₦airaland Forum

[quote author=~Killz~ link=topic=887033.msg10343600#msg10343600 date=1331059055][color=#000030]Don't you know i'm trying to Ignore you? YOU WIN BIT[i]C[/i]H. . . You WIN!!! I surrender. . . You fccking Win!

NEXXXXXXXXXXXXT! [/color][/quote]if you were ignoring me, you shouldn't have replied me in the first place, you serial w@nker.
your propensity to stretch the borders of daftness is legendary. you say one thing then you do the other.
calling me a bytch is a bit rich coming from someone like yourself that lost his virginity to a man.

2buff:
I see the source of your inner-betch now  
You feel all women should rule over you and deserve the right to slap you by virtue of owning a vaggina.
Now I better understand you.

I'm gonna also guess you're one of these niggas who get off to being cuckolded and all that ish  
Na your own be that oh. I'm sure women appreciate having slaves like u, but whenever they tire of that and seek real men, they know the type to call  

sexkillz is a bush man.
don't let his verbose and watery sentence construction tell you otherwise.
you can tell from his yaba-made ray-ban spectacles.

[quote author=~Killz~ link=topic=887033.msg10343579#msg10343579 date=1331058757][color=#000030] Next pls! [/color][/quote]you did the right thing putting a c[i]o[/i]ck in your cess-pit called mouth.
it's a new month with a zero tolerance for dunderheads.

you are entitled to your opinion but don't fuckin abuse the privilege.

chic2pimp:
Easily in the top three when it comes to the best center backs in the world. Can't see him leaving Milan though unless Berlu suddenly suffers from a rush of blood to the head.

let fergie just get ryan shawcross or elokobi.
thiago silva is a waste of money.

[quote author=~Killz~ link=topic=887033.msg10343561#msg10343561 date=1331058597][color=#000030]The Hannibal was also an idi[b]o[/b]t! So was the J, and the S! [/color][/quote]just like the recipient and donor of your y-chromosomes were genetically idiotic.

2buff:
This is all he comes up here for.  
To fish for compliments from delusional women after supporting their delusions.
That's b[i]i[/i]tch-made mehn. . . b[i]i[/i]tch-made.

a tired ploy to get into the knickers of the idiotic and gullible women who hails him
theseeker was a master of that tactics. . . .in few months time, you would start hearing how these useless babes were jilted by the albinoid. . .

there are so many troglodytes here as expected saying one should know the woman he's marrying.
can one truly say he knows the woman he's marrying 100%

violent is not right but it's justified sometimes.
if my wife pushes me too far, she would get slapped. that's standard!!!

chamotex:
Being first doesn't give you the H2H league
The team that takes 8th position could win it.

So sorry no trophy for you

ritchboy is deluded. . . .probably a lunatic manager.
i would never beat my chest cos i am leading h2h league. . . .
it's like kenny dalglish thinking he's the number one manager in england for winning the carling cup.

dayokanu:
Now give us the passing , aerial duels etc of Badstuber

if you pay attention to details, you would see that i have printed those in my previous posts.

Cos all those guys you listed up there, Badstuber edges them in Interception(Anticipation) which is key. nowadays Defenders don't have to get rough. If you can anticipate passes.

which explains why his tackling as a last man is pitiful.

Clearance is the opposite of Passing you don't expect a modern footballer to be clearing balls like Christian Chukwu of 1980.

clearance can be aerial or just goal clearance. you ought to have 100% concentration to do goal-mouth clearance.

Can you tell us one game where this formation has been used or one game where Arsenal left out Mertersacker? The worst german defender now a top 4 defender and the stalwart of an EPL defence

that is because arsenal players rarely get fit.
because united have not played rafael-rio-vidic-evra all season does not make johnny evans a definite starter for man utd.
use your common sense when i demand you to.

That the point of modern football, Hardly do you see Pique making gut bursting runs or cruching ankle breaking tacles. barcelona has shown that if you can do the little, anticipation, short passes etc Anyone can play defence. We have seen them play Busquets, Masherano, etc in Defence

he got a red card in barca's last game.
pique makes gut bursting runs. he makes it more than any defender in la liga as a matter of fact.
puyol was also a lion in his prime. old age might have slowed him down recently.

