Thiago Alc*ntara | Retires

tomaldinho1 said:
From Bavaria, to mass hysteria
A midfielder without compare.
Shaved head look, never booked
A man with an icy stare.

Good with his feet, the Kop's in for a treat
A winner tested and tried.
Confusion abounds, when the announcer sounds
The Butcher of Merseyside

Supposedly mint, should've read the smallprint
Then reality takes it toll.
In the cold light of day, you hear the crowd say
He's just a Spanish Lee Cattermole.
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Bravo
 
tomaldinho1 said:
From Bavaria, to mass hysteria
A midfielder without compare.
Shaved head look, never booked
A man with an icy stare.

Good with his feet, the Kop's in for a treat
A winner tested and tried.
Confusion abounds, when the announcer sounds
The Butcher of Merseyside

Supposedly mint, should've read the smallprint
Then reality takes it toll.
In the cold light of day, you hear the crowd say
He's just a Spanish Lee Cattermole.
Click to expand...
:lol:

Perfect parody of a RAWK poet.
 
Zehner said:
This is like a post-WC season, only far worse. Especially players who had no real break between the seasons tend to look totally out of form.
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Manutd didn't have any break between the seasons. Liverpool had over a month break.
 
Seems a bit daft to start pretending he’s not brilliant.

Doesn’t fit in that system right now but he’s clearly a top footballer. I’d love him at United.

I’m convinced he’ll come good. Sadly.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
From Bavaria, to mass hysteria
A midfielder without compare.
Shaved head look, never booked
A man with an icy stare.

Good with his feet, the Kop's in for a treat
A winner tested and tried.
Confusion abounds, when the announcer sounds
The Butcher of Merseyside

Supposedly mint, should've read the smallprint
Then reality takes it toll.
In the cold light of day, you hear the crowd say
He's just a Spanish Lee Cattermole.
Click to expand...

This is good.
 
Simple.
Liverpool front 3 enjoy direct and chaotic play. Thiago eliminates chaos and directness.
Result? Liverpool look astonishingly average. Toss in the fact without Joe/VVD they will concede 1 in 3 attacks
 
Zehner said:
Look at the points records. After 19 matches you're first with 40 points and City can still get at 41. 19/20 those were 55 points, 18/19 51, 17/18 55. Barca and Madrid being distant second and third by double digits is also not usual. We don't even need to talk about Serie A. The only table that looks somewhat similar is the Bundesliga one and even there one of the two top dogs fell out of the top 4.



Happy for you. I certainly didn't predict yours, way too absurd for that.
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17/18 city had 55 points, closest was us with 42, then Chelsea, Liverpool, Spurs with 39, 35, 34.

16/17 toChelsea with 49, and then closest teams 43,40,39

15/16 top 39pts and then 39, 36

14/15 top 46pts, and then 43, 36

doesn’t seem all that different after 19 games apart from those record breaking past few seasons
 
Zehner said:
See, one can argue both ways for every single one of those clubs. Fact of the matter is that top clubs are unable of maintaining any kind of consistency this season. Not even Bayern, the only title favourite for which you could argue that they are living up to the expectations since they lead the table comfortably, looks even close to being in form.

Fact of the matter:

Top clubs in clear crises:
Chelsea
Arsenal
Barcelona
Madrid
Juventus
Dortmund
Liverpool

Top clubs somehwat underperforming:
Bayern
PSG
City

Top clus living up to expectations:
Tottenham (might also be somehwat underperforming)

Top clubs outperforming expetations:
United
Atletico
Milan
Inter


This is like a post-WC season, only far worse. Especially players who had no real break between the seasons tend to look totally out of form.



So in essence, you think it is indeed coincidence that all this happens at various top clubs during Covid times. I'm sorry but I don't buy this.
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I buy it, I was worrying the standard of European teams was dropping a year or two back. You could see the declines of the two top Spanish teams, juve were just cruising along with an old team and it was happening while Liverpool was getting better. That was way before Covid showed it’s face
 
Zehner said:
So you think the simultaneous form crises of Madrid, Barca, Liverpool, Juventus, Dortmund, Real and to a lesser extent PSG, Bayern and City just coincidently occur during the Corona crises?

I mean, 90% of top clubs look the most vulnerable in ages. Corona will inevitably widen the gap long term but short term it seems to even the playing field.
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Real, Barca and Juve were all obviously at the end of their dominant periods and have been on a downward slide for a couple of seasons now. The fact the former two are only competing with each other and Atletico (who themselves have dropped off from where they were 4 or so years ago) and Juve's huge lead over the rest of Italy means they still won their leagues until now, but this has been coming for all three of them. Arguably City were showing similar signs as well but over the last month or two they look like they may have got their act together. Whether they can keep it up or not we'll see.

Covid likely has had some impact, but not as much as I think you're giving it. A lot of the teams that were still in Europe so didn't get much of a preseason obviously struggled a bit for the first month or two of this season, but since then things have settled into more where things were to be expected. Barca, PSG, City and ourselves are all in this category. Juve, Barca, Real and Chelsea all had one European game as well but they got knocked out so got a bit of a break so it wouldn't have had as much of an impact.

Liverpool are really the only top club that are unexpectedly struggling, but not sure how much they can blame Covid for that considering the two teams at the top of the table were more inconvenienced than they were.
 
Haven't really followed him closely so I'm a bit confused. I swear a couple of months ago people were saying he was doing great, but right now I've seen some articles saying he doesn't fit with Liverpool at all and he's been linked to a move away already

I've only watched him against us. In the league match the commentators were missing over him despite the fact that he didn't do much
 
I knew this was going to happen earlier - my post in October;

If he does buy players like thiago more and more - this is when I personally see him and Liverpool start to struggle.

