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Truly what is the point with City. They bought Haaland and changed the makeup of their team with all those centre backs and they play the exact same way. It's got to bore the shit out of the few fans they have.

They had something like an xG of 3 and couldn't win, same as every other year except last year, where they finally got lucky.

So far in his career, Gabe Martin Nelly may be the fakest class player in the world. Trent has absolutely crowned the guy.

2 hours ago, Em City said:

 

Not Ken Early, who's really the main football voice on there. He's got a proper agenda against him, TD_LFC's opinion is mild by comparison. 

 

He called him the worst signing of the Klopp era last week (which is what my reply to Josef alluded to). Last season, he was writing off some of Nunez's better goals (Wolves at home, Newcastle away) as flukes. 

 

He also said during our slump last season that it would be best if Klopp left, so I put him down more as entertaining polemicist than serious pundit. Second Captain's football coverage is still quite good though, they frequently have great guests on, with the dishonourable exception of Gabriel Marcotti, who's nothing more than a bloated, clueless waffler.

Thanks, mate. I think I may catch the pod most often after we win so might not have gotten the Darwin hate. 

2 hours ago, TheHowieLama said:

 

Agree that he should get a new offer, my point is that should be done and dusted before the summer window closes. And will be imo if he wants to stay.

 

I don't think that Salah's on field contribution (say 25 golas, 12 assists) is worth 80 million and his wages.

Any forward playing the lions share of minutes in our front line is going to put up some decent numbers - they already do. 

The individual difference would come down to single digit goals and a few assists. Not sure overall the teams goals scored would nosedive but that will be far more important.

Personally I don't think the team is in a place where a new manager will walk in and compete for the title - Salah would have value in that scenario. Him scoring a few more while the team re builds, not value.

I think the last sentence is key. Salah wouldn't be that valuable next season, if we are being realistic about where we'll be next season, with a new manager. 

18 minutes ago, Em City said:

 

It's a great listen. Even though Ken Early knows fuck all about football, he is wrong in a very entertaining manner. 

I listen to the free Second Captains pod at times and was under the impression they were pretty complimentary of Nunez.

9 hours ago, Ne Moe Imya said:

 

To be fair, Vitinha has been brilliant, which is probably more than anything what's keeping Ugarte out of the team. Different players, but only space for so many in that midfield.

Zaire-Emery has been pretty good as well.

Enrique said in one of his Twitch streams that he wants the most technically gifted player possible playing the 6. So that is not Ugarte. Vitinha playing there is a bit of an invention, but that is what he prefers. 

32 minutes ago, Wezza said:

Anybody know how Ugarte has got on at PSG this season? I’ve not followed them at all but thought it strange he would be coming on right at the end vs Barca tonight. 

Enrique doesn't rate him because he's not the kind of 6 he wants.

1 hour ago, Mook said:

 

I'm not a stat person at all but you can certainly take objective things like goals, set pieces & possession quite seriously.

 

This new & subjective stuff does not interest me in the slightest.

The objective stats, as you call them, are basically the most useless. It's just counting stuff. Truly those stats are the ones where if you watched every game, you could approximate to a good level how many goals a player has, for example.

Conversely, there are stats that go beyond what you're watching, but are also additive to what you're watching.

Nunez is actually a good finisher, it's the stats guy who is imputing stuff wrong.

16 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

My point isn't really if he's a good or bad coach. He's clearly a good coach (if he's good enough for a job like ours is different, but I can see why some people might think he should be in the field considering how thin that is). But despite that, his football is shit to watch, which for me presents 2 issues. 1. I don't want to watch shit football. 2. I don't think managers who bring shit football get any room to get it wrong. They have to come in and win from minute 1 and keep winning and when they don't, fans will rightly be fucked off. Whoever follows klopp is going to need some goodwill, because he's an almost impossible act to follow. 