A casual observer would think Ahhhh Thats suicide, Drogba would kill Busquets etc, But Drogba can only kill him when they get into one on one physical tussle, By the time Busquets or Badstuber deals with him for 75mins without him(Drogba) touching the ball, He would be frustrated and commit a foul

not anyone can play defence. you ought to have 11 excellent technicians to be able to do what barcelona have achieved. their football is based on low risk football. passing the ball from the defence should be high risk but because barcelona have technical players who can receive the ball in difficult n awkward positions and turn away from trouble with elegance does not mean badstuber or david alaba can do it.

barcelona have the players who can do these things blindfolded. the amount of space xavi gets in the centre of the pitch baffles me. his markers know he's the most deadliest midfielder on the planet and yet xavi still manages to drift into space and operate. his obscene reluctance to give the ball away when pressed is also a factor and that applies to every barcelona player. it is for this reason they can pass the ball as often as they do.

bastuber making 70 passes per league game is obscene.

Its like you have started taking courses in European football and the veil from your eyes are beginning to fall off Kudos though you still have a long way to go.
Since the days of LvGaal, I am starting to think this tiki taka Barcelona plays might be the handiwork of Van Gaal training of the late 90s and early 2000. Barcelona of Old doesn't do tiki taka, Nowadays up to the Under 5 team its tiki taka (remember a clip of their U8 boys vs some Polish side)
Aside Barcelona, Bayern is the possession King of Europe not even Arsenal like most believe. Vs Citeh in Munich there was a play around the 56min or thereabout where Bayern completed 36 uninterrupted passes which culminated into a Lahm pass to Gomez which he failed to convert.

Down the line I believe bayern would catch up with the Barcelonas. Its not easy for Bayern players who learnt this pattern like 5years ago to compete and outdo Xavi, Busquets and Iniesta who were born into that type of play.
I suspect that defenders who hoof the ball away might be made to do pushups

i still have a long way to go? you must be a dreamer.

bayern munich eliminated united in the champions league 2 seasons back and while i was watching the game i thought bayern munich won that tie because of what they did after robben's goal - not what they had done before their goals. the manner of their passes and how they kept possession from then on should be made a football tutorial for aspiring teams.

the fact that united were a man short helped bayern to achieve this but it wasn't the only factor. i have seen 10-man united take risks and go for the kill in that kind of games by committing men forward but bayern kept united at arm's length and never allowed united a sniff. the passes became square passes. from left to right and from right to left. very few forward passes were played - this tactics got united tired to chase.

fergie actually got off his seat before the final whistle cos he knew there was no way back with the way bayern were controlling the game.

your wife is doing a sensible thing - she's spicing up the marriage and doing her civic duties before another pretty damsel gets there before her.
however, if it's putting a huge burden on your finances, have a word with her to reduce the frequency of these gifts.

Sam Milla:
I have been doing a research on domestic violence. The rate at which men kill their wives or wives kill their men is too high in USA and Europe. Do you know why: each time one misbehaves out of anger, the other one does nothing because there is a law that says - dont beat her or him, dont shout at her or him. Then it happens again. A phone gets smashed. A TV gets broken, a car gets burnt, someone gets locked out in the cold etc etc and the anger piles up to the neck. What happens next is that the whole anger comes up once, the retentive memory pushes out everything it has been storing into one mad rush and someone gets killed. Months after the killer must have lived in prison, he or she still cant accept any blame,
Now the reason why we dont kill our wives down here is that when they misbehave, you treat the incident instantly and that goes off your head, (IF A GIRL BREAKS YOUR PHONE AND YOU DID NOTHING, HAHAHAHAHAHA, TRUST ME SHE WILL DO SOMETHING BIGGER BECAUSE SHE IS DEFINITELY GOING TO GET ANGRY ANOTHER DAY)

pent-up anger!
you are right on the money. . . .
unfortunately, some hypocrites would be here spewing asinine comments that ooze sheer idiocy.

if a girl breaks my phone - she would break a jaw.
an eye for an eye - a tooth for a tooth.
if she feels like breaking anything, her father's head would be a good starting point.

nice4life:
ok now I have decided to forget her but its seems shes already into me.She calls me and tells me her every move , she doesn't know that I have withdraw my emotions from the friendship.I will take the back sit now and watch how things goes.

you're a spineless wimp!

dayokanu:
EPL top 4 defenders include Djourou, Mertersacker(Who lost his German shirt), Jones, Smalling, Evans, King, Dawson, Cahill, abi? I laff in gorimapa

djourou and mertersacker are reserve players.
the starting xi of arsenal when everyone is fit: sagna-vermaelen-koscielny-santos.
the united youngsters are better than badstuber - it's not even up for discussion.

ledley king, dawson and gary cahill are also miles ahead.

