The Other Premier League Fixtures Thread (old)

Nah, Claudio Bravo is definitely a better goalkeeper than Joe Hart, but he does seem to be performing very badly this season.

He isn’t so much better that he warranted an entire pantomime from Pep and the media over his replacement. Could have replaced Hart quietly without a great deal of fuss.

Pep was pretty unprofessional and put Bravo in a terrible position even before he kicked a ball for City. It’s obviously hilarious though.

I dunno, it seemed logical, it was only a matter of time before Ter Stegen took over the reigns at Barça, and so Bravo needed a new landing spot, and though I don’t claim to have a knowledge of all the GK prospects out there I can’t think of a better one who’s capable with his feet and a fit in Pep’s team than Bravo.

How was he unprofessional btw? I don’t really remember there being such a big problem.

Maybe different media coverage in the UK - Hart being English and all - but over here it really seemed like Pep was being overly vocal in how Hart didn’t suit his system as he couldn’t play with the ball at his feet.

Sort of made it seem like getting rid of Hart was a way to really get his philosophy into City.

Was all a little overly dramatic and absolutely hilarious now that it looks like Hart would have done a far better job as a ball playing keeper than Bravo.

He wouldn’t, though. Bravo is just making a lot of errors for some reason. In the end it’s not that close though about who’s the better goalkeeper/a better fit in a system that asks the GK to make decisions and plays with his feet.

Maybe he made some mistake in the handling of a player that may have had an important backing in the dressing room–again, I have no idea, and it’s not like City have that many english players anyways/people who seem likely on the face of it to be hugely upset by a Joe Hart exit?–but on a purely football level it was definitely a totally logical and good decision.

Him playing in this set-up was supposed to help him though, no? He was making these dumb mistakes on the ball with Martinez (and probably with England) last season. If he’s playing in a team with more structured possession, with clearer instructions, then you’d expect to see more of this talent that everyone says he has.

And me saying that he’s terrible obviously doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s without any real talent. I just don’t think he’s a good player today and based purely on what I see and not what I others say, I don’t think he does look THAT talented anyway.

IMO, they need new fullbacks, a new centre back and a new holding midfielder. Don’t understand why people talked about their “amazing” transfer window when their squad still lacked so many profiles required to play this kind of football.

For what it’s worth, it doesn’t even look like good ball playing centre backs weren’t availble during the summer. Mustafi, to my surprise, is certainly just that. Umtiti was also available earlier on. David Luiz was also available and Bartra, even if he’s perhaps not amazing, for like 8m would also have been worth it.

If they wanted a promising English ball playing defender then they could have signed Rob Holding. :stuck_out_tongue:

Meh for me it was six of the one. Certainly hasn’t worked out as a good decision though and I don’t even rate Hart that much.

Well my thought was that having the skillset to play the position and the mental ‘hardware/architecture/furniture’ are two different things. And England is probably not the place to look for a young player with the latter.

It’s early days though. Definitely seems to be having a shocker of a start to his career at City but as long as they get their defence sorted out at some point it will definitely prove to be the right decision, and people will see the quality of keeper that Bravo is. It’s not such a stylistic thing as people make out tbh, I think, people like Ter Stegen and of course ValdĂ©s in his Barça days (still the most underrated keeper of them all, what a player he was) are better/more natural with their feet, but Bravo is a very good GK and his work for Barça the last couple seasons was pretty class.

NBC were tearing into Pep at half time and for good reason. All season people have been saying the problem for Leicester is nobody lets them play on the break anymore and they’ve been found out, and then City go and play exactly how they want them to.

It feels like they structure their team so much for attacking that they leave themselves wide open to a team that actually tries to punish them. This was even worse than the Chelsea game where they did at least dominate and get unlucky with finishing but to lose a game like this to a team like this after losing to Chelsea in that manner, that’s very shoddy work.

Aguero and Fernandinho are arguably their #1 and #2 most important players so hopefully they can drop a few more points without them :grin:

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Ugh, as I type this I hate myself, but he didn’t come up through the Everton academy, they signed him from Barnsley post 18th birthday.

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Mahrez was good yesterday, maybe a cheeky bid for him in January?

That assist was absolutely disgusting.

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But but but. Bravo is a ‘ball player’ he must be 10/10 world class right?!

Edit: in other news, I think we should go for Mahrez again.

So far so good for WBA. Keep it up!

Chelsea will win it late

could you shut up?
As soon as i read this.

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FFS just as I open Twitter I see

:disappointed:

Costa is fucking back.

Damn Chelsea didn’t create anything today, one terrible mistake at the back and Costa took advantage.

Not terribly fussed though because if it comes down to it we’ll just handle our own business against Chelsea.

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Football is a game of mistakes. The team who makes the less mistakes wins (Cruijff).