Nobody fancies about the draw of 16 yet?
#31
Hitman, back to the magic show, you must remember magicians let an audiance pick up a card in some distance and tell what the card is, that's as good as he gives a certain card to the audiance to pick. These days they even use hi-tec stuff, like remote control, to determine what happens in a closed space, or let drawn things move on a piece of paper...

Platini came into office and directed a few years in a row of Italians and Spanish top teams drew into the same groups, resulting one side, mostly Italians finished group second and face his ultimate target, EPL in the next round. How many EPL teams Milan has faced since 2007? How many times mediocre teams faced each other in the first knockout round? He just manipulated it way too much, look at the CL participating countries map, and the strip of black zone in the centre, so obvious.
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#32
(12-14-2011, 03:03 PM)ElMago99 Wrote:
(12-14-2011, 09:18 AM)Hitman Wrote: yeah, a team that concedes this many goals has never won the CL... I can't remember a CL-winning team with a worse defence than ours at this time....

The interesting thing is that our *DEFENSE* is not bad player by player. T.Silva, Nesta, Abate are very strong defenders, and obviously we have an issue just on the left side.

I think our midfield is the reason we concede so much. I'd like to see a video of all of the goals we've conceded in Europe, but I'm certainly not happy about conceding this much, considering Milan has a history of always being the best defensive side.

I am a fan of Abate, but I am not sure he is a great defender--yet. Going forward he is very good, and he just needs to work on that crossing. But he has been caught out many times this season. He has incredible pace, but he needs to work on his positioning.

As for Hitman's post--it is accurate, and a welcomed reminder of what is at stake. We need to be worried about the UEFA coeff. The threat is real also from France and Portugal. After this year, we will lose the points from 2007/08, during which year Italy was approx four points higher than France. Then the race is very close. We need to outscore France convincingly this year.

http://www.notevenanoriundo.com/2011/09/...-only.html

The maddening thing is teams like Lazio have been unable to beat Vaslui, and the last game they even fielded a competitive side. They are paying dearly for that ludicrous 2-2 draw with the Romanian side on the opening matchday.

Quite simply, Udinese MUST go through. They need to avoid defeat to Celtic (and hope Sion's legal battle doesn't change anything for the group, though that now looks unlikely after the club sought recourse to a civil court I believe over Court of Arbitration of Sport, the body that UEFA recognizes...you can read more about that on the web). Lazio need a minor miracle: beat Sporting at home today, and hope Zurich, who have absolutely nothing to play for, draw or defeat Vaslui.

Looks tough.

Reasons like these are why we should all suppress our gag reflex and support Inter in Europe.
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#33
Lazio up 2-0 and Zurich are beating Valui 1-0 Wink
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#34
Yep...incredible. Zurich had nothing to play for and they win 2-0. Lazio win 2-0 and they go through.

AND, PSG eliminated, meaning only 2 French teams are left in UEFA competition because Rennes are also eliminated.

Huge boost for Italy.
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#35
Udinese plays tomorrow right? This year seems good for Serie A.
aka xudong
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#36
Hasan, I wouldn't worry about French or Portugal, we shouldn't look behind us now.... I think we should only look ahead and that is to Germany. Besides, being 4th or 5th is the same.

Germany could, in a couple of years, even do better than Spain. I don't like how UEFA rate the EL's wins just as much as the CL's wins.

Xudong, it's not the best of years... because if Milan had taken 4 wins from Plzen and BATE (like how they're supposed to) Milan would have TWO more points individually, and Italy would have 2/7 more points. Inter got only a draw over two games with Trabzanspor, if they won both they would have 3 points as well.

Udinese also did great vs Arsenal and should have gone through, but I really, really hate Di Natale so much for screwing Udinese's chances. He missed so many chances and ALWAYS fails to deliver on the big stage for Udinese and Italy. I hate him so much for that. Udinese could have had 4 more bonus points (and around 15m more cash) for just beating Arsenal.



EDIT:

Last night Lazio won, and earned 2/7 = 0.286 points, and Schalke won and earnt 2/6 = 0.333 points. A win for them earns them 0.05 points more.

But you are right, it is better than recent years cause we were so pathetic. Last night Lazio won and earned us another 2/7 points, hopefully Udinese can win tonight and earn another 2/7 or even a draw would be good at 1/7 just as long as they go through.
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#37
I hear you Hitman. But the thing is we're closer to France and Portugal in the rankings than we are to Germany or Spain. We haven't convincingly beaten France in the rankings for the last three seasons. We must steal a march on France and Portugal this season and then try and do better than Germany every year (there are chances we will do better than they do this year).

Hopefully we get about 17 points this year. That would put us in a great position. Italy is doing very well this year compared to last year, after which we only had 11.571 points. This year we already have 9.357. It will get harder to get points in the knockout stages, but God willing Italian clubs dominate.
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#38
Udinese 1-1 Celtic. One more Italian team goes through. Smile
aka xudong
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#39
Amazingly, just Stoke have progressed from the original Europa League teams from England. Fulham, Tottenham, Birmingham and the rest of them are all out.
We got the young 'un's. We take out big gunz  Devilcool
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#40
but still, the trophy would go to the City of Manchester. Seriously.
aka xudong
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