Interception, Passes, these are the hallmark of a modern footballer, Gone are the days defenders just hoof the ball up senselessly.

that's the only strength badstuber has got and i am sure that has a lot to do with the ethos of bayern munich, not necessarily because badstuber is a good passer. some teams mandate their centre backs to pass it from the back and keep recycling possession till the ball gets forward. he makes an average of 70.6 passes per game - it's quite high for any defender to make such unless of course, he's been instructed to pass it and to avoid long balls.

bayern munich are a possession team - it's sad people don't give them credits for doing that.
besides, they are up against substandard teams in bundesliga who are not good enough to unseat bayern unless when bayern self-destruct themselvs.

What are the strenghts of Djourou, Mertersacker, Jones, Smalling, Evans, King, Dawson, Cahill, etc

djourou - passing(88.6%), dribbling(0.8 per game)
mertersacker - passing(89.2%), aerial duels won per game(1.4), interception(1.7 per game)

jones - interception(1.9 per game), tackling(2.2 per game) concentration(4.7 clearances per game)
smalling - aerial duels won per game(2.0 per game) blocked shots(0.5 per game)

evans - passing(88.7%), interception(1.9 per game), concentration(7.9 clearances per game)

king - passing(90.9%), concentration(6.0 clearances per game)
dawson- aerial duels won per game(3.3), passing(86.2%), interception(1.7 per game)

cahill - aerial duels won per game(3.3), concentration(9.8 clearances per game), offside won(1.9 per game).

chamotex:
Ramires is like the Fletcher of Chelsea

i admire the lad's energy. he never gives up.
if he can sort out his decision making and pass the ball at the appropriate time with those runs he makes then he would rule in europe for years to come.
he's the only player that drives the team whenever chelsea are stuck with their slow insipid football.

chamotex:
I don't see who Badstuber can replace in any of the English top four CBs

rio, terry, king, dawson, carragher(oap), cahill, smalling, jones are all better than holger badstuber.

he can only pass. . . . he cannot tackle.
badstuber probably started his career as a midfielder but the dearth of defenders in germany has made him a one-eyed man in the country of the blind.
what he does better than most midfielders is passing the ball. other than that, forget him. his defensive stats are worse than johan djourou.

i would rather have ramirez than fat frank.

login123:
Coogar, my friend, please, help me, I can't compose or send sms with my newly bought BB 9700, what is the reason?,
Please, tell me what to do,

default address?
i don't understand your post. can you be a bit clearer in the description of your problem?

dayokanu:
How would Joans, develop when he is always galloping forward like a brainless antelope leaving the back bare. One thing is to be young, One thing is to lack a football brain. Phil Jones lacks a football brain simples!!

still better than holger badstuber. . . .

Phil Jones? the same player who was murdered 4 times in less than 30mins by the same Dzeko and Aguero that were pocketed comfortably by Beastuber

jones came on as a substitute late in the game, by then united had 10 men on the pitch and they were goals down.

ritchboy:
Say we "assume" your list is accurate, how does other players being good stop Van Persie from being good as well? Messi is the best player in the world, does that mean he is the only good player?

they were better. . . .i am not saying van persie was as good as them back then.

And how many goals do Kuyt and co score playing from the wing? You think it's coincidence Anelka's highest scoring season was mainly as a center forward?

playing as a centre forward helps. . . .but playing as a midfielder who takes set pieces like free-kicks/penalties also help.
lampard is the highest goal scorer at chelsea - it's not coincidence!

You are a BIG F00L! I never said RvP would've done anything, YOU are the one that accused him of not doing something and i reminded you he never had the opportunity to do it, therefore you cannot castigate him for not doing it. It's like me saying your unborn children are deaf and dumb because they cannot speak or listen from your scrotum!

you are a plank!
damn it, you insinuated van persie has always been a world class player but his injuries prevented him from shining.
i am saying no to that. he's not always been a world class player - he's simply improved and has learnt how to lead the line.

