Premier League 2019/20

[TCO]

Neville just made a good point about United and the transfer market. The Premier League money has really hampered their ability to just take smaller clubs' best players.

If this were 10-15 years ago they'd have Harry Kane, Son, Declan Rice etc in their team at this point and be much better. Just can't do that anymore and they've been left behind.

[Baddar]

We are so bad. Knew we'd make Noble look like Iniesta today.

[stokeriño]

Trying to really savour this next half-hour before we get blitzed.

[FLiam]

How, in 2019 is Ashley Young still playing left-back for Manchester United, and also captain?

[Adam]

You look at the line-ups for Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea and really feel that it's clear only two teams will get near the title this season.

Nothing against them and I'm really glad some young players are getting their chances, but the overall spread of quality seems much lower than you'd expect from those clubs for various reasons.

People saying Ole needs to go on social media are short sighted though. No manager could pull Man Utd above the level they've settled into I don't think. They need some drastically more sensible management off the field from above the manager's station before they get close to what they used to be. We've seen how teams have struggled to restart after a dynasty comes to an end before, and Sir Alex's United were the biggest dynasty in English football history.

[stokeriño]

14 minutes ago, Adam said:

People saying Ole needs to go on social media are short sighted though.

I completely misinterpreted this at first and was wondering why people thought Ole making posts on Twitter would help the team.

Meanwhile, it begins.

[Cymbols]

Super John McGinn!

[stokeriño]

Azpi bundles in an equaliser!

OR NOT

[Benjamin]

What a mess that was.

VAR still the world's best player.

[Adam]

24 minutes ago, stokeriño said:

I completely misinterpreted this at first and was wondering why people thought Ole making posts on Twitter would help the team.

Meanwhile, it begins.

I did think that when I read it back to be fair.

[stokeriño]

Le. Fucking. Sigh.

[Szumi]

That's super hard on Chelsea, a complete double blow too.

Sucks to suck! We got robbed in midweek, sometimes football is cruel

[stokeriño]

Basically the remainder of this game is going to be Chelsea players getting injured over and over.

[Cymbols]

Sokratis is a melt.

[Baddar]

This is going to be the biggest ever gap from 2nd to 3rd with the way things are going.

[FLiam]

Emery’s contract is up at the end of the season. Don’t renew it. 

[Kaney]

I liked Emery but you can't justify these results. Who do you bring in though? I wouldn't go as far as some yelling for Mourinho.

[FLiam]

Just now, Kaney said:

I liked Emery but you can't justify these results. Who do you bring in though? I wouldn't go as far as some yelling for Mourinho.

Certainly not him. 

At first, Emery did bring that complete change of atmosphere, but the longer he’s been here the more I don’t understand what his plan is.

He sets us up a lot as a counter-attacking side, yet to do that you have to be organised all over the pitch and we’re not at all. We don’t look like a team pushing to be on the front foot all the time, we also don’t look like a team trying to play for possession so I really don’t know what we are. He changes the shape of the side too much and I think it’s getting to that point in which the players don’t really know what the plan is either. 

If anything, we’ve regressed since he took over. The defence is as bad as it ever was under Wenger which is quite some achievement especially since Emery was supposed to be more of a defensively tactical coach. 

We need to be looking elsewhere for next season, Allegri may be available. If we can get him in, then go for it. Other than that, I’m not sure who is realistic but that’s Raul’s job to sort out.

On another note, I’m a little worried about Pepe. Not overly panicking yet as I don’t expect all players to hit the ground running but he doesn’t look anywhere close to being a £72m footballer at the moment.

[Cymbols]

Yeah I don’t think you guys should be worrying just yet...

...ah hang on...WESLEY!

[Colly]

7 hours ago, Liam said:

This was all covered in pretty significant detail on the first week of Premiership coverage. Every game had a segment about it and they were able to pretty much compare the positioning of players to the nearest centimetre. It has been out there.

Did it cover the issues that pundits have been asking since that first week around the timing of the image in relation to when the ball leaves the players boot? I can almost believe they can manage to compare two players positions on a still image, but very much struggle to believe that it's accurate to manage that. Gary Lineker is still asking the same question and Gary Neville is only just stretching to "at least it's consistently inaccurate", fundamentally not understanding what's happening...