Well your one in here the rest need to wake up is all I say instead of thinking to enjoy their moment watching their closed league amongst faceless other supporters at derbies thinking how good is this ?!
Seriously this is BS

Wrexham eh? What a story.

Yes sure is nice to see a small club with some backing earning their way up the ladder.

Watching very slowly over the last few months club games from harry kewells career. A couple of things stand out

1) Leeds completely change style between 98/99 games and 01/02 games, their opponents do too. In 98/99 it is probably fair to call it hoofball. By 01/02 the ball is on the deck and resembles a modern style with less sophisticated pressing
2) I have heard that one factor in us struggling to get players into the big 5 is that there are more foreigners today then back then which makes it more competitive today. I disputed that citing stats that showed the surge of foreigners happened before the golden generation came in. That is technically true, but a large number of foreigners are from the brittish isles (ireland/scotland) so aren't as diverse as today. Here is the team sheet for Leeds vs Ipswitch in the 01/02 season


So I was wrong, mea culpa, the increased globalization in football is clearly a factor in our relative decline. Lack of academies/nyl and ais at various stages in the a league era as well as alienating some of our most passionate people in marginalising ethnic clubs probably hurt too......but the globalization of football should probably be taken into account when comparing eras....

Having said that, viduka and kewell are probably still mid table premier league today and are remarkable outliers
viduka seems to play as a playmaker striker like he does for the roos but also enough creative players around him to give him deck balls into the box for him to be a serious scoring threat

curiously, kewell despite being one of the best technicians we have ever produced almost never produces deck balls into the box at club level from what I've seen

Even though they work together at club level, it doesn't work at country level so we should have selected other players to compliment them - either bresciano in place of kewell or aloisi in place of viduka

grazorblade said:

Having said that, viduka and kewell are probably still mid table premier league today and are remarkable outliers
viduka seems to play as a playmaker striker like he does for the roos but also enough creative players around him to give him deck balls into the box for him to be a serious scoring threat

curiously, kewell despite being one of the best technicians we have ever produced almost never produces deck balls into the box at club level from what I've seen

Even though they work together at club level, it doesn't work at country level so we should have selected other players to compliment them - either bresciano in place of kewell or aloisi in place of viduka

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Which is kind of what Hiddink did right?

Kitwally said:

Which is kind of what Hiddink did right?

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yeah I should have another watch of those games after understanding their profiles a bit better. I'm curious who assisted vidukas first couple of goals for the nt. Even if you have an nsl mid/a league who is lower quality but can feed viduka it might've been worth playing them for balance

grazorblade said:

yeah I should have another watch of those games after understanding their profiles a bit better. I'm curious who assisted vidukas first couple of goals for the nt. Even if you have an nsl mid/a league who is lower quality but can feed viduka it might've been worth playing them for balance

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Don't think too much about it mate - just enjoy the goals!

ashtongate said:

Don't think too much about it mate - just enjoy the goals!

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Im a physicist so thinking is my way of enjoying life

But i get im pretty weird and its not everyones cup of tea to be this analytical

I get where you come from Graz and I’m no where at your level of looking that deeply at things.
They say mental health becomes
I’m a huge advocate of the saying analysis paralysis.
Some things just happens doesn’t need a thesis - like he said enjoy the natural ability and finish - at times this cannot be broken down explained but natural against the note book and this is what is brilliant about great sports people.