God No. Nelson is shite.
Palace are crap. We’ll smoke them.
Because of that, Saka has no rest at all.
True. I do think Saka’s mentality though is to play every game possible though.
I think someone in here showed the minutes players like Salah played in comparison over the years and he was playing more than Saka, considerably more actually.
That’s the type of level Saka wants to reach. Messi and Ronaldo used to play almost every game when they were younger just to statpad as much as possible. You subbed them off they would be angry.
The difference is, Messi, Ronaldo and Salah, all got protected heavily.
Unlike Saka, he got abused in every game.
Not sure either of the first 2 got protected that well, they get the fouls but they still got kicked to shit.
Hazard is the best comparison to how Saka gets treated now imo, lad got fouled all game every game and half the time not even given.
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Like fuck they got protected. Players used to get on that field to genuinely injure Messi and Ronaldo.
We’re talking about a time where there wasn’t even VAR to interfere if something wasn’t caught in real time.
What they eventually started doing is make their touches on the ball count and stopped holding onto the ball too long and go on those solo runs.
That’s what Saka has been doing too.
they were… and drew a lot of fouls.
Not specifically on Saka, refereeing nowadays is shit.
Yellow card for nothing, then you can have abuse opponents without getting anything (Rodri, Konate).
A yellow card for “stepping out” of the designated area, or waving to the referee.
All bogus.
if they were not protected, their career could have been shorter, a lot shorter.
They got smarter with their game to protect themselves and had some of the greatest coaches and overall support from their team to get the most out of their career.
See how they evolved over the years with their game. Messi and Ronaldo had unique prep regimes, different from the rest, it was more recovery based than actual training.
Messi and Ronaldo are not only football freaks but sports freaks in general.
this is the game we bounce back, they rarely get anything from teams that actually play ball this season.
goals galore get
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11 days until our next game? Fuck me.
I really hope this team and Arteta buck up their fucking ideas. Lot of preparation time, lot of opportunity for rest.
It was a good performance against Liverpool without the finishing. We should have been hammering them 3-0 by HT.
Martinelli is our only real killer in front of goal. Have to find a way of getting him in the shooting positions. I truly feel he is going to be the one player who has to score the goals to keep us in this title race. I don’t trust anybody else to consistently finish 1v1s.
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hope Arteta can do something different to confuse the opponents…
like switching Saka/Marti in the middle of the game or go 4-4-2/3-5-2 all out of sudden.
we simply just got found out by using 4-3-3 way too much and too predictable.
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Why is this game being played coming weekend instead of the one just gone by though it’s the same gameweek?
Staggered ‘winter break’
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Ah, okay. Thanks mate.
Yeah. He’s been criticised for his finishing lately, but still I think a bigger problem is that he isn’t getting into enough chances (as all our forwards).
Haaland probably misses more chances in one game than Marti has missed in the last few months.
We need to get him (and others) into more goalscoring chances regularly, and then if he start to miss 5 sitters a game I’ll start worrying about his finishing, for now that’s not the biggest issue.
Hupefully Arteta comes back from Dubai with some fresh ideas after sucking up those juicy Salto Bueno steaks.
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Although we lost to Liverpool, we were the better team but our finishing was poor.
But we have to beat Crystal Palace if we want to consider ourselves title challengers, so we are under a bit of pressure, although should still win the game comfortably.
I’ll go 3-1 with Saka, Odegaard and Martinelli to score.
Zinny a doubt
https://twitter.com/Gunnersc0m/status/1747203280650838470?t=d8nhDUQ0xzw3zMROhTSr2g&s=19
Fuck, who else we got that can give the ball away in our third of the pitch and continually get roasted down the wing.
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Kiwior got that covered.
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