If you have anything to say on any subject, mail us at theeditor@football365.com
Question Of The Day
Did any of the AC players ever play for Man Utd? I watched all the ITV
coverage, and I thought they might have mentioned it...
Nik Johnson
Conclusions From Ireland
To borrow the F365 format here are some conclusions from a non-Big 4 supporting Irishman:
* Rio Ferdinand's usage of the football is astoundingly good. Thank God for West Ham.
* Van der Saar has a better left foot than Valencia.
* Pirlo's poise and ability to get a pass off while under pressure is beautiful to watch.
* Evra (while not particularly wonderful last night) is an unbelievable asset to United. He's so good both defensively and offensively.
* Gary Neville can cross a ball. It's a brilliant skill and one that should be rudimentary.
* How much more effective is a cross from in the last 20 yards than a David Bentley style 35-40 yards out punt into the box. It's no coincidence (and has been well pointed out on these pages) that Rooney's headed goals increased with Valencia's crossing.
* Why do all commentators prefer "water-carrier" style players than skilful players? Darren Fletcher is never castigated for being unable to beat 2 men and rifle the ball into the top corner with his weaker foot because that's not his job. Ronaldinho and CRonaldo however are continually disparaged for not "tracking back" or defending or making last ditch corner flag sliding tackles. Which isn't their job. It's ridiculous.
* Commentators (Ray Houghton (I know, I know)) make their minds up about footballers and are unchanging in their opinions. Then if the player doesn't conform to their idea of them they'll have a laugh and say it's atypical. How many times can Nani track back or make tackles (albeit ineffective ones) before the commentator says more than "That's a first... Nani in his own box"? Shut it!
4 positive and only 2 negative conclusions. That's not so bad.
Gearóid
And From All Over
- Despite all of footballs complexities it is the simple stuff that makes this wonderful game of ours quite so beautiful. A sublime header from Rooney for the first. An exquisite pass from Nani setting up the second and Rafael's cross of the night to complete the rout.
- Ji Sung Park was written off as a fringe player not too long ago. The stand out player of the game last night to cap of an excellent month. I'm glad to see he's scoring a couple of goals as well.
- 16 Conclusions got it right. Truly a wonderful night for the Manchester United faithful, Milan's ineptitude notwithstanding.
- It was great to see the reception Beckham got from the OT.
- Inter beat Milan earlier this year with 9 men. After last night's performance it is clear why. Pirlo just doesn't have the legs to keep up with someone like Park. Ronaldinho has fits of the ennui. The legendary Milan defense is now shoddy at best and I for one am extremely glad that our interest in Huntelaar has rightly petered out.
- Just one conclusion from the Madrid Lyon game and it is the fact that Gonzalo Higuain, who has thus far been Madrid's player of the season, has formed quite a bond with the goal posts. He has now struck the post 4 times in his last 2 games. One could almost feel sorry for Real Madrid. If 250 million spent isn't even enough then Perez really has some thinking to do. Maybe another 300 mil over the summer may buy them at least a trip to next years quarter finals. Following that pattern, a couple of years and a billion euro's later they may just reach the champions league final after all.
AKV
1. Has there ever been a better header of a football than Wayne Rooney?
2. To all managers who like a big man up front, Rooney has consistently proved you don't need to be a giant to win headers in the box. Its not bloody basketball where the bloody net is 15 feet high.
3. Antonio Valencia looks every bit a Man United player.
4.Is there any team in the world that wouldn't want Park and Fletcher in a big game? 7-2 up on aggregate into injury time of the 2nd leg and they're still chasing players down?
5. What a feeling there to stuff perma-nemesis Milan in this manner! The hurting and hounding memories of an exhausted before kick off, makeshift, young and immature United side deflated and shorn of ideas and battered in the San Siro by an unrelenting and vastly experienced powerhouse, with first team and even the coffeemakers all fresh for the game for 2 or more weeks, have all been banished from my memory.
6. David Beckham is a f***** LEGEND! Love United Hate Glazer!
7. To the bloke who called Nani a 2 game wonder, you're wrong. He is a 3 game wonder.
8. To all those who say Berbatov makes Rooney play well, or Heskey makes Rooney play well, chew on it. Rooney plays well - bottomline and he plays well with or without Berbatov and Heskey. Neither of them are required in their respective sides and are a waste of space.
9. Everybody except Ferguson and Capello can see this.
10. Gary Neville can still cross a bloody good ball.
11.Will Gary Neville now take Ronaldinho out of his pocket and return him to Milan?