You are a blunt tool. Arsenal play with one striker, who has just happened to feature in every game to date(automatically meaning the other strikers haven't played much), it's perfectly normal for him to outscore the wingers/midfielders by a big margin especially when he's doing better than every other striker in the league as well. Silva has the same number of goals as Walcott. Apart from Bale(who is still way behind RvP) the only players on your list to have outscored Walcott are all strikers(unfortunately for my fingers i have to remind you Arsenal play with one striker).

city also play with a lone striker(4-2-3-1). united also often play the lone striker with rooney dropping deeper to the midfield and welbeck/chicharito leading the line. it's a no brainer. ratio 25 to 5 in the league is atrocious.

Messi has 43 goals this season, the closest player to him at Barca should be Cesc with 15 or 16. Using your daft analogy Messi is "the only decent forward" Barca have and they are "in crisis", lololol.

barca would be in crisis if cesc had scored 16 and messi has scored 80.
the ratio in arsenal is 5 to 1. 43 :16 is not 5 to 1, you olodo.

You ask me a question about RvP scoring at "hostile grounds", i remind you he scored a brace at Chelsea previously and you come back to type this nonsense?
Has Agbonlahor changed his name to Rooney?

doing it in a one-off is nothing.
doing it regularly is the ish -

Of course, RvP never went 10 or is it twelve months without scoring a goal from open play as you're always keen to remind Dayokanu in defense of El Hoho! ;DHow many minutes did he play? Didn't he make YOUR team of the season or has your brains hdd crashed?
And who did THIS rating!!??

which team of the season is this tout talking about.
why don't you post this nonsense and save us from these white lies you keep bandying about.

van persie my foot!

Funny, cos that was the same season Sharon declared Ronaldo the best player in the EPL/multiverse. If the best player in the league was 8/10, then the EPL must be shyte and all the other players should commit suicide.

i don't just donate marks to players. . . . .ronaldo couldn't have been 10/10 in 06/07.
even in 07/08 when he scored 42 goals . . . . .he won't get 10/10. . . .it would be a 9(max).

dayokanu:
And from those stats you still cant see that Badstuber is better than Jones like 1million times? Specsavers cant save you, You need to visit Brainsavers.

it shows how daft you are. . . .your brains cannot be saved.
a daft individual would continue to be daft. even after highlighting the number of times badstuber get mauled as the last man and the cheap number of clearances he makes, what's the comparison?

Show you what Badstuber has achieved? Cant you see it for yourself? In comparison to Jones one of the worst defender to play for a top side
Phil Jones is a defensive liability, No two ways about it

he's 20. his debut season for a top side. for feck's sake, 16 different players have dribbled badstuber in a shyte league like bundesliga. . .
even a nymphomaniac wouldn't have slept with 16 different men in 24 apps. badstuber is so loose, he makes annabela chong look like mother theresa.

one cannot say jones has not been excellent. he even makes less fouls per game than badstuber who has plunged bayern from a lofty height to being 7 points behind borussia dortmund that arsenal murdered!

ritchboy:
In case y'all missed the memo, RvP boasts the best goal-ratio in Premier League history since he actually started playing as a striker(09/10) with 52 goals in roughly 59 games(about 5375 minutes). *Obviously excluding players who haven't played a sufficient number of games e.g Pogrebnyak.

you are such a liar.
van persie often played as a striker before 09/10. . . .in 07/08, arsenal were still a 4-4-2 team.
as at then, they had rosicky and hleb who played as wingers. . . .adebayor/van persie were the strike partners.

even in 06/07, van persie was a striker.
hleb on the right, rosicky on the left and walcott would come in for one of them.
must you lie to score cheap brownie points?

ritchboy:
Dont be a tool. First of all, i said he was Arsenal's best PLAYER, and that was  based on his performance in a PARTICULAR season(08/09), when he also led the whole league in assists. Secondly, Arsenal have been a top-four side since before they even signed Van Persie, so even if your comparison is against the whole universe, it doesn't matter. Lastly, every single team in the league, including the very worst side, will probably have their best player performing at a minimum of 7.5 or 8/10. e.g Rodallega's best season in a Wigan shirt was at least 8/10 and most of the top clubs were linked with him. Any way we look at it, you are blowing hot air.

stop arguing like a numbskull. . . .van persie leading the whole league in assists was because of his obscene amount of corner-kicks and indirect freekicks he floats in. how many of those assists came from open play? you said van persie has always been a good striker. i said no. . .he hasn't always been good and i have brought out names of other forwards better than van persie in the seasons i listed.

