Mad Scientist

My post? Patronising? Compared to this? Yes, I did (and do) seriously think that - based on your demonstrated lack of anything resembling the ability to put together an argument, neatly demonstrated by the above quote. My estimate of your 'reasoning abilities' couldn't actually get any lower.

Yes it does, in the context of 'David Hodgson' making the point that Babel should have started ahead of Maxi.

He has been saying exactly that. He's been making the case for Babel starting instead of Maxi. In response to a post saying that Maxi played well and his selection was vindicated Hodgson responded with: "Virtually everyone was putting him in their team to start V Blackburn, and there were very few shouts for Maxi.", i.e. most of the forum thought Babel should have started so he should have started. A couple of posts later: "Whilst I respect your thoughtful and insightful view of Babel, I must disagree as I think Maxi flatters to deceive and that yes, Babel would have given us more. This was the opinion of virtually every poster on this forum prior to the teams bring announced yesterday." Same again. That point made it's first appearance about a page later. Maybe I can let him off with a warning Or on second thoughts, maybe not. Ad hominem. My bet is he'll be telling me that I'm a clueless whippersnapper who couldn't possibly know as much about the game as him shortly. Which is the kind of thing that happens when you don't actually have any logical arguments to make.

That's a logical fallacy called argumentum ad populum, and I'm reckon an argument from repetition (another logical fallacy) as well, because this same logical fallacy has been mentioned a number of times by you already in this thread. There was an appeal to authority earlier in this thread as well, although not by you this time (you did a pearler a few days ago when debating MFletcher). It doesn't help your arguments when they are full of incorrect reasoning. Which is not to say that you're wrong by the way, it's just that the conclusions you have reached don't follow from the arguments you have chosen to use. You're also not the only one who uses faulty reasoning on here, so please don't think I'm singling you out - it's just the same fallacy repeated a few times over was starting to grate a bit.

You have to kick a mostly white, spherical object into a rectangle with white edges. If you do it well you get lots of small, thin, green rectangles.

What I think is killing the discussions is essentially the same comments being posted by certain posters over and over again, several times per thread, in practically every thread.

I think Leo has subconsciously hit upon the reason why we were so damn good in the 70s...

http://www.myp2p.eu/broadcast.php?matchid=...amp;part=sports lots of streams, take your pick

He was the star of the recent U20 championships, made most of Nemeths goals and scored 5 in 6 games himself. Excellent player, fantastic vision.

Lucas played well, although he wouldn't be my man of the match. He seems to have a habit of playing well against good sides and less well against less good sides - if he can consistently produce the kind of performance he managed yesterday, and start to dominate the less good midfields on a regular basis then he'll be fine. We've missed the level of control that Alonso used to bring to the midfield this season, let's hope that Lucas can kick on from yesterday's performance and start to help us to bring that control back.

Sensational through ball by Benayoun for Torres. Lucas and Masch were both very good in the middle of the park. Carra got a bit lucky with a couple of decisions but played much better overall. Agger was fantastic. A really good all-round team performance.

Agger played well - a couple of gorgeous long passes (one of 50 yards that put the right winger clean through) and nearly scored with a long range effort after advancing into midfield (forced a good save by the keeper). He appeared to be playing the last 10 minutes as a center forward as Denmark were chasing the game, and he looked very tired at the end of match.

Agree with this. Lucas has never played in center mid with Aurelio before, and to pair them together for the first time in a competitive match away from home was a risky call. Plus the tactics were all wrong first half, the full backs were bombing forward far too often. Rafa usually keeps things a lot tighter in the first half, especially away from home. We were giving them acres of space, and their midfielders made very good use of it.

It always was indigestible crap.

Rafa delighted with Purslow

Lucas was bought as a box-to-box midfielder, but has been asked to play in a more disciplined role by Rafa (up until this season). He confirmed earlier this season that Rafa is now allowing him to roam forward more often. It's not just Lucas that has to adapt his style of play, his team mates also need to do this, plus expect him to be in forward positions more than last season. So far this season his runs haven't been picked up often by his team mates, but they are still having to be covered by the opposing defenders. I think Aquilani will be playing a similar role, only hopefully (considering his price tag) a bit better than Lucas has managed so far (although I think Lucas has done OK). Lucas had a fair bit of practice in the defensive role last season, so can cover both Masch and Aquilani to a decent level, without being as good as either of them at defending and attacking respectively.

Is this likely to affect us?

Someone needs to alert Statler and Waldorf. There's a major business opportunity here. We can get Abramovich to loan us the money so we can buy the players that Chelsea want, then loan the players to Chelsea (just to cover the salary costs and no more, wink wink). Finally we can sell the players for a reasonable mark-up to Chelsea once their ban has been lifted. Think creatively boys. We'll get this f***ing stadium built yet... Best get a move on as well, 'cos 'Arry is probably on the phone to Kenyon already.

Temporarily, and then the vermin sell the club for a billion quid to somebody insanely rich and we get back on track again. With a brand spanking new stadium. I know, I know, not likely, but the only other ray of light out there is that there's probably one one manager who could win the league with the squad we've got, and thankfully he's ours already.

I did say it was a slim hope The economy seems to be on the mend. Maybe that will help.

Both Rafa and Xabi confirmed that Xabi asked to leave back in April, so I don't think we can logically accuse the Yanks of selling one of our best players in order to service their debt. However, it doesn't look to me like all the Alonso money was reinvested in the squad, and that is concerning. We sold a 30m player and got a 20m player, 10m went walkabout somewhere (maybe some of it was spent on Kyrgiakos, but most of it is still unaccounted for). I am holding onto a slim strand of hope - there is one way (and only one way) that the Yanks can make a really big profit out of our club, and that's to build us a stadium.

I think point b is the most signficant. I would argue that we defend better as a team than most others. I don't think our center halves are worse than Arsenals. They are arguably not of the same quality as Man U's or Chelseas, but our strikers are better than theirs. I think there's a bit of a drama being made of this issue. If our zonal defending was a calamatous as is being made out by some on here we'd have come nowhere near a title tilt last season, we'd have been losing goals from every other corner kick.

Those figures don't include direct free kicks apparently, although I don't know if that has much effect. I have no idea if penalties are included or not. And we scored more goals than all the above. 9 more goals than all of them, which is arguably three times more significant than conceding three more goals from set pieces.

It shows that three quarters of the teams in the league concede the same or more goals from set pieces as we do.

Apparently Fulham conceded the lowest proportion of goals from set pieces last season (21%), so I don't know where you're getting your 4 out of 24 figure for the mancs from (17%), it doesn't appear you have the correct figure (it must have been at least 6, to be higher than the Fulham figure). Everton had the worst defense against set pieces last season, 38% of goals conceded. The figures show that the current run of conceding from set pieces is unusual for us. We usually defend better from set pieces, we did last season. No system is perfect, but ours is usually pretty good. In Rafa's first season - when we still learning how to defend zonally - we conceded two goals direct from corners all season, in all competitions, from 180-odd corners faced. We've conceded three already in the first four league games this season. So I think it's down to new personnel and individual errors, not down to the system. And yes, I'm sure we're missing Sami a bit. Carra looks off form, Skrtel missed a lot of pre-season with injury, we have a new right back, a new center back and a young left back. The difference between winning the league and not was down to all the (mostly goalless) draws at home, in my view.