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Would you spend €100+ on Paul Pogba??

  • Yup, still very young and filled with potential...

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  • Nah, no CM could be worth that much...

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Theyre so stacked with great young talent man :pimp:. Wouldn't mind seeing them stay together long enough to become a force in the league
 
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Theyre so stacked with great young talent man :pimp:. Wouldn't mind seeing them stay together long enough to become a force in the league

I looked at Martinez funny recently because when he arrived he said he would delivery CL footy, and that hasn't happened yet. But I think the board at Everton will be happy to see how the team is playing...and can see the potential that they have....despite the recent results...
 
A key signing here and there and they could be right in the thick of things top 4 wise. Definitley agree that they've been one of the most exciting teams to watch this season
 
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Lol Adnan really thought he can break through for regular play at Dortmund :rofl:

And that list seemed to have a very strong EPL bias
 
Lol Adnan really thought he can break through for regular play at Dortmund :rofl:

And that list seemed to have a very strong EPL bias

Absolutely outrageous for him to think that BVB was some weak team that he would walk into. :smh:

Should have never signed that loan agreement.
 
Official: Arsenal Agree To Extend Deal For 18-year-old Midfield Wonderkid
Posted by: Oli Price-Bates in Arsenal, Blogs, News, Transfers 1 min ago 0

Arsenal have agreed to let Gedion Zelalem remain on loan at Rangers until the end of the season. The original deal was set to expire this month.
Embed from Getty Images

The 18-year-old midfielder has made 15 appearances for Rangers, impressing with several assists during that time.
Zelalem made quite the impression when bursting onto the scene in pre-season more than two years ago, but injury problems restricted his progression last season. Despite the setback, this spell at Rangers is proving to be successful, although questions can rightly be raised about the level of football he is playing at.
The USA under-23 international will hope that following this loan spell, he can work his way into the first team next season, with a number of central midfielders set to leave the club. Mikel Arteta, Mathieu Flamini and Tomas Rosicky are all expected to be released at the end of the current campaign.
Is Zelalem good enough to have a long-term future at the club? I feel like we’ve known him for ages, but he’s still only 18, leaving plenty of time for him to find his feet and develop weaker areas of his game.
 
The CIES Football observatory top 100 most valuable players

View media item 1858075
The Hazard hype is alive and well :lol:. He does still have world beater potential though can't even lie

Whichever morons, or whichever analysts created this RIDICULOUSLY EPL top heavy list - need to be put on clinical drugs or stoned to death...drugs or death.


"Eden Hazard at number 3...

Raheem Sterling and Harry Kane at €90 million....

Countinho ahead of almost everybody at number 13...."


GET-TF, ALL, THE, WAY, UP, OUT OF of HERE.

Never, ever, ever - post such a ridiculous list like this again in this thread. I still can't believe my eyes - :wow:
:rofl:
 
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Klinsmann Calls 23 Players To Carson For Annual January Camp
NEWS Jan 6, 2016 0
Mix of Senior Team and U-23 Players to Prepare for Friendlies against Iceland and Canada at StubHub Center

CHICAGO (Jan. 6, 2016) – U.S. Men’s National Team head coach Jurgen Klinsmann has called 23 players to Carson, California, for the first training camp of 2016, with the possibility of additions as the week progresses.

The camp, which runs from Jan. 11-Feb. 6 and contains a mix of Senior Team members and a host of players age-eligible for the U-23 MNT, will culminate with friendlies against Iceland on Jan. 31 and Canada on Feb. 5. Both matches will be played at StubHub Center in Carson [TICKETS].

Klinsmann Talks January Camp Roster
“We start out our year with a January camp where we give the opportunity to the next wave of players to come in and make an impression and see if they are ready to step it up into international level, if they are ready to understand what it takes to become a National Team player,” said Klinsmann. “This camp will be a little bit different because we’re going to mix it almost half-and-half with senior players that are already National Team players or some that are older and maybe get the chance to play their first cap, and a lot of the Under-23 players that hopefully qualify us for Rio de Janeiro. This will be more of an identification camp and a development camp. We want to give those players a head start into their very busy year 2016, but we also want to make it clear to them that it’s a huge opportunity that you have to understand what it takes to step it up and to become an international-level player.”

