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Garnacho is exactly the type of player I dislike. A low IQ, heads down and run down blind alleys pace merchant who just tries the same thing over and over again until it works. He will probably score today but you can guarantee he will make 10 fuck ups as well. Rashford is the same on the other...

Also, I am sure Steven Gerrard or Matt Le Tissier or Alan Shearer would love to have won or 'accomplished' (code for trophies) what the Neville brothers or Darren Fletcher or John O'Shea or Nacho won. It means absolutely nothing when evaluating how good a player is. Especially when Varane was...

He probably didn't come close to it (despite the advantages of the club and NT he played for) because (for me) you are vastly overrating his talent in the first place. That's really the most obvious explanation. Good player sure but I never swallowed his hype. Van Dijk as one example is way more...

Need Celta to score a late winner for an exact.

It's more that every time I back United to lose in recent years they win (except Liverpool and Brighton this season), so it's a reverse jinx type of thing. That plus I took your opinion into account lol.

Hoffenheim are slight favourites going by the odds. Might as well back them as the home team.

fair point. Have changed it to 2-1. Your fault though if my original ends up correct:flick:

What do you guys think of my predictions for today? All leagues. I am torn on some of them

I understand what you mean mate - you want him to do his passing and dribbling closer to goal where it will do most damage. No problem. Yeah I know it isn't as simple as I claimed about Cruyff. He was big on positioning too. He was about spaces as you say. But at the same time he did like...

Yeah I agree, I never said his career was wasted - he won a lot. I am more talking about his place in the CB pantheon. He definitely did the best with his talent. Yeah those players sometimes won less but were clearly far better defenders than Varane mate, for me at least (though Kahn was a...

Yeah I know you weren't mate, I guess Birdy meant people away from this site really. Like you say they had to sit back with 10 men in a low block due to Bayern's superiority,

He was just lucky to play with far better players than himself. Good player of course but you could have replaced him with several better CBs at Real Madrid and they wouldn't have lost a step. He wasn't integral to their success. Van Dijk is easily better than him yet people who judge by...

I agree with your last two paragraphs mate - believe it or not I don't like Messi as a person and I have zero celebrity worship in me. I simply defend him as a footballer as he's the best I have seen, at least since Maradona anyway. But I definitely don't think he's divine or untouchable or any...

Agree with it all. Excellent post. The caution you call for over playing players too early in their careers while they're still growing and developing mentally and physically is my main take away. I have saw people say the same thing. Pedri and Gavi have already had injury problems due to being...

Also I reread and thought more about OP, and it makes a good amount of sense. There's a lot of fair points raised. I would add two caveats though: 1) I personally liked when Messi dropped deeper and tried to be more creative, and 2) (and leading on from that), I think the OP, while very good...

Yes agree. The only one I would say should really have been different there was Liverpool. Dembele should have killed that at Camp Nou at the end. Still no excuse for the collapse at Anfield. The hammering by Bayern in 2013, Messi wasn't fit. But yes, he has to take some share of...

True. He and Barca should have won it more. There is a decent argument though that when Messi underperformed nobody really 'bailed him out', unlike a certain someone with the Galacticos. However, Messi played with brilliant Barca teams. It just feels like there weren't many times where he...

Fair enough - that is a reasonable point. Barca should have won more CLs - they were a better team than RM for many years and it's a travesty Real won 4 and Barca only 3 in 2008/2009-2017/2018 era. They did destroy RM in the league though and that counts for plenty too.

What people sometimes don't acknowledge with Messi when comparing him to Ronaldo (especially in the CL) is the expectation on Messi is higher. Ronaldo had a good (not exceptional) all-round game before the three in a row, but in the three in a row he was tasked mainly with playing the box and...

I get what you're partly saying there - you're essentially saying Messi plays too deep and is passing to players in advanced areas who aren't him when he'd be the most effective in forward lines. Essentially, the problem is Messi cannot pass to himself and finish. He can't dribble all the time...