THE WOLF'S DEN - Tana dei Lupi II

[maro]

Don't make my come over there and kick your skinny arse for disrespecking Pocari, Davit. He's forgotten more about Roma's transfer history than you've ever known. I have no idea who our best purchase so far is, having yet to see Angel, Nego, and Lamela in a competitive match and having never attended especially carefully to Skeletonborough's performances. I tend to think all of the signings make a lot of sense on paper and that the Skeleton might be likely to make the biggest difference in terms of what he's replacing. I suspect the next CB signing and the central midfield signing(s) will prove to be the most important of all, one way and another, though.

[DavidP]

do come. i, or georgian food, will persuade the vegequeerian out of you.

how old are you though, pocari? i'm guessing early 20s?

and you probably wont see nego in a competitive match this year, if reports that he will be loaned out right away are to be believed.

[DavidP]

now that maro and i have effectively spammed the last 3 pages of this thread, i will go and watch my game peacefully.

[forzaitalia]

[romawi]

Now that Fabregas is back at Barca, I wonder if that would make Keita an option for us. Good player, but the downside is that he's 31.

[DavidP]

or perhaps Alcantara.

[DavidP]

before anyone hits the panic button...



1) We were playing a Valencia side which is in far better physical condition than us, having started training earlier than us.

2) We were playing a side which uses width like few Serie A teams. Angel & Cicinho will not have as much defensive responsibilities when the season gets going, I think.

3) We were playing a FULL STRENGTH VALENCIA SIDE. FULL STRENGTH.

4) We had 17 year old Valerio Verre and 18 year old Federico Viviani in our midfield (along with Pizarro). With all the due respect, neither of those teenagers look like they should be in the 2011-12 Roma squad, although Verre's tackling skills look very, very sharp. He will be a great addition to our squad in a year or two. However Pizarro, quite simply, doesn't fit what LE needs in midfield. He's not quick, he can't adapt to 1-touch football at this point in his career, and he provides nothing defensively (which will be a problem if he is to play alongside DDR & Lucho). I love the man, but its time that he departed.

5) Apart from the midfield, we were playing with JOKES as CBs (sorry Antei, but same story as the other two youth, while Cassetti should stick to backup RB and not venture to go anywhere near the damn center of the back-line). Neither Antei nor Casseti, never mind their CB pairing, are players we will see at CB this season more than a couple of times. Nothing to fret about here.

6) We were missing one of our biggest talents in Lamela, obviously.

7) We were missing DDR. We quite clearly lacked a destroyer in midfield, and I think it would've been a different game had Daniele played.

8 ) Lobont was between the sticks for the first half.

9) We played Rosi as our starting RB (at this point, that's a big no no for me and we will probably only see it happen a couple of times in the Serie A, so again, nothing new here and nothing to fret about).

10) The first two goals were more childish mistakes ("bambini errors" as LE put it in his post-match interview). Less worrying that actual team mistakes that suggest loopholes in our system.

11) We are waiting on IMMENSE additions to the squad: CB, MF (or 2), FW. What we saw today is nowhere near our 1st team for this season. NOWHERE NEAR.

12) One of the biggest positives: this result gives Sab & Baldini a HUGE wake-up call. To both get the transfers done and to get them done QUICK to get preparations started in a timely manner.

13) Give the team some more time to gel. A little over a month was never going to be enough (some players have had much less than that, even - Stek playing on his 4th day in Rome, anyone?) for "revolutionizing" our previous ideas, as Baldini put it. A winning mentality isn't instilled overnight, either. It took Spalletti 6 months. Somehow I still think it will take LE less than that.

14) Lastly, it was obvious - surround Bojan and Stek with quality players (suppliers and back line, respectively) and they will be OUT OF THIS WORLD. Bojan had shit service & Stek had a shit back line, and they were both still shining; that speaks volumes about their quality. Maybe it was just me but I thought that the entire team played with more confidence in the second half knowing they, for once, had a decent keeper behind their backs.

15) DAJE ROMA DAJE!!!!

