And that's the end of that. Job done. Boring first half and a more interesting second one. Created a few chances and did enough to nick it. Carroll's introduction seemed to give us enough of a boost to carry us over the edge, interestingly. Not what I expected when I saw his number go up, I must admit. Very energetic performance from him. It looks like we still need a point from the Monaco game to guarantee top spot, which is a bit annoying. Can't see us fielding our first XI for that one, even so.
Away win Cleansheet Qualified from group All good on the face of it though it wasn't a great performance. Still think we should have rested more players too. Ah well, bring on Chelsea.
I couldn’t agree more, from my own experience. Pochettino’s choice of XI today and versus Arsenal in the Capital One Cup could be summed up as : "Rivalry! I SPIT on your rivalry!" Having said that: I only saw the second half, as I was on round one of stuffing myself for Thanksgiving, but that was the first good half I’ve seen us play in the Europa. Too much nouveau AVB for about the first ten minutes, but then we started shooting and crossing first and asking questions later, which was much better. Our passing looked sharp overall. The defending was solid. Vertonghen was particularly good. Quality flick on from Son, who is a goal-producing machine: well over 1 (goal + assist)/90 minutes.Incidentally, we’ve now scored two more set piece goals in the PL than any other team, so the short corners are a bit hard to bear. Carroll is good getting the ball from deep to the box or thereabouts. Clinton looked very lively. So even though I would have kept all Chelsea starters at home, at least we did qualify, and even looked pretty decent doing so. Also, maybe more to the point, I got to watch a decent half of football in the midst of my eating orgy. In any case, it’s so nice Americans commemorate a time when their white ancestors rewarded the Indians for kindly inviting their starving selves to a lavish feast by murdering almost all of them and taking everything they had. It just doesn’t get much more warm and cuddly than that. It would be more in the spirit of the occasion if the guests shot the hosts at the end of every Thanksgiving dinner.
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We've got so ma ny options in that position though it's ridiculous : son, lamela, onamah, njie, townsend. We don't need them all, and it must be townsend who's been identified for the chop. Haaaaaaaasssssssssooooooo.
In other news this evening, our very own prodigal son Vladimir scored his first goal for Napoli to maintain their 100% record in the EL. They're scoring for fun in Serie A and Europe this year. Wouldn't want to meet them in the next stage.
Maybe not the very next stage but a bit later on I must say the prospect of any team containing Cheery Cheese is hard to fear. I'd see that as having a one-goal advantage at least over two legs.
Except he's the type of player that will every so often will do something extraordinary, and that would of course be against us. He never lacked confidence
...which I doubt will happen as they've barely played him this year (for obvious reasons, most of which can be found on this forum and YouTube). He only played last night because they were already comfortably through.
Our occasionally snowdrift-encumbered former player was much better at RB than Trippier has been so far.
So! Our manager is finally taking this tournament seriously.He knows we aren't quite championship material yet,but getting close.So let's win a cup.......and the league next season........(?).
Must say I was surprised at the line up, thought a few more would've at least started from the bench but Qarabag showed they were no mugs (again) and so you could say it was a necessary problem by having to play near enough a full strength side despite Chelsea being next in a few days. No one really shone in my opinion, it was a performance that didn't scream out in terms of enthusiasm and energy bar the last 25 mins or so but it was enough to get the job done, plus keeping a clean sheet is always a good booster for the defence. Shows why I play Football Manager and Poch IS a Football Manager though, when he brought Carroll on for Mason, I thought what a pointless sub to make, not only because I thought Carroll wouldn't add much difference to what Mason could do but also because I'd have rather taken off a key player for Sunday - Dier/ Eriksen/ Son - and let Mason continue to get more game time. Yet it turned out to be key, Tommy really added a much needed spark and bite to the performance, he made us raise the game and chase that goal, he's probably the bottom of the pecking order in terms of CM selection yet he done his chances no harm last night, fair play to him and Poch. N'Jie looked lively when he came on too and done well to win the freekick in that dangerous position on the edge of the box, Eriksen surprisingly didn't capitalise on that though. Looks like we had no injuries from the game which is good, here's just hoping that the players won't be too jaded from the flights and be fully ready for Sunday to welcome Moureen and the rent boys.
To be honest, Carroll should be ahead of Mason in the CM pecking order anyway - Mason has always felt like a square peg playing central midfield, so we should've lined up last night with Alli in the pivot and Mason in the attacking three. Minor quibble, but still...
When we couldn’t score goals early this season, Mason’s ability to get the ball up the pitch quickly and score himself were invaluable. Now that we are scoring, those abilities aren’t as crucial, and his tendency to give the ball away is more critical. But there is always a balance to be maintained: I wasn’t happy with the way we squandered our few good chances to break, for the most part. That’s something Mason should help with, even if he didn’t happen to help on those occasions.
I’m glad somebody is happy we started such a strong team against Qarabag. I do get the principle of going all out to win everything, and I like it in theory. The problem is I do my little probability guesstimations, and I think: that was a hell of a lot of work to have on the face of it one chance in 32 of winning the Europa. We just added 8 games to our season, and who knows how much injury and fatigue, and for what? One chance in 32 at winning the Europa, when we started the year with 1 chance in 20 of winning the PL, and one chance in five of getting a top four spot. Of course those are assuming it’s all a coin flip. But what are the chances of winning the Europa? I figure the chances are overwhelming that one of the four or five favorites will win, and we might just be the fourth, fifth or sixth favorite. So let’s say we have 1 chance in 20 of winning. So one time in 20 years we get a Europa title, maybe. How many CL berths will it cost us? Two of the past four years we were within two points of a CL spot. Surely that extra 8 or 10 games in the Europa cost us at least that. So the Europa has cost us the CL half the time the last four years. It really, really hasn’t been worth the effort.
rwaeb Getting into the CL by winning the Europa is better than getting fourth spot in the English league. It gives direct entry to the group stages and misses out the sudden death qualifying games early in the season. We are more likely to attract better players if we can guarantee at least 6 CL games. If the current English representatives don't up their performances it may be that third place will not get direct entry to the group stages. To win the Europa we will probably have to play at least two teams that finished third in their CL group. This will give us some idea of how good we will have to be. We don't want to be in the CL just to make up the numbers.
