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Stephen Tudor article.
+2
Moonchester
blueboy
6 posters
Page 1 of 1
Re: Stephen Tudor article.
by Moonchester Tue Nov 07, 2017 10:51 am
managed to read this on mobile... usual sort of read from him now...
will be interesting with out next 4 games after international break..
very important to show up against Leicester.. they are in decent form again and dangerous.. the next 3 after that look winnable before we have united...
will be interesting with out next 4 games after international break..
very important to show up against Leicester.. they are in decent form again and dangerous.. the next 3 after that look winnable before we have united...
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Re: Stephen Tudor article.
by skyblueoz Tue Nov 07, 2017 3:50 pm
Still cannot get these Steven Tudor articles to open. On all 4 devices I have. Any chance of another copy & paste Blue?
skyblueoz- Cult Hero
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Re: Stephen Tudor article.
by Topdawg Tue Nov 07, 2017 3:56 pm
Is it any good? i tend to find these just ramble on for the sake of it.Moonchester wrote:managed to read this on mobile... usual sort of read from him now...
will be interesting with out next 4 games after international break..
very important to show up against Leicester.. they are in decent form again and dangerous.. the next 3 after that look winnable before we have united...
Topdawg- Legend
- Posts : 26192
Re: Stephen Tudor article.
by blueboy Tue Nov 07, 2017 5:02 pm
As opposed to the usual ramblings in the general media?Topdawg wrote:Is it any good? i tend to find these just ramble on for the sake of it.Moonchester wrote:managed to read this on mobile... usual sort of read from him now...
will be interesting with out next 4 games after international break..
very important to show up against Leicester.. they are in decent form again and dangerous.. the next 3 after that look winnable before we have united...
Here you go Oz - at least you don't whine over City articles.
Guardiola's side are doing wonderful things so regularly that we will soon just expect them to happen
HOW does this Manchester City side compare to the magical Barcelona who revolutionised modern football? Can they become England’s third ‘invincibles’? Will the domestic goal-scoring records be smashed to smithereens?
These are not ordinary questions to ask of any team in early November but then again this has all the hallmarks of being no ordinary team. By any metric, from statistical data to the subjectivity of eyesight, City’s 17 games across all competitions so far have hinted strongly that we are in the presence of something very special indeed: a side not only better than their rivals but residing on another plateau.
Having bossed Napoli in their intimidating back-yard mid-week Guardiola’s luminaries hosted Arsenal on Sunday and barely needed to get out of cruise control to enact a ninth straight league victory. The win put City eight furlongs clear in a one-horse race and further stretched out an unbeaten streak that dates back to April.
Their goal difference is nearly double that of second place United, while Gabriel Jesus’ tap-in on 74 minutes means they are just one shy of PSG in being Europe’s leading goal-scorers. Considering the huge competitive discrepancy between Ligue 1 and the Premier League, that is an outstanding achievement.
That such feats have been accomplished through fantastical, quicksilver, idealistic football makes it all the more extraordinary. It’s one thing to be brilliant. It’s quite another to do it brilliantly.
But you know all of this, just like you know the sequence that must play out on the rare occasions when a dominant force emerges. Whether it’s a singular burst of superiority such as Leicester in 2015/16, or one ground in longevity (take your pick from the usual suspects who have entire shelves in libraries rightfully devoted to them), first comes surprise and celebration that is kept in check with a healthy dose of scepticism.
Are they a flash in the pan? Are they really that good or does their rise illustrate that the overall standard is slipping? Once these doubts have been allayed, pub pundits and the media alike begin to speculate on what ultimately can be achieved: what records can be broken; how high can the bar be reset to? This is the staging post that City has presently reached, one that contains all manner of presumption. For evidence of this, we need only refer to the questions at the top of the page that have tentatively entered the national conversation during the last few days.
It isn’t long however, before we collectively move on to stage three. A point in any great side’s trajectory that De Bruyne and co can prematurely get to, should they continue to run riot on a weekly basis. Let’s call this stage ‘acceptance’.
Accepting that a team is phenomenally good lasts for as long as that team is phenomenally good. In that regard it is entirely fair. In others it is less so. Once a side repeatedly hits the pinnacle of possibilities they become the one to be shot at. In televised games they become the big bad wolves, with every opponent cast as the plucky underdog. Their triumphs become reported rather than lauded while the narrative shifts from their successes to more engaging storylines, such as a multi-way fight for a top four finish. In short, greatness all-too-quickly gets taken for granted.