The youthful roster – with an average age of around 24 years old – is anchored by five veterans from the 2014 FIFA World Cup roster, led by U.S. captain and 2015 U.S .Soccer Male Player of the Year Michael Bradley. He is joined by Jozy Altidore, Matt Besler, Mix Diskerud and Jermaine Jones. At the other end of the spectrum, it features many fresh faces with 11 players who are age-eligible for the U-23 Men’s team that will compete in an Olympic-qualifying play-in against Colombia this March. Among the Olympic hopefuls is Matt Miazga, the 2015 U.S. Soccer Young Male Player of the Year.

As usual, the January camp roster is loaded with MLS players, with a total of 20 players plying their trade in the domestic league. Among the players looking to gain international experience are several players recognized with end-of-season awards, including two members of the MLS Best XI in midfielder Ethan Finlay and goalkeeper Luis Robles, who also collected Goalkeeper of the Year honors. D.C. United netminder Bill Hamid was a finalist for that award, while San Jose Earthquakes midfielder Fatai Alashe and Chicago Fire midfielder Matt Polster were in the running for Rookie of the Year. Will Trapp, who captained the U-23 MNT in CONCACAF Olympic Qualifying, was a finalist for the Comeback Player of the Year award.

U.S. Roster by Position:
GOALKEEPERS (2): Bill Hamid (D.C. United), Luis Robles (New York Red Bulls)
DEFENDERS (7): Kellyn Acosta (FC Dallas), Matt Besler (Sporting Kansas City), Matt Miazga (New York Red Bulls), Eric Miller (Montreal Impact), Tim Parker (Vancouver Whitecaps FC), Marc Pelosi (San Jose Earthquakes), Matt Polster (Chicago Fire)
MIDFIELDERS (8): Fatai Alashe (San Jose Earthquakes), Michael Bradley (Toronto FC), Mix Diskerud (New York City FC), Jermaine Jones (Unattached), Darlington Nagbe (Portland Timbers), Lee Nguyen (New England Revolution), Tony Tchani (Columbus Crew SC), Wil Trapp (Columbus Crew SC)
FORWARDS (6): Jozy Altidore (Toronto FC), Ethan Finlay (Columbus Crew SC), Jerome Kiesewetter (VfB Stuttgart), Jordan Morris (Unattached), Khiry Shelton (New York City FC), Gyasi Zardes (LA Galaxy)

ROSTER NOTES

A total of 13 players enter camp having previously been capped. After Michael Bradley (109 caps/15 goals), Jozy Altidore is the most experienced member of the camp with 89 appearances and 31 goals. Conversely, 10 players will be looking to earn their first cap for the Senior Team.
Following his MNT debut at last year’s January camp, Gyasi Zardes earned 19 appearances in 2015, tying Claudio Reyna in 1994 for most caps by a U.S. player in their debut year with the National Team.
Jordan Morris will hope to build off a highly successful campaign in 2015. Having scored his first international goal in the MNT’s 2-0 win against Mexico on April 15, Morris capped the year by leading Stanford University to the 2015 NCAA College Cup. A finalist for the MAC Hermann Award, Morris will go on a training stint with German Bundesliga side Werder Bremen prior to joining camp.
Jermaine Jones enters camp as the oldest player on the roster at age 34, while two players - defenders Kellyn Acosta and Matt Miazga – are just 20 years old.
17 of the 24 players on the camp roster were born in the 1990s, including four in 1990, one in 1991, seven in 1993, two in 1994 and three in 1995.
Miazga and Darlington Nagbe both made their U.S. MNT debuts on November 13, 2015 in a 2018 FIFA World Cup Qualifying match against St. Vincent & The Grenadines.
A total of 20 of the 23 players on the camp roster represent 14 different Major League Soccer teams, including three from Columbus Crew SC.
Columbus midfielder Ethan Finlay and New York Red Bulls goalkeeper Luis Robles were both named to the 2015 MLS Best XI. Robles was also named MLS Goalkeeper of the Year.
Fatai Alashe, Jerome Kiesewetter, Miazga, Morris, Marc Pelosi, Matt Polster and Wil Trapp were all members of the Under-23 Men’s National Team that recently placed third in CONCACAF Men’s Olympic Qualifying. Kiesewetter and Morris tied for the team lead with six goals each in 2015.
A total of 11 players are age-eligible to compete at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio: Acosta, Alashe, Kiesewetter, Miazga, Eric Miller, Morris, Tim Parker, Pelosi, Polster, Kiry Shelton and Trapp.
Twelve players have ties to the Development Academy: Acosta, Alashe, Bill Hamid, Miazga, Miller, Morris, Nagbe, Parker, Pelosi, Shelton, Trapp and Zardes.
Eight players were also in attendance at last year’s January camp: Matt Besler, Bradley, Mix Diskerud, Jones, Lee Nguyen, Pelosi, Trapp and Zardes.
 
