Great point for Southampton. Thoroughly deserved.
Now for for the main event. 2-2 draw.
3-1 Utd.
Good call.Originally Posted by Crop
I hope your prediction is right man.
Me too!
Unless we get an early second half goal though I can't see it. They were lucky with the second one but they deserve to be 2-0 up. We're not playing too badly but Chelsea are so sharp today.
Erm.Good call.
There was an element of sarcasm in my post seeing as we were already 2-0 down.Erm.Good call.
This is horrible. Post-Fergie Utd have turned into post-80s Liverpool.
Oh, my badI didn't check this thread in realtime. Still, he did say 3-1 Utd so if United manage to get one goal...!
EDIT: Never mind.
Also tbf whatever the criticisms you can make about 1990-2016 Liverpool, they never were so terrified that they came to Old Trafford and parked the bus. This is despite 1990-2016 United being infinitely better than 2016 Liverpool. Have some pride in yourselves ffs!
I guess that Mourinho bandwagon crashed and burned, eh?
Not really Aerith. I'm 100% behind Jose for the season. @Paul - Liverpool were just as defensive as United for many parts of the game last week, up until maybe the last 20-30 mins.
Bad result yesterday but gameplan went out the window with shambolic defending 30 seconds in. There is problems with our team in how we attack that will take time to iron out.
Str8 Pimpin'
I disagree, I don't think this Liverpool team know how to play defensively. Which isn't praise! It's why that was the only clean sheet of the season and it'll be why there'll definitely be no title this year. Klopp always seeks to play the team to their own strengths rather than adapt to the opposition's weaknesses, similar to Monsieur Wenger.
In the game itself, Liverpool had two thirds of possession, more shots (off and on target), more corners and less fouls, all of which points to a much more attacking display. Liverpool didn't do much in the first half an hour because they were just trout and couldn't even string two passes together - it wasn't for a lack of intention, just a lack of application. Of course, you can also credit United's pressing of both players and the goalkeeper for the inability to retain possession and build from the back. Regardless, it certainly was not a 10 men behind the ball thing a la Mourinho.
http://spielverlagerung.com/2016/10/...s-klopps-side/ a nice tactical review!
And now for something completely different...
http://www.swanstrust.co.uk/2016/10/...forum-address/
So it's all (partly) come out in the past week for Swansea City. I've been following this whole farce for a while now, and my gut feeling over this American takeover being dodgy as all hell turned out to be true. I won't expect anyone to read the whole tract from that link so I'll give you the not-very-abridged version.
Wordy exposition for the unfamiliar:Ownership of SCFC was until fairly recently shared more or less equally between Martin Morgan, Brian Katzen, Huw Jenkins (chairman), Rob Davies and the Swansea City Supporters Trust. The Trust is made up of thousands of regular fans who pay an annual tenner and get to have a say in the goings on at the club through the fan director who sits on the club board. It had been this way (give or take a few individual other local businessmen involved in shareholding over the last ten years) since 2002 when all parties, including the trust, literally bought the club on a hail mary to save it from folding altogether. I remember the people shaking buckets on match days and the posters in shop windows calling out to people to join the trust and raise the money they needed to make the (at the time, completely doomed) investment.
Of course, everyone's wildest dreams actually happened and less than ten years later we were in the Premier League. The rest is fairly straightforward, so we'll zip forward in time to early 2015 and the first whisperings of a 'foreign investment' deal (ie. shares being sold), with all shareholding parties involved in talks. Those talks fell through, which is worth remembering for the moment when we consider what follows.
So earlier this year the Kaplan and Levien show were first announced to be coming to Swansea. During the negotiations, the Trust were suspicious only by their complete radio silence over the whole thing, with nary a statement, forum, or even a tweet as to what role they were playing in discussions. It turns out now that this is because they were not party to any of these discussions, deliberately. Yes, basically what happened was that the other board members had decided to sell up and didn't want the pesky Supporters Trust getting in the way of holla holla get dolla, so did it completely on the down low.
