past.

ABBA are horsepoop.

The penalty systèm isn't great either.

 

Both Championship sides were very un lucky, Norwich were robbed by the ref as well.

1 hour ago, RIP Mourinho said:

Remember Federico Macheda? He scored on his bebut too. So yeah, lets not go jumping to conclusions. We've let go much better players than this lad in the past.

Yes - Federico's career  nosedived.  Hopefully won't turn out to be as good as say KDB eh!

Every player we let go for the past 10 years was gonna knock us out of a CL semi

Now 1 is doing well which is just typical eh, always happens.

2 hours ago, Stim said:

Every player we let go for the past 10 years was gonna knock us out of a CL semi

Now 1 is doing well which is just typical eh, always happens.

I remember in 2010 a lot of people got giddy about our first youth cup win for decades there was numerous provisional articles guessing what our team would look like about now and it was along the lines of this  (on average).

----------------------------Delac-------------------------

B.Clifford----Mancienne----------Bruma---------PVA

-------------- C.Clifford------------Cork---------------

Stoch------------------McEachran--------------Kakuta

 -----------------------Lalkovic??--------------------------

Just imagine, we would without doubt be a Championship club at best right now if we went through with it

Lots of wasted potential there.

1 hour ago, Zeta said:

Lots of wasted potential there.

I would love to go in a oarallel universe where messi did not get the right exposure, the right trust, was shafted from one loan to another like a bloody commodity.

i mean the dominant Barca team were more than just great players and a great philosophy. It was a group of players who were conncected. Now think of our players who have to somehow try and get that link every year with different people and different teams. Some in Dutch (a very different culture) or Spain (the same issue). how many of us would be happy with a new job among a totally different culture and people every year? That too with no assurance of even a semblance of promotion despite great work. 

Kakuta was a good talent. Josh was a good talent. Probably not with the best mentalities so I can't fault the club 100%. But it is a failure on the club's part to not be able to get the best out of them. Just like many many others.

People seriously need to understand the massive shortcoming of this sh*t system. Tibo is literally the only success story and that's because he was considered one of the best GKs and most importantly had a 2/3 (don't remember exactly) year loan at Atm.

another hopefully will be Andreas, again very highly rated and a 2 year loan spell. We seriously should stop playing musical chairs with these kids' careers and then blame the fans for having high hopesor the media for treating us like an evil enterprise.

Edited October 25, 20178 yr by didierforever

Maybe we did get the best out of them, which is why they never did anything once leaving. 

5 hours ago, didierforever said:

I would love to go in a oarallel universe where messi did not get the right exposure, the right trust, was shafted from one loan to another like a bloody commodity.

i mean the dominant Barca team were more than just great players and a great philosophy. It was a group of players who were conncected. Now think of our players who have to somehow try and get that link every year with different people and different teams. Some in Dutch (a very different culture) or Spain (the same issue). how many of us would be happy with a new job among a totally different culture and people every year? That too with no assurance of even a semblance of promotion despite great work. 

Kakuta was a good talent. Josh was a good talent. Probably not with the best mentalities so I can't fault the club 100%. But it is a failure on the club's part to not be able to get the best out of them. Just like many many others.

People seriously need to understand the massive shortcoming of this sh*t system. Tibo is literally the only success story and that's because he was considered one of the best GKs and most importantly had a 2/3 (don't remember exactly) year loan at Atm.

another hopefully will be Andreas, again very highly rated and a 2 year loan spell. We seriously should stop playing musical chairs with these kids' careers and then blame the fans for having high hopesor the media for treating us like an evil enterprise.

If we hadn't played musical chairs with TC and AC, maybe they'd be nowhere near as good as they are now.

I agree with you that we as a club failed to get the best out of Josh Mac and Kakuta, who had exceptional potential but just faded away as loan after loan didn't work out. But as Stim said, the fact that their careers have gone nowhere is an indication that they weren't/ aren't as good as we hoped they'd become. Add Bamford as well, but I never put him in the same bracket as those two in terms of ability.

I genuinely feel sorry for some of our best prospects who have been very patient (Chalobah, Ake and Baker in particular), but their pathway to the first team has always been blocked by experienced internationals. And our wish to remain at the highest levels of the European game means we are going to keep investing in internationals rather than in home-grown youngsters.

Great to see Musonda and Ampadu in action tonight, though.

My stream has just gone over to the Spuds v Spam game in Arabic.  Now, I don't speak Arabic but I'm fairly certain I picked out "f**k up" in there!

some naughty scenes from Wembley tonight from both sets of fans

 

Spurs-Hammers 2-3 FT

38 minutes ago, Valerie said:

Spurs-Hammers 2-3 FT

Many want to anoint Poch & spuds as the Greatest show from England since the Beetles - love it when they show their true characters which are bottlers - yes I am borrowing a British term & it seems fitting for this bunch 

Please tell me that this is not true:

 

2 hours ago, Backbiter said:

If we hadn't played musical chairs with TC and AC, maybe they'd be nowhere near as good as they are now.

