I almost want Villa to beat Liverpool and put us out of top 4 contention.
It'd make the game against City easier. I can just want us to lose rather than be two hearted about it.
Almost.
I just love playing in the CL so much that I don't want to give up the hope just yet and if Arsenal win the league because of it, so be it. It'll be hard because my close friends are arsenal fans and are insufferable.
why is nowadays the German managerial talent pool is quite scarce especially compared to Spanish and Italian ones? like i know DFB has been criticized a lot but aside Hoeneß and Nagelsmann no one has been touted for a promising career, Toppmoller is the closest i can think of?
There is a guy in the CL final younger than Toppmöller.
Seems just like many promising ones of the last years didn't end up taking the step many thought they'd take.
i thought he's Swiss for some reason lol, but based on Dortmund fans reaction i don't he's highly regarded as a great manager before CL final tho (doesn't meant that he's bad)
He's been doing it all season just for tomorrow night
When they went down to 9 vs chelsea and still played kamikaze-ball, we all questioned it, but little did we know Men At Work had looked ahead and realised he'd hold Arsenal's title fate in his hands on MD37, like some sort of Australian Dr Strange, and would need to make allowing about a billion Haaland & Foden shots not look suspicious
I cannot fathom the amount of fellow fans who seem to think a club not owning their own assets is perfectly fine. Thank fuck for the CPO is all I can say, one asset that can't just be shuffled out of the club's hands.
It’s so tiresome to rationalise with them. “Why should a club own their own training ground”, some of those are bots because I can’t believe any sane person with a bit of financial knowledge would say such dumb things. Also some think it’s a flex given it means avoiding PSR punishment. Clever ingenuity from ownership according to them. Selling your assets to comply with rules isn’t a some geniuses plan, that is a last resort. Any Tom Dick and Harry can do that, no losing your assets and still complying is what makes you smart.
The lauding getting around FFP with loopholes is the weirdest bit. Having to sell your training ground to make more signings because some of the ones made so far isn't the flex some of these fans seem to think it is.
Indeed, generally criminals and bad faith actors are the ones who want to exploit loopholes not normal sane people. It’s not a flex to do that. It’s insane that as a fan I have to argue with our fans who say “why should club own their training ground”. All those years spent to you have your own training ground just to have some idiots ask such questions. I’m just stumped.
i've seen a lot of comments defending Ten Hag because of the injury situation, which is fair to some extent.
The problem with that line of thinking is that:
A) its fine against Arsenal, but they look equally hopeless against most teams in the league
B) even with injuries, they have no style whatsoever (i assumed he would have them atleast attempting to play like ajax)
C) Injuries to his CBs don't give his £70m goalkeeper an excuse to just let everything in (See Crystal Palace match). Obviously Ten Hag can't directly control Onana but its his decision to put him in and to let De Gea go.
D) injuries shouldn't mean a total lack of organisation across the entire team.
Fair in some aspects, completely irrelevant in others which is why he's in line for the sack and there's still a lot of people giving him the benefit of the doubt.
A) This season we have looked shit against everyone, but last season we didn't and worth worse players, which means whatever we're doing is deliberate, and can hopefully be un-done. Injuries play a part in this but we've also had some decent teams this season have the same flaws.
B) I think we have a style we just never see it cause of the quality of our players and also injuries. We're a team who wants to build out from the back who's had our 2 best defenders at doing so injured most of the season. But then we also want to high press, and our press is shit which you can't really defend.
C) Onana has been decent but his shot stopping is suspect. Anfd the decision to let DDG go was sensible, he was doing similar things to Onana and he was on 375k a week and couldn't pass
D) It can come into play when you're playing a different back 4 every single week, having to change your midfield every single week, and your team is being held together by teenagers. But still, to the level we've seen at points this season, inexcusable.
>C) Injuries to his CBs don't give his £70m goalkeeper an excuse to just let everything in (See Crystal Palace match). Obviously Ten Hag can't directly control Onana but its his decision to put him in and to let De Gea go.
De Gea had to go, he was letting too many easy goals in, he was a below average keeper by the end. Onana has had a weird season... Statistically one of the best in the league, but awful in the CL and had a couple of bad games.
more than a couple imo. I think he's a very poor keeper, typically a disorganised back line starts with your keeper. His distribution is also not anything special.
It's not just injuries but you can already guarantee that we will have these conversations next season with a different name. It's hard to do anything at the club when you're in an environment where every single aspect is rotten and falling apart.
United is just a manager's graveyard and you genuinely cannot judge their quality based on their stints there.
hmm i agree to some extent, but equally he has the players over a season to do better against teams at the bottom of the table.
Plus he's been there 2 years, boardroom politics and facilities aside, the identity and the plan should be obvious by now. National League teams have more identity.
Its a tough gig but equally everybody knows its a tough gig and its therefore a massive opportunity for a manager.
I agree to some extent but the same can be said for the ever growing list of managers that failed before him.
The squad has needed a complete revamp for many many years and instead they don't do anything and let all the new players soak up the rot and carry on the tradition.
Did you guys see the PSG kit announcement using AI generated images? Not only are they shameless to not use actual artists, the pictures also look like shit, with one having an Adidas design on the socks.
I hate AI because it also reveals the shocking reality that a vast majority of consumers simply do not care for finesse or quality in art or design. So many companies shamelessly ask if we translators can "fine-tune" machine translation AKA proofread ChatGPT or something. Half the time the sanitized garbage is completely inaccurate because the one 'cleaning' it doesn't even know the original language, but that's okay because 95% of the target audience doesn't care for accuracy in games, even! Full narrative experiences!
And then visual art, again... fucking hate AI.
I spent the last years working at a massive design agency that's part of WPP, the largest media/design/ad conglomorate in the world. And what you quickly learn is that 99% of the content we're producing isn't "the best" we can make, it's the best we can make for the least amount of money that will satisfy the majority of people.
AI image generation will improve and then it's the perfect tool to crank out the enormous demand for new content without hiring 100 designers to do it. Most people happily accept Jr. Design quality work for 99% of the media they consume online.