"But Manus, surely that must contravene some sort of agreement that was made at the start?" I hear you ask. Well, you'd be right! The 2002 Shareholder's Agreement signed by everybody mentioned above should have stopped this from happening, but Huw and the gang decided that all that didn't matter and even went as far as telling Kaplan and Levien that it was invalid and that they could forget about it. When the Trust caught up to this fact and confronted them over just what the hell they were playing at, they were asked to sign a new agreement which gave the Trust some pointless extra freebies and which also confirmed that said Shareholder's Agreement was no longer valid. Obviously the sellers got told to do one.
Hidden talks continued, and once the Trust managed to find out what had actually been happening, it was too late. Kaplan and Levien had bought out the previous shareholders' stakes, and now had a 75% grip on the voting rights of the club. The previous board members had made off with their millions and will probably never be seen again (and for their own safety, they probably don't want to). Francesco Guidolin was sacked, again without any consultation with the Trust, and an untested American was installed in his place. Welcome to the New Swansea City.
A word on our American overlords. For all the fanfare in the press releases about "being drawn to the community-based club" and "wanting to work with the Supporters Trust", in reality Kaplan and Levien's attitudes towards the Trust have been lukewarm to say the least. They didn't seem particularly bothered about the mountain of deception and collusion that took place in order to get the sale done, have only had a few face to face meetings with Trust board members, where they repeatedly give no guarantees over the Trust's stake and continuing role in the football club. At the same time they maintain that they are 'keen' to work with the Trust. To be frank, if you want my opinion, these are businessmen who come from a world of American sport where the concept of fan ownership (or even, really, "supporters" altogether) is a foreign and not altogether too appealing one. I'm not holding my breath.
The fact is, the worst part of this whole sorry saga is not that the previous owners have sold up (they were a group of slightly-more-well-off fans who bought the club for a pittance and now have the chance to make some life-changing bucks, no fan would begrudge them), but the fact that they have gone behind the backs of the fans to do it. If the Trust knew that there were shares up for sale, they would have undoubtedly gone for them hammer and tongs, because the Trust's stated aim is to obtain a 25% stake and secure the future of the club.
Literally all the Trust cares about is the success of the club. It will still be there four years from now when we're back at the bottom of the Football League. It's especially sad because for the most part the sellers were genuine, lifelong fans of the club. Huw Jenkins continues to claim what he did was in SCFC's "best interests", but £7M makes people claim a lot of things. He's gone from dream chairman to local pariah in the space of 12 months.
By the way, all this intrigue was totally illegal, of course. The Trust is considering court action, but as stated earlier, all it cares about is the success of the club, and it also knows that senior exectives engaging in protracted court battles with its own fans is not going to be great for results on the pitch, so we'll see what happens.
All in all, depressing, infuriating, and sobering.
there was a picture here
I bloody sympathise. We had some absolutely terrible American owners a few years ago that nearly put us out of business and definitely led to a huge decrease in on pitch performances. Hope it gets sorted out soon for you.
Nice article. I'll side with you on it. But I think the media have gone overboard. Whenever we did go forward there was 11 players behind United many times IIRC, but this was more down to how slow we are to attack I'm sure.
The LVG method hasn't washed away yet and we are so stationary when we try to attack. Look at Ibrahimovic. He is forced to play with his back to the goal at all times because there is not one player making runs either side of him to open space. It's all too isolated. I have belief that movement in our team will come back and no imaginary wand will fix it overnight. I looked at Chelsea counter-attacking yesterday. They played through the centre and had players moving either side and that's something we should be doing. It's why Liverpool are very good ATM because of how fluid the movement is up top. Anyway, sorry if I'm going off topic!
@Manus - I find it ridiculous how a group of small individuals can upset literally millions of fans for the sake of money! I think Swansea are safe this year in the EPL at the very least.
Str8 Pimpin'
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