*Official* English Football Season 2014-15

[Lillian Thomson]

Anyone know the odds on a Liverpool v Man City Europa Final.

 

[sledger]

Yeah the actual stuff they say is comical. The stuff to Campbell like he isn't a player who is desperate to be at Arsenal and play and is in fact a world star playing at a club beneath him. And telling Wenger to "get out of my club", as if the club is somehow more the club of some loudmouth drunkard than its greatest ever manager. **** sake.

Yes, I agree entirely.

 

[duffer]

So Andrew Mangan(arseblogger) and Hames McNicholas (gunnerblog) both employed by ESPN? Damn, living the dream.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Not having a go at you BB but I wouldn't walk away from £8m a year either.

I think if money was the main motivating factor he'd be gone by now, tbh. He's got more than enough managerial credit in the bank to get a cushy sinecure type role with a national side with an FA with more money than sense (Russia, Saudis, etc) or an oil-rich Asian club side for far less aggro and at least as much dough.

He's always said missing the day-to-day has put him off a national gig.

 

[cpr]

Anyone know the odds on a Liverpool v Man City Europa Final.

Probably long, because the combinations of results possible tonight mainly have City finishing 2nd or 4th, as in head to head results if points are equal, they'll be below CSKA, below Roma if its 0-0, and bottom if its a 3 day tie. They need a score draw tonight and CSKA to win for them to finish 3rd.

Also, Liverpool are so **** that the odds of them getting to the final???

 

[GIMH]

So here's one for you.

We had a joyful discusison earlier in the season about penalties and whether goals scored from them should count when discussing strikers etc.

Now I've been on the SWA forum today and people are raging because we had a shootout last night and two of our strikers never took a pen - and it went to sudden death which means they were at best 7th and 8th takers. Some people have said no striker should even be a professional footballer if they can't take a penalty.

Thoughts?

 

[Uppercut]

Some people have said no striker should even be a professional footballer if they can't take a penalty.

Thoughts?

Some people are stupid.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Different skillset, IMHO.

Some strikers never scored a goal from as far as twelve yards (Aldo for instance, although think he did take pens too).

 

[Lillian Thomson]

So here's one for you.

We had a joyful discusison earlier in the season about penalties and whether goals scored from them should count when discussing strikers etc.

Now I've been on the SWA forum today and people are raging because we had a shootout last night and two of our strikers never took a pen - and it went to sudden death which means they were at best 7th and 8th takers. Some people have said no striker should even be a professional footballer if they can't take a penalty.

Thoughts?

There's a couple of nitwit presenters on talkSPORT who are always saying that no professional footballer should ever miss a penalty, which is completely brainless. That would only be an argument if there wasn't someone there trying to prevent it going in. I don't think being a striker is particular relevant. A lot of the best strikers are instinctive and less successful if they have too long to think about.

 

[Jarquis]

I actually quite like the UEFA Cup and think it's a decent standard of competition, especially in the latter stages. I appreciate it's not the most meaningful of games but in recent times it's been a pretty even split in terms of who wins the Super Cup.

 

[duffer]

Losing against Galatasaray was one of the most painful moments of being an Arsenal fan. It might not be old Big Ears but it's still a European trophy. If we were in it I'd want us to go for it.

 

[cpr]

I dunno, I find it really poor form for a striker not being in the penalty mix. Whilst it is a different skillset, you want you're penalty taker to be able to strike a ball well, either hard or well placed into a corner, and have the composure necessary for facing the keeper one on one. These should play right into the strikers hands. If you're backline consists of Irwin, Baines, Bruce and Pearce, then fair enough. But condescendingness aside, Tranmere aren't blessed with players all over the pitch you'd back as penalty experts, and thus the striker should be there to take a pen, certainly in the first 6 ffs.

 

[sledger]

Yeah, tbf I guess you would generally expect a forward/attacking player to be able to take a good penalty in most circumstances. But hypothetically let's say, by some bizarre quirk of fate (or something) a player like Ronaldo or Messi really struggled to hit a dead ball for some reason, but retained the rest of all their abilities. I doubt many people would say "They're ****, let's get Andy Johnson in instead".

 

[Cabinet96]

Obviously that professional footballers thing is hyperbolic in the extreme but it is kind of poor. But yeah, it doesn't really mean anything if the guys before them are ok and you'll probably have 1 penalty shootout a year tops.

 

[BoyBrumby]

A lot of goal scav's work is instinctive and they don't have much time to think about it.

Whilst it'd be nice if strikers did take pens, I can definitely see how the long walk to the spot from halfway and all that time to think about where they were going to stick the pen being outside of some strikers' comfort zones.

It's hard to quantify what makes a good pen taker outside of brass balls. Beckham was one of the best dead ball strikers we ever produced, but was never that flash with pens. Famously skyed one v Turkey (just after Rio's pissgate scandal, IIRC) and, as great a moment as it was, his effort v the Argies in 2002 was inches from disaster too.

 

[sledger]

Shearer and Van Nistelrooy the best penalty takers I can recall watching. Both tended to favour the, head down over the ball, smash it into the corner/roof of the net technique. Definitely the best way to do it for mine. The chipped penalty that Henry used to do seems to have gone out of fashion a bit.

 

[cpr]

.... and on the other foot Anderson cooly put one away in a CL final....

 

[Cabinet96]

I think in some ways bottling it and not taking because of nerves is probably a better reason than not being technically capable. There's often a surprising amount of "if you want to take one you can, if you don't, you don't have to" stuff in shootouts.

But if you actually look at all the strikers for the big sides in the prem, the majority are all good penalty takers. Aguero, RVP, Rooney, Falcao, Balotelli, Lambert, Giroud. Costa and Sturridge are probably the only high class strikers I can really think of that aren't good at them.

 

[Uppercut]

I think in some ways bottling it and not taking because of nerves is probably a better reason than not being technically capable. There's often a surprising amount of "if you want to take one you can, if you don't, you don't have to" stuff in shootouts.

But if you actually look at all the strikers for the big sides in the prem, the majority are all good penalty takers. Aguero, RVP, Rooney, Falcao, Balotelli, Lambert, Giroud. Costa and Sturridge are probably the only high class strikers I can really think of that aren't good at them.

Rooney's terrible at them tbf. I think he's statistically the third or fourth worst of the Prem era.

Also Welbeck took a ****e one in the comedy shoot-out with Sunderland last year.

 

[Cabinet96]

This says his conversion rate is about 69%. from a couple years ago. Don't know if it's got significantly worse since then (I honestly can't recall him missing any high calibre ones) but that isn't that bad really. Might cost you like a goal a season if he's your penalty taker over RVP or whatever.