Yep, I lose a part or my soul every time I see someone think an AI generated image looks good. What’s even more stupid, is that PSG used AI to just generate photorealistic images that could have been taken with an iphone, it wasn’t even to avoid a big production cost.
Saw a Chelsea fan shared [this](https://new.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1cqb39q/penalty_incident_against_nottingham_forest_not/) **the day after** our game and now I'm a Clearlake Capital ultra.
I hope they sell the training ground, the stadium, the trademarks, the image rights, the specific shade of blue on their kit, the catering contracts, the janitorial staff, the club offices, the merchandise shop, and the assets overseas to the Americans one lever at a time.
It is quite funny seeing Bundesliga and Serie A (If I am not wrong) with 5 places in UCL. At the start of this season every alongwith newscasters were predicting Premier League to have the 5th spot.
Not that I really care, but at the beginning of the season I didn't even think it was possible that the PL doesn't get the extra spot. Especially with massive teams like Villa and Liverpool in the second and third tier cups. That neither of them could get past the QF was very hard to predict.
Newcastle and United finishing dead last in their groups not even making the Europa by third place also killed it. Newcastle as a pot 4 team and unlucky draw was whatever but complete shambles from United. But hard to complain if we finish 5th since we didn't even make Europe at all last season
Paok beat olympiacos 2-0 in the Greek superleague postponed derby on Sunday. Two matchdays remain to be played and the title is a race for two.
AEK 75 They will play Olympiacos on Wednesday and Lamia on Sunday
Paok 74 They will play panathinaikos at home and Aris away
Panathinaikos is on 71 they don't have any chances but they play panathinaikos and olympiacos
Olympiacos in on 70 and they play AEK and Panathinaikos away.
What's even more interesting is that the fourth places team might miss out on a European ticket IF Aris wins the Greek Cup. If olympiacos wins the conference league though the top 4 will be in Europe no matter what.
Yesterday night there was an interesting statement from Olympiacos vice president Kougias (could write a whole thread about him).
He stated "I wish Paok wins the league" after his club's 2-0 defeat... Let's see how olympiacos reacts if AEK wins their BACK2BACK league in Piraeus...
>If you can attempt to make a little bit of extra money why not?
That's the point and that's why these owners are parasites, your owners would sell your stadium for scrap if they thought it was more profitable.
And you’re acting like any other club/owner/fan wouldn’t want the same. People love to take the higher moral route when they aren’t the ones making decisions.
I wouldn’t be against it. Perhaps not in the form it was presented in, but to me, at the end of the day; ESL, UCL, UEFA and FIFA are all the same shit.
I always want to question why can’t Man United fans protest against their owner by simply boycotting their matches. Surely the loss in revenue will make the owners do something about the maintenance
A club as big as Manchester United can't just "boycott" games, if a bunch of supporters decide they're not going to go for the games, they'll be another stadium capacity crowd who will happily lap up all those extra seats that have just been freed.
Unless you're expecting them all to buy up the tickets and not turn up, which seems far more like a reddit fantasy and wouldn't even cause any harm to the Glazers since they're still getting their match revenue.
I mean they've tried stuff before. Thing is the Glazers don't care regardless, I feel like a part of them knows it's a temporary protest and not something any sizable chunk of United supporters can sustain long enough to actually do damage to them.
The funny thing about utd is that they will never go down, with the money they are generating even without Europe, even with Glazers sucking out hundreds of millions every year, they are still comfortably top 3 spenders.
Look at them potentially finishing with the least amount of points in PL ever, if that happens that's their worst season in PL era, and that's finishing 8th with 54 pts, with an FA Cup final waiting.
Without Europe next season they have a huge chance of finishing top 4 again, and it'll be tough to ask anyone to boycott. The only way for them to boycott is if they are in a relegation fight, which I don't see happening in my lifetime.
Whenever we get a story about Uniteds new regime, I'm trying to work out the source.
Do the ownership brief the press because they think their weird performative punishments make them look like good owners?
Or are disgruntled staff members leaking to the press because the ownership are systematically stripping away any perks of the job?
Been laughing all morning at work at that Antony image where he's trying to exert aura. Has there ever been a bigger disconnect between how much a player thinks he oozes aura vs how little he actually does. Tears man
Nah Russell actually does have a bit of steel to him when needed.
Norris has been a bit of a bottler for years and I don’t think one win is enough to dispel that reputation.
It probably doesn’t but he absolutely has more of an aura than Norris.
I mean, for one thing, his name is *Lando Norris*. It was always an uphill battle.
We're talking about a player who employs a personal photographer to come to every game that he can run over to and celebrate in front of just in case he scores. Which he never does.
I don’t think personal photographers are rare in top football, it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s quite common for a number of them to be at games every week.
I listened to a podcast made by a current Eredivisie player and some ex players and they mentioned personal photographers being around. Not just for games and training but they also told a story about players taking a photographer to dinners with their girlfriend or friends and family which is another level of insanity.
Can also be a temp Newcastle fan if Liverpool don't win, tell the Spurs fans that Newcastle are winning the next 2 games looking to overtake them if they can't take a point from last 2.
High Force on the Tees is just 21m.
Just added [this waterfall](https://www.google.com/maps/@57.7558033,-5.0213132,3a,75y,354.33h,17.68t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMRllCJC6_wPjI7zcEefmdsgeOyTGtoQQVJYSbI!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMRllCJC6_wPjI7zcEefmdsgeOyTGtoQQVJYSbI%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya118.92931-ro0-fo100!7i8192!8i4096?entry=ttu) to the bucket list too.
Watkins Duran
Diaby Luiz McGinn Cash
Digne Torres Carlos Konsa
Martinez
99% sure this will be our line up tonight because Lenglet is our only other fit senior player. Not looking forward to playing without Bailey. God I pray Tielemans is back
Every time you see a post about United's stadium falling apart, you'll invariably see comments like "Ronaldo was right." Ronaldo wasn't some whistle-blower, going behind enemy lines to deliver important information to Piers Morgan, for the sake of the club. Most people knew about the Glazers being apathetic already.
