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***Official*** English Football Season 2019-20

andruid

Cricketer Of The Year
Not sure why Wenger would want to take on what is clearly an incredibly difficult job at his age. It would have to be a root and branch overhaul.
Maybe he might want to take it up as a technical director rather than a coach

I know we're a few weeks in but does anyone fancy a fantasy league?
Fantasy league code is 69lwsj for anyone who's interested.
yes please, where is this league?
 

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
Loris tho
Lloris is different though. He's a keeper who is generally very good (or at least decent, depending on who you ask), but makes the occasional howler. Not unlike a lot of good keepers really. Pickford is a substandard keeper who makes regular howlers.
 

Uppercut

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Yeah Lloris makes more big mistakes than average but pulls off a lot of crazy saves too. On balance he’s pretty good but it means people have wildly varying opinions on him.
 

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
Yeah Lloris makes more big mistakes than average but pulls off a lot of crazy saves too. On balance he’s pretty good but it means people have wildly varying opinions on him.
The interesting thing for me is that Lloris makes more howlers (based on my anecdotal experience anyway) than most other keepers I would consider to be better than just "quite good". His howler regularity is probably above the minimum threshold I would normally expect of a "good" keeper in other words. But yet I do very much rate him. I would not say he is elite tier, but he's probably in the bracket below, for me personally. There are certainly more reliable and steady keepers out there, who are also by no means crap, but simultaneously are definitely not as objectively good as Lloris. Or at least as good at him when he is at his best anyway.
 

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
If Arsenal had signed Lloris in say 2008, as was heavily rumoured at the time, I daresay the outcome of several of the Premiership seasons between then and now would have been quite different. The persistence with Almunia for so many years was very damaging. To this end, my observation is hardly novel. I daresay Arsenal would have fared considerably better with any vaguely competent goalkeeper. But still, it is something I think about from time to time.
 

Furball

Evil Scotsman
I wouldn't have thought it was possible to make a worse error than the one he made in the World Cup Final, but he sure proved me wrong.
 

OverratedSanity

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Also I don't follow football all year round, is this thing of trying to play out from the back/getting the ball to the keeper's feet something which has caught on a lot just recently or something? Even keepers who are crap at it are trying to do it.
 

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
Goalkeepers being people who are "a bit mad" or prone to lapses in concentration/brain fades is a bit of a cliche, and I do not necessarily agree with it, but in a sense it is strange that there are not more glaring errors really imo. The pressure on the keeper in a top team is huge. For the most part they are spectators for most of a match, and have maybe 2 or 3 saves to make in a game, but have to keep their awareness etc. up for the whole time. Conversely, keepers that play for awful teams that face about 30 shots a match get a disproportionate amount of praise because of the number of saves they make. Rob Green was a particularly annoying example of this. Press used to fawn over him despite the fact that he habitually played for teams that lost 3-0 every week and got relegated.
 

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
Also I don't follow football all year round, is this thing of trying to play out from the back/getting the ball to the keeper's feet something which has caught on a lot just recently or something? Even keepers who are crap at it are trying to do it.
It's become very fashionable in the last year or so, and the media are dressing it up as "the new thing", but in reality many of the good teams have been doing it for at least ten years. The problem, as you allude to, is the fact that loads of teams are now trying it, despite having players who are hopelessly under-equipped for the task, resulting in amusingly bad results.
 

Furball

Evil Scotsman
Goalkeepers being people who are "a bit mad" or prone to lapses in concentration/brain fades is a bit of a cliche, and I do not necessarily agree with it, but in a sense it is strange that there are not more glaring errors really imo. The pressure on the keeper in a top team is huge. For the most part they are spectators for most of a match, and have maybe 2 or 3 saves to make in a game, but have to keep their awareness etc. up for the whole time. Conversely, keepers that play for awful teams that face about 30 shots a match get a disproportionate amount of praise because of the number of saves they make. Rob Green was a particularly annoying example of this. Press used to fawn over him despite the fact that he habitually played for teams that lost 3-0 every week and got relegated.
If you're facing 30 shots a game then that's because your defence and midfield are crap.
 

Cabinet96

Hall of Fame Member
Also I don't follow football all year round, is this thing of trying to play out from the back/getting the ball to the keeper's feet something which has caught on a lot just recently or something? Even keepers who are crap at it are trying to do it.
They changed the rules on goal kicks this season. Previously no one except the GK was allowed in the box and the ball had to have left the penalty area before anyone on either side could engage with it. Now the team in possession are allowed to put players in the box and opposition players can press the ball as soon as the keeper plays it. Essentially it's like a free kick now. I think this has encouraged more teams to play short since you can't man mark across the field anymore if the CBs are within their own box. Obviously the more teams doing it = greater chance of high profile **** ups though.

The Athletic did a good article on it recently.
 

vcs

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How was that Mahrez goal a howler by Pickford? It was just a very good free kick that he failed to save.
 

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
Tbf I may have been slightly hasty in calling it a "howler", but it was definitely one of those where you think "he should have done a lot better with that", and Pickford is a keeper I often find myself thinking that about.

I think my perception of him is not helped by the way he looks either. Kind of looks like a bloke you'd expect to find working on a farm or as a blacksmith or something. In fact he honestly looks a lot like the butcher's boy from GoT who gets killed by the Hound.

 

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