Nope give me the absolute shittiest team available every single round. I wanna see my damn club win the thing before i die. We can chase the glamour ties when we`ve won it a few times.

Can’t believe this fun shitpost has been downvoted haha.

I think the solution is players start sharing the penalties a la Titi-Pires. That way the ones who wouldn’t be allocated a pen get an assist to boost their value.

------------Eddie
Nelson-------------Cozier-Duberry
------Nwaneri-----Elneny
------------Jorginho
Sousa--Gabriel--Kiwior--Cedric
------------Ramsdale

Sub out Jorg for a Lewis-Skelly at some point, Eddie out for Sagoe Jr, and Gabi for Walters.

growing into empty massive markets where there’s zero competition (US, India, China, Japan, Africa).

…what? Those markets are EXTREMELY competitive lol. First off, Africa not having its own football culture? Its probably the one thing that is consistent across the whole continent lol. Football is the biggest sport in probably every single country there, with most countries having healthy leagues that are broadcast consistently.

Back to the no competition, it is way harder to get someone who isn’t a football fan at all to watch a game than to get someone who already enjoys the sport to watch a different game. The US and India already have sports that are entrenched into the top spots, the thing the EPL did is market itself well and made good broadcast deals to be available in those areas even before the big contracts kicked in.

For context, despite the PL being such a huge league, Barca and Real still have way larger global fanbases than any other team bar Manchester United. That’s because those teams dominated the spotlight when the game was expanding. Key differences is the teams around United were given the facilities to flourish and get better with time whilst La Liga funnelled its resources to Barca and Real even more. The EPL didn’t decide to just market United, La Liga decided to market its big two and that’s on them

the vast vast vast majority don’t speak a word of Spanish.

This doesn’t matter. Broadcast the games in English lol. I don’t get why people think this matters so much, the EPL is full of players who don’t speak English. Real is the most popular team in the world, and that’s not because only the Spanish speaking world is backing them.

Improve the product, and the money will come in.

Charlie Patino Sambi double pivot dominating the CL next season. You heard it here first.

It’d be great for the game if more South American teams started receiving more for the work they do developing these talents, even better if they could start cutting out middleman leagues like Portugal

One fullback inverts into midfield so that the 8 position can get forward and join the attack while the other fullback overlaps the winger to take away a defender creating space for cutting inside or creating a crossing opportunity.

The fullbacks do that very conservatively. Compare that to any other team in the “big 6” and you’ll see that, plus the fact that we play FBs that are closer to CBs than they are to the traditional FB.

I mean Zinchenko just scored this past game

From a corner lol. Saliba also scored from the same situation, you wouldn’t use that to imply our CBs are attacking.

so idk what you’re talking about lowest in the league?

As I said, our matches’ combined xG, which is our attacking xG+ our opponents xG, which indicates how open matches are. I can show you my source in about an hour since I I’m on mobile rn but the point is, our matches are very stingy. Even the example you give is great, we are 7th in attacking xG, give away the least xG. We aren’t some swashbuckling team like last season. We are a lot more measured and careful, and that’s a good thing imo.

not to mention playing out from the back no matter how many times it burns us

Playing out from the back is actually the safer option lol. You lump the ball forward results in the opposition being way more likely to win the ball back.

when your main holding/defensive mid is out, you have to fill in that gap with an extra body

We did the same thing last season when Partey was around. Our rest offence in 3-2-5, Zinny was Partey’s midfield partner.

To summarise, ask yourself this simple question when watching us. How many times do we try low % options? We don’t spam long shots, we don’t span through balls, our wingers almost never run into outnumbered situations and will almost always pass back inside, we’re even pickier at which transitional moments we’ll attack. This is all mostly by design, because our performances have been a lot more mature and controlled as opposed to the high intensity of last season.

We’re a very cautious team when you look at the risks we take. Our fullbacks aren’t as aggressive in attack, we normally have a shield of 2 in front of our defence and we rarely try pot shots or low percentage passes.

This is reflected in the stats for needs too. Our games have the lowest total xG in the league. We don’t create an insane amount but we barely give up any chances

Brentford away then Lens at home will be massive.

Win both of those and it makes our December so much easier. Win Brentford and we pull away from one of City/Liverpool a bit, win Lens and it means we can fully rotate for PSV away, which is right before a tricky game against Villa.

If we have a true dead rubber against PSV let’s force Mikel to take leave and get Arsene in for that game. Mikel doesn’t have it in him to play a full meme line-up like Arsene used to in those games

Just saw the United lineup.

• highest net spend over the last decade on the planet.
• 1.5 billion dollaridoos spent

And they’re starting Jonny fucking Evans, in 2023.

Arteta wouldn’t. We took Xhaka, who used to be that and turned dropped his touches, then signed Havertz specifically because he isn’t that.

The LB will always be the tempo setter on that side. The only exception I can see to that is if we bring back Partey at RB so that Dec can slide across when he’s playing the 6, but that still requires the LCM to not be a high volume guy.

I’ve never known a top player to be recruited in to an academy at the age of 16 and make it to the prem for example

I’m pretty sure Gabriel Jesus is one of those players. He joined Palmeiras’ youth when he was 15, hence his “brings the streets to the pitch” attitude since he wasn’t academy cooked.

Yeah but this stuff is cyclical. Germany also revamped their coaching and youth system quite a while ago and reaped the benefits of that but that cycle is obviously ending now. England need to capitalise on it before it passes

Good thing we have another one coming in 3 fucking weeks…

Hey there, JD defence force coming through.

The dude was a good CB, and could have been great with a bit of luck. He came back from that huge injury and was legit our best CB for a bit. He then got moved to RB during the great FB drought and he sucked at that which killed his confidence, then he did his shoulder and that was GG. Its notable that of all the names mentioned there, only JD had a respectable career after Arsenal.

Back to the OP, I can’t believe Mikael fucking Silvestre isn’t an option because he is always the right answer.