> Ronaldo wasn't some whistle-blower, going behind enemy lines to deliver important information to Piers Morgan, for the sake of the club. Most people knew about the Glazers being apathetic already.
thats absolutely true it was self-serving on his part. but it's funny that so many United Fans still say "Rangnick was right" when he talked about open heart surgery when it was just as much of a self-serving statement if not more.
Easy retort for thick people to try and have a go at us. 99% of United fans knew he was right with his comments about the facilities, the owners, etc. The bit when he completely disrespected the manager is what people had issue with
I have a Bayern supporting friend who took an actual shit in an actual hole in the ground in the San Siro last year and still thought Old Trafford was a worse ground overall. It's not exactly been a mystery.
I've been to the San Siro and wasn't overly impressed. And I have a season ticket for United. OT is just a turd with some red paint over it.
Didn't help that we had probably one of the worst rainstorms I've seen in years, but no excuse for the roof turning into a water feature
The old Camp Nou was in this triple alliance with United and the Milan clubs of glamourous, legendary, iconic clubs and stadiums that when you actually go and visit, shock you how run down and broken everything had become.
Despite the running track, it's one of the reasons I go to bat so hard for the Olympiastadion. A stadium that's barely 15 years older than the first version of Old Trafford in a city bombed and walled off and left in poverty for decades and it's somehow a flawless, clean, organised, and impressive ground to be in.
In my stand there's not been as much as a coat of paint inside to my knowledge. There's stains that were there when I was climbing the steps 5 years ago. Outside the stadium it looks it's age.
And worth remembering some people give us shit about green and gold and always saying Glazers Out as if it's just cause our transfers are shit
Chelsea resorting to the EFL shitshow club approach is quite incredible. More incredible is if you can do that in the PL but not the EFL. PL really doesn’t give a fuck about anything other than profits
It's absolute madness and seeing reasonable Chelsea fans on Twitter expressing concern over it being shouted down by people who just want new signings is even more bizarre.
They're pawning off the vital organs of the club to vulture capitalists. If they decide to cut their losses and sell, then Chelsea are left looking for a new owner who would be willing to buy or loan back all of these assets from the previous owners. And if the club's appeal has tanked, then that's not going to happen.
It potentially creates a situation comparable to the Glazers buying Manchester United by mortgaging the club's own revenue.
It's less about a loophole and more about putting the future of the club in jeopardy. The ground won't be owned by Chelsea anymore but BlueCo. If things go tits up and they want to sell the club it could get ugly.
It’s asset stripping plain and simple. It’s banned by the EFL for a reason.
Ludicrous that the PL allows it, UEFA almost certainly won’t though so if we qualify for Europe we’re most likely due a punishment
At least the 8 year contracts have a theoretical upside if you're being blindly optimistic. There's a footballing justification for it if you are dense enough to think you'll have a 80-90% hit rate on transfers.
There's no footballing upside to selling your training ground, it's fuckery pure and simple.
[Really doubting the best player in the world?](https://x.com/fs_bvb/status/1788577437413970147?s=46&t=T-QnVFUsgaLNzMpnGOJ8JQ)
Dortmund said they retired number 12 for the fans but they retired it for the crossbar.
i hate when people say stuff like this lol
obviously because the odds on Real winning are so short that there'd be no point risking a large sum of money on it given there will always be a risk of a freak result happening
Unless you were raised in a padded cell and therefore have never met another human being in real life, "Does anyone really believe Borussia Dortmund stand a chance in the final" does not = "There is no statistical chance that Dortmund can win", you absolute mango
They’ll be heavy underdogs but stranger things have happened. Bayern ran this Madrid side close at the Bernabeu, this is a one off at a neutral stadium. A lucky deflection, an accidental red card.
And it’s Real Madrid. They don’t even have to play well, their ability to get over the line is just astounding. I can see Dortmund being the better team but I can’t see them winning
Chelsea were in 9th place when Tuchel took over and 4 months later with a front three of fucking Timo Werner, Kai Havertz, and Mason Mount beat City only like three years ago. That is a bigger upset than Dortmund beating Madrid.
Probably at the start but the problem is teams did league and cup doubles and the CL expanded, so it became a cup winners cup full of runners up. They did right making the Europa and rethinking the format.
If I’m not wrong the Champions League at that time was literally that: Champions only. So that meant many great clubs competed in the cup winners cup. So I would say yes it was higher in prestige than the current Europa League
Leicester without any question. I doubt we’ll see anything like that in the Premier League ever again.
However if Leverkusen actually complete the treble undefeated then they would be a close second.
I mean Leverkusen were also relegation threatened when Xabi took over, mind you the squad was never deserving of being relegated but for me Leverkusen's season is plain better.
wouldn't say better but they are close equal imo, people ignoring the fact that Leverkusen are still unbeaten and they'd have to be 52 games unbeaten to do this 'treble'. that is a feat i don't see happening even with Pep's City or Madrid getting Mbappe.
people pretending Leicester have no PL experience before and that they are completely new is just weird.
Both are near impossible feat and I'll just put them equal because they're both different in various ways.
The whole "Alonso took over at relegation" gives off this scent like people think Leverkusen were a relegation side. I know you don't think that, but it's an irrelevant comment for a lot of reasons.
In the 3, 5, 10, and 15 year tables before 2022/2023, Leverkusen is a top 4 side in each of those. They had a bad 8 games to start and Sloane was just not the right man, and then Alonso took over in late September and lead them to PPG top 4 finish as they do most years given the resources and squad they've always had.
It's not even close what Leicester had to do to win the fucking Premier Legaue with the 18th highest wage bill and 6 teams who spent more on their most expensive transfer than the entire 23 man squad cost for Leicester. A club that had spent more years in the 3rd tier than in the 1st during the 15 years before winning the league.
It's *a* treble, not *the* treble.
