8 members of a football forum who can be relied upon to know what they are actually talking about. Not bad. Not bad at all.
He would do much better in Spain, he would have that bit more space to start a run and the refs are more inclined to give free kicks or penalties
What a player.. As the match goes on you can see Chelsea are scared of Pelle, Mane and Tadic. Particularly late in the game. Chelsea were torn to shreds and very lucky to not lose by 5 or 6 imo
I also like Mane's temperament. He wasn't given a penalty and got booked when fouled, but he just got up, pulled a wry smile and got on with it. Didn't even complain when asked about it afterwards. Knows there is no point in moaning and there will be other chances. We don't need him sent off for protesting, so just the right attitude when you are as good as him. He will be valuable not just for being a chance creating and taking player, but also for attracting defenders to him, leaving the game open for others. Also for those ManU fans praising Van Gaal for spotting him as a future player...the skill is selecting from the menu...anyone can fancy something already on someone else's plate!!
He is constantly moving, constantly on the half turn (which he has down to a tee). He is so slippery, it actually must be a nightmare to play against him. If you switch off for even a second he is so quick he will be gone. Fascinated to see what he can do this season. Whilst we are waxing lyrical about players - Dusan Tadic is bloody brilliant
Good to see Tadic returning to the player he was when he arrived. A niggling injury stopped him towards the end of last season.
In the first half against Chelsea he did a sideways pass to Davis for him to blaze wide. It was very similar to the one for Pelle against ManU at OT last season. He was surrounded by 4 or 5 Chelsea players and popped a perfectly weighted ball right for Davis to run onto. Tbh, I don't know how he even saw Davis, let alone judge the pass to him. But that's Dusan - the most heads up player I've seen for a long, long time.
Having just watched the compilation above, it still angers me that at least one pundit claimed that the ref didn't give the penalty owing to Mane "going down too theatrically ". His left foot was trodden on, and his right knee came into, or was about to come into contact with Ramires' leg. Of course he is going to bring his leg back and up to lessen the impact, but in all reality, if refs are deliberately ignoring fouls, because a player has gone down "theatrically", they are the ones that are cheating, not the players.
I said it and that was my point, it was not given despite being a foul, this is wrong, a foul is a foul, no matter what happens afterwards. Another thing that has annoyed me recently was the commentator (I've heard it twice in the last two games), saying Mane was running too fast resulting in the opposition player "accidentally" kicking him! Nonsense, if he was kicked it was interfering with play and should still be a given as a foul. In my opinion.
I presume the ref didn't see the stamp on Mane and therefore only saw him arcing like a salmon....I don't think his style of falling affected the ref as such, more like that was all the ref saw. However, having decided that Sadio dived, he was influenced to assume Mane was faking again when he was subsequently fouled. Mane will suffer from this, but hopefully a lot of decisions will be more clear cut to refs. And remember that the same ref didn't fall for the Chelsea player's dive.....if he'd given that and we dropped points, we'd all be spitting feathers.
http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2896/premier-league/2015/10/11/16208322/- I missed this criticism by Koeman of Mourinho (originally reported in the Sunday Mirror). I agree about Mourinho's team becoming defensive when they score....though I think they became scared of us, but perhaps they would have dealt better with us if they were more attacking. On the other hand, Chelsea have won more than Arsenal, so perhaps it can also work the other way. I guess it comes down to the fact that Koeman would rather model us on Arsenal than Chelsea.
This has been flagged up in half a dozen or more articles, all of them with different takes on what Koeman is supposed to have said. Koeman and Mourinho are actually buddies, to a certain extent, after working together for some time under Van Gaal, so I can't see Koeman being heavily critical of Jose. I suspect it was just a passing comment that Chelsea defended their lead against us, rather than pressing for a second, that the journos leapt all over and turned into a story. I wouldn't mind betting Koeman didn't actually mention Arsenal in the same sentence, but it got glued together with the other stuff. I can imagine a sorry mate phone call coming along at some point.
Exactly, as much Jose does these rants to protect his own house. It would be nice if him to acknowledge the performance of the opponent from time to time. I saw that Sir Alex leadership doc last night and Mourinho commented that Sir Alex congratulated all the Porto players in the dressing room after they infamously knocked United out. Jose said that would never happen in Portugal. I think he meant that Jose would never do that.
Yes, I saw it too. The significant thing was that Ferguson would never, ever publicly acknowledge, say in an immediate post match interview, that a better team had won on the day. He might acknowledge a smaller team doing well against his, but never a direct rival, in public. I think that was part of the siege mentality he built up. One can't say it didn't work.
Definitely after. Yeah, I thought it hurt too, and afterwards Tadic seemed to be favouring his other side slightly. Mind you, it didn't stop him sprinting to the left of Mane during the 3rd goal. He played his part well in that, occupying defenders.
Sorry, but I actually agree with the pundit whoever it was. Diving after contact is just as much cheating as diving before and its not unreasonable for a referee to think that the whole thing was a put-on. All this, he felt a touch so was entitled to go down stuff, is just nonsense. If you are tripped you fall naturally....there was actually a study done on it by the boffins at Loughborough University showing what a natural fall looked like. Where the referees often get it wrong is in not giving a foul when the player tries (and succeeds) to stay on his feet despite being tripped. I think its because these often get missed that players exaggerate the contact and end up with the 'dives'.