 

The best example of this for me is David Moyes. This is probably the best west ham team I can remember - I have vague memories of the team that won the cup in 1980 and then followed up to lose to us in the league cup the year after. But I was young and football wasn't wall to wall like it is now, so you pretty much saw cup finals live and I think 2 or 3 games on match of the day. This is definitely their best team since. And every west ham fan I know absolutely hates watching them, puts up with it because of the results and want him out as soon as he loses 2 or 3. Including this season, just months after their first trophy win in years. Villa fans will be the same with emery. They'll enjoy this bounce and then somewhere along the way, form will dip and they'll try to hound him out. 

Again, this will make it seem like I'm very pro, when I'm pretty neutral on him, but I'm not sure his football is even that bad.

In the 17-18 season, PSG scored the most goals ever in a season in all comps for a French club. And Villa aren't the most dynamic, but they’re certainly not safe or slow or anything like that. They've scored 4 less than us.

I think Moyes is pretty harsh style-wise. Moyes couldn't get his teams to score like Emery can. Not even close.

To me, the issue with him is that he just doesn't seem to have the intangibles for a massive club, but maybe he would succeed if he had the infrastructure behind him.

4 hours ago, TheHowieLama said:

Pretty sure he must be mighty pissed off to have been hung out to dry by Monahan.

The alleged background story is that he has been told there will be a full merger in the near future so he either gets to cash a check or not.

That's what Rahm was thinking.

5 hours ago, Barrington Womble said:

yeah, you could look at rafa's time like that. but that's not the reality is it? and it doesn't matter if i dismiss emery or not. it's if arsenal did. and they did. because his results were poor and his football was shit. 

 

arsenal were 19 points off the top of the league after just 13 matches in his 2nd season when he was sacked. The were 11 & 10  points off 2nd and 3rd and 8 points off a CL place. The football was shit and because the football was shit and the results were shit, he got fired. If he'd been playing a better brand of football, it might have bought him some time to build, but he offered absolutely nothing. 

I am not super pro Emery, but he is a victim of chosing bad jobs a bit. PSG was always a total no win situation unless he won the Champions League and Arsenal was batshit when he went there. Just off of Wenger leaving and they had a terrible and cluttered backroom setup with an agent placing players there (Kia Joorabchian), a DoF who seemed useless (Mislintat) and an overzealous CEO (Raul something). These people are now all gone and Arsenal turned it around. 

He's been good this season, but when you're said to be the greatest centre back of all time and universes and your team hasn't been great at defending, you should get crticized. The leadership part of it, I don't care, because I can't speak to what he does in the dressing room and all that.

7 minutes ago, Ron B said:

Gary O’Neil:

•Young British manager

•Early in his career

•Hasn’t won anything 

•Did well with smaller clubs

•Progressive style of football. 
Some of these are good things. All of these are things we got with Rodgers. Please don’t say you want Gary O’Neil in one sentence, and then bemoan someone who had a very similar profile and CV when he arrived a decade or so ago. 

Gary O'Neil doesn't play progressive football.

The job he's done at Wolves is basically to get them decent results in not super easy circumstances because they have had some bad injuries. The football is bad, though.

1 hour ago, Antynwa said:

Great podcast.

 

One of things Paul kept saying at the beginning of the season was we where failing the eye test.  I don't think its reactionary to say that Salah for me every time I've seen him recently feels like he's failed the eye test.

 

I'm not quite saying we should sell him, but equally the way we're setup with him it's like we're playing with 10 men and I felt v Palace this was even more the case.

 

Whilst we're mathematically in this, we've as was said on the pod, seen this movie before.

 

I don't fancy going all in on this again, I don't have the emotional strength to put myself through yet another Wolves at home.

 

Whatever will be will be, there is light at the end of the tunnel put part of me hopes it's just the train so I can get on with my life 

Agreed. This has been the season of the eye test.

10 minutes ago, Arniepie said:

love the way salah is "unlucky" and darwins is down to poor finishing

Statistically, Salah is an adequate finisher. Darwin is disastrous in that respect. 

