The Rags

[DoomMerchant]

Then de Maria signs but would he displace Nasri or Silva? He's not really an inside winger and we only use Navas(our only outside winger) for impact and rotation when needed.

He must've played close to 90% of his games for Real Madrid on the right wing before switching to the left of a midfield three after Bale's arrival.

Anyone who would have him over Silva is mad, though.

i wouldn't have him over Silva, but you'd have to admit that based upon last year's success on the left side of midfield and as someone asked to play more defensively than he ever had at Madrid....that he smashed it.

If we didn't have Silva, one of arguably the best 5 midfielders in the world, then you'd jump at Di Maria. A very solid buy for them i think.

If they land Vidal and a CB they've got a very strong team. No joke.

cheers

[Florida Blue]

So would this new system be called hole-istic?

[Foreverinbluedreams]

Then de Maria signs but would he displace Nasri or Silva? He's not really an inside winger and we only use Navas(our only outside winger) for impact and rotation when needed.

He must've played close to 90% of his games for Real Madrid on the right wing before switching to the left of a midfield three after Bale's arrival.

Anyone who would have him over Silva is mad, though.

i wouldn't have him over Silva, but you'd have to admit that based upon last year's success on the left side of midfield and as someone asked to play more defensively than he ever had at Madrid....that he smashed it.

If we didn't have Silva, one of arguably the best 5 midfielders in the world, then you'd jump at Di Maria. A very solid buy for them i think.

If they land Vidal and a CB they've got a very strong team. No joke.

cheers

IF they do they've got a very strong group of players, not necessarily a strong team.

[MilnersJaw]

Then de Maria signs but would he displace Nasri or Silva? He's not really an inside winger and we only use Navas(our only outside winger) for impact and rotation when needed.

He must've played close to 90% of his games for Real Madrid on the right wing before switching to the left of a midfield three after Bale's arrival.

Anyone who would have him over Silva is mad, though.

i wouldn't have him over Silva, but you'd have to admit that based upon last year's success on the left side of midfield and as someone asked to play more defensively than he ever had at Madrid....that he smashed it.

If we didn't have Silva, one of arguably the best 5 midfielders in the world, then you'd jump at Di Maria. A very solid buy for them i think.

If they land Vidal and a CB they've got a very strong team. No joke.

cheers

IF they do they've got a very strong group of players, not necessarily a strong team.

considering the rest of their team, they will still be shit. How shit their squad cracks me up.

go to a pub during a rag game and all you hear from every rag fan in the pub is them slagging off how shit their players are, comical.

[Beefymcfc]

Can't remember who it was but Sky were doing an analysis of Tia showing him ripping through defences and then went onto say that due to the way he plays the 'Rags will now play like Real Madrid'.

I laughed.

[Nigels Tackle]

Can't remember who it was but Sky were doing an analysis of Tia showing him ripping through defences and then went onto say that due to the way he plays the 'Rags will now play like Real Madrid'.

I laughed.

hahahahahahahahaha!!

[Wooders]

They got a piss easy group in the champs league, no other teams? How is that fair?

[Hutch's Shoulder]

They got a piss easy group in the champs league, no other teams? How is that fair?

They were in pot 5.

[zuricity]

Popped into THE pub in Zürich tonight where the PL games are shown at the weekend. The Bar Manager , originally from Bristol and not interested in football confirmed that no rag fans are watching their games and when the odd two in the corner do watch they hide their rag badges.

Well done Glazers you brought them to their knees.

[Bianchi on Ice]

They got a piss easy group in the champs league, no other teams? How is that fair?

They were in pot 5.

Hope that pot has a fucking lock on it

[DoomMerchant]

Then de Maria signs but would he displace Nasri or Silva? He's not really an inside winger and we only use Navas(our only outside winger) for impact and rotation when needed.

He must've played close to 90% of his games for Real Madrid on the right wing before switching to the left of a midfield three after Bale's arrival.

Anyone who would have him over Silva is mad, though.

i wouldn't have him over Silva, but you'd have to admit that based upon last year's success on the left side of midfield and as someone asked to play more defensively than he ever had at Madrid....that he smashed it.

If we didn't have Silva, one of arguably the best 5 midfielders in the world, then you'd jump at Di Maria. A very solid buy for them i think.

If they land Vidal and a CB they've got a very strong team. No joke.

cheers

IF they do they've got a very strong group of players, not necessarily a strong team.

Realistically tho...they'll gel over half a season and be a strong squad. Van ghoul isn't Moyes as much as we want him to be.

Writing them off is silly. They might struggle for fourth but they have the cash to climb back in easily. Gill and Platini have assured that.

Cheers

[twosips]

Basically what I was trying to argue earlier on in the day Doomie ^

I'm with you on that. Thinking they're totally buried is wishful thinking.

[Slim]

Then de Maria signs but would he displace Nasri or Silva? He's not really an inside winger and we only use Navas(our only outside winger) for impact and rotation when needed.

He must've played close to 90% of his games for Real Madrid on the right wing before switching to the left of a midfield three after Bale's arrival.

Anyone who would have him over Silva is mad, though.

i wouldn't have him over Silva, but you'd have to admit that based upon last year's success on the left side of midfield and as someone asked to play more defensively than he ever had at Madrid....that he smashed it.

If we didn't have Silva, one of arguably the best 5 midfielders in the world, then you'd jump at Di Maria. A very solid buy for them i think.

If they land Vidal and a CB they've got a very strong team. No joke.

cheers

IF they do they've got a very strong group of players, not necessarily a strong team.

