Football (Soccer) Thread

[Ed Anger]

I enjoy Aston Villa fucking people up. 

[Josephus]

Suarez is back

[Sheilbh]

Man Utd. 

Is this the haunted look of a man awaiting his execution?

In fairness he looks like that when overjoyed

[Sheilbh]

Ed. You may shortly see Newcastle fans assaulting a horse

[Ed Anger]

Ed. You may shortly see Newcastle fans assaulting a horse

I was watching the game. 

Also got to see crying Newcastle kid in the stands.

[FunkMonk]

Shelf, you like Everton ya? What do you think of Martinez and how they're playing now?

[Sheilbh]

Shelf, you like Everton ya? What do you think of Martinez and how they're playing now?

I love him. We did very well in the summer and hopefully we can get another couple of decent permanent signings in January and next year (I'd love Altidore).

So far so good on how we're playing. The first half against Newcastle was the best Everton performance I can remember, it was outstanding. Also we've had some pretty solid defensive performances which was a worry about Martinez.

We've got a younger and deeper squad than under Moyes, and there's a new style of play. So it'll take time and there'll be mistakes. But overall I'm optimistic.

[FunkMonk]

I'm hoping to see Everton finish above Moyes' United. 

[FunkMonk]

Shelf, you like Everton ya? What do you think of Martinez and how they're playing now?

We did very well in the summer and hopefully we can get another couple of decent permanent signings in January and next year (I'd love Altidore).

To be honest Altidore hasn't looked very good so far this season. I know Sunderland are terrible right now but Altidore isn't doing much to help his cause. He looks slow, is constantly out of position, his movement is bad, and he looks like he just doesn't care. Hopefully the new manager there, whoever it is, will have some faith in him and charge him up some. At least until Fletcher returns and Altidore becomes a permanent sub.

[katmai]

Did you watch this weekends game?  All i saw was atrocious passing from the midfield until they brought on the 2nd forward.

[FunkMonk]

Yeah I did. The team as a whole is bad and will get relegated most likely (sorry Tyr). To be fair to the Jozster he isn't getting very good service. The only player of quality in the midfield is Giaccherini, and a couple of times I could swear he and some of the other Sunderland players were seeing Jozy and deliberately not passing to him. I don't know if that's just in my head, but maybe there's some mistrust in the camp there, which wouldn't be surprising considering who the manager was for many months.

[Josquius]

I disagree they're just bad. What is particularly frustrating about Sunderland is that they often play so well for long spells...then suddenly fall apart for a little while and let the opposition score and win. Often the other teams goals just come out of nowhere, one minute the ball is bobbing about in midfield and the next its in the back of the net and nobody knows what happened.
We did well against Man Utd for instance. Putting in a good performance gets you nowhere in fooball though.

Also I'd get the opposite impression about scoring. We're pretty good at getting 8/10 of the way towards scoring but completely fall flat in the important part.

I have to just hope for the best. I tell myself we're only 2 wins from a respectable league position, and on paper at least we certainly have good enough players that we shouldn't be in anything like the trouble we are.
Hopefully we'll play like we did for most of the Man Utd game in the next few matches and manage to finally get the season started.

One thing that does really have me worried at Sunderland is that apparently we went in for a more continental system with Di Canio. The old, flawed system of new managers coming in regularly and completely rebuilding the team was to be done away with. We would have head coach Di Canio and a more permanent and solid backroom staff....yet this seems to have been quite thoroughly linked with Di Canio. And the sort of team they want to build remains a mystery to me.

Semi-related: I learned something on Friday. That good new Korean player we have? Turns out he's a stupid racist, infamous in Japan for some incident where he called Japanese people monkeys (despite being Korean.....). Wonder if it played a part in Di Canio aquiring him.


Totally unrelated: Has anyone ever read Soccernomics? I'm reading it now. It makes some pretty nifty academic observations about the game.

[FunkMonk]

Yeah, to be fair, Sunderland have played Arsenal, Liverpool, and Manchester United so far, and di Canio supposedly lost the confidence of the squad. I figure they only have one direction to go from this position, and that's up.

And yeah, I've read Soccernomics. Really interesting read.

[Viking]

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/oct/15/world-cup-2014-qualifier-iceland-norway

Right now Iceland is three games away from qualifying for the Brazil World Cup and if they make it they would be the smallest population country ever to qualify. To qualify first "we" need to either win against norway (which has nothing to play for and  chaos in the backroom) or perfrom as good or better than slovenia against switzerland (which is already qualified). Both away games.

Then Iceland will need to beat one of the seeded second place finishers over two legs.

We have hope and if we crash and burn we will be proud of doing as well as we did.

[Josquius]

Come on Iceland! That would be fun.