[pocari_fenrir]

[pocari_fenrir]

De la Pena with some nice words after we let him walk off for a bit
http://www.football-italia.net/aug13b.html

And we got murdered out at Valencia
http://www.football-italia.net/aug13f.html

No surprise there with a lacklustre D line. Second goal sounded horrid with both our CBs pushing up on a set piece. Weird that Stek didnt play the full game and Perrotta getting subbed 7min in. Bojan is hitting more crossbars and Okaka is still missing sitters wtf

[DavidP]

[pocari_fenrir]

Lugano is at a VERY good price of 3-3.5m and getting Kjaer on loan for 2yrs will take some magic but yes, he would be an excellent edition. Ive been highly critical of Juan after his first season with us due to his structural integrity being more questionable than Chivu's; he's also put in horrid performances last season to boot... CONSISTENTLY. If we were to ring immediate changes, Lugano could afford us alot of fortitude at the back but will need someone less volatile to pair him or defensive full backs to overlap. Not sure if CBs and fullbacks overlapping is a good thing; Man Ure got crushed in the CL final last season due to Evra overlapping sideways with Vidic.

Also, Davit, what program do you use to produce those wonderful looking line-ups??

[DavidP]

yeah, it will definitely take some magic, but so did making the deal where we got paid to have bojan for 2 years, as well as the deal which got us stek for 5.6m. and surely there was more to why Barca crushed manure than evra simply overlapping sideways with vidic?

There is no program that I know of which does something like that, though I wish there were. I use good old http://www.footballuser.com.

[pocari_fenrir]

Yes Davit, there was ALOT more to why Barca crushed Man Ure but i noticed their midfield trifecta was particularly effective when they were able to abuse that overlap. It was almost a guaranteed play that lead to a goal as Vidic allowed for too much space in a 1v1 and Evra's overlap would spiral the D line into utter confusion.

I dont think it took magic to bag Bojan, the kicker was allowing for Barca to claim their home boy back for a 1mil defecit and grab us by the balls with a 28mil payout if we wanted to challenge it. It would be a crying shame to lose a Romanly-efficient Bojan after 2 years simply because Barca can take first option and exploit us for taking the frugal option. I dont mind Roma's frugal spending since we've been smart with Sabatini taking the reins from an unreasonable Prade. When Barcelona deal their players, it's just flat-out extortion sometimes and without all the recent silverware Pep's crew has earned them, they need to get off their high horses.

Stek's transfer was a testament of Sabatini magic. The man mentions a collection of valid keepers in Stek, Sergio Romero and Viviano. Fails in his bid for Viviano due to Bologna/Inter going to blind auctions so he locks on to Stek. He formally shows up on Ajax's doorstep and low balls them 5mil as to the 10-12mil they expect. Then he plays it cool and hucks Kameni as a red herring. Gets super serious about it and have a handshake go awry due to an act over 'personal terms'. Sabatini goes back to Ajax and agrees that 8mil is a fair price to meet them halfway with. Then comes the magical part... he walks away with a done deal at 6mil, just 1mil shy of what he wanted. Arguably, the lack of demand from other clubs for Stek was a huge factor but to heckle a typically selling club like he was strolling through Chinatown, the man has more than my attention, appreciation and respect.

I am unfamiliar with his transfer dealings at Palermo but they all struck me simply as him finding many diamonds in the rough and Zamparini gloating around like he did all the work.

[DavidP]

fair enough.

for the quality that bojan brings to the side, i think getting paid to have him for 2 years is indeed a piece of magic from sab. similarly to stek's deal, the external stuff was all going very well (none of the other clubs wanting stek, in that case) - and that was barca's signing of alexis sanchez. no way this deal would have happened had barca not signed a replacement beforehand. still, the setup was there, but there was still a lot to be done. i don't think either of us can exactly know how much of it was the wizard's wand at work and how much of it was barca's initiative, but i'll give our man the benefit of the doubt.

spot on about stek and also agree about palermo. i would definitely give sab more credit than labeling his transfer policy there as hit and miss with young prospects.

