Quote Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn View Post
Salah is a miles better player than Owen it’s not even close, Owen had a good low centre of gravity and pace but he was one dimensional. If you wanted to compare Salah as poor in comparison to Henry or Bergkamp slightly more sympathy there

Rice and Keane - In terms of pace and technique neither are that great, Rice is a slightly better passer but again not great. Both good readers of the game, Keane better tackler but not a lot in it.


I know it’s lovely to cry for the moon and say things are not what they used to be. But I watched enough football then and enough football now to realise that most of it is rose tinted spectacles.


I remember the game against Liverpool the last time we played on December 23rd, when Durkin sent off Van Bronckhorst and despite that we won the game 2-1. The Ljungberg goal was good football but the rest was scrappy and attritional.

If it’s just that you’ve fallen out of love with the game because of the financial doping, banter mentality, social media nonsense and the absolute fuck face of really terrible match officials, arbitrary rule changes etc. well who can blame you

But if you’re arguing there’s been a significant decline in the overall quality of footballers. Sorry I don’t see it
Salah is a much, much better player than Owen. And that's not even a knock on Owen, the boring cunt, he was a terrifying player but even he says his peak was 20/21. If that. He wasn't a bad player by any means but he was pretty much done by the time he left us. Salah the freak, barring any injury, will still be going strong at 36 or 37. As a pure finisher, Owen was amongst the best I've ever seen, but he was a striker; Salah is a winger scoring striker numbers of goals and still providing a huge number of chances for that shitkicker Nunez to miss.

I don't really necessarily agree with Owen either that football has gotten away from being technical to purely physical. Sure, players have to be a hell of a lot fitter and physically able than before, but a huge part of that is down to tactics being so much more based around pressing and team shape as a whole. It's not as if there aren't ludicrously technical players about either. Look at Alexander-Arnold. [Somewhat unfairly] maligned about his general play, the kid is hideously good.

Football is getting demonstrably shitter (could be a coincidence but may be because I'm getting older, my dad said the same about football in the 90s onwards, but then he always was a miserable bastard like me) but I don't subscribe to footballers getting shitter. You can point to Henry or Bergkamp, but they were amongst the best players of their generation but it's not like they weren't playing against some absolute shitkickers at the time as well.

Anyway I've forgotten what I was saying. I'm off to watch the 2001 Cup Final. Which was a pretty boring game. Henchoz