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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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Wasn't feeling that attempt by Mahrez man. But dude can do whatever he wants :lol

But really that attempt was terrible.
 
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Realistically, solid match....

Pulis sets up his teams very defensively...getting a draw out there is not a bad result.
 
eiddyfouw said:
Time after time Blunderland claw their way out of relegation...
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damn, Yedlin picked up the assist on that goal 
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Do Arsenal have fewer leaders than their title rivals and does it matter?

Following Sunday's hugely disappointing 3-2 defeat to Manchester United at Old Trafford, it didn't take long before some familiar criticisms of Arsene Wenger's Arsenal emerged. The problem, it seems, was a lack of leadership. "Arsenal's major failure in recent years is not investing in leaders," Rio Ferdinand said. "People that grasp the moment, that set the right tone."

Former Arsenal midfielder Ray Parlour agreed. "The big players didn't turn up," he said. "The most important thing is the leaders. When the going gets tough, you need people like that -- when I played we had Tony Adams. Guys like that demand more from you when you're up against it."

Few Arsenal fans would argue that the current side has more leaders than during the Adams era when the entire defence was packed with experienced, dependable professionals. Nevertheless, football's insistence on eternally looking to the past to find "leaders" and "characters," before comparing the current crop unfavourably, is somewhat tiresome.

"Football today lacks the personalities of 20 or 30 years ago," the Arsenal manager once wrote. "It is sometimes said that if the old players were to come back, they would show up the limitations of the men of today. But there is no coming back. I know how boldly and confidently the old-timers speak of their prowess, and how they are inclined to belittle modern day players."

It might surprise you, however, to learn that "the Arsenal manager" is not Arsene Wenger writing in 2016 but legendary boss Herbert Chapman in 1934. He penned that 80 years ago, but those comments could apply perfectly today. Every generation thinks there were more personalities and more leaders back in the day.

Adams was the archetypal captain, a centre-back you eternally picture pointing a teammate into position, but it's doubtful whether Arsenal's 2003-04 side were packed with leaders. The man who succeeded Adams as captain was French midfielder Patrick Vieira, a tremendous footballer who led by example, but not a traditional leader.

Vieira admits being "unsure" when Wenger asked him to take the armband after Adams' retirement. In Amy Lawrence's book about Arsenal's Invincibles season of 2003-04, it's interesting to read Jens Lehmann on Vieira. "Patrick was somebody who you needed to kick up the bum sometimes, because he was very laid-back and he knew, 'ooh, I'm the greatest' -- being great doesn't always help."

Arsenal went unbeaten that season, of course, despite having a captain in this mould. The best players of that time -- Thierry Henry, Sol Campbell, Robert Pires, Ashley Cole, Gilberto Silva -- were surely not natural leaders; perhaps Lehmann was the closest thing. In Lawrence's book, the Arsenal players are keen to stress that they preached "shared leadership" but isn't this simply a favourable spin upon the fact Arsenal didn't have a natural leader like Adams back then, either? It's a positive concept because Arsenal won the title.

More importantly, though, the Arsenal of 2016 are not competing with the Arsenal of 1998 or 2004: they're competing with the Leicester and Tottenham sides of 2016. Looking through those teams, it's difficult to find leaders there either.

Who are Leicester's leaders? Robert Huth, perhaps? He's no more of a leader than Per Mertesacker. His centre-back colleague Wes Morgan is the club captain but few would have described him as an inspirational leader last season when he was constantly making ludicrous errors: only now, largely thanks to the brilliance of Leicester's attacking players, would Morgan be considered a good leader. Kasper Schmeichel is a reasonably vocal goalkeeper but nothing more. They arguably lost their clearest leader, Esteban Cambiasso, last summer.

Similarly, Tottenham don't have particularly dominant personalities: this is a young, hard-working, disciplined and somewhat shy group of footballers following their manager's instructions flawlessly. Again, you look to the goalkeeper and the centre-backs for signs of leadership: Hugo Lloris, Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld are excellent players enjoying fine seasons but they don't boast leadership qualities to embarrass Arsenal's equivalents.

If the likes of Eric Dier, Dele Alli and Harry Kane are now considered leaders, then surely the concept of leadership is essentially decided in retrospect based upon the overall success of a side. It's a self-fulfilling concept: Any successful side has leaders. Any bad teams clearly have none.

English football is obsessed with these old-school attributes: leadership, "bottle," mental strength. Those are unquestionably valuable attributes, but they are also easy, often-used criticisms -- the default explanation when technical, tactical or physical qualities are actually lacking. In truth, it's difficult to find any current Premier League side that have a particularly impressive number of natural leaders. Maybe that's why the standard is currently poor and why the league is wide-open. Whatever the truth, it's not an area in which Arsenal are demonstrably weaker than their title rivals.

Because everyone jumps upon Arsenal's traditional weaknesses quickly, Wenger's side often escape criticism for not performing in their traditional areas of strength. They're a lesson in confirmation bias.

The most notable thing about their performance at Old Trafford was the lack of a deep-lying playmaker who could dictate the play from central midfield, push Arsenal forward and help the Gunners to apply concerted pressure on the Manchester United backline. Wenger prides himself upon his side's slick midfield passing but while Arsenal had 61 percent of possession in the game, their most frequent passing combinations involved the defenders keeping the ball for long periods.

You can say that's about a lack of leadership if you like. Alternatively you can simply say it's about Francis Coquelin being a pure holding midfielder rather than a playmaker, or about Aaron Ramsey wanting to storm forward rather than dictate play from deep. This, however, remains a relatively rare problem for Arsenal: their passing is usually very good.