This incredible technicolour Manchester City have already proven their capacity for eminence but should they continue in a similar vein after the international break and dispense with Leicester, Huddersfield, Southampton, and West Ham then travel the short distance to Old Trafford holding a double-digit lead, stage three is what inevitably awaits them.
This is not stated with any bitterness attached, and there is certainly no suggestion of any anti-City bias as the underlying cause. It’s just the way it is. It’s just the way it’s always been. Greatness all-too-quickly gets taken for granted.
Should Pep Guardiola’s men continue to assault opponents’ senses from every angle then stage three will arrive prior to Christmas and by Easter their scintillating football will raise no further eyebrows and be greeted only by steady heartbeats.
From that point on the next occasion they will astound will be retrospectively - stage four -when the players have long retired and their accomplishments will be found on library shelves or grainy clips online. “Wow,” we will exclaim. “They were from another planet”.
So, savour these moments Blues. Drink it in. Cherish every thrill of incredulity at seeing your side graffiti the mausoleum of English football with a whole new language.
Human nature dictates that very soon such performances will be reacted to elsewhere as formalities. And to us they might just become the norm.
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Re: Stephen Tudor article.
by skyblueoz Wed Nov 08, 2017 3:44 pm
an enjoyable read as per usual but then again anyone praising the way city play
and being complimentary to them will always win favour with me. It will be a strange feeling though when everybody hates us & we are no longer everybody's second favourite team.
and being complimentary to them will always win favour with me. It will be a strange feeling though when everybody hates us & we are no longer everybody's second favourite team.
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Location : Perth Western Australia
Re: Stephen Tudor article.
by blueboy Wed Nov 08, 2017 3:52 pm
We're that now Oz!!! Apart from some journos, opposition fans hate us and most journos are desperate for us to fail.
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- Posts : 25330
Re: Stephen Tudor article.
by Strange Blue Mon Nov 13, 2017 10:29 pm
My only criticism would be that each Steven Tudor article should have its own separate post. They are that good if slightly out there.
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- Posts : 1734
Re: Stephen Tudor article.
by skyblueoz Tue Nov 14, 2017 10:04 am
sorry blue every time i try to open the link it comes up cant find the web page. Any chance of doing your usual for me 
skyblueoz- Cult Hero
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Age : 65
Location : Perth Western Australia
Re: Stephen Tudor article.
by blueboy Tue Nov 14, 2017 10:24 am
Just training, but will do it at some point today.
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Re: Stephen Tudor article.
by ManCityMan Tue Nov 14, 2017 12:43 pm
Here you go Oz
IT is incontestable that the gap between Manchester City and Manchester United at present is far greater than the eight points detailed on a Premier League table.
Unless you named your first born ‘Eric’ and have spent the past three months with your eyes squeezed shut while loudly ‘la-la-la’-ing to drown out the hard truths, it is abundantly clear that the war is being won and being won in some style.
Using Guardiola’s intricate roadmap City are reimagining English football, bamboozling opponents great and poor into sorry submission with an aesthetically thrilling brand of pinball wizardry.
Using Mourinho’s well-thumbed manual, United are flat-track bullying inferior fare while sucking the very life out of games the moment anyone half decent comes along.
One side is striving for the stars in order to light them further; the other skulks through bushes hoping to navigate their way to the finish line largely undetected.
As far as the generals are concerned the much heralded ‘Pep v Jose’ epic has swiftly become a horrible mismatch. Which is why one of them has recently begun unfurling a white flag and planning an individual retreat to Paris. Which is why he will soon enough start howling weekly at imagined injustices designed to detract from his own failings. Nobody will fall for any of it.
Or perhaps some will, because if the once special one has at least the wherewithal to privately acknowledge that the game is up there are plenty of Reds who stubbornly reside in denial. God love them for that. Seriously. When Dylan Thomas wrote ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ he did so with his sick father in mind but really in modern times it relays perfectly to supporters who should never, ever openly admit that their rivals are significantly better than they are. Instead, dispensing with irrefutable logic, Reds rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Their raging ignores all that has transpired since mid-August; it ignores how Pep has constructed a team of brio and invention and through obsessive alchemy got them breaking records for fun and changing perceptions as to what is humanly possible on 70m x 100m of grass. It ignores Mourinho’s targeting of players to fit into his archaic form of powerball, a remit of the athletic over aesthetic worsened by the employment of nullifying tactics that sends our souls to sleep.
