English Premier League thread

Who else thinks Mancini is loosing the plot with City...his body language wasn't too convincing in the match against Sunderland.

There are rumours that come july, Mourinho will take over from Mancini.
 
Wouldn't want him at United personally, I'd prefer a manager who's in it for the long haul, David Moyes would always be my pick, he'd certainly adhere to the standards of the club if he were put in charge. But I get the feeling he's more than happy at Everton.

It's not that I don't think Mourinho would do well, probably buy a wealth of talent (If the Glazers are feeling generous) and i'm sure he'd bring success. But he'd eventually get bored and leave. Then the next manager would be left with someone elses team and players who probably didn't want to play for him, but Mourinho, queue Turmoil (Inter, Chelsea).
 
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I agree with that. It seems that clubs go downhill after the special one has left.
I also agree with Moyes, seems like a United type of manager. IMO he's did a fantastic job with Everton.
 
Moyes isn't good enough tactically for United, nor is he anywhere near ambitious enough in his play.

That said, I really do like him, I'd rather he stayed at Everton and then they got a buyer who can give him some money to compete.
 
Moyes would struggle to adapt, no offense to Everton but the leap is too big, we need a manger with at least experience of managing a "top club" and what the fans and players expectations are compared to what they've known.

I honestly consider Guardiola a possibility, We'll see it would be a bigger risk than Mourinho.

BTW this is probably more suited for the United thread.
 
YoungGun_UK said:
Moyes would struggle to adapt, no offense to Everton but the leap is too big, we need a manger with at least experience of managing a "top club" and what the fans and players expectations are compared to what they've known.

I honestly consider Guardiola a possibility, We'll see it would be a bigger risk than Mourinho.

BTW this is probably more suited for the United thread.
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I would steer clear of Guardiola if I were you. He's done very well at Barca, but he didn't really have to build the team, and it's been his only test so far. How much of his sucess is down to him or the team? Rijkaard won the CL with Barca in 2006, and many of those 2006 players are/were in the team in 2009 and 2011.
English football is very different to Spanish football, and Guardiola has only really known the latter. As a manager, he's only managed in Spain, and as a player he only played in Spain apart from 4-5 games for Roma and 20 odd games over 2 seasons at Brescia. Some managers are suited to be able to manage in different leagues which exhibit different footballing styles, everyone will think of Mourinho as an example of this, but there is also Trappatoni (won leagues in Italy (2 clubs), Germany and Portugal, and European Cup), Cappello (won Serie A (with 3 different clubs) and La Liga) and the best example (probably the best manager in European football in terms of versatility) Ernst Happel, who won the league in Belgium (with two teams), Holland, Austria and Germany, and won the European Cup with both Hamburg and Feyenoord, and coached the Dutch National team to 2nd place in WC 1978. I think going down this route (not necessarily any of these managers per se, and Happel is no longer alive so is not an option anyway) might be less risky than a manager who has "won all his eggs in one basket" so to speak, and who mightnt have the exposure to different styles of football, or even to different club structures.
 
Ha, edmundo you really know your football...Ernst Happel is IMO one of the best coaches ever.
I'm glad that this isn't discussed in the United thread because i never come to that thread since i'm seen there as the enemy.

I think United should stick with a Brittish manager, since there is a huge difference between a contintal coach and a manager in England. Personally i think it is too soon to judge Guardiola. I would like to see him with clubs like Athletic de Bilbao, Atletico Madrid or Getafe...it's easier to be fast with a Ferrari than with a Lada (i know this is a litle bit simplistic). As a manager i would never want to succeed Ferguson. I think his successor will be gone fairly soon and the one after that will be the good one. Who am i thinking off? Moyes, but maybe even more Paul Lambert...this is for me the man that is the right manager for Man Utd. He is doing splendid with Norwich (personally i prefer Swansea and their coach, but don't underestimate what Lambert does with Norwich and the way his team plays is more United-like than what Brendan Rogers does at Swansea).

Another alternative might be Martin O'Neill. The way he turned things around for Sunderland is very, very impressive. If i was Liverpool i would sack Dalglish and contact MON.
 
