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Where does Cristiano Ronaldo rank in the All time list?
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) was joined by comedian Ali Woods to look back at the best and worst moments of a rollercoaster season with the annual United Hour Awards.
Has Ten Hag been sacked yet? We're not sure and we hope not, but it's looking more likely as the days pass.
Who should replace him and why is it taking so long to make a decision?
Shevchenko was approaching 30 when he went to Chelsea; it's likely he'd peaked, and was starting to decline at that point. And Messi's on a whole different level to Shevchenko as well.
We do know with Messi...there's absolutely no reason to suggest that he wouldn't perform in this league when he's performed in two finals against a team that had just won it. It takes time to adjust to a league (sometimes), but it's not as if he'd be stepping into a different sport.
Yeah, but forgot to mention that he was 16 or so and doing a PhD in Princeton back then. I read that now he doesn't play video games cause he becomes very addicted to them.
A great article on him: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/magazine/the-singular-mind-of-terry-tao.html
When some people claimed that Henry was the best PL player ever rather than Ronaldo, at least they have longevity on their side. But over their entire career?
I love that game.Yep. I am doing now my thesis in Szemeredi's lemma which was done as part of Szemeredi's theorem and many people worked decades to finally get that theorem. Then Tao came and within a year or so proved it using completely different branches of mathematics. Apparently, he is doing so with other stuff too.
Despite being unanimously accepted as the best mathematicial alive (and he is still quite young) and apparenly the human with the highest IQ, he seems to not want to work on MIT, Stanford and co., because he is comfortable on where he is. Bonus cool points: he loves fantasy books and was a video game addict. Apparently, he failed exams in uni because he spent all the time playing Civilization.
Ronaldo won more in his short stay at Untied than Henry won in all his time at Arsenal so I don't see how that even factors in.When some people claimed that Henry was the best PL player ever rather than Ronaldo, at least they have longevity on their side. But over their entire career?
In EPL, I would sa that Henry was the best. Ronaldo's 07-08 season (if we include UCL too) is better than Henry's any season, but Ronaldo was a great EPL player only in 3 seasons, whie Henry was a top player in many more seasons. But then since the Madrid switch (well, in the last 5 seasons), Ronaldo has been a couple of levels better than Henry ever was. He has already scored more than a hundred goals than Henry, and has an another decade to play.When some people claimed that Henry was the best PL player ever rather than Ronaldo, at least they have longevity on their side. But over their entire career?
It is just not even close.
I don't think that is fair. Ronaldo won more than Henry in England because he played for a better team. Team trophies generally tell you how good and legendary a team is, not an individual player. If you want to judge who is/was a better player then judge them by what they contributed on the pitch and not by how many trophies the team they played for won. I think Ronaldo is a better player than Henry was when you take into account Ronaldo's career in Spain but it can certainly be argued that Henry was a better player in the Premier League overall when you take into account that he had 7 world class seasons in the Premier League in comparison to Ronaldo's 3.
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yeah mate, flip that and people could easily laugh at what Ronaldo's Madrid goals have won him, which isn't much in the grand scheme of his career there.
I'm not saying Henry is a better player than Ronaldo. Just that some will give him extra points for being more entertaining and scoring a better quality of goal. And Henry scored quite a few goals against United, against Madrid. I mean as United fans that should be fairly obvious anyway, in fact one of those goals was about as good a goal as I've ever seen in the premier league.
He's an outlier because of his physical attributes. You completely missed my point. He's picked despite of that unlike when managers picked players as defenders because they were big and lumpy.
I didn't miss your point, it's just not very strong and certainly doesn't suggest a trend.
What Blind playing where he does tells us more than anything else is that LVG - more than this era - will sacrifice a lot for a ball-player out of the back, and that is nothing new as he's being doing that since the same 90's you're making blanket statements about. In fact, here's some irony: he did the same with Daley Blind's dad in a fantastic, Champions League winning Ajax side 20 years ago.
My point to you is that picking an outlier to make a point, is redundant, which is why I asked for more examples to prove your statement correct.
Bayern and Barca both do it. Trends don't start with teams that aren't succeeding in what they're doing. Blind has also played CB for Netherlands.
You really need to read back through this discussion. Using Barcelona is disingenuous because they break all kinds of rules because they can, not because it's normal. They're the most dominant, possession based team the game has ever seen - it affords them a ridiculous amount of scope for what they do at the back.
And your initial point was about the meekness of Blind and the fact his ability is put before that. Bayern don't have any meek central defenders.
Pep has played with Lahm as a CB plenty of times. Alaba has played CB every match this season and against Leverkusen he played with Alaba, Bernat and Lahm at the back.
Ok, so let's take your point at face value (none of them are meek, even if Lahm is tiny). You've named only Barcelona (an outlier) and Bayern, who are a ridiculously dominant team through midfield, being managed by Pep afterall, and no other team.
Is that enough to make the point you have? Not really. Of all the teams active, that's 2, one of which shouldn't count as defining this era. I can name two slow, lumbering technically superior defenders from the 90's in Koeman and Blind snr. but such a small sample size doesn't validate anything.
Change doesn't happen overtime but three of the biggest teams in the world are doing it. There are only so many big teams. Real don't need a "meek" defender playing there because Ramos and Varane are both good ball player defenders. PSG vastly overpaid for a physical one because of his skills with the ball to partner their already good ball playing defender. My point isn't that teams are preferring defenders that are small. My point is that managers want players in their defense that are good on the ball. Both Pep and LvG just don't have a Ramos so they improvise. They'd rather have a non-conventional player as a CB because of the player is good on the ball. These players are still good defenders. It's just that height or pace isn't the priority.
Where is the option for "wouldn't make it into my pub team" lol.
I voted top 10 but time still on his side to break into the top 3. Plus, without checking the stats, he has answered the one question that all top players in the world need to answer before they are considered great. Can he do it on a cold Wednesday night at Stoke? Messi, Maradona and Pele cant say that they can.
I voted top 10 but time still on his side to break into the top 3. Plus, without checking the stats, he has answered the one question that all top players in the world need to answer before they are considered great. Can he do it on a cold Wednesday night at Stoke? Messi, Maradona and Pele cant say that they can.
And why do you think that's any different to the 90's when I came name more top, top notch ball players out of the back from that era than there are playing now, and more who were slower and comparatively weaker than what we see there now amongst what you consider a bunch of cloggers and donkeys?
There's not been a time between now and at least the 70's when what you've said didn't apply. The sweeper was only phased out in the 90's for the masses, prior to that, you had exceptionally talented players at the back for tactical and technical reasons.
The point you made about collectives being better isn't wrong, but just throwing a blanket over a whole era and saying this or that is how they played is ridiculous.
Admire the hell out of the guy for his stats and his incredible consistency over the last decade, but I really don't enjoy watching him play any more. Don't get me wrong, he's a remarkable talent but it just seems to me that his only job is to score a ton of goal, a fantastic job though it is. Back in the day when he was with us he took part in a bit of everything. Now he seems like a petulant child whenever a team mate scores over him. I'd take him back in a heart beat but it wouldn't be without reservations. Doesn't seem like a team player to me anymore.