Mugu, why will we compare RvP with strikers when he almost never played as a striker in those seasons? In any case i never said he was the best striker/player, i only said he performed well in those seasons. Are you are trying to invent a rule that states if player A B C & D played well, player E must be "utter w@ank"?

to be considered good, you must be in the top 5. . . .are you saying defenders jitter when they saw van persie's name on arsenal's team list in 06/07?
jeeez, in that season, the names that send fear across the land were rooney, ronaldo, drogba, bent, etc

ronaldo never played as a striker. rooney often found himself on the flank as well.
dirk kuyt, robinho, anelka, etc have all had to play on the flank to accommodate strikers in their team so what's the excuse?

Because Van Persie has made 20 EPL starts just ONCE before this season. Last year he played half-a-season and almost won the golden boot. This year he's already run away with it, they might as well hand him the trophy now.

stop bothering yourself about what van persie coulda, woulda, shoulda done and concentrate on what he has done.
by the same token, owen hargreaves is the best defensive midfielder on the planet. the only time he completed a full season, he won the european double for his team. if he was fit in 08/09, 09/10, 10/11, united would have won 3 back to back champions league titles.
only criminally idiotic fellows reason like that.

Yet again you expose your severe lack f common sense. Let's even assume Arsenal are shyte, is it not a massive indictment of you unrivaled stupidity you think it's easier to shine in a shyte team than a good one? Will Messi be scoring 50 goals a season if you stick him in Wigan or Bolton?

arsenal are shyte. . . .the weakest team in the top four with van persie being the best of the lot, how won't he score obscene amount of goals @ arsenal?
the closest player to van persie on the scorer's chart is theo walcott with 5 league goals and van persie has 25 goals. he gets the lion share cos he's the only decent striker arsenal have got.

let's look at other clubs.
rooney(18), chicharito(- berbatov(7), welbeck(6)
aguero(16), dzeko(13),  balotelli(11), silva(5)
adebayor(11) defoe(9) bale(9)

once you have a situation where the top scorer in a club has scored 5 times as much as the 2nd top scorer, then there's a crisis.
even in 09/10 when rooney was on a scoring spree before he did his own ankle in munich, he scored 26 goals and berbatov copped 12 league goals.
van persie scores that much because there's no other striker that would eat into his ration of goals.

How many minutes has he copped at these hostile grounds and what position did he play? Answers on a postcard please!

what's my business in the number of minutes he's played at old trafford?
fact remains it took van persie 8 seasons to score a goal at old trafford.

I remember him scoring a brace at Stamford bridge that put one of the final nails in Scolari's coffin, funny!

ronaldo scored a brace at highbury @ the age of 19(invincible era of arsenal)
no united fan would tell you he had a good season all because of that.
the lack of trophies has made you gooners celebrate mediocrity.

Go and grab it. . . Youtube may not necessarily tell you the overall quality of a player but it can show you his abilities. Does Agbonlahor score goals like this on Youtube?

for every good goal van persie has scored, wayne rooney has scored 3 times more. name it. . . .volley, headers, benders, chipping the goalie, etc.
even with that, i would not say rooney has been class in all his seasons at united. he's had stinkers in several seasons.
i have to say our standards of rating players differ. fecking hell, your own standard is very low.

RvP's performance in 06/07 was 8.5/10, 8 at very least, you can quote me anywhere. Speaking of quotes, maybe i should dig up your posts from the 06/07 team of the season thread where you were creaming yourself over RvP's sterling performances on the left-wing, only to come here 5 years later to feign ignorance. You're a phucking disgrace!

