Men's Soccer (Football) Thread Soccer • Page 41

How does NEW look energy wise? Especially Lascelles. Still gassed or on the mend?

 

They look full of energy, a complete contrast to the Spurs game. Also, I've not watched Lascelles closely, but Milan look timid and have not pressured him.

 

thank you for your scouting report. This wi help me greatly later in the week.

 

PSG lol. They’re going to lose, Enrique is going to get sacked and hired by United. and I’ll lose whatever little hope I still had.

 

Milan have grown into it now. Not had a shot on target, mind you.

 

LeBron James of soccer!!!!

 

First shot on target for Milan, too @Serenity Now

 

2 shots on target, 2 Milan goals. Champions League is so ruthless.

 

Theo Hernandez should have killed the game with that open goal

 

Newcastle out of Europe completely

 

Bayern - PSG
or
City - PSG

seems inevitable, lest they save that for a later round

or

Real Madrid - PSG — winner gets Mbappe

 

Only Inter and the sole figure of Mbappe scare me honestly. Otherwise, I think we should be favourites for whoever we get (not that any of them will be easy).

 

that Micah Richards flop is out of this world

 

they changed it

seems like all the Man Uniteds changed to City

 

Didn't get to see the match last night, as I was dragging some running punks around a night run, but I'm not feeling too bad about how things have panned out. We've finished bottom of the group, but really we should have been third, with PSG bottom. Given the state of the squad right now, I didn't expect us to get anything tonight, but it sounds like we took a good swing at it regardless.

A few weeks back, I was pretty hopeful we'd drop down into the Europa and maybe get a run there, but given how badly we need to get players back in the squad and start rotating/resting people, getting knocked out entirely is probably better for us overall.

If we can beat Chelsea next week, then we could reasonably make a strong push for the league cup. Aside of that, trying to hunt down a Europa spot for next year seems a realistic goal. I can't see us getting back into the top 4 this year. I think Liverpool, Arsenal and City will have the top 3 sewn up and the fight for that fourth spot looks pretty congested now.

 

Coming 4th is probably better for both United’s than dropping into the Europa. Europa is great and all. But the benefits of one game a week is much greater, especially looking at some of the teams in the Europa this season.

 

Well, unless you come fifth in the PL this year. Although it looks unlikely right now.

 

Oh yeah, the coefficient is fucked now so it will only be top 4 getting into the CL

 

Coming 5th and qualifying for the Champions League. Football formats just get worse and worse.

 

The Swiss system was absolutely appalling in the Champions Cup, it will probably be appalling in the Champions League too

 

Yeah. Not a fan of any of the top 4 leagues getting extra places, or the new format. Hopefully it’s shit and they go back to the group stage. Part of the fun every year is the draw, too.

 

I've never seen anything run using the Swiss system before. On paper, I think it sounds like it could be quite an interesting change, but I'm not sure how it's going to play out in practice. The seeding idea sounds like it's been thought out, but then the seeding in the current CL repeatedly leads to groups of wildly varying quality, so I guess the proof will be in the pudding with that.

My worry is going to be around the transparency of the draw. That's going to be really complex, so I wonder if they'll bother manually drawing balls from pots.

I'm not totally convinced that the league format is going to be as fun as the groups format though. You aren't going to have all the known permutations you get later in the groups, which add tension to the fixtures. The idea is to get the big teams playing each other more often (which is cool in a way), but if both of those teams meet in the 6th match and are already safely well inside the top end of the table, then it's basically a dead rubber.

There's also the worry that this is just going to make it way harder for smaller teams to get to the knockouts.

Feels a bit "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" though.

 

Dele is taking part in group sessions now @Swoos May feature for the reserves first on Friday!

 

De Zerbi finally brings on Ferguson. Brighton need to score to avoid the play offs.