Patters wrote:

Balotelli swapped shirts with Pepe at HT and he's subbed off for the start of the second half. Rodgers was downplaying the Balotelli signing a couple of weeks ago and it looks like he's had enough already. Lallana in his place, I think Sterling is playing at no.9.

I would instantly sell any player who did that if I was the boss, remember that stupid fat fuck Santos tried to to it with Van Persie and was sold soon after.
I was one of those who would have liked to see Ballotelli given one last chance here before he was caught smoking but I then washed my hands of him, he's a dumb cunt who will never learn, bullet dodged.

Rex wrote:

Kos would start for all of those teams, Özil was a starter for Real Madrid for 3 years, and Alexis was Barcelona's best player last season. I'd wager that Walcott would play quite a bit for most teams as well, and so would Ramsey.

Ozil was sold and Real won the CL the following season. Ozil's form since moving would not be good enough for any top team. Alexis is great and I love the bastard, but they just went and sold him, as well. Don't think they're gonna miss him too much, either. The fact that both were sold should tell you something, no? That both teams did not class either as fundamental players.

Walcott would be a great super sub, but Ramsey wouldn't start for either. In fact, neither team employs a gung ho midfielder like Ramsey for him to be of any use to them. Regardless, Ramsey is not better than Rakitic, Iniesta, Kroos, Modric, James, Gotze, Lahm, Alonso or Schweinsteiger.

Benatia,  Pepe, Varane and perhaps even Boateng are all better than Koscielny. Even then it's negligible either way.

None of Chelsea or even Man City's players would start bar Aguero. The sad fact is that Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich are far and away the best teams on the planet. They also have most of the top 30 players of the world in their teams.

Look at the best PL players. Silva, Aguero, Cesc, Sanchez, Ozil, Di Maria, Falcao, Yaya. None of them are as good as Messi, Iniesta, C.Ronaldo, Bale, Robben and Muller. Aguero is the closest.

ultimate_warrior wrote:

Benatia,  Pepe, Varane and perhaps even Boateng are all better than Koscielny.

Behave.

Koscielny has made too many big game errors. Otherwise, he is quality but his big game temperament is poor.

Let's agree to disagree.

Agree with UW on Kos. He simply makes too many high profile and costly errors to be considered among the best centre backs. Neither is Boateng nor Varane though.

What about Pepe then? I remember when Real Madrid lost 4-1 to Dortmund, he was at fault for every goal. Also his 10 game ban must be considered a fuck-up far greater than Kos could ever do. Considering Ramos is Real Madrid's only starting CB while they rotate Pepe and Varane, it would be extremely weird to include either of them in that list without including Ramos. I think Kos is better than both Pepe, Varane and Boateng personally.

Also I think it's ridiculous to say that Sanchez was Barcelona's best player last season. Eve though Messi had his worst season in a long time, scoring "only" 41 goals, he was far better than any other Barca player.

Gladly, Rex. Can someone ban me, already? I'm wasted too much of my life with this shit. :angry:

Be careful what you wish for, U_W.

inb4b7

est wrote:

Be careful what you wish for, U_W.

I'm actually serious, lol. I put this site on Google Blocker, and then ended up browsing on my phone instead.

Of course Messi was better than Sanchez last season, but that was hardly the point. Barcelona let Alexis go because they had their eyes on Bitey McRacist. With FFP they obviously need to sell a few players too, but let's not pretend that Alexis wouldn't have played a significant number of games for any team on the planet. As would Özil and Kos, and as would Ramsey. They'd just be used differently by most other managers than the one we have.

Put any of those defenders in our team and they would make as many mistakes if not more. Our defenders are always too exposed

Well everyone is as entitled as the next person to say this player is better than that one, thats why football is discussed.
I personally think players look better or worse according to the system they play in, the rest is just confidence.
Take Kos as he has been mentioned, does he make costly mistakes because his style is so proactive and aggressive or is it because of our high line and how he is constantly exposed lead to the costly mistakes?

Kos hasn't had a good start to the season but he has a serious achilles problem and is clearly affected by it. Koscielny of 2013-14 is a world class player. Ramsey, Özil, Alexis are all up there. Wilshere, Chamberlain, Chambers are excellent U22 prospects too.

The problem is that so many of our other players are average. Szczesny, Gibbs, Debuchy, Flamteta, Welbeck... you don't see them as first choice at Chelsea/City/Barca/Madrid/Bayern. Elite teams have squad players better than those. City have two better players than our starters at both fullback positions, holding midfield, and striker! So when Koscielny and Özil get hurt and Ramsey goes out of form we look like half a team. This tactical shift hasn't helped, but Alexis and at times Wilshere aside we are getting a lot of average individual performances. It really shows you our individual quality when Wenger doesn't have it spot on tactically. It's not good.

"When Wenger doesn't have spot on tactically"???
Wenger's whole system is an abortion, its like Frankenstein's monster.
It's a cop out and too easy just crying and saying our players are inferior to others they're not- It's a team game, a top manager with use a system that gets the most out of his players so that their total is more than the sum of their individual parts.

City down to 9 and going out.

They remind me of our 01-03 teams in europe. Plenty of quality but repeatedly mugged off in europe

Messi has equaled Raul's CL goal scoring record.