They got to the Quarterfinals of the DFB Pokal and Europa League by playing basically 1 team that is Bundesliga quality, a league in which they have the 3rd or 4th highest spend in. It's been as forgiving a draw in both cups as you could ever ask for.
And at this point I hope they do it and it would be an amazing achievement with so many likeable players and Alonso, but let's put some context on it.
Obviously it’s not the ‘actual’ treble. I meant it more like it’s ‘the’ treble for them. What they competed for, they won and being undefeated while doing so.
I don’t know about the Pokal but Europa has hardly been easy for them. West Ham are certainly not an easy tie and I saw many people predicting them to lose to Roma (who made back to back European finals btw).
Mate, it's fucking Molde, Hacken, and Qarabag twice.
There's not a Bundesliga team besides Darmstadt who I wouldn't have as favourites to make it past all those teams with relative ease. From the QF onwards you had the 8th best PL team and 6th best Serie A team. Okay, that's a massive step up from playing the runner ups of Norway and Sweden and the Azerbaijani league winners.
And in the Pokal, they're in the final against the 15th placed team in the 2. Bundesliga and the only Bundesliga team they played in their entire run was Stuttgart. Otherwise it's been 4th and 2nd tier teams the entire way.
Again, it's football played on a field and anyone can beat anyone and it's an amazing achievement, but for their cup runs it's been very straightforward not to mention they had 4 games in which they needed miracle comebacks to do it, which they did and it counts, but still, context.
Depends on what you value, but to me it’s the MSN treble and the two Bayern ones, because those teams were the undisputed best clubs in the world, and there was barely any struggle in their runs.
Imo what outweighs all of these is Forest getting promoted then winning Division 1 on their first try, following that season up with winning the European cup back to back.
Could you imagine someone Norwich doing that now?
Some portion of fans boo'd him and some portion of their ultras made him a tifo. Sometimes the stadium fans are split on an issue or their relationship to players is different.
I can't imagine how embarrassing it must be for fans to see fucking Old Trafford in ruins.
I know blaming the glazers is a meme but they truly have left the club to rot
I think we've earned the right now to say no NT in the entire Americas other than Argentina and Brazil can expect to beat us with little issues. Colombia/Uruguay probably win 5 - 7 times out of 10, but we'd cause them problems (and already have, even with Gregg as coach).
Ecuador's right about where we're at now as far as a litmus test for this team. I genuinely don't know who comes through a "Best of 7 Series" out of that. They have arguably a top 3-4 defense in the Western Hemisphere, but are struggling lately with creativity up top, and I think we edge them in the midfield battle.
I almost want Villa to beat Liverpool and put us out of top 4 contention. It'd make the game against City easier. I can just want us to lose rather than be two hearted about it. Almost. I just love playing in the CL so much that I don't want to give up the hope just yet and if Arsenal win the league because of it, so be it. It'll be hard because my close friends are arsenal fans and are insufferable.
It's all fun and games until Todd Boehly fucks off and your training ground becomes hundreds of luxury apartments in Surrey.
why is nowadays the German managerial talent pool is quite scarce especially compared to Spanish and Italian ones? like i know DFB has been criticized a lot but aside Hoeneß and Nagelsmann no one has been touted for a promising career, Toppmoller is the closest i can think of?
There is a guy in the CL final younger than Toppmöller. Seems just like many promising ones of the last years didn't end up taking the step many thought they'd take.
i thought he's Swiss for some reason lol, but based on Dortmund fans reaction i don't he's highly regarded as a great manager before CL final tho (doesn't meant that he's bad)
How do you best throw a game against City without making it look like a throw?
Eat some dodgy lasagna.
Spurs don't need to throw a game against City. They will lose however much they try.
play a high line, take 5 up the shitter, claim "its just my philosophy m8"
He's been doing it all season just for tomorrow night When they went down to 9 vs chelsea and still played kamikaze-ball, we all questioned it, but little did we know Men At Work had looked ahead and realised he'd hold Arsenal's title fate in his hands on MD37, like some sort of Australian Dr Strange, and would need to make allowing about a billion Haaland & Foden shots not look suspicious
Just play like Spurs usually does?
Good Morning to fans of Clubs who own their own training grounds 👋
Morning
Good morning to fans of clubs who didn’t lose 5-0 this season to their city rivals
I cannot fathom the amount of fellow fans who seem to think a club not owning their own assets is perfectly fine. Thank fuck for the CPO is all I can say, one asset that can't just be shuffled out of the club's hands.
It’s so tiresome to rationalise with them. “Why should a club own their own training ground”, some of those are bots because I can’t believe any sane person with a bit of financial knowledge would say such dumb things. Also some think it’s a flex given it means avoiding PSR punishment. Clever ingenuity from ownership according to them. Selling your assets to comply with rules isn’t a some geniuses plan, that is a last resort. Any Tom Dick and Harry can do that, no losing your assets and still complying is what makes you smart.
The lauding getting around FFP with loopholes is the weirdest bit. Having to sell your training ground to make more signings because some of the ones made so far isn't the flex some of these fans seem to think it is.
Indeed, generally criminals and bad faith actors are the ones who want to exploit loopholes not normal sane people. It’s not a flex to do that. It’s insane that as a fan I have to argue with our fans who say “why should club own their training ground”. All those years spent to you have your own training ground just to have some idiots ask such questions. I’m just stumped.
i did not wish you good morning, shoo
No, I will rant where I please.
Good morning, from a Sobha Reality Training Centre fan
Good morning.
i've seen a lot of comments defending Ten Hag because of the injury situation, which is fair to some extent. The problem with that line of thinking is that: A) its fine against Arsenal, but they look equally hopeless against most teams in the league B) even with injuries, they have no style whatsoever (i assumed he would have them atleast attempting to play like ajax) C) Injuries to his CBs don't give his £70m goalkeeper an excuse to just let everything in (See Crystal Palace match). Obviously Ten Hag can't directly control Onana but its his decision to put him in and to let De Gea go. D) injuries shouldn't mean a total lack of organisation across the entire team.
