yellow jumper

arsenal trying to sell it to their fans maybe. john cross their usual gimp for that sort of thing.

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if he's going to play the diamond he should arguably play sturridge, sterling and henderson as they know the system.

is that what you're taking out of that?

was that what was in his head to start the euros then? a back 4 and a front 3 that have never played together before.

classic.

he's better than vermalen by dint of being fit and he's better than mathieu, who's a left back. he's also better than martin skrtel.

well mascherano and batra look like leaving and he's better than thomas vermalen and jeremy mathieu.

isn't he colombian?

he's also injured all the time. dortmund are awful at protecting value of their players, though.

yeah, that's why i said inadvertently. hoddle's team did reasonably well, but his scandal was more weirdo, than the sort of chancer/joker thing i was thinking about. wasn't robson involved in a tryst also?

venables maybe. eriksson, inadvertently. but, yeah. they probably should have gone for redknapp last time round. not a great manager but more likely to communicate something that would help mentality of players.

i bet he's goes down a storm at the FA garden parties. england always do better with a manager who's likely to scandalize, do or say inappropriate things. the main skill needed for that job is taking pressure off, one way or another. hodgson a disaster.

he might bring the sense and direction their money clearly needs. but, hiring a very particular and vocal manager like mourinho then putting a 'name' sporting director in place wouldn't appear the most joined-up move. added to the other big voices and agendas already in place; the plc, ferguson etc.

it's both. monchi hires the coaches as well as players. juande ramos won the europa twice there. there have been other good campaigns under other managers too. could do. my doubts less about him really than how much many of these super clubs are really prepared to allow someone like him to do the job the way and with the time he's been able to do it at sevilla.

bayern munich have an excellent sporting director already. arguably a better one, given he's done it at two clubs. their business been great over last few years. i'd be wary of monchi to an extent, as impressive as the work at sevilla has been in terms of team building and refreshing, it's really the europa league that elevates them, and the way they operate not certain to translate to a higher level. like many of the players that do well there.

from a liverpool perspective the disappointment was these were probably our two worst performances in big games under him.

just that i think it's been pretty dour football and that doesn't tend to go down well there.

yeah. there's obviously some value in his ability to demand more basic/conservative things from superstars. but not sure i see what he's doing being tolerated that long at madrid even if it brings trophies. or flying elsewhere particularly. also in game management bizarre; watched three big games now where he's taken off three of his better players early-ish with a 1-0 lead and got away with it. mind you i'm not sure enrique's that great either. atletico lost that in traditional way for them. bit of historical inferiority complex together with the underdog approach. took risks when they were behind, but not enough when they were level.

zidane's a massive spoofer.

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building castles in the sky.

think that is as much about how they end up as how they look when he first gets them. there are players at liverpool he obviously likes who haven't or don't yet tick all those boxes.

i doubt there's much in it. similar to the one-sided reporting of a move for kovacic last summer. but not sure what 'a klopp player' is, is all that easy to identify.

portuguese press reporting brahimi to us apparently, not a squeak from liverpool sources though.