Yeah Happel was a real football pioneer, people talk about Cryuff and Rinus Michels when they talk about "Total Football", but Happel's Feyenoord also played a big part in Dutch football's development yet he has sort of been written out of their history.
 
cfdh_edmundo said:
I would steer clear of Guardiola if I were you. He's done very well at Barca, but he didn't really have to build the team, and it's been his only test so far. How much of his sucess is down to him or the team? Rijkaard won the CL with Barca in 2006, and many of those 2006 players are/were in the team in 2009 and 2011.
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to be fair the difference between rijkaard's barça and guardiola's barça is as wide as the difference between the current man utd team and the 2008 man utd team. man utd might end up winning the league this season, but we can all appreciate the difference between this current team and the 2008 team.

sure it would be a risk to pick guardiola because, like u said, this barca team is his first coaching experience..... but changing a coach is always a risk. moyes might be a good call aswell, but he also would be a risky pick, as he never had to deal with the several different challenges that managing a top club involves.
i'm not saying i believe guardiola would be a good call... i'm just saying there's no such thing as a risk-free option when changin coach.... and there's also no way to measure the risks, so we can't even say wich option would be "safer". as a matter of fact a coach perfectly suited to the english game might fail, whereas a coach much distant from english football might succeed.
ancelotti is light years distant from english football and yet he succeded. ferguson himself displays a football wich is everything but "english". mancini on the other side (who isn't a great coach, but whose football is perfectly suited to the english game) isn't really setting the league on fire.
 
The thing about Ancelotti was, while he only had experience of Italian football, he had been in other roles within the Italian game before he got the Milan job. He won promotion with Reggianna, then took over Parma and got them to second place and into the Champions League, and then took over Juventus (again finishing 2nd or 3rd). So he already had different experiences to just being at one club, even though he hadn't experienced another league, he prouved sucess at different clubs, of different levels (Serie A and B) and with different managerial / ownership structures - for instance Parma's ownership sitution (at the time owned by Parmalat) was different to both Juventus, Milan and Reggianna. I would compare him to Ottmar Hitzfeld who had great sucess at both Dortmund and Bayern, so while he might be a "Bundesliga Specialist" he had demonstrated ability at different clubs within that league.

Obviously everyone knows how well Ancelotti did at Milan, but it's also worth stating how he built and evolved the squad there. By the time he was at his peak the squad was very different to the Fatih Terim one he took over. He added in players like Dida, Nesta, Seedorf, Cafu, Kaka, Stam (all added in 2-3 years of taking over) and pretty much built 80% of a new team/squad, even adding fringe players like Thomasson, Pancaro and Simic. I dont see the same level of evolution from Guardiola. If you look at Rijkaard's last European game as manager of Barca (the defeat at Old Trafford), you have Valdez, Abidal, Puyol, Xavi, Iniesta, Messi that played then are all still very much key players for Guardiola 4 years on . I'm not saying he hasn't innovated the tactics (these are definately different to Rijkaards), but I dont see the level of innovation in squad growth that say Ancelotti had made in his first 2-3 years at Milan.

A key question is how good would Guardiola be in the transfer market. If he was the next manager at Old Trafford he would probably have to make a signing or two. While their attack is ok, you would think with Ferdinand's age and back and Vidic himself picking up a few more injures, and Evra looking a bit lost for the last 18 months or so, you can't really imagine that backline being the same in say 2014-2015. Smalling or Jones might become good players, but I think investment would definately be needed there in the long run. It's a similar situation for midfield, Scholes and Giggs can't go on forever and at some stage a new manager will have to think about strengthening the midfield (unless Ferguson does this himself before he leaves), so showing an ability in the transfer market would be useful. I have to say I've been a bit underwhelmed by Guardiola's transfers. Dani Alves has been a good signing, but it's hard to say how muhc of that was planned before he took over. Certainly the trading of Eto'o (and cash) for Ibrahimovic didn't turn out to be a great move. Also why Caceres wasn't kept was a bit of mystery to me, at a time where Barca seems a bit light in central defence Caceres could have been a solid backup. Mascherano has been a moderate sucess and Fabregas and Sanchis have a high chance of doing well, but for every good singing there seems to have been a pretty bad addition (as well as the previous ones Chygrinsky and Affelay haven't / didnt really do that well). To a large extent his failings in the transfer market don't really matter as they are masked by the ability the club have to bring in youth team players (like Pedro, Busquets, Thiago [Mazinho's kid]) but would have this luxury at another club? Would it not be slightly less risky to take a manager who can build teams from outside sources?
 