Instead there is apparently a solitary reason why Guardiola’s City are squishing Mourinho’s United into the dirt: ladies and gentleman I give you the root of all evil and the root of all easy answers – money.
Since both men arrived in Manchester to resume a rivalry born in Spain they have each been lavished with cash to furnish their squad overhauls. Guardiola however has so far been given £90m more and according to the skewed rationale from certain prominent Reds on Twitter that would be sufficient – were it evened out – for United to lure Antoine Griezmann. Oh what poor deprived Jose could do with that ninety million.
That right there is their reasoning; the explanation as to why these neighbours are streets apart. Guardiola is nothing more than a chequebook manager while Mourinho has had to somehow cobble together a title-challenging squad by signing six new players for £308.9m and half a Twix.
It is of course pure and utter nonsense, not so much sour grapes than a resentful raisin. The addition of Griezmann to this United squad – under Mourinho at least – would be merely a sticking plaster placed on a rotting corpse while the very notion of United supporters complaining about being outspent is rich indeed.
Even so, if that’s all they have to come back with then so be it, let’s briefly inhabit their fantasy world they’re hiding in, safely insulated from cold realities, and play a game of hypotheticals.
In fact, let’s go one step further. Rather than envisage how much better United would be this term with yet another Galactico in their eleven, let’s instead afford Mourinho the keys to City’s golden kingdom. With all the exorbitant advantages supposedly given to a City coach – and the squad that it’s help accrue – would Mourinho be sitting eight points clear if he was scowling from the Etihad dug-out rather than at Old Trafford? Would the team still be a joy to watch with Jose no longer having to resort to eking by with his bargain-basement purchases?
Well firstly we have to assume that the recruitment would be very different had City lost their bearings in the summer of 2016 and over-looked the Spanish Grandmaster for the Portuguese Pouter. Based on empirical evidence we can surmise that ‘crybaby’ Kevin de Bruyne would have been drummed out of east Manchester instead of developing into one of the world’s most devastating conductors. Meanwhile, Mourinho’s need to isolate a star to show everyone what a ruthless b*****d he is would have resulted in Raheem Sterling being banished to the margins, his career forever stalled. This is a great shame of course because Sterling, under Pep, has flourished ten-fold. The spared Luke Shaw incidentally would now be an England starter.
As for the pivotal transfer window of 2016/17 we can bet our houses on Mourinho looking to add to his midfield options, bringing in a plethora of Carlton Palmer clones rather than secure the services of Leroy Sane. Gabriel Jesus meanwhile would have gone to the Bernabeu.
This hypothetical situation, however, is already taking us down a rabbit hole of supposition. Perhaps it would be better if we simply installed Mourinho into the City hot-seat in the here and now, blessed with a team in sensational form; blessed– in Red eyes – with the expensive tool-kit that Pep is fortunate enough to play with.The back five, you feel, would remain the same, though Stones would regularly get a half-time rocket for daring to ignore his manager’s pre-match instructions to play long diagonals at every opportunity. Mourinho would talk Stones up in interviews but only to get him through the season until a replacement could be sourced.
With scant Matic/Herrera/Carrick types to bolster the middle ground Yaya Toure would be brought back into the fold, deployed alongside Fernandinho in a two-man shield. Ahead of them David Silva, De Bruyne and Sane may thrive, the latter regularly enduring public criticism from his new gaffer with De Bruyne always just 90 minutes away from receiving the same. As for the team’s attacking focal point Aguero would prowl until a more physical striker was purchased for close to one hundred million pounds next summer.
Regarding Gabriel Jesus – a forward of exhilarating promise who has so far bagged six goals in eight starts – he would undoubtedly begin each game on the bench, brought on only for the last knockings and distrusted for his youth. Raheem Sterling? Training with the kids as the sacrificial lamb.
If the line-ups don’t differ that much the philosophy and quality of the football certainly would. Away to Leicester this weekend Mourinho would negate the Foxes’ strength of getting in behind opponents by setting his side up with a low block. Sane and De Bruyne would be instructed to defend first and foremost with their attacking bent restricted only to counters and set-pieces. The ideal result would be 1-0. Failing that, 0-0. After an hour of this Blues would be slumped in their seats, comatose by ennui. That evening they would be confused at hearing certain quarters of the media describe it as a performance that wins titles.
For the first time that I can ever recall I have changed my objectivity in the middle of writing an article. This was intended to assert that Pep Guardiola is an infinitely better coach than his long-standing rival; more nuanced and certainly more deserving of laudation. I was even going to place Pep in control at Old Trafford and speculate how spectacularly good the football would be to watch from the likes of Pogba, Martial and Rashford under his charge.
