[han2503]

All discussion involving other European leagues here

Just to get things rolling, Pogba will apparently have to sit out Man U's first game due to yellow card accumulation in the Coppa Italia (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

[han2503]

They got BETTER after they lost their best players, Han.

They've been losing their best players for years now aside from that 1 season when they got new ownership. Then he had divorce drama and started to sell again. Last season was a flash in the pan for them. They didn't build up gradually to it. I can't remember them having such a great season is recent history

Nope, for me it's done now. Tone was set pre-season and it's continued.

Your finality and rash judgment are a real mystery to me Danny. There's obvious tension at Cheslea, not denying that, but Conte is one man I'd bet on to pull through it. He went through similar tensions at Juve and with the NT, yet he was successful with both.

Chelsea played with 10 men for more than an hour. That plays into it, obviously they've got things to work on as they didn't look good before the red card either, but to completely dismiss them after an off day is ridiculous

Plenty of teams have bad pre-seasons btw. Carlo's teams for example always have a bad pre-season, yet they generally do the job when it matters

Didn't City offer Donna 12M? Didn't Real offer Mbappe nearly 10M?

Sky confirmed yesterday that PSG offer him 13m a year, which basically means he'd be earning twice what he does with us. Don't know about City, I don't think that was ever concrete, Pep wanted a ball playing keeper and Donna is hardly that

Wow, your ligue 1 knowledge stinks. No offence. If you knew anything about Lyon you'd know it was anything but organic.

Actually, no, I said before I was done on this topic and it's p*ssing into the wind. You can have all the last words you like, I ain't chatting about this again.

When did Lyon spend nearly spend a billion dollars in players? They had a great scouting system, and sure they bullied the other French sides, as generally happens when there is a top dog, but they rarely bought finished products, unlike PSG

Also what is up with you continually cutting off good discussions. We're discussing a footballing topic in a civil manner, why the need to have the last word and peace out? And you do this constantly with practically every topic we disagree upon.

Can't we just continue the discussion in the civilised manner we were carrying on in?

Against a woeful West Ham! At home! I'd peg Bilic's men as relegation candidates.

Last season they were awful, even against the relegation sides. They played well yesterday, it doesn't matter who their opponents were, at least they showed flowing cohesive football which is something I haven't seen from United since the Ferguson days

He willfully benched one of his key players, ditched another (Costa) and honestly Hazard aside there was no one else missing of enough gravity that the defending champions can say they were justified in losing at home to Burnley, who were fourth bottom last season if I'm not in error?

They had an awful pre-season and it's continued. You say room for improvement but maybe they've already peaked and they're on the slide, Jose style.

The only top five team I'm fairly convinced by remains Spurs. Best team in that division over the past two years. Hate their fans though.

Conte is a character no doubt about that. If you get on his bad side he won't stand for it. Juve were so great under him because he drilled them like robots, and that drilling continues to show it's fruits even to this day. Some players have trouble with that kind of coaching style, no doubt about that, but I believe he'll do well. We'll see if he can win the league again, I think he has the team to do it

So this weekend I was playing around with translating Italian renaissance embroidery patterns into a sweater design. I had the English league games on in the background and admittedly wasn't paying close attention. But....good lord, is the defending always that appalling in that league?

Yeah, week one was a terrible advert for defending. But I generally find that the art of defending is just taking a massive hit with each new season. We're seeing worse defending, the game is tilted to an attacking style anyway, so it's gotten to the point of teams outscoring each other