Thursday Night Lights: The 2014/15 Europa League thread

#freeshinji

tbh spurs could win the prem this season, if they do so it will be the biggest thing in forever for the team and everyone will remember it for a long, long time.

if they were to win the Europa league this season - obviously they won't now - in about ten years people would be like "didn't spurs win the Europa league once?"

Ah idgaf about the uefa if it shores up CL qualification this season.

But I would like our second string to be better than this.

But idk Dortmund a p good template for how we could have possession and also be actually effective so yknow learn from it I guess.

A good template in the same way Barcelona were a good template for Arsenal

who is going to play the pointless and soul-crushing second leg

Yeah but in arsenes first full season

on the sidelines poch smirks. if this don't convince facking levy to cough up for scott parker nothing will

I'm just annoyed with Spurs cos this match was supposed to be the rich delicious crab lasagne with champagne velouté before the fridge cold ginsters of five past eight

I feel bad about mocking Reus's hair for so long now that he's decided to turn himself into Alex Turner.

Do me a favour

Still, another 4-7 games in this competition would have killed us, this is what you get for designing such a stupid, onerous, interminable tournament. Ditch the group stage and the second leg and teams might actually compete properly.

Teams do compete properly. Just not English ones.

The only thing I'd change would be CL drop outs being involved.

Other European leagues have less stupid onerous domestic campaigns though.

God this is gonna be a shit foulfest isn' t it?

is the seemingly team-wide adoption of the stutter-step PK going to be balo's lasting legacy?

Incredible first half for de gea. fellaini absolutely useless in a match like this though, everything is just going around him the whole time

Fucking de gea, gonna regret these missed chances when hendo is sent off.

Bah should be 4-0. John Aldridge used to do the shimmy step peno back in the 90s tbf

He almost had that pen stopped too

I mean I love lil Phil but FFS stick it in with your left foot!!

fellaini absolutely useless in a match like this though, everything is just going around him the whole time

redundant second clause tbf

Carrick's coming on anyway. We desperately need to go 433 but van Gaal has seemingly abandoned it forever

looool 352

what a fucking chancer

When teams who've done next to fuck all in Europe for years decide to throw European games I just want the rest of their season to go to shit.

Boring this, innit?

a match involving lvg's man u boring surely not?

Terrible performance, not getting my hopes up for the hammers at the weekend

this is honestly one of the most perplexing managerial reigns in the history of the sport

NOTHING he does makes sense

and the humiliations just keep coming

LOL

LOL @ SCHOLES actually saying the word "British" in his dire post-match rant

turns out all those times picking up the kids from training and not yet writing autobiographies his internal monologue was worse than the ilx thread

and tbf lol at both these clubs, playing each other on a thursday night and lfc only able to score via a penalty and michael carrick failing to control a terrible cross from an offside jordan henderson

apparently Fellaini elbowed Sakho at some point before the end

I don't think I've ever hated a Utd player more. And Wayne Rooney still plays for us

was that not can. can went down just at the very end, in my stream they said there was some incident with fellaini.

not gonna get wildly excited, but i do feel liverpool are a bit like spurs post-bale, a lot of the signings that seemed a waste are growing in confidence. people even dismissed firmino earlier this year. lallana is really playing well, can is looking like the midfielder we've needed, clyne has been good from the beginning, and allen coming on seemed to steady us a lot.

i mean yeah, prob lose 3-0 next week, but there's some promise there.

I initially dismissed firmino because I watched him play for brazil in the copa america last summer and he was bobbins and missed a diabolical sitter from about 12 yards in one game

Was it him that did that crazy backheel turn between mata and whoever? Need a vine of that

that was lallana i think. he has definitely improved under klopp

Ah yeah right, that was good that

no, I think it was Firmino

edge of the box, right hand side?

Nah that was Lallana, that was unreal. Lallana is thriving. He was sensational against City last week.

https://twitter.com/realfootballhub/status/708045762849087494

Oh I didn't even see that one! This was what I was thinking of:

https://twitter.com/LFCMostar/status/708046671465172992

lallana ftw imo.

not gonna get wildly excited, but i do feel liverpool are a bit like spurs post-bale, a lot of the signings that seemed a waste are growing in confidence. people even dismissed firmino earlier this year. lallana is really playing well, can is looking like the midfielder we've needed, clyne has been good from the beginning, and allen coming on seemed to steady us a lot

Also both Rodgers and AVB gave every impression of not wanting half the players they'd just been given. Unless you have a really exceptional player or one whose playing style is particularly attuned to the EPL then it's always going to take time for them to find their feet, often time that supporters and pundits aren't willing to grant them. Obviously not an issue with Lallana but that was more an issue with injuries/confidence.

Some people even dismissed Vidic and Evra when they arrived in the Premiership, which looks ridiculous in hindsight.

Suarez's first season he was p sloppy

I mean obviously if it's one or two players they get a bit of leeway unless there's a massive fee attached, signing five or six with the money from a talismanic player is pretty much asking for trouble. Was kind of exasperating to watch Liverpool repeat that exact same mistake barely a year on from Bale.

there's the interpersonal element of large scale squad overhaul which does take time and trial/error - poch was insistent on shipping out who he perceived as bad apples spoiling his ideal most receptive group - but imo it's simply the difference between a manager thinking deliberately about specific pieces in a specific puzzle versus recruiting and having around players who just represent endless bloating ~options~ . i mean brendan might have had vague glimpses of possible tactical formulations but there was no clear-sighted vision of plans a b c (and no i don't excuse him from the actions of the transfer committee) and it seems mainly he was driven by his kind of sick vanity backing himself to whip something together ad hoc as he went along, with his talent presumably outshining all the expensive broken toys it left behind. basically the "time to find feet" line is bullshit mostly and applies to the coaches 100x more than the players