Jonathan Wilson about Guardiola:

There is a strangely persistent idea that Pep Guardiola is not a great coach, that a great side somehow fell together beneath him for which he bears about as much responsibility for it as, say, the man who turns the lights on at the Louvre does for the Mona Lisa. He has fine players of course, but you wonder how many of them would truly prosper away from the Camp Nou. Even the greatest of them, Lionel Messi, looks a different player when he turns out for Argentina.
Barcelona are a triumph less of the players than of a philosophy, one laid down 40 years ago and refined to near-perfection in the modern era. Crucially, Guardiola is not a blind devotee. He does not simply write the same names on the team sheet and expect them to go out and do the same thing over and over again. He tinkers, revises and, like a watchful gardener, seems engaged in a constant battle against the entropic imperative.
What marks Guardiola out is his awareness of the future, not in the sense of positioning himself for a move to another club or even in terms of youth development – although he is clearly acutely aware of that – but in terms of understanding the sweep of history, of recognising that what is good now will not necessarily be good in a year or two's time. Dress it as the lesson of Bela Guttmann ("the third year is fatal") or Karl Marx ("all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned"*), but that awareness marks Guardiola as a true dynastician. Not for him the club-hopping of Guttmann or even José Mourinho: he wants to erect an edifice for the ages, something, paradoxically, strengthened by his refusal to commit to more than a 12-month rolling contract; he will not become a weary leader, governing by convention, but leaves open a perpetual route to step down for a fresher man when the occasion calls for it. (As examples from Tony Blair to Abdoulaye Wade indicate, though, leaving the door open does not necessarily mean he will still be willing to step through it when the time is right.)
In football terms, Guardiola is clearly determined to prevent Barcelona ever becoming complacent or predictable, to make sure they always have a second line of attack. The signing of Zlatan Ibrahimovic was intended to give them height, the option of going aerial if the usual tiki-taka didn't deliver and, when that didn't quite work, he began experimenting with the back three.
What is interesting about that is the way that it has changed the mindset. Barcelona often don't play a back three or a back four, but a hybrid – a back three and a half, perhaps. In the Clásico, that meant Sergio Busquets dropping deep to become an extremely deep-lying playmaker. On Tuesday, against Milan, it meant Dani Alves being given freedom to charge down the right flank, operating most of the time as an attacking midfielder. When they use a back four it is with the knowledge of a back three; when they play a back three it is with the knowledge of a four. It is neither one thing nor the other, but both simultaneously, gloriously protean and so are all but impossible to counter.
Given Milan's narrowness, the odd thing is that Alves didn't operate higher in the first leg as well, but perhaps the issue there was that Barça became a little narrow themselves. That is always the danger (admittedly not an especially big one) when Messi starts in a nominal right-sided role, as Argentina have often found; when Uruguay frustrated them in the quarter-final of the Copa América last summer after having Diego Pérez sent off, it was by vacating their left flank and trusting Messi to wander into congested areas.
The surprising introduction of Isaac Cuenca, who has started only nine league games, seemed specifically designed to ensure Barça retained their width: he is a natural winger – whereas Pedro and Christian Tello are modern wide forwards prone to cutting infield – and his value was almost entirely tactical. With Alves pushing so high that Barcelona's shape often resembled a 3-3-4, Messi and Cesc Fábregas drifting vaguely in central areas, it meant that Milan's two full-backs were kept wide, stretching the back four and so increasing the possibility of spaces opening up.
The other effect of Alves playing so high was that it took Barcelona as a whole farther up the pitch. Busquets, who so often drops in to become an additional centre-back, played in a much more orthodox holding midfield role, pushing far higher than is usual. To an extent he was able to do so because of Robinho's reluctance to track back – non-tracking forwards have been a feature of Milan for years and have arguably played some part in their exits from the Champions League in each of the past five seasons, most particularly against Manchester United in 2010.
That, of course, is something of a gamble because it means that the forward can be left free if the opponent breaks quickly, as happened when Robinho, dropping away from the defensive line, found space to initiate the move that led to Milan's equaliser (although the person most at fault for that goal, of course, was Javier Mascherano, inexplicably 10 yards deeper than his team-mates and so playing Antonio Nocerino onside as Ibrahimovic picked him out with a finely weighted through ball). It could be argued that, with a one-goal lead, Barça had no need to be playing in such an offensive way, but that would be to deny what they are and what has made them so great.
Yet while they were better than Milan and deserved winners – the ludicrous "debate" over the second penalty notwithstanding – Barça were not great on Tuesday. They were adequate. They did enough, but not a huge amount more. They could have won by much more – Messi missed two decent early chances and Christian Abbiati made an excellent save to deny Xavi in the first half – and that Milan over four games against Barça this season lost by an aggregate score of only 8-5 was largely down to greater productivity in front of goal (Barça had 67 shots in the four games, Milan only 20), but Barça were far from their most fluent, something borne out by the fact they had only 61% possession, as opposed to the 65-70% they commonly enjoy.
To an extent that is credit to Milan. Their midfield four stayed narrow, worked diligently and even, when they had the ball, caused problems as Clarence Seedorf and Nocerino attacked the space afforded them on the flanks. With Fábregas dropping back, it was effectively four on four in the middle, which, even for a side with Barcelona's close technical skills, makes for a congested game, especially when the use of a false nine denies them the option of bypassing the midfield by going long. Hércules, similarly, played a flattened midfield diamond when, 53 games ago, they were the last side to beat Barça at the Camp Nou.
Fatigue, physical and mental, may be a factor – which must be a concern for Spain in the summer – but it's important to keep these things in context. Barcelona have beaten a decent Milan side 3-1 on aggregate with barely a scare; it's a measure of how good they are, how high expectations, that that should bring a slight sense of disappointment.
Yet for Guardiola the relative lack of fluency must be troublesome. Is it a blip, the sort that is inevitable, or is it an indicator of longer-term decay? An awareness of entropy and putting in place measures to combat it is one thing; winning that battle is something else.
 
