Barclay's Premier League discussion '15-'16

Art Morte

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Okay, so I'm a new guy and I hate the idea I might be going against some unwritten (or very much written but just too lazy to read) rule, but here's a thread for general Premier League discussion. When it's not worth a thread but you want to voice your ever so clever thoughts.

I thought this thread:
http://www.onefootballforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/the-most-open-premier-league-season-ever.7626/

was going somewhere along these lines, but not quite there, so, anyway, here it is. Shoot it down if you must. But know that during the dark winter days over here in Finland we have nothing better to do than learn some West African voodoo. And that's the worst kind of voodoo, just so you know.
 

Art Morte

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And to kick off, my most interesting results this Saturday were...

Stoke beating Man City.
Leicester topping the league and probably putting the final nail in Monk's coffin.
Man United being boring again. Or is that interesting? Probably not.
And, of course, the champions losing at home to Bournemouth. Daaaaaaamn, son!

Mourinho's salvation might be that there aren't any great options available to replace him.
 

Stevencc

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Jose Mourinho has lost as many home league matches this season as he has in his last thirteen seasons combined.

Chelsea have lost as many league games this season (8) as Man United, Arsenal and Liverpool combined.

With twenty three games left in the season it is now mathematically impossible for Chelsea to match their points total from last season.
 

JimJams

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On the subject of us being top and Chelsea being pants, Skysports recently ran an article on us and them for the year, and how we've got more points than them. That's for 2015 as a whole not the current season.

3384108.jpg



This was prior to today so we're 4 points clear in 2015!
With 4 games to go who will come out on top of this annual, 2 club only battle of the wannabes and has beens?!
 

G.B

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And to kick off, my most interesting results this Saturday were...

Stoke beating Man City.
Leicester topping the league and probably putting the final nail in Monk's coffin.
Man United being boring again. Or is that interesting? Probably not.
And, of course, the champions losing at home to Bournemouth. Daaaaaaamn, son!

Mourinho's salvation might be that there aren't any great options available to replace him.

 

Art Morte

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Above there is a fine example of the exactly sort of post I was afraid we'd miss out on if there wasn't this thread.
 

T.A

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Before the United game Leicester were 16/1 to be top at Christmas. With 2 games left each they sit 2 pts clear of Arsenal in 2nd place.

Remaining games.

Leicester:
Chelsea H
Everton A

Arsenal:
Villa A
City H

Man City: (3 points behind)
Swansea H
Arsenal A

Man United: (3 points behind)
Bournemouth A
Norwich H

Current odds are

Leicester 2/1
City 2/1
Arsenal 2.5/1
United 3.4/1
 

JimJams

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2/1 on us to stay top is quite poor odds when you look at the sides to play and the different possible outcomes. Generally we wouldn't be expected to win either of those games, but us being the (joint) favourite side suggest we're being touted to pick up 4 points at least.
You'd be better off just putting money on us in the respective games if you thought there was any chance, or alternatively lay us.
 

T.A

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Oh yeah! Too late to put money on now. Will be annoyed if they do it as I seriously considered it when they were at 16's

Agree that the odds should be higher seeing as they have the "harder" games imo. Just thought I'd share it as normally the media make a bit thing of being top at Christmas.
 

Art Morte

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Someone mentioned on another forum that Moyes is the favorite to take over at Swansea if Monk gets canned. Reckon any truth in it? He might be a good no-nonsense appointment, no?

Inbe4 he's Chelsea's interim manager.
 

PDS

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I'd be I interested to hear how much Leicester fans credit Nigel Pearson for their success this season
 

JimJams

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I'd be I interested to hear how much Leicester fans credit Nigel Pearson for their success this season
A lot really, although I know there are a few Leicester fans who are now starting to kind of disregard him. One of the things that's pretty evident in the side is belief, and that stems from last seasons great escape. Under Pearson we played well, even on our monumentally bad run of results before April, we were never outclassed by anyone. To then put together the string of results we did has instilled the belief that we can come back from anything, which is why we've overturned deficits and gotten results where sides without that confidence would just collapse.
In terms of the play style we've gone back to a 4-4-2 which is the formation we played so effectively to get promoted. Though in the Championship we weren't a counter attacking side we were the side that kept possession so despite it being the same formation it is a different way of playing.
There is still the feeling that Ranieri has basically inherited a team that's needed very little input from him and that when he's relied upon he may not be up to the job. Kramaric was interviewed recently and asked about Ranieri and he said that he basically coaches the defensive side of the game and lets the forwards do their own thing generally. Given that at the time of the interview we'd only kept 2 clean sheets that kind of makes you wonder what his input on the side is really doing for them.
Earlier in the season he was changing our personnel to a more negative side, dropping Mahrez for Albrighton against Saints for example because he offers more defensively. The problem was that our pressing attack is part of our defence, and now Ranieri seems to have figured out how to play, and when he's needed to change things, he's made good changes to the sides.
In terms of the players Pearson didn't play Drinkwater and obviously didn't have Kante, and they're a really important part of our play who are both overlooked by most thanks to the goals of Vardy and Mahrez. Considering they're the only 2 that play in the middle of the park for us they play very well but Pearson abandoned 2 in the middle last season when he went to 3-5-2 and that was fair enough because at the time we just didn't have the ability to go with 2 in the centre, even though Drinkwater was an option. Albrighton was a fringe player under Pearson, and was alienated from the side for the first half of last season, he's now a regular starter, though I still have my doubts over his ability, and he's fitting in well for the most part.
Pearson also signed the majority of our side, so in terms of the players at our disposal it's only really Kante who he didn't bring in. Him n Fuchs are the 2 players to break into the side from the Summer signings, but Fuchs was actually signed before Pearson got the boot.
Under Ranieri Vardy has become our main striker, while under Pearson he was generally played to provide for Ulloa, Mahrez has stepped up a level as well.
Pearson laid the foundations for the side and instilled a belief which has carried over. It's difficult to assess how much Ranieri has added to it because we haven't had a bad run yet, and it's largely expected to be now. Under Pearson the run of fixtures til new year wouldn't have affected us too much if we got no points from them. We'll have to see how it works out under the tinkerman.

