Liverpool v The Arsenal, 5.30pm Saturday 23 December 2023

[Letters]

Someone give you a time machine for Christmas...?

You may have heard of DVDs and other recording media.

Oh, and yeah, there have been cloggers in every generation of footballers. It’s easy to look back with rose tinted glasses and remember the best players, but there’s always been players who are pretty mediocre.

[Mac76]

You may have heard of DVDs and other recording media.

Ok ok, it was just the way said "off to watch"...

Anyway i thought it was funny

[Niall_Quinn]

Proper men are not whinging and insecure, would just be secure and content with their own lives rather than worry about how sodomites are ruining their Christmas.

But if it helps I’m sorry that your sacred holiday which you largely pinched from people you’d regard as heathens is just as much celebrated by people who at best believe Jesus was apocryphal (I’d go a little further and say if he did exist he was a cunt anyway).

That’s ecumenism for you


It’s like you and the multi coloured haired pronoun solipsists are just as annoying as each other. Both invoke slippery slope thinking, both deeply boring and actually at the core the real thing you’re unhappy about is that everyone else thinks you’re insufferable cunts

It was a jab the pope, not you. So calm down a bit.

[Niall_Quinn]

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

Okay, that's argued well enough. But I don't agree with any of it. Especially the Salah/ Owen comparison. That's crazy talk. Another thing I don't get is how they can be saying football is faster and more physical these days. Absurd. None of these players would last 2 minutes in a proper match. Hell, the likes of Bruce and Keown had license to boot the opposition off the pitch. Now all you need to do is sneeze in their direction and down they go, screaming. Totally different game. Worse on every level. As a sport, I mean. As a marketing spectacle, well maybe you have a point.

[Niall_Quinn]

I don’t think it’s that technicality is lacking. Martinelli, Saka, Odegaard are all very good technically but the pace of the game doesn’t always give you the time to show off that technical skill

Odegard is shite btw. I can't be doing with a 33% player.

[HCZ_Reborn]

Odegard is shite btw. I can't be doing with a 33% player.

Again compared to who? If you’re saying Pires or even Ozil yeah I’d say they were both better. But equally he’s better than Ljungberg, better id say than Paul Merson and id put him on the level of Santi Cazorla

[HCZ_Reborn]

Okay, that's argued well enough. But I don't agree with any of it. Especially the Salah/ Owen comparison. That's crazy talk. Another thing I don't get is how they can be saying football is faster and more physical these days. Absurd. None of these players would last 2 minutes in a proper match. Hell, the likes of Bruce and Keown had license to boot the opposition off the pitch. Now all you need to do is sneeze in their direction and down they go, screaming. Totally different game. Worse on every level. As a sport, I mean. As a marketing spectacle, well maybe you have a point.

And Keown got his fair share of yellow and red cards. The reason a player like Keown wouldn’t work today is not because of how aggressive he is, but because he’s not quick enough. Saliba is reasonable pacy and Gabriel has pace to burn, you have to have a defender who can play with the ball at his feet today where as back in the day you just needed a hard worker who was happy to collect yellow cards, could man mark and head the ball.

End of the day, physics comes into play, football is a contact sport but with the pace the game is played at today you are more likely to come off worse