Football (Soccer) Thread

[Josquius]

Liverpools keeper absolutely dominated that game.

Incidentally. Poor League Cup. It deserves better. Carabao advertising as far as the eye can see. And was the final always so early in the year? - it has been for a while but so I remember in the 90s it was at a more sensible time?
But then these days even the FA cup is seen as worth nothing by many

[Zoupa]

If Spurs can poach Gallagher or Mudryk I'd be happy. They need to get out of this team.

[Tamas]

Come on. Just a week prior they had a pretty good game against Man City. One thing Pochettino definitely sucks at though is making substitutions. "Right, we have been able to surprise and keep City on their toes the whole match by being able to run dangerous counter-attacks. So clearly, with almost half an hour to go, what we must do against Manchester Fucking City is to substitute all our counter-attackers and try to park the bus".

[Gups]

I though it was a decent game and Chelsea are improving. Agree with Tamas that Pochettino's sub strategy is dreadful.

[Tamas]

Sport journalism is ridiculous. If any of the Chelsea's myriad close calls find the net in normal time they would be talking about the clear improvement the teambhaa been showing lately. Instead they showcase the match as a clear example of Chelsea being a failed project.

[FunkMonk]

Seems like The Narrative is driven by a few pundits like Gary Neville and Rio Ferdinand and it sucks when your team is the victim of it. Arsenal got hit recently for "over celebrating" whatever that means 

[Zoupa]

I agree that the game could have gone either way, lots of opportunities and the ball hitting the woodwork etc.

I think the Narrative is that Chelsea spent ungodly amounts to be 17 points behind Aston Villa...

[Josquius]

I don't follow Chelsea at all so no idea about their problems in general.
But based on that game they seemed the most like winning. It was just liverpools keeper having the game of his life that stopped them.

[FunkMonk]

BTW Sheilbh congrats on Everton winning the appeal, probably the biggest win of the season for any team (4 points) 

[Sheilbh]

Although second charges still outstanding

[Tamas]

Klopp will have his dream exit if the referees can help it: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/mar/02/forest-furious-as-error-hands-liverpool-victory

[FunkMonk]

To be fair the Forest players were utterly incompetent in clearing the ball from the corner kick that won the game.

I was yelling at the screen "HOOF THE BALL YOU MORONS" 

[FunkMonk]

Arsenal have won 7 league matches in a row scoring 31 goals and conceding only 3 and are just 2 points off league leaders Liverpool.

In the dark days of 2020 when Arsenal were like 15th I prayed for times like this 

[Josquius]

Klopp will have his dream exit if the referees can help it: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/mar/02/forest-furious-as-error-hands-liverpool-victory

Caught these highlights on MOTD. And yeah. That was insane. Poor Forest.

Can't remember who it was, but some random commenter on sky sports said something that really rung a bell with me: This year its like there's 3 premier league teams in the championship and to an extent 3 championship teams in the premier league, the surprising possible exception being Luton, who were most expected to be the one to crash- and on the other side of the equation Forest who have seriously misstepped trying to establish themselves over the years.

Looking from a Championship perspective I very much get this. Leicester are just way too good for the Championship.  Southampton much less so and Leeds in between.
Lots of talk from Sunderland commenters that this year was never going to work out and next year will be an easier league.

I can't quite get my thoughts in order about this. It isn't uncommon for teams to bounce right back up after relegation and it hasn't been going back into the mists of history. But certainly the gap seems to be widening in recent years after a few years when it seemed to be closing with the Championship really rising to be better than most of Europe's top leagues- Sunderland's main management target being the manager of a French top league team who the word on the street says we would have gotten last time around but the chairman was too cheap to pay is 250k release fee.

[Tamas]

After the last two of his sketches that I have checked, David Squires is under suspicion for being a Liverpool fan.