Oh yeh I forgot... cos Rodgers was playing entertaining attacking football last season to TRY to lose! My bad. Ofcourse you try to win, who said you dont??? You're not buying the Mourhino way of grinding out success mate, you've fallen for the Sam Allardyce Bolton book of winning by any means necessary. The myth reinforced by braindead Skysports pundits and now bought by the masses. Why cant you do both - play entertaining football and win? You can do both. Bringing Arsenal into this is pure misdirection. Arsenal weren't perenial failures bcos they played entertaining attacking football, they were failures bcos they werent good enough. Prior to 2005 they were just as entertaining AND successful in their previous 7 years bcos they WERE good enough. Liverpool didnt miss out on the title last season bcos of their free-flowing entertaining football fgs, they missed out bcos their defence wasnt good enough. Entertaining, attacking football doesnt mean you dont defend. Nor does a good defence mean you stick 10 behind the ball and grind out wins either. My point is that at the end of the day you choose how you want to try and win. You can play dull negative football and be just as unsuccessful or successful as a team that plays entertaining attacking football. The win isnt decided by one or the other but by the quality of the way you demonstrate the style you've chosen. And regardless of what you choose, you will have periods without success and therefore all things being equal, surely watching entertaining football atleast is better. That I believe is what IBWT was getting at and it makes sense.
Long with dedicated way to miss the point Some clubs serm to think 4th is success You can talk around it all you want but treble you said quality or being good enough regardless of style and I bet did not say that he wants entertainment
The best teams don't play the same way in every game across the season. The best managers will have an underlying style/tactic but will make subtle tweaks depending on the opposition and situation. Going back to Chelsea - do people honestly believe that they are boring this season? They are simply basing that opinion on their performance in a few big games in which they didn't lose. Watch them against the rest of the league and you'll see that they are anything but boring. And I resent that having a solid defence with a compact and dominant midfield in front of them is considered boring football. Defending is as much as part of the game as attacking is, and it's a shame that defenders don't get the credit they deserve. Players like Maldini, Nesta, Staam etc were world class in their positions and I would argue that someone like Maldini was better in his position than say Messi is as a striker. At the end of the day - it's all down to preference and what people enjoy. Some people enjoy fast, attacking football and would happily compromise defensive structure for it. Others may enjoy tactical battles and controlling midfields and accept 1-0, 2-0 wins.
I think what's being missed is that to "enjoy fast, attacking football" you don't have to "compromise defensive structure for it". The way you're implying that "a solid defence with a compact and dominant midfield" is the only way of being strong defensively, is what's most frustrating. Once you hold that stance, ofcourse playing attacking entertaining football equates to losing. But the best teams including the Liverpool of 80's, the Milan side of the late 80's and early 90's, the Arsenals of the late 90's and early 00's as well as the United sides of the same era, and more modern Barcelona sides have all been as much about defence as they have about the great attacking football they have been known for.
Because football fans work on emotion, its not about rational analysis and stats most of the time. Most fans are always optimistic that next week will be different and the players that they reckon are under performing will suddenly turn on the style and start picking up wins. When I went to watch Liverpool vs Real Madrid was I thinking "These guys have the 2nd best player in the world, have won 7 consecutive games & are the European champions" OR was I thinking "if we play to our best we can have these today"... It was the latter, even there was no real logic behind it.
Not quite right, they were playing attacking football against the lesser teams and defensive against the top teams for the first half of the season. Ever since Spurs beat them 5-3 they have played the same against every team, sit back and see if they can nick a goal on the break, then pull off a creative player and chuck on an extra defender or holding mid to shut the game out.
Not at all - I have said numerous times that there is no reason why we can't have both. But every great team builds from the back. This is where LFC is lacking and Rodgers has shown no evidence throughout his career that he understands the importance of a defence or how to improve one.
That's nads. In the 3 games directly after the Spurs defeat they scored 10 goals without reply, including a 0-5 win at Swansea. People are basing their opinion on how they've tightened up in the run in, ensuring they got over the line. Only City have scored more goals than them, and no-one has conceded fewer, that's just great team play and organisation.
The boring Chelsea tag is getting......boring. Seriously though they've been very good and just because they tightened up at the end of the season to ensure they win the league people want to get at them. They've been easily the best team in the league and deserve the title.
I think context is always important. Have Chelsea had Costa up top? Not so much so it has affected them so they have addressed it another way We cannot deny that they are extremely negative again top 4 but s couple of scraped wins v lower teams shoes they've dropped in form which is not the same thing
Exactly! There is nothing wrong with having a solid defence but a team shouldn't be looking to park the bus to achieve it either.
Jose works on the principle that if he beats all of the lesser teams and doesn't lose to his direct competitiors then he's likely to win the league. Going gung ho against your peers is crazy, they're 6 point games, avoid defeat and nothing is lost. Keep it tight and nick a winner, even better. Pragmatic and extremely sensible.
A few years ago I'd have agreed with you. However, if the last two or three seasons have told us anything about the PL its that scoring goals will get you up the table. As you say most days (or even hours ), the PL is poor defensively. Why not just get a couple of players that know where the goal is and claim the table immediately? I'm convinced that if we'd had someone to put the ball in the net we'd have pissed the top four this season, we're not a million miles away now and our top scorer has seven goals
They looked good (in terms of a Mourinho team) at the start of the season but once the media and bookies were convinced Chelsea had already won the league (bookies were paying out in November FFS) they seemed to go into second gear and they're yet to step it back up. As a result, they have been boring.