He is really good at getting that extra bit of effort and quality from players that weren't as highly rated - he brings that high rating from playing for them most of the time due to his style of football.

The extra pressure of getting the best out of players that are already deemed top/world class will work at times and sometimes it wont work because these players need to play to their advantages.

As good as Thiago is for example - I dont see him playing like Henderson, Widjnaldum, Milner, Keita etc whilst that extra ability of a player in Thiago brings something different to Liverpool; it will also take something away, something that had been working already.

I saw this happening at Dortmund under Klopp as well. When people viewed them as a growing team from the ground, he was doing well but as they grew in to a well known team and needed to show that level, he was competitive but struggling compared to what he had showed before.

Liverpool are a CL and PL winning team now, he needs to change it up to scare and shock it up and I think this is when things will start changing for them.
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Zehner said:
See, one can argue both ways for every single one of those clubs. Fact of the matter is that top clubs are unable of maintaining any kind of consistency this season. Not even Bayern, the only title favourite for which you could argue that they are living up to the expectations since they lead the table comfortably, looks even close to being in form.

Fact of the matter:

Top clubs in clear crises:
Chelsea
Arsenal
Barcelona
Madrid
Juventus
Dortmund
Liverpool

Top clubs somehwat underperforming:
Bayern
PSG
City

Top clus living up to expectations:
Tottenham (might also be somehwat underperforming)

Top clubs outperforming expetations:
United
Atletico
Milan
Inter


This is like a post-WC season, only far worse. Especially players who had no real break between the seasons tend to look totally out of form.



So in essence, you think it is indeed coincidence that all this happens at various top clubs during Covid times. I'm sorry but I don't buy this.
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Yes, because covid has somehow only targeted specific teams and somehow improved others. Sorry, but you seem to want to "buy" the narrative you like. How on earth Barca being terrible can be put down to Covid is bewildering.

UnrelatedPsuedo said:
Seems a bit daft to start pretending he’s not brilliant.
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Agree. We should just keep hailing him as an all time great CM (which he is nowhere near) and disregard actual peformances even if they're below par. Because... Thiago :drool:
 
Zehner said:
See, one can argue both ways for every single one of those clubs. Fact of the matter is that top clubs are unable of maintaining any kind of consistency this season. Not even Bayern, the only title favourite for which you could argue that they are living up to the expectations since they lead the table comfortably, looks even close to being in form.

Fact of the matter:

Top clubs in clear crises:
Chelsea
Arsenal
Barcelona
Madrid
Juventus
Dortmund
Liverpool

Top clubs somehwat underperforming:
Bayern
PSG
City

Top clus living up to expectations:
Tottenham (might also be somehwat underperforming)

Top clubs outperforming expetations:
United
Atletico
Milan
Inter


This is like a post-WC season, only far worse. Especially players who had no real break between the seasons tend to look totally out of form.



So in essence, you think it is indeed coincidence that all this happens at various top clubs during Covid times. I'm sorry but I don't buy this.
Click to expand...
Top clubs outperforming expectations doesn't mean that they are not actually an improved side who deserve to be where they are. It's like Covid only impacted the title winners of last year while the likes of United got a free pass from Covid because even the virus wanted to level the playing field.

United and City virtually had no preseason and once they got their players fit and firing, it has resulted in them being where they are. Moreover, this form of United has been consistent since the turn of last year when we got Bruno. The only blip was the start of the season when players were basically doing their preseason in competitive matches.
 
NK86 said:
Top clubs outperforming expectations doesn't mean that they are not actually an improved side who deserve to be where they are. It's like Covid only impacted the title winners of last year while the likes of United got a free pass from Covid because even the virus wanted to level the playing field.

United and City virtually had no preseason and once they got their players fit and firing, it has resulted in them being where they are. Moreover, this form of United has been consistent since the turn of last year when we got Bruno. The only blip was the start of the season when players were basically doing their preseason in competitive matches.
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Somehow people just ignore this. Since Bruno was signed we have made more points than any team(maybe after city, not sure). It's not even small sample size, it's around 38 games and a full year.
 
roonster09 said:
Somehow people just ignore this. Since Bruno was signed we have made more points than any team(maybe after city, not sure). It's not even small sample size, it's around 38 games and a full year.
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People wouldn’t ignore it if the league had commenced when Bruno first joined as that would make us champions but alas it is just another stat that pops up but in the grand scheme of things it means feck all!
 
He's a good player but somehow it seems he's not as good as his reputation and hype around him seem to suggest. And it's obvious he doesn't fit the was they play. He's good at fouling that's for sure.
 
Denis' cuff said:
still doesn’t

was it Alonso who ridiculed England ignoring Carrick and said he would fit in at Madrid nicely
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For some reason England has traditionally treated silky skilled midfielders with suspicion, look at Gazza not going to France 98 when Rob Lee and David Batty were picked as midfield selections for the squad. Glenn Hoddle didn't get half the caps he should have, Paul Scholes was shunted out to the wings ridiculously while Le Tissier, who admittedly was a striker, was more or less ignored. It's not hard to see why the national team has struggled when hard work is placed above actual ability.
 
:lol: :lol: Shit man.. I'm just giggling non-stop, imagining Thiago as spanish Lee Cattermole. :lol:
 
Could it be a touch of the Berba's about him? Joined a perfectly functioning team, supposed to take it to the next level, undoubtedly a class player.

Will look good, have his moments, but never reach the same heights as before he joined the club.
 
Bubz27 said:
Could it be a touch of the Berba's about him? Joined a perfectly functioning team, supposed to take it to the next level, undoubtedly a class player.

Will look good, have his moments, but never reach the same heights as before he joined the club.
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more a Veron but point taken.

he would have been a class signing in 2013 when we could have moulded him into whatever we wanted.
 
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