Champions League 2014/15 | Group E

Thought Varane retired after 42 year old Drogba ruined him.

Carlo benched his ass for good

For the record I don't rate Boateng and Kompany that highly either.

varane is still better than kompany though, and we all know varane would be starter, for most if not all elite clubs fact and he will prob takeover next season as starter as well

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:For the record I don't rate Boateng and Kompany that highly either.

Why? What's Boateng done in the past years to not be considered a highly rated defender?
Getting nutmegged once after playing with one man down for 70 minutes, in a match that held no consequence whatsoever for his team?
After the last three seasons he's had?

You guys know I don't traffic in terms like "the best", but he certainly is among the ranks of the world class defenders, isn't he?

I just have never liked him Viva, he's too erratic for me. As RG will attest, I hate aggressive defenders

I prefer defenders to stay in their lane and not try to win the ball all the time. I respect what he's done but I just dislike his style.

I think Boa has improved greatly since he arrived at Bayern. In the beginning he often acted rashly and was prone to errors due to that, but by now his timing with tackles is mostly perfect. He does do risky things, but usually they work out.

Yesterday's gaffe was an unfortunate error that can happen. The problem is that with both defenders and goalies, errors mostly end in goals, so they are more costly  - but you cannot avoid errors 100% as the players still are humans.

chad4401 wrote:kompany is decent at best, come on now titles doesn't change the fact, im pretty sure city wins by out scoring not defending, kompany is lolz against elite attackers

Except over the last 5 years (including this one) City have allowed the lowest goals against in the EPL (146 over that span). Kompany has been there for 6 years now...all while playing an attacking brand of football.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:I just have never liked him Viva, he's too erratic for me. As RG will attest, I hate aggressive defenders

I prefer defenders to stay in their lane and not try to win the ball all the time. I respect what he's done but I just dislike his style.

Well I can appreciate that, it's a good enough explanation.

doesn't change the fact that kompany is meh, just cause he plays in the prem your trying to hype him, I have seen him against elite attackers and he sucks at organizing his defence



look how easy totti drew him out and ran into the space to score as he ball watches , that elite footy bruh... , anybody can defend hoofball

VivaStPauli wrote:

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:I just have never liked him Viva, he's too erratic for me. As RG will attest, I hate aggressive defenders

I prefer defenders to stay in their lane and not try to win the ball all the time. I respect what he's done but I just dislike his style.

Well I can appreciate that, it's a good enough explanation.

No it isn't lol. If Boateng comes forward to win balls that is because he is required to do so, and because frankly if we play a high line and let attacking players receive and control the ball in the seams of midfield and defense we are *bleep*.
But I'm sure we'd have conceded less goals in the last couple of seasons, than the two record lows of Bundesliga history, and would have won a lot of trophies, if Mole would have been there to tell Boateng to stay put, or if we had better defenders, real world class ones lol.

Good recent article on this very subject:

http://www.espnfc.com/blog/tactics-and-analysis/67/post/2161900/uefa-champions-league-manchester-city-likely-regret-selling-jerome-boateng

chad4401 wrote:doesn't change the fact that kompany is meh, just cause he plays in the prem your trying to hype him, I have seen him against elite attackers and he sucks at organizing his defence

look how easy totti drew him out and ran into the space to score as he ball watches , that elite footy bruh... , anybody can defend hoofball

Oh come on. You are moving the goalposts. First you say City are not known for their defending (then I post showing they've actually been the best defensive side in the PL over the last 5 years) now you are bringing up specific instances of Kompany making mistakes, of which you can find of any player in the world. I'm not hyping him because he plays in the PL I don't really care what league players play in, he plays well far more often than he makes mistakes (or at least he has for years now). With Belgium he is strong also.

dude your acting like city are not getting destroyed in the cl and as i said anybody can defend hoofball, and im sure when city meets a proper team in the league they concede, so if you think stopping scrubs is impressive, good for you

kompany is meh against elite,ball watches and positioning is garbage, again another decent player being label WC for stomping hoofballing epl scrubs, no wonder suarez was the 3rd best player in the world while not doing anything against top team, but 4 goals vs shit? top player , sorry i got eyes bruh

Im in aww and dumbfounded with the Varane hype from Madrid fans. Now I kid who has played 17min in the last 5 La Liga games is better than Kompany and Top 5 CB . This isn't Pardew freezing him out of the team. If Carlo isnt starting its for a reason. He isn't error prone or lacks position awareness like kompany, how many error can one make from the bench?? If you want to rate his potential fine, i rate him highly as well. Especially afer he kept Messi in his pocket in his debut classico. Once he started for a full season than we can rate him accordingly. Not enough sample size to rate him anything more than a promising young player with WC potential.


