[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by lokken

I wasn't fussed, the first was bound to be a goal fest, the second was a challenge where the away team was going to have to be smart to get through. Given how Lampard was average playing that way and that Chelsea really don't have any wingers who track back to any degree, I think they could do it but they wouldn't be as successful as they are now with the squad they have.

My point is largely that they built their team that way. They had bags of money and took the shit option.

I'm just willing to accept that sometimes you have to sacrifice one for the other, but in a game where the objective for a team is to win, entertaining at the expense of losing isn't what teams aim for.

I'm not really suggesting it is. I'm criticising chelsea for playing winning while not bothering to play entertaining football really. Realistically these days football is a business and thankfully maybe chelsea will work out that to become the biggest club in the world they'll have to play a more attractive game.

If they know the penalties, work out the cost within the rules, then yes they should play the system as it's another way of winning football matches, however unpopular it is. If you can win by giving away fouls that are pretty cheap from your point of view, then if I was a manager I would happily tell my team to do it if I felt it was the only way of succeeding in a match. This kind of tactic has to be played clever as go over the top, you get players sent off. This is not something I see as cheating - it is playing by and very much accepting the rules of the game. Like in Planetarion, if people become unhappy, the rules will change.

Oh come on. It's more analogous to people deliberately cheating in PA but knowing that they'll only get minor warnings/punishments for each time they do it so it's worth doing in the long run.

I just pointed out that teams that are cynical (for example, Milan as an Italian side) are playing purely for the likelihood of certain events falling in their favour and they don't particularly care except to increase their chances of winning on that basis. A bad decision is something teams have no control over and it's just something that can turn a game. It's part and parcel of football and sometimes works for and against teams.

And as we all know Italian football has been doing so well in terms of attracting fans recently.

Teams who play the most exciting football (Barcelona and Arsenal) only become arrogant and believe that they deserve to win matches because they play a certain way. It's a sure fire way to flag up your limitations and get beat. When Rijkaard frowned and said Liverpool weren't progressive at the Nou Camp you knew they'd been bettered by a defensive style of football that had been executed in a more superior fashion. It's the quality of execution that we should judge, not the way teams decide to play.

It's the overall package really. Liverpool put together one of the most asinine displays I've ever seen in the second half of the second leg against barca and to be honest I was praying they'd get punished for it. Largely teams think they're playing percentage football when really the percentages of actually playing proper football are pretty similar.

The difference between the former and the latter is how much you get bankrolled. There are probably 15 teams in the premiership who will never win the title for 50 years the way it is going.

That's a fairly bold prediction. As you said if people are unhappy they'll probably change the rules.

No you're making unreasonable demands on teams to play the way you want them instead of playing in a way that suits them and they feel they can win games of football if they do it well enough. If a team does that consistently, they will be playing good football. Even Bolton.

I'm pretty sure that's the first time anyone's used the words "good football" and "bolton" without the disclaimer "haven't played since christ was a little-known carpenter" in between.