I agree with you that we as a club failed to get the best out of Josh Mac and Kakuta, who had exceptional potential but just faded away as loan after loan didn't work out. But as Stim said, the fact that their careers have gone nowhere is an indication that they weren't/ aren't as good as we hoped they'd become. Add Bamford as well, but I never put him in the same bracket as those two in terms of ability.

I genuinely feel sorry for some of our best prospects who have been very patient (Chalobah, Ake and Baker in particular), but their pathway to the first team has always been blocked by experienced internationals. And our wish to remain at the highest levels of the European game means we are going to keep investing in internationals rather than in home-grown youngsters.

Great to see Musonda and Ampadu in action tonight, though.

That was my point. We did not really play musical chairs with them. We gave them long term stability in 3 and 2 year loans. 

I agree with a lot of what you said but specially not what stim said. Once there is no development of those players or there development is completely stalled, then reaching their true potential will be extremely difficult. 

We gave Baker two years at Vitesse but still packed him off again to Boro this year. From what I heard he was a big success in Holland. I suppose we as a club don't consider the Dutch league prepares players properly in the way la Liga and the Bundesliga do. So, err, why use Vitesse to develop players if we don't think players can develop sufficiently while there?

BTW - anyone know when Liverpool will have to pay us for poaching Solanke?

 

 

 

3 hours ago, Backbiter said:

We gave Baker two years at Vitesse but still packed him off again to Boro this year. From what I heard he was a big success in Holland. I suppose we as a club don't consider the Dutch league prepares players properly in the way la Liga and the Bundesliga do. So, err, why use Vitesse to develop players if we don't think players can develop sufficiently while there?

BTW - anyone know when Liverpool will have to pay us for poaching Solanke?

 

 

 

Levels. They may not be able to develop enough to step into our 1st team straight from Holland, who in the Dutch league would get in our squad? He got experience and playing time to hone his skills, now the club have pushed him on to what they think is the next step. Right or wrong in the end they aren't just loaning players about aimlessly. 

The thinking may be, give him time in Holland to develop technically, now let's get him used to a more physical English style and see what we have. 

It's hilarious how whenever I go on a sports website I see nothing but Conte rumours, players unhappy with him, board unhappy, on the brink of a sack. Yet Klopp who's been an absolute disaster is getting absolutely 0 media pressure, nothing but a media darling. 

Liverpool look atrocious, whereas Chelsea have been inconsistent but we've at least put in some really good performances. Not to mention a number of injuries we've had, yet Chelsea are the centre of attention when it comes to management crises. 

I'll admit we've done this to ourselves, given how trigger friendly we are when it comes to managers, but it's not like Liverpool have been sacking managers left right and centre since Rafa have they...

Edited October 26, 20178 yr by Slojo

Just confirmation that Chelsea are a much more interesting club, who cares about Liverpool 

1 hour ago, Valerie said:

Just confirmation that Chelsea are a much more interesting club, who cares about Liverpool 

I wish that was the way it works when we were doing well then 

The point is though this is Klopp's 3rd season and he's taking Liverpool backwards, Conte has done nothing but improve Chelsea despite the 3 losses in the league this season. Look at how bad Liverpool have been. One get's a free pass the other doesn't, I hope Conte isn't as affected as I am about this paper talk.

6 minutes ago, Slojo said:

I wish that was the way it works when we were doing well then 

The point is though this is Klopp's 3rd season and he's taking Liverpool backwards, Conte has done nothing but improve Chelsea despite the 3 losses in the league this season. Look at how bad Liverpool have been. One get's a free pass the other doesn't, I hope Conte isn't as affected as I am about this paper talk.

Conte is a big boy. And perhaps you should try to shrug it off too instead of allowing stupid articles to get to you. It's only a bunch of letters filling a sheet of paper that needs to be sold, or hits acquired for advertising reasons. 

4 hours ago, Slojo said:

I wish that was the way it works when we were doing well then 

The point is though this is Klopp's 3rd season and he's taking Liverpool backwards, Conte has done nothing but improve Chelsea despite the 3 losses in the league this season. Look at how bad Liverpool have been. One get's a free pass the other doesn't, I hope Conte isn't as affected as I am about this paper talk.

When I've seen Liverpool this season I've looked more closely at Salah, so far I'm not disappointed we let him go.

Sure he is very quick, good at creating chances yet rarely finishes them or provides assists.

He might improve his end product but just now I don't regret his moving on.

 

 

7 hours ago, Slojo said:

It's hilarious how whenever I go on a sports website I see nothing but Conte rumours, players unhappy with him, board unhappy, on the brink of a sack. Yet Klopp who's been an absolute disaster is getting absolutely 0 media pressure, nothing but a media darling. 

Liverpool look atrocious, whereas Chelsea have been inconsistent but we've at least put in some really good performances. Not to mention a number of injuries we've had, yet Chelsea are the centre of attention when it comes to management crises. 

I'll admit we've done this to ourselves, given how trigger friendly we are when it comes to managers, but it's not like Liverpool have been sacking managers left right and centre since Rafa have they...

It's typical really. We have 3 losses and are constantly in crisis. Liverpool have 3 wins and have one of the best attacks in the league.

Classic English media. Doubt it'll ever change