Yet writing the above brought me out in a cold sweat. It momentarily became too easy to picture; all too real.
So some United supporters claim that City are only the kings of Manchester right now because they have spent more? Big deal. To them I say keep on believing that if it gets you through the night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
IT is incontestable that the gap between Manchester City and Manchester United at present is far greater than the eight points detailed on a Premier League table.
Unless you named your first born ‘Eric’ and have spent the past three months with your eyes squeezed shut while loudly ‘la-la-la’-ing to drown out the hard truths, it is abundantly clear that the war is being won and being won in some style.
Using Guardiola’s intricate roadmap City are reimagining English football, bamboozling opponents great and poor into sorry submission with an aesthetically thrilling brand of pinball wizardry.
Using Mourinho’s well-thumbed manual, United are flat-track bullying inferior fare while sucking the very life out of games the moment anyone half decent comes along.
One side is striving for the stars in order to light them further; the other skulks through bushes hoping to navigate their way to the finish line largely undetected.
As far as the generals are concerned the much heralded ‘Pep v Jose’ epic has swiftly become a horrible mismatch. Which is why one of them has recently begun unfurling a white flag and planning an individual retreat to Paris. Which is why he will soon enough start howling weekly at imagined injustices designed to detract from his own failings. Nobody will fall for any of it.
Or perhaps some will, because if the once special one has at least the wherewithal to privately acknowledge that the game is up there are plenty of Reds who stubbornly reside in denial. God love them for that. Seriously. When Dylan Thomas wrote ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ he did so with his sick father in mind but really in modern times it relays perfectly to supporters who should never, ever openly admit that their rivals are significantly better than they are. Instead, dispensing with irrefutable logic, Reds rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Their raging ignores all that has transpired since mid-August; it ignores how Pep has constructed a team of brio and invention and through obsessive alchemy got them breaking records for fun and changing perceptions as to what is humanly possible on 70m x 100m of grass. It ignores Mourinho’s targeting of players to fit into his archaic form of powerball, a remit of the athletic over aesthetic worsened by the employment of nullifying tactics that sends our souls to sleep.
Instead there is apparently a solitary reason why Guardiola’s City are squishing Mourinho’s United into the dirt: ladies and gentleman I give you the root of all evil and the root of all easy answers – money.
Since both men arrived in Manchester to resume a rivalry born in Spain they have each been lavished with cash to furnish their squad overhauls. Guardiola however has so far been given £90m more and according to the skewed rationale from certain prominent Reds on Twitter that would be sufficient – were it evened out – for United to lure Antoine Griezmann. Oh what poor deprived Jose could do with that ninety million.
That right there is their reasoning; the explanation as to why these neighbours are streets apart. Guardiola is nothing more than a chequebook manager while Mourinho has had to somehow cobble together a title-challenging squad by signing six new players for £308.9m and half a Twix.
It is of course pure and utter nonsense, not so much sour grapes than a resentful raisin. The addition of Griezmann to this United squad – under Mourinho at least – would be merely a sticking plaster placed on a rotting corpse while the very notion of United supporters complaining about being outspent is rich indeed.
Even so, if that’s all they have to come back with then so be it, let’s briefly inhabit their fantasy world they’re hiding in, safely insulated from cold realities, and play a game of hypotheticals.
In fact, let’s go one step further. Rather than envisage how much better United would be this term with yet another Galactico in their eleven, let’s instead afford Mourinho the keys to City’s golden kingdom. With all the exorbitant advantages supposedly given to a City coach – and the squad that it’s help accrue – would Mourinho be sitting eight points clear if he was scowling from the Etihad dug-out rather than at Old Trafford? Would the team still be a joy to watch with Jose no longer having to resort to eking by with his bargain-basement purchases?
Well firstly we have to assume that the recruitment would be very different had City lost their bearings in the summer of 2016 and over-looked the Spanish Grandmaster for the Portuguese Pouter. Based on empirical evidence we can surmise that ‘crybaby’ Kevin de Bruyne would have been drummed out of east Manchester instead of developing into one of the world’s most devastating conductors. Meanwhile, Mourinho’s need to isolate a star to show everyone what a ruthless b*****d he is would have resulted in Raheem Sterling being banished to the margins, his career forever stalled. This is a great shame of course because Sterling, under Pep, has flourished ten-fold. The spared Luke Shaw incidentally would now be an England starter.