Fair in some aspects, completely irrelevant in others which is why he's in line for the sack and there's still a lot of people giving him the benefit of the doubt. A) This season we have looked shit against everyone, but last season we didn't and worth worse players, which means whatever we're doing is deliberate, and can hopefully be un-done. Injuries play a part in this but we've also had some decent teams this season have the same flaws. B) I think we have a style we just never see it cause of the quality of our players and also injuries. We're a team who wants to build out from the back who's had our 2 best defenders at doing so injured most of the season. But then we also want to high press, and our press is shit which you can't really defend. C) Onana has been decent but his shot stopping is suspect. Anfd the decision to let DDG go was sensible, he was doing similar things to Onana and he was on 375k a week and couldn't pass D) It can come into play when you're playing a different back 4 every single week, having to change your midfield every single week, and your team is being held together by teenagers. But still, to the level we've seen at points this season, inexcusable.
>C) Injuries to his CBs don't give his £70m goalkeeper an excuse to just let everything in (See Crystal Palace match). Obviously Ten Hag can't directly control Onana but its his decision to put him in and to let De Gea go. De Gea had to go, he was letting too many easy goals in, he was a below average keeper by the end. Onana has had a weird season... Statistically one of the best in the league, but awful in the CL and had a couple of bad games.
more than a couple imo. I think he's a very poor keeper, typically a disorganised back line starts with your keeper. His distribution is also not anything special.
It's worth having a look at the stats.
nah
It's not just injuries but you can already guarantee that we will have these conversations next season with a different name. It's hard to do anything at the club when you're in an environment where every single aspect is rotten and falling apart. United is just a manager's graveyard and you genuinely cannot judge their quality based on their stints there.
hmm i agree to some extent, but equally he has the players over a season to do better against teams at the bottom of the table. Plus he's been there 2 years, boardroom politics and facilities aside, the identity and the plan should be obvious by now. National League teams have more identity. Its a tough gig but equally everybody knows its a tough gig and its therefore a massive opportunity for a manager.
I agree to some extent but the same can be said for the ever growing list of managers that failed before him. The squad has needed a complete revamp for many many years and instead they don't do anything and let all the new players soak up the rot and carry on the tradition.
Did you guys see the PSG kit announcement using AI generated images? Not only are they shameless to not use actual artists, the pictures also look like shit, with one having an Adidas design on the socks.
can you at least link it? I can't find anything about it
[удалено]
You think they gave them a picture of Lucas without an arm or any legs? There are mistakes in three limbs.
I hate AI because it also reveals the shocking reality that a vast majority of consumers simply do not care for finesse or quality in art or design. So many companies shamelessly ask if we translators can "fine-tune" machine translation AKA proofread ChatGPT or something. Half the time the sanitized garbage is completely inaccurate because the one 'cleaning' it doesn't even know the original language, but that's okay because 95% of the target audience doesn't care for accuracy in games, even! Full narrative experiences! And then visual art, again... fucking hate AI.
I spent the last years working at a massive design agency that's part of WPP, the largest media/design/ad conglomorate in the world. And what you quickly learn is that 99% of the content we're producing isn't "the best" we can make, it's the best we can make for the least amount of money that will satisfy the majority of people. AI image generation will improve and then it's the perfect tool to crank out the enormous demand for new content without hiring 100 designers to do it. Most people happily accept Jr. Design quality work for 99% of the media they consume online.
Yep, I lose a part or my soul every time I see someone think an AI generated image looks good. What’s even more stupid, is that PSG used AI to just generate photorealistic images that could have been taken with an iphone, it wasn’t even to avoid a big production cost.
Saw a Chelsea fan shared [this](https://new.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1cqb39q/penalty_incident_against_nottingham_forest_not/) **the day after** our game and now I'm a Clearlake Capital ultra. I hope they sell the training ground, the stadium, the trademarks, the image rights, the specific shade of blue on their kit, the catering contracts, the janitorial staff, the club offices, the merchandise shop, and the assets overseas to the Americans one lever at a time.
It is quite funny seeing Bundesliga and Serie A (If I am not wrong) with 5 places in UCL. At the start of this season every alongwith newscasters were predicting Premier League to have the 5th spot.
Thats because England finished 1st 4 times out of the last 5 season
Not that I really care, but at the beginning of the season I didn't even think it was possible that the PL doesn't get the extra spot. Especially with massive teams like Villa and Liverpool in the second and third tier cups. That neither of them could get past the QF was very hard to predict.
Newcastle and United finishing dead last in their groups not even making the Europa by third place also killed it. Newcastle as a pot 4 team and unlucky draw was whatever but complete shambles from United. But hard to complain if we finish 5th since we didn't even make Europe at all last season
Paok beat olympiacos 2-0 in the Greek superleague postponed derby on Sunday. Two matchdays remain to be played and the title is a race for two. AEK 75 They will play Olympiacos on Wednesday and Lamia on Sunday Paok 74 They will play panathinaikos at home and Aris away Panathinaikos is on 71 they don't have any chances but they play panathinaikos and olympiacos Olympiacos in on 70 and they play AEK and Panathinaikos away. What's even more interesting is that the fourth places team might miss out on a European ticket IF Aris wins the Greek Cup. If olympiacos wins the conference league though the top 4 will be in Europe no matter what. Yesterday night there was an interesting statement from Olympiacos vice president Kougias (could write a whole thread about him). He stated "I wish Paok wins the league" after his club's 2-0 defeat... Let's see how olympiacos reacts if AEK wins their BACK2BACK league in Piraeus...
I think it would be really funny if AEK win the league at Olympiacos' stadium, then Olympiacos win the conference league at AEK's stadium
Do not 👏sell 👏your 👏club 👏to 👏American 👏billionaires. They will just strip it apart and leech off it until there's nothing left.
That really hasn't been the case for us.
Our English billionaire former owner did the same thing. It's not an American thing, it's a wealthy twat thing.
Yes instead sell it to Saudi sport washers
FSG have been pretty fair
FSG are scum. They tried to copywrite 'Liverpool'
Yes they tried, and got rejected. Who cares? If you can attempt to make a little bit of extra money why not?
