NAMING RIGHTS THREAD: Liverpool really won't win the Premiership 2010-2011

Hernandez should have made the Young player shortlist

he's no seamus coleman

Can't disagree with you there

I think Hernandez is too old for the young player shortlist?

city to chelsea back to city is truly heartbreaking

Hernandez is 22, Nani is 24 and Hart and Nasri are 23

Rooney's superiority to Bale and Nasri proved with science

Wayne Rooney - 10 goals, 11 Assists
Gareth Bale - 7 Goals, 1 Assist
Samir Nasri - 9 Goals, 1 Assist

Berbatov - 20 goals, 9 assists

So the shortlist should have been all Utd players basically. Including Scholes and Giggs naturally

bale, and i've said this before, has 'assisted' crouch, defoe and pavlyuchenko to the tune of about 30 missed sitters. Where's the stat for that?

Bale made both lists. Stop whining.

heh i've pointed out that he wouldnt have made mine, tbf

and i've said this before

At 14 Bale was running 100m in 11.4 seconds. 'I wouldn’t like to say what I could run now, but I’m definitely a lot quicker.’

he def seems a lot faster in the last year or so cuz before he was pretty quick but not super fast, iirc?

he keeps accelerating, which is pretty good to watch. He needs to be given the space though, and i've said this before, this is where domestically he's finding it tougher.

That, and p neville's carte blanche to provide one early reducer per game

yeah i think the dfference is that he needed the extra mass to keep accelerating, whereas most fast players are lil dudes like walcott who are fast long before fully grown

i'm just hoping he further eclipses the croxteth cromagnon to become consensus BEST PLAYER IN BRITAIN

done imo

eh, not best player but better than clogger mcgrannyfuck surely

And he isn't English... which is nice

jeez the level of nationalist bigotry on this thread is just

need a Martin Samuel essay on the subject stat

It means there will be less hype about him

He'd probably be the greatest player in the world by now

ya irl he's better but the consensus isn't quite there

well the guy has no chance of ever getting a World Cup winner's medal unlike English oh hang on

Olympic winners medal?

Isn't it just English players in the UK Olympic team?

So far, but I reckon that might change

rooney executes a mean triple pike, prob his best chance of a medal?

I think Bale's probably done the pro-GB Football Team lobby a favour. Whoever they are.

lol utd

Admitting infringement, it's being punished that they have a prob with.

I can see their confusion, what with the treatment they're used to getting on the pitch tbf.

'Drugs and booze, fast cars, big houses. I've had it all.'

thought that was gonna be a Graham Taylor interview

My dad's always saying that players never used to get injured in the 60s, 70s or 80s, or at least not as much as they do now. Is this correct? I read somewhere recently that players in the 70s used to run an avergae of 4k in a match, while players today run an average of 11km. That would go some way to explaining the apparent increase in injuries in the modern game wouldn't it, as the body is surely more susceptible to wear and tear the more strain you put on it? Any thoughts?

Sounds true.

Also hitting other people at greater speed --> greater damage.

But I think players did use to get injured - they certainly did in the 1980s. (Bryan Robson!) Of course they were less fit.

think i've read that the knife-edge of peak fitness & athleticism they're expected to maintain contributes a lot to muscle strain, which i think is a slightly different point to the wear and tear of 10k a game.

recurring injuries tend to hit the speediest/most agile players more often, or so it seems to me- because of their tendency to be slighter of build or whatever?

With some players it's just sheer good luck that they avoid a bad injury that can recur throughout their career.

with jenas it's just my sheer bad luck i guess

The speediest and most agile players tend to attract the crudest tackles as well.

i'd hazard that most recurring injuries are non-contact tbh

More games, faster games, more off-the-ball work for the modern player imo. Old games look laughably pedestrian nowadays. Plus greater travel, media work, etc. Basically, it's a much harder job now.

Also, you can walk 6km in 90 mins ffs - of all the fashion for stats, 'distance covered' has got to be the stupidest.

More games

Do they play more games? It used to be 42 league games a season, now it's 38. There used to be a lot more FA Cup replays. If a team goes a long way in the Champions League then that would probably mean more games in total than in the past, but most teams aren't even in the Champions League in the first place, never mind the semi-finals.

no such things as squads in my day neither

Yeah, this too ^

Also, a more demanding game means players have to pull out if they have a knock - can't nurse a strain by pacing around doing nothing most of the time (gag goes here)

Thanks for the replies people. I've been out so am only just catching up on this now - interesting stuff. I've also read that pressing didn't really become commonplace until the 80s - apparently the famous World Cup Final of 1970 between Brazil and Italy is actually pretty dull; there's hardly any running, and players are literally moving up and down the pitch at walking pace. Of course plenty of finals since then have been boring, but perhaps for different reasons.

doesn't help that italy were absolutely shit on the day to the point where brazil literally could walk through them.