Daily Blind - 35 Million Euros...

Marco Reus - 33 Million Euros....

And so much more, it really gets better.... :wow: :rofl: :rofl:


@Rolaholic18 go find those Swiss bastards while they're spending every Saturday and Sunday morning watching the Premiership (and obviously nothing else), inform them that Switzerland can no longer be a neutral country - they have just sparked a war with objectivity and common sense :lol:
 
The Question: what is attacking football?
Louis van Gaal believes simply having the ball shows ambition but possession, shots on target and even goals aren’t necessarily enough to satiate fans
Manchester United's Wayne Rooney and Chelsea's Thibaut Courtois
Are chances on target and instances where a side test the opposition goalkeeper always the result of attacking football? Photograph: Matthew Ashton – AMA/Getty Images
Jonathan Wilson
Wednesday 6 January 2016 05.00 EST Last modified on Wednesday 6 January 2016 05.03 EST
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After Manchester United’s goalless draw with West Ham in December, Louis van Gaal professed himself baffled by the Old Trafford crowd’s demands for his side to be more attacking. “I don’t understand that they are shouting ‘attack, attack’ because we are the attacking team and not West Ham United,” he said. In doing so, he raised a question that seems fundamental to football and yet is surprisingly hard to answer: what is attacking?

Louis van Gaal: entertaining the media, if not Manchester United’s fans

“We,” Van Gaal went on, “are always more dominating than our opponents. When we have a lot of ball possession, you have a lot of ball possession to create chances and not to play the ball around and don’t score.” So for Van Gaal, having the ball is attacking; he believes goals will come from possession. “My opinion about scoring goals is not only compulsion but also a lot of luck,” he said.

The aspect of luck is clearly important. There are games in which one team plays superbly, have 20 chances and fail to score, maybe because of a striker who is out of sorts, or thwarted by a goalkeeper in inspired form, defenders popping up on the line, the ball hitting the post and bouncing out not in. That happens. Goals alone aren’t a measure of how attacking a side is (although clearly there is a correlation, particularly over longer periods of time).

United against West Ham had 21 chances, but no one – Van Gaal perhaps excepted – could realistically claim they had played great attacking football. Only one of the chances resulted in a shot on target, which at the very least suggests United weren’t attacking efficiently. It’s telling that eight of their shots came from outside the box (and three more right on the edge), and that eight were the result of set plays. Their way of attacking wasn’t creating good chances. The problems have continued since then – just four goals in the following five league games, even if those matches yielded 21 shots on target between them.

But even to talk of a number or quality of chances seems the wrong way round. That’s the result of attacking, not the cause of it. So while we may know what attacking looks like – goals, shots, chances, crosses, etc – is there any way of categorising the approach that may lead to that?

Proactive v reactive

Perhaps most simply, football can be divided into proactive and reactive approaches – playing with the ball, looking to control possession against playing without the ball, looking to play on the counter. Yet even that is more complicated than it may at first appear.

During the 2010 World Cup I wrote a piece in which I pointed out that Germany were a reactive side who counterattacked brilliantly. That prompted unusual fury below the line; one commenter accused me of being a Russian plant. Reactive, it seemed, was perceived as an insult, counterattacking seen as pejorative.

That, surely, has now changed. Jürgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund showed how stirring counterattacking can be, while many came to find the relentless possession football of Spain wearisome. But that’s where the association of proactive/reactive with possession/non-possession starts to fall down. For one thing, Van Gaal’s United had 58% possession against West Ham, yet fans clearly didn’t think that was attacking.

And for another, pressing – the organised hounding of the opponent in possession – is about as far from being reactive as it’s possible to get. You can counterattack by sitting deep and waiting for the ball to come to you, or you can counterattack by chasing the ball high up the pitch. Counterattacking, it turns out, can be reactive or proactive.