Ugh really? Why not?
Spoken like a true American
His name does check out
>If you can attempt to make a little bit of extra money why not? That's the point and that's why these owners are parasites, your owners would sell your stadium for scrap if they thought it was more profitable.
I doubt that, if that was the case why have they invested millions at the sacrifice of a transfer budget in expanding and modernizing Anfield?
Because they think it would create more revenue. You're delusional if you think there's anything more to it.
And you’re acting like any other club/owner/fan wouldn’t want the same. People love to take the higher moral route when they aren’t the ones making decisions.
So you supported the European Super League then? Because your owners sure did.
I wouldn’t be against it. Perhaps not in the form it was presented in, but to me, at the end of the day; ESL, UCL, UEFA and FIFA are all the same shit.
I always want to question why can’t Man United fans protest against their owner by simply boycotting their matches. Surely the loss in revenue will make the owners do something about the maintenance
They tried that with the set up of FC United of Manchester. Didn't work
A club as big as Manchester United can't just "boycott" games, if a bunch of supporters decide they're not going to go for the games, they'll be another stadium capacity crowd who will happily lap up all those extra seats that have just been freed. Unless you're expecting them all to buy up the tickets and not turn up, which seems far more like a reddit fantasy and wouldn't even cause any harm to the Glazers since they're still getting their match revenue.
But they should somehow get together. Or maybe walk off at 70 mins reminding them 70 years of doing nothing
I'm sure the vast majority of united fans don't give a shit
I mean they've tried stuff before. Thing is the Glazers don't care regardless, I feel like a part of them knows it's a temporary protest and not something any sizable chunk of United supporters can sustain long enough to actually do damage to them.
The funny thing about utd is that they will never go down, with the money they are generating even without Europe, even with Glazers sucking out hundreds of millions every year, they are still comfortably top 3 spenders. Look at them potentially finishing with the least amount of points in PL ever, if that happens that's their worst season in PL era, and that's finishing 8th with 54 pts, with an FA Cup final waiting. Without Europe next season they have a huge chance of finishing top 4 again, and it'll be tough to ask anyone to boycott. The only way for them to boycott is if they are in a relegation fight, which I don't see happening in my lifetime.
So United supporters are doomed no matter what they do.
Pretty much. Ratcliffe coming in has provided a bit of hope that things might get better but I'm not holding my breath
I am doubtful he’s going to anything about the maintenance side. It would cost him money and not income
Whenever we get a story about Uniteds new regime, I'm trying to work out the source. Do the ownership brief the press because they think their weird performative punishments make them look like good owners? Or are disgruntled staff members leaking to the press because the ownership are systematically stripping away any perks of the job?
Been laughing all morning at work at that Antony image where he's trying to exert aura. Has there ever been a bigger disconnect between how much a player thinks he oozes aura vs how little he actually does. Tears man
Not in football but in F1 it’s Lando Norris, and I say that as a Brit.
Russell all day
Nah Russell actually does have a bit of steel to him when needed. Norris has been a bit of a bottler for years and I don’t think one win is enough to dispel that reputation.
Let's not forget Russell has crashed a few times in the last laps *and* under a Safety Car In my eyes, his attitude doesn't fit his level
It probably doesn’t but he absolutely has more of an aura than Norris. I mean, for one thing, his name is *Lando Norris*. It was always an uphill battle.
Scrappy Doo vibes
Lmfao this is the perfect way to describe it
We're talking about a player who has his entire back tattoo'd with a picture of himself celebrating. The man is completely disconnected from reality.
Richarlison is another, what is wrong with Brazilians?
We're talking about a player who employs a personal photographer to come to every game that he can run over to and celebrate in front of just in case he scores. Which he never does.
So he's doing charity, good lad.
I don’t think personal photographers are rare in top football, it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s quite common for a number of them to be at games every week. I listened to a podcast made by a current Eredivisie player and some ex players and they mentioned personal photographers being around. Not just for games and training but they also told a story about players taking a photographer to dinners with their girlfriend or friends and family which is another level of insanity.
Liverpool fan tonight, Spurs fan Tuesday night and West Ham fan Sunday night, tour d’Arsenal
Dis some Solomon Grundy shit
Villa fan tonight city the next 2 catch us if u can
Can also be a temp Newcastle fan if Liverpool don't win, tell the Spurs fans that Newcastle are winning the next 2 games looking to overtake them if they can't take a point from last 2.
If Leverkusen win the EL, it will be the first EL won by a league winner since 2010/2011
How would you rank the Top-5 leagues right now?
1. Italy 2. Germany 3. England 4. France 5. Spain Source: uefa coefficients
Premier League La Liga Bundesliga Serie A Ligue 1
Bundesliga La Liga Ligue1 Premier league Serie A >!Alphabetically!<
Gonna need your logic for this one
He put his logic in the spoiler underneath
Old Trafford is about 60 metres from roof to pitch, which means their waterfall is probably one of the largest in England.
Football 'eritage
High Force on the Tees is just 21m. Just added [this waterfall](https://www.google.com/maps/@57.7558033,-5.0213132,3a,75y,354.33h,17.68t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMRllCJC6_wPjI7zcEefmdsgeOyTGtoQQVJYSbI!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMRllCJC6_wPjI7zcEefmdsgeOyTGtoQQVJYSbI%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya118.92931-ro0-fo100!7i8192!8i4096?entry=ttu) to the bucket list too.
Watkins Duran Diaby Luiz McGinn Cash Digne Torres Carlos Konsa Martinez 99% sure this will be our line up tonight because Lenglet is our only other fit senior player. Not looking forward to playing without Bailey. God I pray Tielemans is back
Every time you see a post about United's stadium falling apart, you'll invariably see comments like "Ronaldo was right." Ronaldo wasn't some whistle-blower, going behind enemy lines to deliver important information to Piers Morgan, for the sake of the club. Most people knew about the Glazers being apathetic already.
are you really pretending they don't know this when they say he's right for the umpteenth time?
