Rival Watch™ 2013/2014

i thought mourinho might have won the battles but he lost the wars he's started.

Arsenal and wenger serious made his failure comments look silly. wenger just put him in his place with his comments never mind beating us.

City beat them in the cup, which mourinho might not care about honestly, but i think the quiet way pellegrini has gone about it and the just constant now sniping by mourinho is starting to look just weak and petty. its now counter productive but mourinho never stops.
everyone knows chelsea got a very easy draw along with utd compared to the other two so nobody with any rationality is listening to this stuff denigrating barca.

anyone watching how mourinho thought to play barca with pepe etc knows the score in other words.

 

The argument goes that be being a dick he takes the pressure off his team by focusing attention on himself but the pointless fights he's now starting just mean more media attention overall rather than simply deflecting the existing attention away from his players

 

I don't really buy it.

taking pressure off... i mean his team is his team this stuff didn't work for madrid and chelsea are europa champions and CL before that... I think he is attracting more attention that he's diverting and he's the guy who's bigging up hazard too.

I doubt he needed pressure taking off when he went for wenger did he?

in the end he's out of the cup so now its easy run in CL to QF and see who he gets and a league tilt and the pressure will come on no matter what he does.

the bady pony crap might wash with the press as an excuse if he fails but its RA that matters #sackwinningmanagers

 

The Messi Villa Pedro front line was the best for me. Had it all. Lightning Pace form Pedro. Class and top finishing instinct by Villa and Messi (nothing to say #GENIUS)

Their performance in the 10/11 CL final had it all!!

 

This was the Barca team the night 7 years ago when they suffered their only ever defeat at home to an English club in the CL and the 2nd time the same English club had won there in European competition.

Barcelona: Valdes, Belletti, Marquez, Puyol, Zambrotta, Xavi (Giuly 65), Motta (Iniesta 54), Deco, Messi, Saviola (Gudjohnsen 82), Ronaldinho.
Subs Not Used: Jorquera, Van Bronckhorst, Thuram, Oleguer

Wonder which English club it might be.

 

yeah thats the one really pity villa fell out with messi and broke his leg

 

yeah tey did improve a bit after that night.

saviola and gudjohnsen..

decowas in no 10 role messi wide, but it had a lot of talent.

 

Here's the bbc match report, check out the link to 606, there's some bitter posts on that particular thread

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/europe/6371395.stm

 

The Arsenal fans were decent and gave credit back then though (at that point it was less than 2 years since they won a trophy)

 

No way, Ronaldinho was the best in the world at the time and Henry was the best striker in the world at the time. You had to be on your toes at all times with all three players. I do rate Pedro very very highly but he isn't better than anyone in REH, Messi is better than all three though.

I just wished the Messi-Ibra-Henry line up worked

But yeah, REH is the best from three I've ever seen.

 

Henry was never the best at anything whilst at Barcelona.

 

This!

 

Don't agree. As pointed out Henry was past his peak when at Barca and Messi of 10/11 >>>> Ronaldhino of that period.

It's also about how the 3 complement each other. You can have yours, i'm sticking with MVP.

 

Man City: Hart, Zabaleta, Kompany, Demichelis, Clichy, Navas, Toure, Fernandinho, Kolarov, Silva, Negredo.

Barcelona: Valdes, Alves, Pique, Mascherano, J Alba, Sergio, Xavi, Fabregas, Alexis, Messi, Iniesta.

 

http://www1.skysports.com/football/...-manchester-united-can-finish-in-the-top-four

 

So...

tottenham have travelled to the ukraine.

Emmanuel Adebayor, Aaron Lennon, Kyle Walker, Mousa Dembele, Younes Kaboul and Hugo Lloris are all left out

big swing.... the others have gone.

Putting rivalry aside, lets all hope everyone is safe, comes back safe and nothing happens. especially if fellow fans are travelling (you'd be mad to i think but if its paid)

they then play norwich away who can't defend but are desperate for points.

.... an interesting time.

 

this, doesn't matter who you support, we should all hope everyone is safe and comes back ok, where ever they go.

who do spurs have as goalies now days? remember a time when they was strong in that dept, they still are?

 

nothing is impossible but.....

if utd win all 12 games they can achieve a miserly 36 points... add that to the 42 they have and 78 is possible.. so yes. 4th is possible if we are targeting 76.

so lets give utd the benefit of the hallucination mata is having.

give utd 73 points. that is 10-1-1 record

LFC are on 53 with 24 positive GD over utd. so we only need 20 more points from 12 games.... that is 6-2-4 record in 12 games...

juan mata expects LFC to do worse than 6-2-4

our fixtures

Swansea
Southampton
Sunderland
Man United
Cardiff
Tottenham
West Ham
Manchester City
Norwich
Chelsea
Crystal Palace
Newcastle

so lets again play the deluded game.... utd beat us at old toilet. fine ok... city beat us, chelsea beat us and tottenam beat us... thats 4 losses. the west ham shut up shop for a 0-0... then say southampton hammer us away. we could win the swansea, sunderland, cardiff, norwich and palace games and fail to get to the CL.

so we need to lose 3 games at home to top 4 rivals and one to southampton before we even mention utd.

 

#reality

 

You could have stopped there

Also, if we drop as drastically as you highlight they still need to overcome Everton and Spurs too.