01-12-2025, 13:23
But your fans went agin Rudoni, agin Sorba Thomas, they wanted more from Koroma ....... and you're not likely to be in for Bellingham and Estevao are you?
Very few teams at ANY level are good enough to play out from the back all the time. And whether they score more or concede more that way is a moot point.
The rule change regarding goalkeeping that breathed life into this kind of football was intended to REDUCE passing back to the keeper. Instead he now has to take dodgy passes often to his weaker foot and quite often under challenge and has to get out from under the problem and use the ball as if he were a Zidane or a Hoddle. Pundits happily tell you it doesn't matter how the keeper saves it so long as he does when that ball bounces away to safety, yet if he knocks the ball away and it is intercepted by a lurking forward who then scores they will tell you he is at fault for not directing the ball to safety. They operate double standards all the time and aren't even bright enough to notice.
Footballers were playing out from the back EVEN when I was at school, and they were also using a big boot too. We wanted, and everyone should still want, the goalkeeper primarily to catch the ball, distributing it well was and still should be a secondary duty, but we are being conned into using entirely false parameters to judge goalkeeping performance. On Saturday I think it was 94 of the many passes Chesterfield played went BACKWARDS. That's the entertainment were are being treated to throughout the modern game, not just EFL2.
We are listening to purveyors of bollox and they are influencing the game at every level.
The best thing that happened at the weekend? Chelsea with 10 men, faced with an Arsenal corner, left three players up front so Arsenal didn't then dare to crowd and push eight or nine men into the six yard box. In another match I counted 16 men in the six-yard box for a corner. How can a keeper get through such a wrestling tide of humanity to catch that ball that almost certainly should be his to claim?
The beautiful game mixed its styles and its skillset. A long ball up front can be as beautiful as a strolling melange of short passes. But if we reduce the game to a negative catalogue of misplaced passes, poor control and shots off target we begin to wring the life out of it.
Sorry, my high horse unexpectedly appeared.
Very few teams at ANY level are good enough to play out from the back all the time. And whether they score more or concede more that way is a moot point.
The rule change regarding goalkeeping that breathed life into this kind of football was intended to REDUCE passing back to the keeper. Instead he now has to take dodgy passes often to his weaker foot and quite often under challenge and has to get out from under the problem and use the ball as if he were a Zidane or a Hoddle. Pundits happily tell you it doesn't matter how the keeper saves it so long as he does when that ball bounces away to safety, yet if he knocks the ball away and it is intercepted by a lurking forward who then scores they will tell you he is at fault for not directing the ball to safety. They operate double standards all the time and aren't even bright enough to notice.
Footballers were playing out from the back EVEN when I was at school, and they were also using a big boot too. We wanted, and everyone should still want, the goalkeeper primarily to catch the ball, distributing it well was and still should be a secondary duty, but we are being conned into using entirely false parameters to judge goalkeeping performance. On Saturday I think it was 94 of the many passes Chesterfield played went BACKWARDS. That's the entertainment were are being treated to throughout the modern game, not just EFL2.
We are listening to purveyors of bollox and they are influencing the game at every level.
The best thing that happened at the weekend? Chelsea with 10 men, faced with an Arsenal corner, left three players up front so Arsenal didn't then dare to crowd and push eight or nine men into the six yard box. In another match I counted 16 men in the six-yard box for a corner. How can a keeper get through such a wrestling tide of humanity to catch that ball that almost certainly should be his to claim?
The beautiful game mixed its styles and its skillset. A long ball up front can be as beautiful as a strolling melange of short passes. But if we reduce the game to a negative catalogue of misplaced passes, poor control and shots off target we begin to wring the life out of it.
Sorry, my high horse unexpectedly appeared.