8.5/10 and he never made the premier league team of the season.  are you high on shekpe?
who's doing this rating? as a winger, ronaldo, giggs, pedersen, kuyt, david bentley, james milner and aaron lennon were all better.
as a striker, drogba, mccarthy, viduka, rooney, doyle, bent, etc were better.

go n dig up any quotes of mine that had me creaming myself over van persie in 06/07.
van persie? you must be ultra-high.
ronaldo that won player of the season in 06/07 won't even get 8.5/10. he would get 8(max)!

denzel2009:
You've not been to aussie yet, so I disagree to agree!

jenny was once in europe. we used to attend night vigils together back in the days. . .
why don't you ask jenny instead of assuming?

Ibime:
Na me hammer pass for the top 10 this week. . . . 69 points. . . . top 3 by end of the week. . .

Abeg make una help me ask Lalaboiy how he only managed 23 points this week!

you bark without biting. . . .a certain manager copped 83 points.
how can 69 points be the highest in the top 10?
captain amangala, are you sure there's no epidermic of conjuctivitis in ijawland?

Effiko:
dis is mad execution jare . . . .

https://i.minus.com/ib0v651AxSMB5e.gif

dayokanu:
Lets see if Jones get to the level of Mobi Oparaku before comparing him to Badstuber.
Were Jones to be German, he would be playing in division 2

phil jones is better than badstuber. . . . .

badstuber
24 apps, 1.5 tackles/game, 2.6 interceptions/game, 1 foul/game, 0.4 offside won/game, 2.3 clearances/game, was dribbled 0.7/game, 0.5 shots blocked/game

jones
21 apps, 2.2 tackles/game, 1.9 interceptions/game, 0.5 foul/game, 0 offside won/game, 4.7 clearances/game, was dribbled 0.5/game, 0.5 shots blocked/game

The Spurs defenders were simply naive, Young cant dribble or do anything other than look for that far post and they still gave him all the chance in the world to do same
Spurs still have a lot to learn

this is criminally idiotic.
young can dribble, he could slip a pass to rooney or welbeck who had dragged spurs defenders away from ashley young.
if they closed young down quickly, young would have made a killer pass to welbeck and a goal would have ensued all the same.

duduspace:
Naaa, He only needs to be dangled upside down for about a week, the increased blood supply to his brain should reenergize some of his atrophied synapses from their comatose state.  

this epileptic beast of burden has found his voice again - oh yes, arsenal have won 2 games in a row and preejacs flow ceaselessly.
mumu told us united would decline and arsenal's policy is the new order - 27 games down the line and arsenal sit 15 points below united yet again.
the debt is meant to have crumbled fergie's empire as they cannot sustain paying the players.
if you are not the most idiotic man on planet earth, then guinness book record should be sued.

ritchboy:
Hehehehe, this is the dumbest sh[color=Black]i[/color]t I've ever read.

you're a cockstain. . . .
i gave you a list of seasons van persie was utter w@nk and you are here bringing youtube goals and telling us he's arsenal's best striker.
what a cobweb you have in your cranial cavity. rodallega is wigan's best striker now means he's being good? my comparison is against the whole league, you are clutching at him being the best striker at arsenal. . . .how many decent strikers have arsenal got that van persie won't be the best there?

compare van persie to the strikers in the league back then not what he was doing at arsenal.

04/05. . . .henry, andy johnson, yakubu, rooney, defoe were all better.
05/06. . . .henry, ruud, bent, keane, rooney were better.

06/07. . . . drogba, rooney, berbatov, bent, mccarthy and even mido stole the shine.
08/09. . . . .anelka, torres, rooney, robinho and bent still outclassed van persie.

van persie has never made epl's team of the season ever before.
it's one thing to be brilliant in arsenal(they are full of shyte anyways) but it's another thing to be dominant in the league.

of van persie's 8 seasons in england, this season has been his best . . . . .apart from his obvious number one position on the scorer's charts, he has been able to do it in hostile away grounds. something he never did in seasons past.

this season alone. . . .

scored at old trafford(his debut goal there after 8 seasons)
scored a hatrick at stamford bridge.

scored at white hart lane
scored at anfield.

he has also managed to score against some of these big teams at home in the emirates.
that's the mark of a striker who is ruling the roost not the nonsense youtube links you are showing me.

if i grab agbonlahor's videos on youtube n paste them here, you would pee in your pants.
they only capture the brilliant things a striker does. . . .never the crappy stuffs.

for you to come here and say van persie was 8.5/10 in 2006/7 makes u look like a complete dunderhead.
what should we then call ronaldo that season? 14/10?