TL;DR - Not sure really.
 

Art Morte

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West Ham seem fucked, Reid and Moses have been ruled out for 4-6 weeks and Payet, Sakho and Lanzini are already out until some time next year. That's 4-5 starters out.
 

G.B

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Ashley took a slight financial hit recently... http://www.themag.co.uk/2015/12/mike-ashley-loses-half-billion-two-weeks/


This is the interesting part for me;

If the Sports Direct brand is becoming ever more toxic due to its association with Mike Ashley, then are we nearing a point where he will be forced to take a less active role and possibly even significantly dilute his shareholding.

If that was the case, then the free worldwide advertising of his Sports Direct empire becomes ever less valuable to the NUFC owner and just maybe, that pledge he made to stay at Newcastle United ‘at least until 2016’ might have some relevance.

Others discount (no pun intended) the idea that the free worldwide advertising is Mike Ashley’s biggest reason for owning Newcastle United, even though his representatives told Sir John Hall this when he bought the club, but if it is then we could be heading for a potential change of ownership that the vast majority of Newcastle fans would welcome with open arms.
 

Christian Slater

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He's probably lost that much money from people putting claims in against his shops for being buried alive by stacks of shoebox.

Didn't he commit a lot of money to the team this year? I don't know if that's significant to what he has kept over time or what, I've become numb to anything relating to Ashley's because of how long it's been going on.
 

Art Morte

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I don't know, I think that's a bit of a stretch to be a) saying that Ashley has a toxic influence on Sports Direct's sales and b) to link Newcastle United's "free worldwide advertising" to any decisions Ashley makes about Sports Direct.

I'm not so sure anyway why Newcastle fans are so unhappy with Ashley anyway, he's put quite a lot of money into the club. Wasn't Newcastle's net transfer spending in the top-10 in Europe last summer? Reminds me of Man United fans massively protesting the Glazers a few years back, but have gone all quiet on that front with ManU posting record revenues each year and hundreds of millions being spent on players, too. Those anti-Glazers ManU fans look rather silly now - and the same could yet happen with Newcastle's anti-Ashley fans.
 

Christian Slater

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It wasn't silly to protest the Glazers taking close to a billion quid out of United's pocket and putting the club at risk. An upstart club materialised from it and is relatively successful. That's not to deny many of the scarf bearers were jumping onto a cause they didn't take seriously, but people weren't silly to make their feelings known.
 

smat

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love too discuss the Barclays Premier League
 

G.B

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I don't know, I think that's a bit of a stretch to be a) saying that Ashley has a toxic influence on Sports Direct's sales and b) to link Newcastle United's "free worldwide advertising" to any decisions Ashley makes about Sports Direct.

I'm not so sure anyway why Newcastle fans are so unhappy with Ashley anyway, he's put quite a lot of money into the club. Wasn't Newcastle's net transfer spending in the top-10 in Europe last summer? Reminds me of Man United fans massively protesting the Glazers a few years back, but have gone all quiet on that front with ManU posting record revenues each year and hundreds of millions being spent on players, too. Those anti-Glazers ManU fans look rather silly now - and the same could yet happen with Newcastle's anti-Ashley fans.

Has he? We make a healthy profit every season and we owe him £130mil in the form of a loan taken out by Ashley against the club. Prior to this season we were 2nd or 3rd bottom in the net spend table over the years during his reign. The only time we've spent money under him is when we've been close to/narrowly avoided relegation. And that's purely because his fat PL stacks were put at risk. He's made far more money from us than he ever has/will put in, and that's without taking in to account the fact that St. James' is essentially one giant Sports Direct logo nowadays.

Can't think why Man Yoo fans would be upset at a couple of yanks taking over the club with roughly £800mil in loans/debt secured against their club and yearly interest payments reaching close to £60/70mil per year. Fans love paying through the nose to facilitate people with no connection taking over their club. They hadn't been in debt since 1931 btw.
 

thespus

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Collymore thinks there are too many "small teams" in the top flight:

http://betting.boylesports.com/football/bournemouth-v-watford-doesnt-cut-it-for-premier-league

Well some of those big teams have been missing from the top flight for some time so everyone should be used to it...

He'd better get used to that fixture - both those sides are staying up. Bournemouth would be challenging a top-half finish with Watford had half their first XI not missed the majority of the season.

As G.B. pointed out so poetically, there are far too many England old boys in journalism that rely on cliches, football culture circle-jerks, and being asinine towards anything new, or "different".
 

G.B

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aye, i'm great with words me
 

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