they are at home and are losing lol. next season will be much harder for them to stay up.
 
beachryan said:
Swansea are bloody fantastic to watch. 75% possession against Newcastle so far, away too!
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We need a striker who can guarantee goals though if our passing game is going to get results. I wasn't quite sure why Sinclair and Graham weren't on from the start today, but even so, we still need a goal grabber, someone who can get us 15-20 goals a season, but they are hard to come by for our modest size. Three defeats on the bounce and a few things seem to be getting to us, the constant talk on Brendan's future, some of our top players being the subject of interest from bigger clubs, Sigurðsson's future. I hope we don't get that curse of the "second season syndrome", which we have been through before (81/82 a success, 82/83 ended in relegation).

Newcastle were the better team today and Cissé has proven for them what a great signing he is. That second goal was superb I have to take my hat off to him for that chip.
 
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Yeah, guess I cursed them a bit! Outplayed Newcastle completely for 65minutes, and ended up being 2-0 down. Cruel.

No cutting edge though...
 
I didnt know today have EPL match , i just saw Cisse score twice ! this guy its great , newcastle politic its most great in EPL at the moment , take players do them famous , sell them and still finish even more up in table with new players
 
Oh how I loathe this self-centered, arrogant joke of a human being Mario Balotelli... Just a f*cking disgrace to the English football.
Could have broken the legs of 3 Arsenal players in a period of 35 minutes, just horrid. Deserved at least 1 red and 2 yellows for his 3 "tackles" and he got just a yellow. Shame.
 
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Yeah I don't get all the fuss with Ballotelli, in his interview with Noel Gallagher he basically said most of the good (as in made him a good person) funny rumours that came out about him were false and those rumours were his redeeming feature.

But it seems everybody ignored that in the interview?

His challenges today and his general arrogance don't lend to somebody who should have that much adoration? maybe I'm missing something?
 
Balotelli could have got 4 red cards in this game. Refs should protect players...
Song is one of my favourite players, but he should have got a yellow card too...

And what a fantastic performance of Arsenal. As a Spurs fan and knowing that Spurs had an advantage of one point City should have won for us, but during the second half i supported Arsenal all the time. When Arsenal are good, they play stunningly beautifull football...glad that Arteta scored the winner too...
 
Arsenal were generally excellent - and even managed to have a few 'Arsenal' moments (that triple miss...wtf?). Denying City a single shot on target all match is phenomenal.

Magic number for United is now 11. Perhaps more impressively, United have over-turned a goal difference which at one point was 15 worse than City.

Since Scholes came back, in matches he's featured United have played 12, won 11, drawn 1. Not terrible.
 
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