12. I'll bet my house on Rooney winning the World Cup with a headed goal.
13. Cristiano Ronaldo -Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. How's the sun in Madrid?
14. The day Paul Scholes decides to hang his boots, will be a very sad day and a loss to the entire footballing world.
15. Conor Byrne (See what I did there? This will now get published...).
16. Bring on 19 times!!!
Judas (The Madrids and the Citehs and the Chelskis of this world - You can't buy class!) Iscariot, MUFC
Ooohh La La
Florentino Perez! Kaka! Raul! Karim Benzema! Xabi Alonso! Alfredo di Stefano! Cristiano Ronaldo! Zinedine Zidane! Guti Hernandez! Manuel Pellegrini! Ferenc Puskas! Gonzalo Higuain! Luis Figo! Raul Albiol! Roberto Carlos! Fat Ronaldo! Can you hear me, Fat Ronaldo!?
Your boys took one hell of a beating!!!
Joe, Vive la France!
Ouch
At least Cristiano Ronaldo won't have far to travel to watch Manchester United in the Champions League Final.
Jamie Owen
More Summing Up
So if Barcelona wins La Liga this year, Real Madrid would have paid 250 million for the privilege of doing exactly what they did last year
I see Jose's point when he said that Inter could have beaten Milan with 7 men
If Porto's performance was an indictment of the Portuguese league, then no words can describe what Milan's performance says about the Italian League
Do any Arsenal fans still want Huntelaar over Bendtner?
The performances of Man U and Arsenal over the last two days have exposed the idiocy of the pundits who claim that Arsenal are only in the title race cos the PL has declined.
Naz, Nigeria
ManYoo Are Better This Year
Is there anyone out there who still thinks that the current Man United side pales in comparison to last year's team?
Bar the constantly injured Ferdie and Vidic, every player has improved on last year's performances, to the point where a first eleven featuring both Fletcher and Park not only doesn't instigate panic among the masses, but actually gives cause for optimism.
The side is scoring more goals, conceding less ( even without our pre-mentioned 1st choice centre halves) and are generally performing like a TEAM.
To be honest, I hope we get Barca next.
Darren Pashen
...Can we now get past the talk this season that Man United are really just an 'average' team?
Stephen Williams
Rio And Rooney Love-In
I thought that Rio was outstanding tonight. No matter what some opposing fans may think of him, he is the lynchpin of United's defence (more so than Vidic) and is crucial to England's cause in this summer's World Cup.
For me, he is the best defender in the world at present. As he has matured over the years, he has developed an understanding of the game that is second to none and the number of times he was in the perfect position tonight to repel crosses and dangerous balls into the box was truly commendable. He may not make the highlights reel too often because his is a cultured style of defending which relies on positioning and his reading of the game, rather than last-ditch tackles. He is similar in style to some of the best Italian defenders of the past decade such as Maldini, Cannavaro and Nesta and should be revered by England fans as he takes on his new role as Captain.
Rooney will obviously take the plaudits (and deservedly so) as he has turned into the most clinical striker in Europe. I always lamented the fact that Alan Shearer opted against joining United and wondered what it would have been like with him leading United's attack. Now, with Rooney's new-found aerial ability, we know. The scary thing is that Rooney is a better all-round player than Shearer. Suddenly, Ronaldo's haul of 42 goals seems an achievable target (14 games to go if we reach the Champions League final) and, if he stays fit, we could surprise a few people at the World Cup.
Dan, Utd fan, Newnham
Milan The Minnows
Sad to see a once great team reduced to the level of a mid table Championship side.
Anon
On The Other Hand...
An awful lot of Premiership sides would have hammered AC on tonight's evidence so if I was a United fan, I wouldn't get too excited.
There are tougher tasks ahead than beating a mishmash of geriatrics living on past glories.
Philip Brady
Erm...
Are any team actually going to give Manchester United a game this season or should we just award them the Champions League trophy and the Premier League title now?
N (Hoping a voodoo doll can break metatarsals) O'Reilly
Rooney v Van Persie Reflection
Reading the deserved accolades that have rolled in for Wayne Rooney this week, as an Arsenal fan I am caught somewhere between incredible sadness that van Persie's lack of fitness has prevented him from competing with Rooney's achievements (on these very pages there was a very worthwhile debate raging as to who was the better between Rooney, van Persie and Drogba) which I think he could have done.
Yet at the same time I find it utterly amazing that we're still in with a shout of the title having missed RvP for 4 months now. Would United have done as well had it been Rooney's ankle that had been torn to shreds in November? I guess we'll never know.
Tim Stillman
Flat-Track Bullying
So far, to my counting, Rooney has scored against Arsenal (2), City (2), Spurs (1), Villa (1) and AC Milan (4) in all competitions this season. With United still to play Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs (@ OT), and City away, exactly how many goals does one need to score against the big teams before you become a big game player?
