Bitch and moan all you like, but the big dog is in my fantasy side from this week.
18 Jan 2024
171
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The Big Doggiez.
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He'll score. He's bound to. And the media gets its Lestoh-style 'fairytale' headline.
Given all the pre-match hype, it would be hilarious if he twanged a hammy chasing after the first through ball.
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I’m hoping the Messiah is so wound up and desperate to prove himself he does a Gazza. But with a proper ref and VAR and not smiling Roger fcukin cnut Milford in charge he actually gets sent off.
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Toneyfest well underway on Football Focus.
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I hadn't realised quite how injured Brentford are. I wonder if Nuno has someone like Yates follow Toney everywhere on the pitch and invites Brentford to beat us with the other ten. Mind you, I wonder that kind of thing several times a season and it never seems to happen, man marking appears to be a thing of the past these days. It's all zonal systems and pressing the ball.
(I am, BTW, heartily sick of hearing about "high press" and "low block". I assume that, much like "CDM" a few years ago, they're terms that were introduced to the world via the FIFA video game and kids on the internet started repeatedly spewing them out.)
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I agree that man marking Toney would be a good idea. I suggested Worrall for the role a few days ago...on the basis of a reasonable match up of attributes....leaving the two young run around at the half way line centre halves to not get overly murilloed in the box when we are there.
It's quite amusing watching these trends cycle around over and over again. Young people imagine that they've invented them....and that Harry Stiles really did write that killer forty year old cover version.
There isn't a lot that's done in football that wasn't done in the period from the mighty magyars to the great Cruyff dutch side. Players are fitter....there's a bit of tweaking and juggling, and combining more ideas into the same pattern of play...but the fundamentals don't change much. False nine? Hungary in the fifties. Overlapping full backs? Jimmy Armfield in the early sixties. Interchanging positions? Brilliant orange. 'Quarterback' CDM? The Kaiser (RIP). Wingless wonders? Come on...
As for 'Getting out' and 'press them tight' it's been happening for as long as I've been playing football, and beyond.
What is different these days, at the top of the English pyramid, is that there are more mismatches...so it looks like these things are happening for the first time...but they used to happen in both teams, at the same time, pretty equally. Now it's Kuwait stuffing the nottinum florist because of the player resource discrepancy.
It's a lot easier to have room to innovate, tactically, if people aren't kicking each other pretty equally all over the park.
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Turner and Montiel back in. Seems like Nuno has made his goalkeeper decision. For now.
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Also seems like Omob has impressed him. Did someone say Nuno isn't a manager who is good at bringing young players through?
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Also, long term government plan for personal gain designed to endanger small children and eliminate old people.
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Apparently they are having a minutes applause to remember everyone that's died in 2023.
They do know that people die all the time? And that really, actually, remembering them all, is going to take a lot of time?
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What the everloving fuck are those shorts? Since when do we have a pink strip?
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FUCKING WOOT!
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Pick that fucker out
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That defending was comically bad.
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Woot, stunner