Indeed, if the Gunners fail to win the title, and either Leicester or Tottenham triumph, it will be the organisation of those sides -- particularly without the ball -- that should be highlighted as the major difference. In terms of on-field leadership, there's little difference between them and Arsenal.

Michael Cox is the editor of Zonal Marking and a contributor to ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @Zonal_Marking.
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I rather not bring politics into things. But racism is still obviously an issue. When it comes to the US, we don't really hear about it, especially in the MLS. I don't there have ever been any issues in the MLS. I'm not sure about other leagues but I'm sure there are teams that travel to areas that aren't too friendly, whether it be at the college level or lower.

Donald Trump, David Duke, and the Soccer Fields of Louisiana
BY CLINT SMITH


Growing up in New Orleans, I was always the only black kid, or one of two, on the school soccer team. While I was always conscious of this status, what took precedent was my unfettered love of the game. I loved the way that my feet sunk into the thick soil of our high-school field; how the low-cut grass, with its endless cascade of small, emerald blades, was a place where I felt more like myself than anywhere else; how celebrating with your team after a goal was an unparalleled sort of ecstasy.

I don’t get a chance to play as often as I’d like anymore. What was once dancing gracefully around defenders has become tripping over a pair of feet that fail to follow directions as they once did. But I will always remember the moments when the game made me feel most at ease, just as I will always remember the moments in which it was clear that the soccer field could not shield me from what existed beyond it.

In 1991, when I was three years old and still a few years from officially setting foot on a field, David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, rose to national prominence during an infamous runoff to become the governor of my home state. Duke was known for his open hatred of many groups, including African-Americans. He was quoted as having said, “White people don’t need a law against rape, but if you fill this room up with your normal black bucks, you would, because ******* are basically primitive animals.” Duke lost the election, but won fifty-five per cent of the white vote.

Last week, David Duke came out in support of Donald Trump’s candidacy, stating, “Voting against Donald Trump, at this point, is really treason to your heritage.” On Sunday, when asked if he would condemn Duke and the Klan, Trump failed to give an unequivocal “yes,” instead suggesting that he did not know who Duke was and that he had to do research on the organization. The next day, Trump said that he had misheard the question and had already “disavowed” Duke, but his response on Sunday spoke for itself. It was the sort of silence I had known throughout my life.

When I was a sophomore at Benjamin Franklin, a magnet high school on the campus of the University of New Orleans, we had an early-stage play-off game against Dutchtown High School, of Geismar, Louisiana. Geismar is a predominantly white town in southeast Louisiana, with about seven thousand people and a large petrochemical plant. The town is about twenty miles south of Louisiana State University, where, in 1970, a young David Duke formed a student group called the White Youth Alliance, a campus affiliate of the National Socialist White People’s Party.

It was standard for me to be not just the only black person on my team but the only one on the field. Such was the case as we lined up to begin that game. We stood in our burnt-orange jerseys, theirs a deep purple, our uniforms matching the color of the early-evening horizon, as kick-off began.

We won the game comfortably, moving on to a season that eventually culminated in winning the state championship. It was one of my better performances, the kind of game where you feel yourself to be indomitable. I had the sense that I could score every time I touched the ball.

After the game, my teammates and I sauntered over to the sidelines, where our parents and classmates were waiting. Some of them looked deeply unsettled. We didn’t spend much time celebrating the victory; instead, we were rushed back to the parking lot and told that we should leave quickly. No one wanted to stay there longer than was absolutely necessary.

Apparently, after I made a run that beat several defenders before crossing the ball to a teammate for an assist on a goal, someone in Dutchtown’s section of the stands shouted, “Take that ****** out.”

I did not hear it from the field, but the slur came from directly behind my parents, who, along with many others, quickly turned to see who had made the remark. There was a commotion, and my father began moving in the direction the comment came from, wanting to demonstrate that he had heard what had been said and was unwilling to let it go unacknowledged. This was not new to him. He had told me stories about being a student at the University of Florida and, on more than one occasion, being called “******” by drunken frat boys as he and his friends walked across the quad. “They only talked like that when they could hide behind a crowd,” he said.

After the game, no one from Dutchtown came and said anything to us. No one apologized to my parents. No one apologized to me. I’m not sure that I expected them to. Perhaps they felt it wasn’t their responsibility to say anything about something that they didn’t say themselves. Perhaps they thought that, since it did not come directly from their mouths, they did not need to disavow the remarks.

After being harangued for his failure to quickly and explicitly disavow David Duke, Trump blamed his response on “a very bad earpiece.” The idea was that he had not fully heard Duke’s name.

Trump, of course, has said that he wants “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” He has said, of Mexican immigrants, “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.”

When I hear Trump make these remarks, I find myself less concerned with him than with the crowds that explode in jubilance at his events—and with the poll numbers that rise with each offensive comment. How many of those in the crowd would ever say these things themselves? How many of those people, lost in the sea of faces, do not believe themselves to be full participants in bigotry? I wonder how many of those responding to these polls are people I have worked with, gone to school with, or played soccer with.

When I ask my mother about that game, years later, she remembers, more than anything, how quickly we left, fearing that the person who wanted me to be taken out could still be somewhere in the stands or in the parking lot. Being black in Louisiana meant that you weren’t going to wait to find out.

When I think back on that game, I do not remember the person who said, “Take that ****** out.” I remember all of the people who might have let it happen and then said it wasn’t their fault.
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we hitting the politics talk real quick?

I got you. Yo @HEGGSY how's HEGGSy as a city? is it affordable? Cuz if Trump wins Ima start looking into real estate and a job. I can teach spanish at a secondary school
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. Got no credentials in that department though
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