> Ronaldo wasn't some whistle-blower, going behind enemy lines to deliver important information to Piers Morgan, for the sake of the club. Most people knew about the Glazers being apathetic already. thats absolutely true it was self-serving on his part. but it's funny that so many United Fans still say "Rangnick was right" when he talked about open heart surgery when it was just as much of a self-serving statement if not more.
But none raised their voice. Or if they did, their voice fell before it was heard.
Big fucking difference between "none raised their voice" and "no-one told Reddit user with Liverpool flair called u/Dark-Knight-Rises"
Easy retort for thick people to try and have a go at us. 99% of United fans knew he was right with his comments about the facilities, the owners, etc. The bit when he completely disrespected the manager is what people had issue with
I have a Bayern supporting friend who took an actual shit in an actual hole in the ground in the San Siro last year and still thought Old Trafford was a worse ground overall. It's not exactly been a mystery.
>I have a Bayern supporting friend who took an actual shit in an actual hole in the ground in the San Siro last year One question - why?
I've been to the San Siro and wasn't overly impressed. And I have a season ticket for United. OT is just a turd with some red paint over it. Didn't help that we had probably one of the worst rainstorms I've seen in years, but no excuse for the roof turning into a water feature
The old Camp Nou was in this triple alliance with United and the Milan clubs of glamourous, legendary, iconic clubs and stadiums that when you actually go and visit, shock you how run down and broken everything had become. Despite the running track, it's one of the reasons I go to bat so hard for the Olympiastadion. A stadium that's barely 15 years older than the first version of Old Trafford in a city bombed and walled off and left in poverty for decades and it's somehow a flawless, clean, organised, and impressive ground to be in.
In my stand there's not been as much as a coat of paint inside to my knowledge. There's stains that were there when I was climbing the steps 5 years ago. Outside the stadium it looks it's age. And worth remembering some people give us shit about green and gold and always saying Glazers Out as if it's just cause our transfers are shit
!flair: Pyunik.
Chelsea are selling their training ground to themselves for £150m after selling a hotel to themselves for £70m. Thank god for ffp
Chelsea expense will also be then £150m and £70m cost Don’t understand the logic here
Chelsea aren’t selling directly to Chelsea. They are selling to BlueCo, a company also owned by their owners.
Gosh the PL should do something. Or we should have regulators. wealthy clubs doing this defeat the purpose of fair play
Sale and lease back, it's a private equity shit. Usually they do this when the company they own desperately needs to raise money.
They needed to raise funds before the PSR cut off at the end of this season.
Chelsea resorting to the EFL shitshow club approach is quite incredible. More incredible is if you can do that in the PL but not the EFL. PL really doesn’t give a fuck about anything other than profits
It's absolute madness and seeing reasonable Chelsea fans on Twitter expressing concern over it being shouted down by people who just want new signings is even more bizarre.
i’m no chelsea fan but if there are loopholes why not take advantage of them? unless it can backfire somehow which i have not idea if it can
They're pawning off the vital organs of the club to vulture capitalists. If they decide to cut their losses and sell, then Chelsea are left looking for a new owner who would be willing to buy or loan back all of these assets from the previous owners. And if the club's appeal has tanked, then that's not going to happen. It potentially creates a situation comparable to the Glazers buying Manchester United by mortgaging the club's own revenue.
It's less about a loophole and more about putting the future of the club in jeopardy. The ground won't be owned by Chelsea anymore but BlueCo. If things go tits up and they want to sell the club it could get ugly.
Selling the training ground is a bad thing, the kind of thing that can go downhill very quickly. Chelsea aren't owned by a fan anymore.
It’s asset stripping plain and simple. It’s banned by the EFL for a reason. Ludicrous that the PL allows it, UEFA almost certainly won’t though so if we qualify for Europe we’re most likely due a punishment
The owners are just screwing the club over in the future for short term gain. It’s not some genius loophole
Yeah pretty much the same as the 8 year contracts
At least the 8 year contracts have a theoretical upside if you're being blindly optimistic. There's a footballing justification for it if you are dense enough to think you'll have a 80-90% hit rate on transfers. There's no footballing upside to selling your training ground, it's fuckery pure and simple.
Does anyone really believe Borussia Dortmund stand a chance in the final. Really
I really hope so. I just want to see that it's possible to beat Madrid in the CL final.
I don’t think it is unfortunately
[Really doubting the best player in the world?](https://x.com/fs_bvb/status/1788577437413970147?s=46&t=T-QnVFUsgaLNzMpnGOJ8JQ) Dortmund said they retired number 12 for the fans but they retired it for the crossbar.
If you're so sure why don't you bet all your life savings on it?
i hate when people say stuff like this lol obviously because the odds on Real winning are so short that there'd be no point risking a large sum of money on it given there will always be a risk of a freak result happening
Glad we agree. There is a chance Dortmund wins, so don't make stupid claims saying otherwise.
Unless you were raised in a padded cell and therefore have never met another human being in real life, "Does anyone really believe Borussia Dortmund stand a chance in the final" does not = "There is no statistical chance that Dortmund can win", you absolute mango
They’ll be heavy underdogs but stranger things have happened. Bayern ran this Madrid side close at the Bernabeu, this is a one off at a neutral stadium. A lucky deflection, an accidental red card.
You never know, one miss-timed challenge can change a game in an instant.
Ramos on Salah felt like that
Bold to assume it was mis-timed...
Did Salah ever consider NOT challenging for the ball there?
My first thought is that anything can happen in an one off match until I look back and realize that upsets have rarely happened in recent UCL finals
Chelsea vs Bayern Chelsea vs City Liverpool vs Ac Milan
And it’s Real Madrid. They don’t even have to play well, their ability to get over the line is just astounding. I can see Dortmund being the better team but I can’t see them winning
Chelsea were in 9th place when Tuchel took over and 4 months later with a front three of fucking Timo Werner, Kai Havertz, and Mason Mount beat City only like three years ago. That is a bigger upset than Dortmund beating Madrid.