André Villas-Boas's Callowness Was No Match For Chelsea's Veterans

In Vietnam, they called it "fragging": the deliberate killing of a commanding officer by his own men. It happens in all wars when experienced foot soldiers lose respect for their leader and put their own survival before loyalty. And now it has happened at Chelsea. Twice.
No wonder the club's ground shares its name with a famous battle in which an English army defeated invading forces. Three years ago the sergeant-majors in the dressing room were able to exert enough influence on the high command to have Luiz Felipe Scolari, a World Cup-winning coach, removed after six months in the job, having concluded that his insufficiently rigorous training sessions imperilled their chance of winning trophies.

Scolari was an older figure, aged 61 at the time, with medals on his chest. Now the same forces appear to have done for a much younger commander, the 34-year-old Dom Luís André de Pina Cabral e Villas-Boas. Having taken the job on a wave of fresh-faced confidence, the man familiarly known as AVB rapidly came to resemble a young captain, trained on the playing fields of Eton, arriving to command a battle-weary platoon at Passchendaele. Another victim of friendly fire, he lasted only a month longer than the Brazilian.

This is an astonishing degree of influence for players to wield, particularly when their employer is one of the world's richest men. Evidently Roman Abramovich, who can do whatever he likes with his £11bn fortune, prefers to listen to the whispers of his workers rather than put his long-term faith in the coach he hired to turn them back into a winning team. The Russian is either a firm believer in player power or a man whose own judgment and that of his closest lieutenants at Stamford Bridge – the club chairman, Bruce Buck, the chief executive, Ron Gourlay, the director Eugene Tenenbaum and close friend Eugene Shvidler, the chairman of Millhouse, Abramovich's investment company – is so faulty as to disqualify them from the stewardship of a leading football club.

The Chelsea dressing room is certainly no respecter of age or class. Scolari, like his father a former professional player, was a product of football. And if José Mourinho was that rarity in English football, a middle-class manager, then AVB was in all probability unique in its modern history: an aristocrat in the dugout, his family tree including barons, viscounts and a grandmother from Cheadle, a posh Manchester suburb. She taught him English at an early age, and his near-perfect command of the language gives the lie to the belief that the only thing standing between foreign managers and Premier League success is an inability to communicate with their players and the outside world.

Villas-Boas communicated all too well. His excellent manners and willingness to answer any question in considerable detail gave him the sympathetic ear of football reporters long accustomed to gnomic responses delivered with a Clydeside sneer. But the terms in which he analysed his side's performances soon came to seem technocratic and academic. Until the very end, when his honesty was equally painful, his pronouncements contradicted the evidence of the reporters' eyes, and the players came to share their scepticism. Those who came out with a public defence of AVB during the last days of his regime were not English players grateful for his fluency in their native tongue but the sizeable contingent of his fellow Portuguese speakers, led by David Luiz, the Brazilian defender.

There was something of the nerdy schoolboy about him, and not just in the nervous way he constantly tightened the belt of his black raincoat, a less stylish trademark than Mourinho's grey cashmere overcoat. Despite starting his Premier League campaign with three consecutive wins, not once during his 40 competitive matches in charge did he convince observers that there was substance to his strategy and tactics. Where Mourinho had gone through three seasons without losing a league match at Stamford Bridge, October and November saw AVB's Chelsea losing successive home games 3-5 to Arsenal and 1-2 to Liverpool.

His brief record with Académica de Coimbra and Porto may have looked promising, but at Chelsea he made so many mistakes that it is hard to know where to start. Hired with a brief to revitalise the playing staff and, if necessary, consign the older generation to history, he promoted only one of the younger players, Daniel Sturridge, while alienating the seniors, who disliked the way he sent Nicolas Anelka and Alex to train with the reserves while awaiting a transfer to other clubs.

Whereas Manchester United and Juventus have brilliantly exploited the experience of Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and Andrea Pirlo this season, Villas-Boas could not find an accommodation with Frank Lampard, whose resentment became a focal point for disaffection. A stronger manager would have shipped out Fernando Torres in January, rather than allowing his wounded presence on the bench to remain as a symbol that all was not well. His unconditional support for John Terry when the club captain was charged with racially abusing an opponent was poorly judged, only a notch or two below the advocacy on behalf of Luis Suárez that brought Kenny Dalglish into disrepute.