Paddy O'Toole
It's Embarrassing That People Are So Obsessed With Finding Bias That Such Simple Things Like This Have To Be Explained
One of the entries in your last mailbox was from someone who calls himself ph1l0s0phe and criticises Pete Gill's argument for lacking intellectual rigour.
Yet this ***** doesn't see how clear and simple is the argument that passing in to feet is more likely to invite tough tackles than passing into space in front of the player. One of the advantages of passing to feet is you are more likely to keep possession as it is more difficult to tackle a player with the ball at his feet rather than a pace ahead of him. One of the disadvantages is that any tackle is more likely to result in an injury.
If you are incapable of understanding this argument regardless of which teams are involved then I suggest you refrain from using the words philosophy or intellectual as you are clearly unable to understand them.
James, FFC
...I'd like to respond to Philosophe, who takes issue with Pete Gill's 16 conclusions and in particular his point about Arsenal's style of play inviting more rash challenges and thus contributing to their players suffering more injuries than their competitors...
Philiosophe contends that "Pete Gill's argument... has all the intellectual rigour of someone blaming a rape victim for wearing a short skirt". I really don't know where to start with this, but here goes...
The analogy might just work if every challenge that resulted in an Arsenal injury were a deliberate attempt to cause harm (justifying the parallels being drawn between rape and the challenge). As has been widely documented however, the vast majority of challenges causing injuries to Arsenal players are not malicious. If anyone disputes this, how many of the six examples of recent injuries to Arsenal midfielders can people even remember the challenge for? For every Shawcross effort (and I would contend that it was not mailicious, just mistimed anyway) there are multiple innocuous comings together / 50:50s that cause the damage.
I was at the Emirates for the Liverpool game (as a Liverpool fan) and certainly cannot remember the moment Diaby went down and certainly do not remember it being caused by a dangerous or reckless tackle.
So first things first, Philosophe, let's tone down the hyperbole shall we?
To defend Pete's original argument, the point he is quite clearly making is that Arsenal's style of play - tippy-tappy, to-feet, call it what you will - simply brings about more incidences and opportunities during the average game for very slightly misplaced/underhit/overhit passes to invite a strong challenge.
To perhaps expand this for the slower Arsenal fans out there, imagine for a second (and I know this is a stretch for you) that aerial and shoulder-to-shoulder challenges were the most dangerous part of the game of football, resulting in the highest proportion of serious injuries. Would Philosophe and others then disagree that a side like Villa, who play lots of balls high to Heskey/Carew and lots of balls into channels for the pace of Agbonlahor, would be likely to suffer more injuries than others (including Arsenal, who rarely resort to these tactics)?
Obviously there would still be large elements of luck involved in determining who gets injured, but, simply playing the percentage game, one might easily assume that Villa would suffer more injuries than most. Well unfortunately for Arsenal, those sorts of tackles rarely result in injury, whereas slightly mistimed ground-based challenges, often where one or both players is having to stretch, are the most dangerous tackles in the game.
Arsenal's style of play simply invites more of these. It's no one's fault, but it does.
Matt H, London
This Alonso Thing
In your 16 conclusions from the Man U v Real Madrid game you mention (Quite rightly) that the premiership looks good when you see what has happened in Europe this week and use Flamini and Ronaldo's evident disappointment to help make your point. HOWEVER you go on to also use Alonso as an example as well. Wow! You must be the only person who thinks that the way this season is panning out leaving Liverpool was a bad idea for Alonso. At Real Madrid he's still got a good chance of winning the League and will be definitely be playing in the Champions League in 2011. You ask how Alonso must view his decision to leave Liverpool . . . best one he's ever made I would suggest. (He just should have come to London instead of going back to Spain)
ChelseaR
'Regrets' is probably the wrong word, but had he stayed at Liverpool then who is to say that his and their season would have gone very differently? After all, they did rather well with him last season. It's a transfer that has done neither party much good so I would have thought that there's at least a decent possibility he regrets it from that perspective - Pete.
Jeez. Is There Any Point With People Like This?
of course it was a f**kin anti-climax for you tits - United wiped the floor with Meelan when you were all hoping they'd be put out instead of going on to notch another European Cup. That's how good United are. After 18 years the penny hasn't dropped yet but as soon as l'arse and their "kids" win a corner they're f**kin "sublime".
Fergie rules again.
LOL
Steve McDonald
Blandly Swearing
Now I actually agree with pretty much everything that Johnny Nic wrote today (which is unusual for me) but is there not something hugely ironic about a man complaining about "corporate, bland people trying not to offend you, who end up offending you by being so f***ing bland"
Who throughout his article has to cover his swear words with asterisks? Are you worried you might offend?
James "I hope it doesnt rain on my wedding day" Woollett