Realistically tho...they'll gel over half a season and be a strong squad. Van ghoul isn't Moyes as much as we want him to be.

Writing them off is silly. They might struggle for fourth but they have the cash to climb back in easily. Gill and Platini have assured that.

Cheers

They still need some muscle in that midfield. People may rave on about how Di Maria got back defensively last season, but I wouldn't play him there, could you imagine us replacing Fernando with Nasri? Vidal is who they need and if they were going to spend £60M on a player I thought that would be where it would go.

Van Gaal? When we played 3-5-2 in the Championship and destroyed teams, we also got knocked on our arses a few times if you remember. When we came up to the top flight(Bless you KK), KK tried it a few times and was quickly taken away from the notion it would work in this league. Imagine us versus them and Yaya switching play to Nasri and Zabs who runs the overlap, all of a sudden you've got a 2 on 1 and the system you employ means that will happen all damn day. This league needs wingers who will track the fullback, it's too fast paced and too physical to behave any other way.

[Dwaring]

The rags just got a whole country worth of new fans. Too bad they won't increase revenue at all. Plus when Kim Jung is overthrown all those Koreans are like to switch algiences to city after having that crap football shoved down their throat for years.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news ... an-4120104

[Hutch's Shoulder]

Looks like Kim and LVG share the same barber too.

[Foreverinbluedreams]

Then de Maria signs but would he displace Nasri or Silva? He's not really an inside winger and we only use Navas(our only outside winger) for impact and rotation when needed.

He must've played close to 90% of his games for Real Madrid on the right wing before switching to the left of a midfield three after Bale's arrival.

Anyone who would have him over Silva is mad, though.

i wouldn't have him over Silva, but you'd have to admit that based upon last year's success on the left side of midfield and as someone asked to play more defensively than he ever had at Madrid....that he smashed it.

If we didn't have Silva, one of arguably the best 5 midfielders in the world, then you'd jump at Di Maria. A very solid buy for them i think.

If they land Vidal and a CB they've got a very strong team. No joke.

cheers

IF they do they've got a very strong group of players, not necessarily a strong team.

Realistically tho...they'll gel over half a season and be a strong squad. Van ghoul isn't Moyes as much as we want him to be.

Writing them off is silly. They might struggle for fourth but they have the cash to climb back in easily. Gill and Platini have assured that.

Cheers

Agree, I wasn't writing them off, just making the point that good individual players doesn't necessarily mean good team.

[Piccsnumberoneblue]

It is still a factor though that their owners have tried not to spend for years now. This now is panic. If it doesn't end with CL participation it really will spell trouble for them. Which direction they go will be interesting.

[patrickblue]

It is still a factor though that their owners have tries not to spend for years now. This now is panic. If it doesn't end with CL participation it really will spell trouble for them. Which direction they go will be interesting.

That's the main point IMHO.
All those years of bacon overachieving, (to the point of performing miracles it now seems) has left them pretty rudderless, and it's panic as they realise the problem wasn't Moyes.
There's been no investment in the future at all, as bacon said all was well.
I think its just a shame it's only their rudder that's gone, and there's not a great big hole in the hull.
YET

[Hutch's Shoulder]

I think they have another problem, also a Ferguson legacy, aside from the quality of their squad. This other problem is the archaic management structure of their business.

The Glazers seem to have been essentially hands-off owners, sitting back and enjoying the money-making machine they purchased.

Gill, and probably Woodward, have been good at the commercial side, signing the image rights deals in Asia etc., like our Tom does.

Ferguson meanwhile ran the football side and it all went through him. There was no long term planning, no world-wide vision or even director of football like Ferran and Txiiki provide, no plan for their academy, etc., just Fergie.

Take him away and Woodward is out of his depth, Moyes and LVG (who today said he left the signing of players to Our Ed), are sticking plasters on the first team squad season-by-season.

In business terms, they have a poor product, which is bad but repairable, and no Governance or Management Vision. The contrast with what ADUG have done for us is stark.

They don't seem to have realised this point yet, and it is that which makes me optimistic that we will stay ahead of them for years.

This management weakness is a result of Ferguson's style: he was an old style, dictatorial manager, with all the strings in his own hands. As with many dictators, long as he was pulling the strings, it worked okay by and large, but once he was gone, his appointed successor was in a different mould and there was no football management infrastructure to keep it going (compare what happened when Mancini went - Kiddo retained, Vieira in place etc.). We seem to have a management team, they had a dictator.

[Bianchi on Ice]

I think they have another problem, also a Ferguson legacy, aside from the quality of their squad. This other problem is the archaic management structure of their business.

The Glazers seem to have been essentially hands-off owners, sitting back and enjoying the money-making machine they purchased.

Gill, and probably Woodward, have been good at the commercial side, signing the image rights deals in Asia etc., like our Tom does.

Ferguson meanwhile ran the football side and it all went through him. There was no long term planning, no world-wide vision or even director of football like Ferran and Txiiki provide, no plan for their academy, etc., just Fergie.

Take him away and Woodward is out of his depth, Moyes and LVG (who today said he left the signing of players to Our Ed), are sticking plasters on the first team squad season-by-season.

In business terms, they have a poor product, which is bad but repairable, and no Governance or Management Vision. The contrast with what ADUG have done for us is stark.

They don't seem to have realised this point yet, and it is that which makes me optimistic that we will stay ahead of them for years.

Perhaps they are the footballing equivalent of Tesco, who also seem to be in a minor quandary at the moment, after riding roughshod over everybody around them for quite some time..