[lokken]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

Good thing you're not coaching a football team. Just as a hint sometimes accepting being a goal down is better than accepting being a man down.

I didn't say they should do it if they risked a red card.

The doubt element in football concerns whether or not the foul is deliberate or not. Yellow cards were not introduced to allow you to hack the opposition down, they were introduced to allow for errors in timing tackles.

The reality is that there is a limited situation where a red card will happen where there are defenders behind the ball, usually if the tackle is dangerous.

18, 21, 25, 25, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 31. That's the average attendance figure in thousands for Serie A over the past ten years.

Fine, but I think the Italian way of playing is still extremely valid, they deserved to win the world cup because they did what they wanted very well. People throw stones at the Italian style but when it's well done, it's one of the best kinds of football not just in terms of winning but in my opinion to watch. There was a period when they were over obsessed with defence and this was putting too much pressure on the whole team to score and defend and it didn't work.

Liverpool didn't even have a player anywhere near the ball when it was hoofed away. Not even on approximately the same line going the whole way across the pitch. Next question please.

They they could have done it better, what more can I say. Sometimes 'get it out' is the best option when teams are just running at you because the last thing you want is for an attacker to nick the ball and get a shot away.

I've been talking about this for large parts of the year.

I'm pretty much saying that the deficiencies in his own team and Liverpool's relentless exploitation of them justifies the way Liverpool played.

Competition for football boils down to the teams. If you're going to encourage the teams to get the result by playing any way they can on the field they're going to do the same off it and complaining about it is just hypocrisy....Guess what, your single-minded focus on results, as reflected in many others, is to blame.

Not at all, money has just put undue pressure on teams because now they have too much to lose, because you can't just lose games, you can lose millions. I don't think money affects how teams play, given how sides have stayed up and won titles in the Premier league via different styles of football. The money just made the people who run the financial side of the top clubs to use their financial muscle to prevent other clubs getting their hands on players who might let their opposition compete. It's especially true with Premiership clubs who are by far the richest and it speaks volumes when even Laporta won't talk about the youth team out of fear that the club will lose their best kids. It's that ridiculous level of funding that will see even your dearest team muscled out and losing out on talent, which I don't think anyone would want. The marketing of the EPL will beat any other team hands down and unless the US starts loving football and football really dies, we'll have the best funded football teams.

Well executed football (in terms of technique and mentality), whatever style you play will near always be winning football. There is always pressure to do well and get results, whether you do it by passing it round, playing it long, keeping it tight etc.

If the game had ended at halftime in the second leg I would never have questioned anything. However the way they acted towards the end just wasn't football and it took a lot away from what preceded it. I still probably wouldn't quite say they didn't deserve to win. They played good football for a lot of the tie. It's just like watching a good film for 90 minutes and then getting nailed by the most dire last half an hour imaginable.

They closed the game out by stopping any game of football taking place, because they needed to. What do you expect?