Emery and Postecoglou aren't really mentioned because no one imagines that Villa and Spurs will be reasonable in giving them up.

He is still elite at producing and scoring goals but I think almost everyone can see that he is on the cusp of Ronaldo territory, where when he plays he will make goals but his play is bad. The only way we could think about keeping him is if we used him like City use De Bruyne now, which is; not play him in every game, have him be more of a member of the squad. But we cant afford to do that. He should 99% be sold. 

Still, it isnt his fault that he has still been more useful than the 24-27 year olds in the front line who havent taken the step up. 

52 minutes ago, Freddo said:

This team is crying out for a lethal number nine. Darwin Nunez isn’t that player. He may have a role to play in the squad but it’s as clear as day we need a clinical finisher. Those that can’t see that are beyond help. 

We didn't have a "clinical finisher" when we had Mané-Firmino-Salah. It's not essential, but on this team it is because we're not as good at football.

14 minutes ago, El Rojo said:

Arsenal were always going to falter. Didn’t think it’d be this early though. 

It's actually a perfect example of bottling it. There's no way they drop points had we not lost before them. That's the way the universe works.

Unai sinking them is very funny, to be fair.

Fucking hell

11 minutes ago, El Rojo said:

On the not playing with a traditional nine thing, that was sustainable with a generational trio of peak Salah, Mane and Firmino.

Doesn’t work as well now with the current crop. 

 

Jota is world class but is injured or recovering from injury 60% of the time.

I think Stig is under the impression that it's an intentional thing that Nunez isn't this monster goalscorer and Klopp is having him do stuff where he's playing an all around game rather than rack up goals. Either that or it's an intentional excuse because he's been so in on him. He can correct me if I'm wrong.

Nunez isn't the most traditional of 9's, but he's absolutely a 9, and the goal (no pun intended) when we bought him was for him to score a lot. There's no doubt about it. He's not some Firmino type player, who was essentially a striker and midfielder all in one, who unlocked the wide players and created all sorts of space.

14 minutes ago, Jairzinho said:

 

Jota's fitness is an issue for squad building. If he could play 80% of games you'd start him most weeks, blood Danns as a sub and in cup games etc, and you wouldn't need to sign a number nine. But if he pulled his hamstring in the third game of the season we'd be fucked. 

 

What I think doesn't work is having a group of forwards like we do, but some can have a stinker and be out of the side for a few weeks, and others can't even come off for the last two minutes of games. 

 

Inter is a really good example of where they do things completely differently. They have two starters and two backs ups, and all four of them know the score.

It was working with 5 subs when everyone was fit and involved. But yeah, the example you used with Inter is exactly what we were doing. Mané-Firmino-Salah and then clearly inferior players behind them, but dedicated backups. We might have been lucky with fitness and injuries at times, but the dynamic was great.

29 minutes ago, El Rojo said:

He’d be good out wide with a proper, prolific, physical 9 like Solanke in the main role.

 

I think Mo needs to move on. 

You can't play him wide if you are a team that will dominate possession most of the time. He's not a remotely complete enough player. 

What he is really is a very mobile 9, so yeah, he can go out wide, but unless you are a small team that always plays on the counter and you just need someone to run very fast up and down the line, he isn't more than a temporary or one off tactical solution on the wing. It's something we turned to last season when we didn't know what to do.

The best formation for him is probably something narrow where he. is playing closely off another forward. Like a diamond or something like that.

16 minutes ago, Strontium said:

It's fizzled out like Arsenal's title challenge did last season.

 

Of course, after last season, Arsenal went out and spent £200m. And therein lies the difference.

Arsenal were at the beginning of their attempt to become a world class team again. They're building something stable under the same manager.

Our season was almost a Cinderella title, built on a rebuild of the midfield and a desire to come back after last season, but ultimately built on not super solid ground. And then Klopp is leaving so there were the emotions, negative and positive of that.