FT : 1 - 1

Marcelo is worse, it should have been VDV start and we seriously need a solid LB anyway nice game though by both team.

Madrid lucky Pato goal disallow

anyway goodgame lads

GTG

^^^ maybe to even things out.. the penalty call was very soft too

marseille is catching up now...BE CAREFUL...if no ronaldo 4 the return game in france we are doom...dang

Pato did nudge Arbeloa's back with his knee when he jumped which was what the ref blowed for. The pen however was non-existent. And before the pen Milan were absolutely nowhere to be seen. If we were more ruthless it would have been over in the first 20 mins. If there's anyone that should count their lucky stars it's Milan.

not really.. we just need to won the game against zurich, which is at home.. if we win, then.. nothing to be worried. either milan or marsille will throu..

Madrid and Milan played a very good game in 1st half and 2nd half respectively but, for me Milan had two different successful half and Madrid have only one.

I REALLY thought things are gonna change with Madrid's gameplay at the second half and yes it did and as the game grows, our strikers tend to be wingers and we rolled our pass in front of 7 or 8 Milan players. and we lost the ball once we pass it to the center and Milan starts to counter. This happens fro several times until we started to play long ball later in the game which btw, made us look more pathetic. I don't understand why we let them defend at our own game. If we launch a counter attack (which we did and Kaka took more than half of the responsibility for ruining it) we could have won the game.

Simple but effective. Think of this. We have very fast offensive players of which their ball controls are not even close to bad compared to their players. We have a long ball specialist. Place all the fast players wider and we have ourselves a great counter attack team.

Just my 2 cents.

EDIT: looking forward to this weekends game for it'll be a very interesting Derby.

This post has been edited by gto87: Nov 4 2009, 04:13 PM

@gto87:
The thing is Milan played like how Italian teams have played against us the past few years regardless if they are playing at home ie defending deep with at least 7 players behind the ball most of the time. Even for the goal we scored Kaka had to get past 2 players 1st before unleashing his shot.

The problem with the our 2nd half was our tempo and intensity dropped big time. Whether it was a fitness issue I'm not sure but the ball needs to move alot faster in the final third which was what we did in the 1st half. Currently it seems the only player capable of keeping that intensity for 90 mins is Lass. The other players would do well to take a leaf out of his book.

Verx

That's what I'm talking about, We know they're an Italian team, and we know damn well they gonna sit back, defend and counter us whenever they got the chance. So why don't we sit back and let them attack a bit and we'll hit them on counter.

If you guys remember, not a while ago, we used to launch similar attacks when we're under Schuster's tenure. Robinho and Nistelrooy were very clinical at that time and compare that line up to what we have today, I think we can fire at least 2 goals past Milan or any other team.

Well, like you said maybe it's fitness problem or maybe not, we'll never know, but one thing we do know that, we have a lot of potential in this team and I don't like to see it to be wasted. Don't get me wrong here, I never underestimated Pellegrini, but I expected a lot better from him.

I hope Perez will be patient and throw his axe away so that we can really bring stability to the team.

GUys, we are imformed that , CR9 will be out for another month ...
Soo sad , he can miss the clasico against barcelona.

Anyway , Pell' must find someways to play now without him , because he is uncertain for at least a month or even more according to Goal.

Hala Madrid !

It's just a difference in philosophy. We could have sat back but then the game would have most likely ended up in a boring draw. Milan were definitely not going to throw many players forward and inviting pressure is a dangerous game for us. If there's one thing Milan are better than us it's that their backline is more organised. We are just a few steps away from being a team that pins opponents to their half. Isn't that what you would prefer to see?

->Verx
I agree with your last line, I do want to see it happen.

But I don't think letting the opponent attack while having our backfour with 2 DMs at the back as inviting pressure, I think solving counter attacks with only 3 players at the back is inviting more pressure. But maybe that's just me. That said I'm not asking us to be more defensive. I'm saying that instead of just giving time to the defenders to gel, why don't we prevent the goal first.

We can't always prevent the opponent from scoring. But if we counter them for each time they attack, plus with the players we got, I'm pretty much sure, we'll be in comfort zone before the ref blows his final whistle.

But, I respect your opinion verx, everybody have their own opinion on the team's strategy, but somehow I find yours is in need of a very lengthy period and mine is the short term solution, agree?

mayb the reason they conceded alot because they havent change their mentality, if our opponent score 4 goals, we going to score 5..

That's the thing about football. Guillem Balague has a saying: Football is like a small blanket. If you cover the head you expose the feet and vice versa. Having a backfour and DM sit back at all times means you're going to concede the midfield to opponents. You're giving control over and believe me it won't be counter attacks that will be giving you headaches then. The reason why we have 3 or 4 players only back at times is because we are trying to win the ball further up the field. The problem is we haven't reached the proper organisation needed yet. If you've watched Barcelona play before they have this down to perfection.

That's only possible if our opponents throw players forward at us which I would think is highly unlikely most of the time. Most teams would take a draw against us but we can't afford that luxury if we want to win something this year.

It's not a question of long term or short term. We are playing with a new system and we need to put it into practice for us to get better at it. It's counter productive to practice another strategy cause then we won't ever be better at what we are trying to accomplish.

I watched Barca played before and what I can say is they cut down the opponents attack way before they even planned to launch one and that's what you mean it. I get it. But, ever wonder why they win the ball most of the time? It's because their forwards helped the MFs to pressure the opponents player who's in possession and narrowed down the gap before he can even think of doing something. That's what it takes if we really wanna win the ball up front. The forwards must work together. But in Madrid, apart from Raul, this is a very rare thing to happen. So, why waste so many players up front when only Lass is doing that job. It's like when the opponent get the ball, they bypassed all our MFs with one quick counter not because they literally quick and not because they're good in counter attacks. No, that's not it. It's because our MFs is simply too lazy to chase the ball and they think it's the defenders responsibility to do the chasing, tackling and winning the ball.

So, I say we agree to disagree on the highly unlikely part. I assumed that you had watched all the madrid match including Madrid vs Gijon match, vs Sevilla, vs Alcorcon, vs Getafe, vs Deprotivo. Ok, you can clearly see that all these teams were given space to attack, and by space I don't mean just for counter attack, they really did came forward, string a few passes in front of our goal and at some point in the game, they even had all their 5 or 6 forwards in our half switching the ball from right to left vice versa with us just watching and waiting for the right moment to snatch it. Given the chance, even a team like Alcorcon will attack us and they did just that.

Barca never allowed such attacks and to prevent them they used their forwards wisely, cut you down before you can grow~

HT 0 2 : kaka and marcelo.

Nice goal from kaka