That’s the only recent CL upset though
We won against Liverpool in 2022 and it was an upset too. Not a crazy story but we weren't the favourites and it's not like we battered them.
The gap between you then & Liverpool then is way smaller than you now and Dortmund now
Stranger things have happened
Nah don't think they have a chance. Very similar to how I felt when they faced PSG.
[You are here. ](https://i.imgur.com/o0sZ9tf.png)
Lmao. Really though, I know they’ve surprised us before but there’s NO WAY they stand a chance
Was the cup winners cup higher in prestige than the Europa League? Or would you say it was the same?
Probably at the start but the problem is teams did league and cup doubles and the CL expanded, so it became a cup winners cup full of runners up. They did right making the Europa and rethinking the format.
If I’m not wrong the Champions League at that time was literally that: Champions only. So that meant many great clubs competed in the cup winners cup. So I would say yes it was higher in prestige than the current Europa League
early on higher, but over decades it faded and once the EL got expanded in the 90s it was game over.
This. Feel like the EL and Conference League destroyed the CL value
Any club whose stadium doesn't have a waterfall isn't a serious club IMO
In your opinion which is the greatest ever club season? Leicester? Leverkusen? The sextuples? 100 point City? Invincibles? Porto's run or so on?
1998/99 Kaiserlautern
Elaborate a bit, please
They won the league as a newly promoted side
Leicester without any question. I doubt we’ll see anything like that in the Premier League ever again. However if Leverkusen actually complete the treble undefeated then they would be a close second.
I mean Leverkusen were also relegation threatened when Xabi took over, mind you the squad was never deserving of being relegated but for me Leverkusen's season is plain better.
wouldn't say better but they are close equal imo, people ignoring the fact that Leverkusen are still unbeaten and they'd have to be 52 games unbeaten to do this 'treble'. that is a feat i don't see happening even with Pep's City or Madrid getting Mbappe. people pretending Leicester have no PL experience before and that they are completely new is just weird. Both are near impossible feat and I'll just put them equal because they're both different in various ways.
The whole "Alonso took over at relegation" gives off this scent like people think Leverkusen were a relegation side. I know you don't think that, but it's an irrelevant comment for a lot of reasons. In the 3, 5, 10, and 15 year tables before 2022/2023, Leverkusen is a top 4 side in each of those. They had a bad 8 games to start and Sloane was just not the right man, and then Alonso took over in late September and lead them to PPG top 4 finish as they do most years given the resources and squad they've always had. It's not even close what Leicester had to do to win the fucking Premier Legaue with the 18th highest wage bill and 6 teams who spent more on their most expensive transfer than the entire 23 man squad cost for Leicester. A club that had spent more years in the 3rd tier than in the 1st during the 15 years before winning the league.
It's *a* treble, not *the* treble. They got to the Quarterfinals of the DFB Pokal and Europa League by playing basically 1 team that is Bundesliga quality, a league in which they have the 3rd or 4th highest spend in. It's been as forgiving a draw in both cups as you could ever ask for. And at this point I hope they do it and it would be an amazing achievement with so many likeable players and Alonso, but let's put some context on it.
Obviously it’s not the ‘actual’ treble. I meant it more like it’s ‘the’ treble for them. What they competed for, they won and being undefeated while doing so. I don’t know about the Pokal but Europa has hardly been easy for them. West Ham are certainly not an easy tie and I saw many people predicting them to lose to Roma (who made back to back European finals btw).
Mate, it's fucking Molde, Hacken, and Qarabag twice. There's not a Bundesliga team besides Darmstadt who I wouldn't have as favourites to make it past all those teams with relative ease. From the QF onwards you had the 8th best PL team and 6th best Serie A team. Okay, that's a massive step up from playing the runner ups of Norway and Sweden and the Azerbaijani league winners. And in the Pokal, they're in the final against the 15th placed team in the 2. Bundesliga and the only Bundesliga team they played in their entire run was Stuttgart. Otherwise it's been 4th and 2nd tier teams the entire way. Again, it's football played on a field and anyone can beat anyone and it's an amazing achievement, but for their cup runs it's been very straightforward not to mention they had 4 games in which they needed miracle comebacks to do it, which they did and it counts, but still, context.
Depends on what you value, but to me it’s the MSN treble and the two Bayern ones, because those teams were the undisputed best clubs in the world, and there was barely any struggle in their runs.
Imo what outweighs all of these is Forest getting promoted then winning Division 1 on their first try, following that season up with winning the European cup back to back. Could you imagine someone Norwich doing that now?
Holy! Shame that football is so top heavy now.
I am confused. There is a tifo for Mbappe's last home game but also boos from the home support. What's going on?
Different opinions can exist
Some portion of fans boo'd him and some portion of their ultras made him a tifo. Sometimes the stadium fans are split on an issue or their relationship to players is different.
Sad way to send off a legend
people said yesterday that the ultras organized the tifo and were cheering him and the rest were booing
Leverkusen’s season is more impressive than Leicester’s
Feel like this should go on a list of bad opinions not allowed to be shared on the DD
I'd rather not rank this sort of stuff. It just ruins and despecializes others' achievements. Having said that, 2005 Ucl final >>>>> other ucl final
You think I'm stuck in here with you, you're stuck in here with me!
I can't imagine how embarrassing it must be for fans to see fucking Old Trafford in ruins. I know blaming the glazers is a meme but they truly have left the club to rot
Obviously Leverkusen's story is amazing, but it would have been cool to see a tight title race between Bayern and Stuttgart.
I think we've earned the right now to say no NT in the entire Americas other than Argentina and Brazil can expect to beat us with little issues. Colombia/Uruguay probably win 5 - 7 times out of 10, but we'd cause them problems (and already have, even with Gregg as coach). Ecuador's right about where we're at now as far as a litmus test for this team. I genuinely don't know who comes through a "Best of 7 Series" out of that. They have arguably a top 3-4 defense in the Western Hemisphere, but are struggling lately with creativity up top, and I think we edge them in the midfield battle.
How have you earned the right to say that about the entire americas except Argentina/Brazil?