Was re watching the Chelsea highlights on you tube and loving the fancy football from Pelle, Mane and Tadic ( especially when he leaves Ivanovic on he floor..). Was thinking that it is one of the best EPL performances i have seen... What would be your best game....?
Southampton 3 Manchester City 1 I just looked this game up to check the stats. Amazingly Fox and Hooiveld started. Yoshida as the other centre back. No wonder the win felt so good. Remarkable stat I just noticed from the game is that Hooiveld won 14 aerial duels.
I still like the very first game back, the 3-2 loss at Man City. The 8-0 was amazing but almost a bit of a joke scoreline, and I don't care about Sunderland at all. Winning at Old Trafford was sublime and yep, the Chelsea game.
I watched the highlights of the Chelsea game again yesterday as well....can't imagine why. Have to think about this one....obviously great to humiliate Chelsea and Mourinho, but we've had some good games with victories over most of the big clubs. Had a super run under some Argentinian...what was his name?
I like a lot of the games already mentioned and would add the 3-2 defeat at home to United first season up for the incredible atmosphere, despite the score at the end. I'd also include the Arsenal 2-0 win last season and the two 4-0 wins against the Toon.
That stat doesn't surprise me at all. He was utterly reliable for a long time. I loved seeing him on the team sheet, he was so capable. Unfortunately Hoover was a classic case of fans destroying a player. He had a couple of bad games and the crowd (oh how I love football crowds sometimes) got on his back and attacked him the way they currently attack Matty and Maya. He didn't take it well and it became a vicious circle where he tried harder and harder not to mess up and so messed up more. Now he's become a bogeyman joke figure you tell your kids about when they need to be scared by tales of an awful defender. It's tragic to see it happening. It's almost as if football crowds want deliberately to destroy players. It could have happened to Pelle but, fortunately, he came up against our away fans at Milwall, who just kept cheering him and supporting him throughout a fraught game for him. He finally scored and his confidence flowered. How different it could have been if it had been a home crowd on his back all game. Vin
As for the best game, the famous 8-0. A real carnival atmosphere where we didn't take a break. Remember Ron urging the team forward at 6-0? He didn't want to settle for a mere six goal victory. I'd had a bet on 6-0 (Onionman Jr had predicted it) and even I didn't want us to stop. Yes, Sunderland were dire but we were equally excellent. Vin
I think I've watched the recent Chelsea match about 4-5 times now. Not the highlights, the whole match.! Highlights are hardly ever enough for me unless there is nothing else. I've started out watching the match for various reasons, like how we're playing without the ball, or what we do to regain possession - a critical eye. But by the time we start to take the game to Chelsea I'm just in it for the entertainment. It just takes over. And I pause matches when I go to make a cup of tea.! I'll re-watch almost any match if it has something of interest about it. ManU at OT last season, Arsenal away in the League Cup, again last season. Arsenal at home. QPR at home and away. I have loads of matches to choose from, so I tend to think of one or two aspects I want to concentrate on and watch the match for that reason. Bit nerdy isn't it. You do learn a lot though.
Not 100% sure about the Home fans destroying a player, but I completely agree that the Away fans are something else. Incredibly supportive.
I think that this probably deserves a thread of its own (if it hasn't already been done,several times). Saints' away fans (to be fair, probably all away fans) sing more songs and are far more positive about the team, before, during, and after the match. Everyone (OK, a huge generalisation) is there because we support the team and want them to do well. We wear mid-week drubbings (thankfully very rare, nowadays) as a badge of honour, and we go to enjoy ourselves, no matter what. This amount of good feeling transfers itself to the team, and the "It's us against the world" mentality drives the fans and the players to out-perform the home team/home fans. At Liverpool, the home crowd was unbelievably quiet, apart from the Saints contingent, even if we sang songs about Pompey, just to fill in the embarrassing silences. As another example, during the League Cup match on Wednesday, the Aston Villa fans were all singing, despite their team's performance, and were still laughing afterwards.