Sturridge apart, younger players were marginalised. Once upon a time the Stamford Bridge faithful would have been able to enjoy the development of the extravagantly gifted 18-year-old Josh McEachran, as they once feasted on the sight of the teenaged Alan Hudson and Ray Wilkins, but Villas-Boas sent the England Under-21 player to Swansea City on loan. Jeffrey Bruma, Patrick van Aanholt, Romelu Lukaku and Oriel Romeu were removed from first-team contention after brief consideration. Fabio Borini was sold to Roma, where he quickly earned himself a place in Italy's senior team against France last week, still only 20 years old.

That is to say nothing of Villas-Boas's inability to demonstrate a talent for imbuing a team with any semblance of originality on the pitch. His 4-3-3 looked like anyone else's – very much like Mourinho's, in fact, but without the flame of authority or the spark of inventiveness. Sometimes it seemed that senior figures were included against his real wishes, simply because their omission would lead to an inconvenient amount of trouble. There was no hint of the strength of will or purpose that might have led to the forging of a new Chelsea, had he and the owner backed their beliefs and kept their nerve through what was always going to be a difficult season.

The bigger mistakes, however, have been made by Abramovich, £64m of them on managers alone, and who is to say that the most consequential of all was not the appointment of Villas-Boas but a dismissal that prefaced it: that of Ray Wilkins, Carlo Ancelotti's assistant, sacked without notice and apparently on a whim at the Stoke d'Abernon training ground one fateful morning in November 2010. It was a move that instantly destabilised the playing and coaching staff, leading – via the subsequent departure of Ancelotti – to the decision to hire a promising young Portuguese coach at least a year, and perhaps several, before it would have been possible to form a serious view of his ability to do a job that now looks harder than ever

duduspace:
It serves a purpose, he needs to be reminded of his mental incompetence periodically. 

this is a bit rich especially coming from an inscrutable troglodyte that has been predicting united's demise for the past 3 seasons.
if being brainless is a germ, duduface is it's infection site.

afrodoc:
its important dt there r no more injuries and dt d guys coming back regain fitness quickly.we cant rily afford to lose rio,carrick,rooney n our wingers at d moment

we cannot afford to lose anyone now. the diet of those players should be monitored.
rooney should stop taking alcohol and tobacco. . . . .anderson. clev, smalling must also return for the run-in.
united have won 6 league games out of 7 drawing the other. . . . .it's squeaky bum time, people.

https://i.minus.com/ibvLErk5FitNGV.gif

what a finish!

afrodoc:
LOL
i put it to u dt most MVPs didnt "beast" d stats as u so eloquently put it.wats more YOU KNOW IT!
u just want to win dis argument as usual,no b you?  

i aint winning an argument - what do i stand to gain?
since prozone/opta started compiling stats, people don't just name twats as mvps.
in the past, tournament organizers might have been guilty of this because some players can't do no wrong for some managers but with football blogs lying around who musta discussed this n that about a certain player, it's so easy now to see who is doing what @ the tournaments.

[quote author=Mr_TA link=topic=871307.msg10329067#msg10329067 date=1330892815]Standing infront of number 20.

(H) West Brom - 3 points
(A) Wolves - 3 points
(H) Fulham - 3 points
(A) Blackburn - 3 points
(H) QPR - 3 points
(A) Wigan - 3 points
(H) Aston Villa - 3 points
(H) Everton - 3 points
(A) Man City - title decider
(H) Swansea - 3 points
(A) Sunderland - 1 point[/quote]we have to win the next 8 games.
it's shaped up beautifully for us. the difficult teams in there are playing us at old trafford.
the easy teams are away so if fergie does not cop brain farts, we should make 24 points from the next 8 games.

city would not match that as they will still host chelsea and they would go to the emirates. . . .and even britannia.

dayokanu:
Euro 2004- Theodoros Zagorakis

supply his stats accordingly. . . .why just name him without his stats.
so because he's not popular means he couldn't cop better stats than the big names of that tournament?

afrodoc:
you n i know dt d stats of a player isn't wt is most important when naming best players of tournaments.it would be disingenuous of u to pretend otherwise

yes it is. . . . .
name any tournament where the best player didn't beast the statistics.
the only problem is we won't find those stats anywhere to prove my point.