I would rate Boa but can't due to fact he was a City/PL flop. And whiny POS about wanting to play CB instead of fullback.

Hapless_Hans wrote:

VivaStPauli wrote:

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:I just have never liked him Viva, he's too erratic for me. As RG will attest, I hate aggressive defenders

I prefer defenders to stay in their lane and not try to win the ball all the time. I respect what he's done but I just dislike his style.

Well I can appreciate that, it's a good enough explanation.

No it isn't lol.

Sure it is a great explanation of why Mole doesn't like Boateng. I happen to think that his pace, and willingness to move out of position to snuff out danger early makes him an even better defender, but I won't convince Mole of that, if he hates active defenders.

Look at hapless-Kompany.



He does this so often, it's hilarious. But I bet you the english media will have you believe it was anyone else's fault but his.

Is anyone seriously defending Kompany? He's been horrible for the standards of an international class footballer, meaning he has been decent. "Decent" is, imho, not good enough for someone leading a defense partaking in international tournaments.

VivaStPauli wrote:

Hapless_Hans wrote:

VivaStPauli wrote:

Well I can appreciate that, it's a good enough explanation.

No it isn't lol.

Sure it is a great explanation of why Mole doesn't like Boateng. I happen to think that his pace, and willingness to move out of position to snuff out danger early makes him an even better defender, but I won't convince Mole of that, if he hates active defenders.

I'm not saying Mole has to like Boateng, or can't have a certain taste in style of defenders, I'm saying that it's kind of ridiculous to transfer that into the "I don't rate" line, when the attributes Mole chooses to dislike are pretty obvious assets the player brings to our team.

Kompany better than Varane

Magricos wrote:Kompany better than Varane

Kompany is the captain of the English champions.

Varane is on the bench of the Spanish 3rd placed team.

Now pull yourself together, ffs.

nasir who said varane was top 5? the point is varane>kompany, varane has made like a handful of costly mistake in his young career, getting treated like some scrub, like he wasn't benching pepe for both mou and carlo before injury , just to watch ramos,pepe,t.silva,kompany,kompany and kompany , gift goals weekly and gets a free pass after some big performances, of course kompany rarely has big performances since the cl is too tough for him

Hapless_Hans wrote:

Magricos wrote:Kompany better than Varane

Kompany is the captain of the English champions.

Varane is on the bench of the Spanish 3rd placed team.

Now pull yourself together, ffs.

So him being Captain makes his positional awareness better and tackling better

@James and Chad: I criticized him for his for the Totti goal on a City board when it happened. People from that board actually tried to blame Demichelis for that

This is what I wrote about it:

1 month ago
Sure Demi should have been closer but he was in his correct position. The fault is sole on Kompany. He gambled for no reason. If he followed Totti's run it would have been 4 City defenders vs 2/3 Roma attackers. Everyone was behind the ball so the risk out weight the reward and we got punished for it.

The Varane overhype is real.

cujo failing and resorting to nonsense, maradona still overrated for you?

I don't even particularly like Kompany but at least one can properly evaluate defenders who regularly play.

Until Varane plays regularly there will be too many unanswered questions. This isn't a discussion about potential or what he will become. This is about what these players are right now, not what they could do if they were elsewhere. As Nick says, there are no ifs in football, only what happens. The truth is Varane is a bench player and until he regularly plays in his starting eleven, he can't be properly compared to players like Kompany.

You can ask of the likes of Kompany, Boateng etc, questions like what are their concentration levels like over a season? Do they perform against minnows or do they let their guard down? How are they when the team around them isn't performing well and they get less protection? How are they without their regular partner who complements them? I don't have any particular affection for Kompany's bizarrely shaped head but at least I can answer questions like that about him. With any player who barely plays the sample size is just too small to actually draw strong conclusions from.

Also I agree with those stating that Boateng has improved since his move from City. In his first seasons with Bayern his aggression was far less controlled even if he wasn't punished, such as his initial performances against City when he could have given away several penalties.