Not only that, but Van Gaal’s sides (and this is not only true of United) often manage to be reactive with the ball, their risk-averse probing being as reliant on the opposition making a mistake as José Mourinho at his most possession-averse.

The ball

Shortly before the 2014 World Cup, I was on the panel at a Blizzard Q&A where an audience member insisted that what he wanted from England wasn’t necessarily to win but just to be attacking. I asked him what he meant and he talked about getting more exciting attacking players in the team. Which I suppose is reasonable enough. But the problem is, before those exciting players can do any attacking, they have to have the ball – a lesson Florentino Pérez, for instance, seems never quite to learn.

The issue of how to get the ball comes back to the issue of proactivity and reactivity. If your players are good enough, you can have it and keep it, like a Van Gaal side, and assume that the attritional process of passing will wear an opponent down. You can sit deep, rely on your defenders or your defensive shape being good enough to win possession and then counter, with the advantage that an opponent on the attack is likely to be off-balance and to have left space that can be exploited. Or you can press, go hunting possession, again with the advantage that a quick transition is likely to be more productive than attacking a defence that is set.

Most commonly, of course, teams do all three, but in varying proportions. In the Premier League this year, it’s notable how much more common the latter two are than the former, something that probably in part goes towards explaining why home advantage is apparently so much less significant than it was. Counterattacking has become more common than attacking – although even there is a complication in that a recognition of the value of counterattacking means that the counter-counter – of which gegenpressing is the most proactive and celebrated example – has also grown in popularity with the result that the number of goals scored on the counterattack as actually fallen over the past decade.

Risk

Manchester United attempted 81 crosses during a Premier League match against Fulham in February 2014 but still failed to win the game.

You can play breathtakingly exciting football with 40% of the ball and desperately dull football with 60%. You can be boring with 20 chances and thrilling with five. More than outcomes, perhaps, what is important is mood. This is Sjaak Swart’s point. “I never gave the ball back to my defence, never!” the Ajax winger of the 70s told David Winner in Brilliant Orange, complaining about how Ajax’s wingers in the 1990s, Marc Overmars and Finidi George, would check back if faced with two opponents. “It’s unbelievable! But that was the system with Van Gaal. Many games you are sleeping! On television, they say: ‘Ajax 70% ball possession.’ So what? It’s not football. The creativity is gone.”

He wanted the wingers to take on the defenders, to risk losing the ball. United fans now who speak of the classic United style – and clubs’ styles are always hard to pin down – seem to mean a game based on width and getting crosses into the box. But crosses also risk losing the ball. The joy of Klopp’s Dortmund at its best is how quickly the team got the ball forward, even though that risked losing possession.

Yet take each of those three points in turn and it’s evident that none in itself is a panacea. Dribble too much and you end up with a mannered, individualistic game not unlike football in the 1860s and 1870s before the Scots invented passing. Cross too much and you end up like David Moyes’s United against Fulham in February 2014, attempting 81 crosses without anything to show for it. Get it forward too quickly too often and you end up with the brainless long-ball nonsense that has blighted English football for so long; there’s a backlash in Argentina, for instance, against Marcelo Bielsa partly because so many teams in the Primera now play too quickly and too directly, conforming to Bielsa’s vertical tenets without the tactical organisation to make it effective.

Balance, clearly, is part of it, but there must also be intelligence: endlessly repeating the same trick may have attacking intent, but the effect is tedium. There must be some kind of risk, but equally there needs to be a platform to support the risk-takers. Short passes can be attacking, but so can long. Playing with the ball can be attacking, but so can playing without. Proactive football can be attacking, but so can reactive. Dribbling can be attacking, but so can an approach based almost entirely on passing.

Attacking is, like so much in football, nebulous, and is largely dependent on context. In the end, attacking becomes like pornography in Justice Potter Stewart’s famous description: it’s hard to define, but you know it when you see it.
 
I stopped at Hazard.
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Reus's tag is by far the most egregious :lol: :x

Managers in last 20 years:

Real Madrid: 21
Chelsea: 16
Barcelona: 13
Bayern: 12
Liverpool: 8
Man Utd: 3
Arsenal: 1
 
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I know long term job security is a thing managers in most places have to worry about but damn 21 in 20 years 
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