As for the pivotal transfer window of 2016/17 we can bet our houses on Mourinho looking to add to his midfield options, bringing in a plethora of Carlton Palmer clones rather than secure the services of Leroy Sane. Gabriel Jesus meanwhile would have gone to the Bernabeu.
This hypothetical situation, however, is already taking us down a rabbit hole of supposition. Perhaps it would be better if we simply installed Mourinho into the City hot-seat in the here and now, blessed with a team in sensational form; blessed– in Red eyes – with the expensive tool-kit that Pep is fortunate enough to play with.The back five, you feel, would remain the same, though Stones would regularly get a half-time rocket for daring to ignore his manager’s pre-match instructions to play long diagonals at every opportunity. Mourinho would talk Stones up in interviews but only to get him through the season until a replacement could be sourced.
With scant Matic/Herrera/Carrick types to bolster the middle ground Yaya Toure would be brought back into the fold, deployed alongside Fernandinho in a two-man shield. Ahead of them David Silva, De Bruyne and Sane may thrive, the latter regularly enduring public criticism from his new gaffer with De Bruyne always just 90 minutes away from receiving the same. As for the team’s attacking focal point Aguero would prowl until a more physical striker was purchased for close to one hundred million pounds next summer.
Regarding Gabriel Jesus – a forward of exhilarating promise who has so far bagged six goals in eight starts – he would undoubtedly begin each game on the bench, brought on only for the last knockings and distrusted for his youth. Raheem Sterling? Training with the kids as the sacrificial lamb.
If the line-ups don’t differ that much the philosophy and quality of the football certainly would. Away to Leicester this weekend Mourinho would negate the Foxes’ strength of getting in behind opponents by setting his side up with a low block. Sane and De Bruyne would be instructed to defend first and foremost with their attacking bent restricted only to counters and set-pieces. The ideal result would be 1-0. Failing that, 0-0. After an hour of this Blues would be slumped in their seats, comatose by ennui. That evening they would be confused at hearing certain quarters of the media describe it as a performance that wins titles.
For the first time that I can ever recall I have changed my objectivity in the middle of writing an article. This was intended to assert that Pep Guardiola is an infinitely better coach than his long-standing rival; more nuanced and certainly more deserving of laudation. I was even going to place Pep in control at Old Trafford and speculate how spectacularly good the football would be to watch from the likes of Pogba, Martial and Rashford under his charge.
Yet writing the above brought me out in a cold sweat. It momentarily became too easy to picture; all too real.
So some United supporters claim that City are only the kings of Manchester right now because they have spent more? Big deal. To them I say keep on believing that if it gets you through the night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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Re: Stephen Tudor article.
by skyblueoz Tue Nov 14, 2017 3:10 pm
Thanks Blue, another great read and true in almost every word. Long may we keep rubbing their nose in the dirt, They did it to us for long enough, Now is our time in the limelight, whilst they can skulk in the shadows for a number of years.
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Location : Perth Western Australia
Re: Stephen Tudor article.
by Topdawg Tue Nov 14, 2017 3:19 pm
The sad thing is, since we overtook them, we’ve won 2 leagues, 2 league cups and an FA cup. It’s not as if they’ve won nowt in that time. ProbBly a EL, FAC and LC at least which isn’t too shabby
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Re: Stephen Tudor article.
by blueboy Tue Nov 14, 2017 5:55 pm
True...but the main thing is - is "the Man United way" long gone? That "style of football" they all claimed United played...has gone. That "we never look like we can lose"...has gone. That "we'll always attack, even if 1-0 down and win 2-1"...has gone.
I don't care how United fans want to dress it up...the football they play is nothing short of a WBA with vastly higher paid for and higher paid players...and that, when they see the football we are playing, is the ONE thing that grates on the United fans....they simply HATE IT.
So I don't care of we win a title and they win an FA Cup each season, or we win the CL and they win a title....whilst we are playing the beautiful football we are playing under Pep...it will always be viewed by United fans, as "if only we could play that way"....and that's as important as the odd trophy for them, here or there.
I don't care how United fans want to dress it up...the football they play is nothing short of a WBA with vastly higher paid for and higher paid players...and that, when they see the football we are playing, is the ONE thing that grates on the United fans....they simply HATE IT.
So I don't care of we win a title and they win an FA Cup each season, or we win the CL and they win a title....whilst we are playing the beautiful football we are playing under Pep...it will always be viewed by United fans, as "if only we could play that way"....and that's as important as the odd trophy for them, here or there.
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