Pep Guardiola

Liverpool flog their starting XI to no consequence for what 5 years straight? Simply unheard of

Equals out in a way IMO, people joke about Pep and PED’s but if anyone’s been doping it’s Liverpool

Doping in football is definitely rife lol

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Think I mentioned somewhere before but these gels they’re using at Liverpool has got more than the odd whisper.

I believe they’re just about on the right side of legal given that they contain nitric oxide and caffeine.

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You’d think there would he a lot of blood spinning as well to help with recovery. I mean, I’d do it if I knew how and wasn’t afraid of needles just so I could run 70mi a week.

I don’t know how to respond… stock market? People do use various analytics but there is no magic bullet… duh… that doesn’t mean you throw out all data and all belief that data can help you make better decisions, even if just marginal.

Football statistics are troublesome, no doubt… but they aren’t useless. Anyway, no point arguing this if you have that extreme a view on the matter.

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Oh yeah forgot

FRAUDIOLA

They were good for the whole game and not like Real were forcing them to make a change.

You can say this is hindsight, but the machine was running well, not necessary or no urgency to make the Grealish sub if you want to defend. You don’t put an all attacking (and lazy to defend) player to defend. When things go right, you take the credit. When things go wrong, you need to take the criticism.

Their next league game was Newcastle, De Bruyne and Mahrez were far more important in this CL game.

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Regarding spending, and I’m just saying this off the top of my head, will have to be looked into, but before Grealish they were limiting their key transfers to 60-70m max., which proved pretty shrewd compared with the RM and Barca busts with 120m signings that went bad. That said, maybe wages offset some of this.

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Transfer fee and salar is one thing…
All the teams he managed, were all ready made and had strong foundations and financial powers…
Barcelona, Bayern, now City.

At least Mourinho won with Porto, even if you count it as a one time fluke…

I don’t know what we can all agree on here. Maybe that he isn’t the best manager in the world. I don’t see anyone here disputing that Klopp is a better club manager. I agree Pep has made sure to go to places with the biggest chance of success, although at Barca and City I still think he did elevate somewhat above the sum of the parts, and I do also think things have just not gone his way in the CL knockout tournament while he has his PL titles.

I mentioned Ancelotti earlier because he failed at Everton, and maybe if we call Pep a fraud maybe Ancelotti should be called the same as he only succeeds in pretty ready-made situations also.

Klopp is also up there with Wenger and Ferguson in terms of long-term management and development of a club. Mourinho is a class of manager who can only do 2 seasons before things blow up. There were some suggestions Klopp could be the same actually by burning out players at Dortmund, but he’s bucked that at Liverpool, and after a difficult season last season. Pep has kind of plateaued at City.

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I am not going to begrudge someone for wanting to manage the best clubs if he has the choice. In Pep’s case, he thoroughly deserves to get the gig at Bayern & City after what he achieved with Barcelona.

The reason everyone is calling him a fraud is down to his failure to win CL for 11 seasons with 3 great sides. Winning the league title with Bayern & City is something that has been accomplished prior to Pep’s arrival so he didn’t really achieve something unattainable.
Bayern continued to win Bundesliga without Pep and managed to win the CL as well.
City will continue to win PL not long after Pep leaves.

Pep doesn’t need to manage a mid-table club to prove himself. I don’t expect Ancelotti to win anything with Everton but if Ancelotti was managing Real or PSG for 6 or so years, I would expect him to win a CL because winning La liga or Ligue 1 is not a big deal for those respective teams. If he doesn’t, he becomes a fraud.

Certain clubs are too stacked or have the capacity to be stacked enough to keep winning trophies. Real, PSG, Bayern, City, Chelsea, ManUnited, Barcelona are those clubs. Not winning CL for nearly a decade is a failure for those clubs.

I’m not picking holes, just trying to call balls and strikes here, but isn’t this a bit dicey because the start of these 11 years only includes the twilight of his Barca tenure (he won 2 CL’s previously)? In some ways this reminds me of the pain I felt when some people callled Arsene a loser while forgetting he did win PL titles.

Edit: I’ll add something to this. In terms of the nature of the CL, let’s not forget PSG in this, in terms of no guarantees for success.

What does this mean? Are either of those things banned or limited in any way?

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Would be smarter to do Guarana anyway. Has been doing wonders for me the last week or so.

Nitrates have a P classification. This means pharmacy only. I.e. if you’d run out of your angina spray, you could walk into a pharmacy and buy one, without the need for a prescription

Now, the concentration of nitric oxide within the gels the players are reportedly using must be small enough to circumvent this legal classification.

Does beg the question as to why a footballer needs such a drug.

Gone are the simpler days when, famously at Arsenal, it was “out with the Mars bars and in with the pasta”. Seems like medicated stuff now to make you play longer.

I think the answer to my question then is no, they are not banned or limited.

And the answer to this is quite obviously (imo) to try and gain an edge. But that option is open to any and all footballers it seems as it isn’t on any banned list.

And the answer to your original question “what does this mean”, is it’s just on the right side of legal, which I said in my original point.

There isn’t degrees to this stuff. The substances are either banned, limited or not. So this isn’t even like Chris Froome taking too many puffs of his inhaler, they could straight out inject this stuff into their veins and the authorities couldn’t do anything about it.

No