Oso planning to go pro
Who? Incredible balance, but overall poor performance by the team. Lost their heads after the VAR decision.
Yikes. Lost to a league 2 side on pens. Thats like losing to the Flamingos.
Crawley just off the promotion zone in League 2 and Stoke headed for relegation from the Championship at this point. Might be on the level next year. Stoke looking to join the Black Cats and Blackpool as the EPL regulars to plummet down a couple levels
It feels like last year’s UCL final was the peak for this group.
Blackpool isn’t an “EPL regular.” They’ve spent only one season in the top division in the last 40+ years.
It's a blessing for a team competing in Europe to drop out of the League cup early. Fixture congestion is a curse come December for teams in the Prem competing in continental tournaments plus FA Cup and league games. No one actually cares about the League Cup but it is always funny to poke fun at a team like Spurs losing to an opponent two levels below them.
I'll stick with my opinion on Gold. He'll be in foul trouble within the first eight minutes.
Poch started: Sanchez, Dier, Wanyama, Davies, Walker-Peters, Alli, and Moura, and brought Erikson, Lamela, and Son off the bench, that tells me that he cared. It's the League Cup so it's not a huge deal, but lets not pretend like he through the U19s out there.
Poch can't beat teams that park the bus anymore. Pompey this weekend will be interesting.
Isn't Pompey actually Portsmouth?
If you truly believe that, you’ll be shocked into a heart attack at the coverage of Liverpool/Arsenal and Chelsea/Man United next month. It'll be breathless. Also, at a club like Spuds daring to do means not winning trophies. They aren't quality enough to be picky over hardware. They play to win every competition.
Furthermore, the clubs playing in Europe didn't join it until this week and will play only two rounds before the various UEFA group stages end in December. The semis are played before knock out rounds start up.
Big matchups on paper will always bring cache to the observer, regardless of competition. Big time friendless sell out stadiums across the world, that doesn’t mean it’ll be high quality match with all top players. Those teams will still most likely field starting lineups that are much different than their starting XI’s for league/europe/fa cup comps.
December/January brings FA cup 3rd round, busy Christmas league schedule, closing of Champions League group stage and possibly League Cup games. Right when you think you’re out of the busy game schedule, congratulations make the semis of the League Cup and you’re given a two legged playoff! Fantastic….. All for qualification into the black hole that is Europa league. Big clubs don’t need the League Cup unless of course they have the squad players to make a deep run. Given the choice, no manager or fan for that matter would prioritize League Cup ahead of the other three competitions listed.
That's occasionally the case, although when you look at who Poch played it clearly isn't.That's still no excuse for losing to a team as poor as that with the players that played. Look, I know that the League Cup isn't a huge deal, but considering Spurs downward trend (in every competition other than the Champions League) in the last 6 months, any Spurs fan should be very concerned.
Especially when one club has won something like 7 out of the last 10 domestic trophies. For all the talent that's been at White Hart Lane the last decade, that trophy cabinet is looking pretty bare.
No team does "prioritize" the league cup. However last year, three of the four semifinalists were still involved in European competitions and all three put out top line ups for both games.And the result? One went on to with the Premier League, one went on to win the Europa League and the third was the UCL runner up. Fixture congestion is a problem with no winter break, which is why PL teams are getting off weeks this season.But teams in other leagues are still playing two games a week. La Liga teams are playing Copa matches pretty much non stop when they get back from break.
I think its a factor more for the fringe top 4 teams. Liverpool was helped MIGHTILY in their EPL and UCL pushes by bowing out of the domestic cups early and keeping fresh. Now that they are established and have continued to bring in top talent, they have the depth. They can sit their studs and play guys like Gomez, Lallana, Ox, Origi who are capped internationals and contend for it. Same with City, as Mourinho joked their backups would be a top 4 squad.A team like Wolves, regardless of their early season form struggles, are gonna have a difficult time if they want to go deep in either cup, while pushing on the two "bigger" stages.
No squad depth, can’t retain top talent and can’t recruit experienced difference makers to feature consistently in the starting XI.
Yes the lack of silverware is concerning, but Daniel Levy absolutely knows what he's doing