[maro]

I don't think the Bojan deal had much at all to do with Roman frugality, Pocari; it seems almost certain that it was a clause that Barca were always going to insist on, since they weren't completely sure they actually wanted to let Bojan go and were worried that he might turn into another 'Fabregas' and they'd have to pay big money to bring one of their own back. We had to accept such a clause if we wanted Bojan at all - this is certainly how it seems to me.

Thanks for the summary, Davit. Makes me sad to have missed the game. Presumably it'll be fairer to judge Rosi and Pizarro once they have the defensive spine in the team around them (Juan-Burdisso-DDR). Pizza's defensive game is fine so long as he's filling space, with the play unfolding in front of him. The trouble for him is when he has to catch back up with play - something which might quite literally never happen in a game when he's a regista, but which will happen all the time if he makes runs beyond the ball as a mezz'ala. This is why he played some top stuff for us in front of the back four in Ranieri's 4-3-1-2 two seasons ago. It's also what led Ranieri (and LE?) to feel that Pizza and DDR couldn't play together (other than, I suspect, in the 4-2-3-1).
http://www.forzaroma.info/rassegna-stam ... -roma.html

[DavidP]

no problem. i don't think you missed much, though if you want i can upload the match for you. one thing i missed in the summary is that there was a LOT of rotation (naturally). i think we made 9 subs (with pizza and bojan playing the 90 if i'm not mistaken). burdisso-heinze started at cb, which, on paper, is alright defensive cover coming from the cb pairing for rosi, though there was nobody shielding the defence from midfield at any point in the game.

perhaps you're right about pizza, but his defensive problems, as i see it, are just one of many reasons why he doesn't fit this system. if you look at the , you'll see that pizza is actually running back for the first 2 goals ahead of the centerbacks (for the second goal, both of them had gone up with virtually no cover at the back (??????????)). it was two defensively weak fullbacks vs the entire feckin valencia attack (so much for good defensive cover coming from the cb pairing for rosi...)

[maro]

Yeah, nothing at all to read into those two goals - other than that Jose Angel doesn't know how to defend. It's been said that the side has done no work at all on set-plays (in defence and in attack), so one shouldn't be too worried if they're not completely sure of their roles yet. The first goal was just a shocker; the second was more worrying because it was such an unbelievably bad bit of decision-making from Angel; had he played offside or had he gone with Soldado it would almost certainly have fizzled out into nothing. And nothing at all wrong with Pizza in either case - presumably he wasn't going up for the corners, so was, in fact, occupying a 'holding' role (the position of the regista in the run of play), hence his being pretty comfortably in position in each case.

[romawi]

[maro]

For Chewna:
Luis Enrique vuole ancora Thiago Alcantara
Sabato 13 Agosto 2011 12:33

L’arrivo al Barcellona di Cesc Fabregas potrebbe chiudere le porte alla permanenza in blaugrana di Thiago Alcantara.

Il gioiello della cantera, per distacco il migliore tra i suoi in pre-campionato, potrebbe decidere di fare le valigie e lasciare la Spagna, emigrando in prestito per una stagione. Nonostante le smentite del padre e agente, Mazinho, che nei giorni scorsi ha ribadito che il ragazzo è pronto a giocarsi il posto restando nel miglior club del mondo, e di non temere la concorrenza, sul 20enne nato in Puglia hanno messo gli occhi diversi club. Su tutti la Roma di Luis Enrique che, come riportato dal portale britannico tribalfootball.com, avrebbe già sondato il terreno per prelevarlo immediatamente, contando sullo “sponsor” Bojan, fresco di arrivo nella capitale e amico di Thiago.
It would only happen, of course, because of the Luis Enrique connection. We shall see.

[pocari_fenrir]

LE has been particularly chatty about us signing a WF, seems like Osvaldo has a 1up over Nilmar
http://www.football-italia.net/aug13o.html

He also continues on about the amount of work he has to do, probably feels like he didnt get his message of winning mentality across. More focus on defense perhaps soon??
http://www.football-italia.net/aug13j.html