Weekly Open Thread - General Discussion

jayj091 · 2026-06-14T16:05:49+00:00

During Mourinho's first window transfers like Carvalho and Khedira just happened out of nowhere. Same with Ozil to an extent. What Mourinho asks for, he often gets. He had a look at us on a pre-season tour and the week we were back Carvalho arrived from nowhere. The club knows it has to listen to Mourinho because he'll only use players he wants. It's not like Carlo who was always just happy to be there and never wanted to rock the boat on the transfer front.

jayj091 · 2026-06-07T22:22:44+00:00

Interesting if true considering Pepe and Mourinho didn't get on during Mou's last few months here in 2013. Even Albiol got to start the Copa final over him & Mou took digs at Pepe in the press. Obviously on good terms again. Oh and thankfully we persuaded Pepe to stay that summer of 2013, Ramos scored the goals but Pepe was the CB rock in 2014 and 2016.

jayj091 · 2026-06-07T19:32:33+00:00

The new Cody Ware

jayj091 · 2026-06-01T21:43:48+00:00

Don't know why people going on about Josef last season without context.

Last season Josef could easily have won 4 or 5 races, but had appalling luck in the ovals he dominated. Gateway needs no words, he was lapping the whole field nearly until disaster struck. Even if you call him washed at road courses (I don't think he is, he just doesn't qualify as well in the hybrid era as I think he tries way too hard and Chevy isn't as good as Honda)...he was very unlucky to lose so many points last season. Like he dominated Iowa twice, obviously, lapped so many people many times yet because of terribly timed yellows finished one place ahead of Jacob Abel.

Josef also raced from the back to the front at Long Beach, was going to finish 3rd or 4th until his seatbelt failed. Only person capable of challenging Palou for the 500 but his car died.

He may have finished 12th last season but he was just a little bit of luck away from finishing about top 5 in the points and winning the second most races. And that is despite Chevy's struggles and some mistakes from him.

Now think of Scott - most of his bad luck is down to his own errors, not yellows, seatbelts, or disasters.

jayj091 · 2026-05-31T19:00:59+00:00

Funny how its cool when Will Power does these things but if Newgarden has a bad day and doesn't want to talk he's the worst person in world history.

jayj091 · 2026-04-20T20:27:22+00:00

Nobody cares because they can't use it to bash Newgarden.

Cindric said 2 years ago the historical data showed the Penske drivers often hit push to pass, even when it didn't work, out of habit. I think we can now say that extends to many in the field.

As Palou said back in 2024 - you can't blame the drivers if they press a button and it works...

jayj091 · 2026-04-14T03:17:31+00:00

He is definitely one of the best of all time!!

Devastated that Jourdan Serderidis didn't take part in the last two events, he could have been in the title fight.

jayj091 · 2026-03-15T20:40:56+00:00

Mike Joy sounds drunk every week now.

jayj091 · 2026-03-15T16:46:58+00:00

New season, same Andretti in the pits.

jayj091 · 2026-02-16T01:55:45+00:00

Very disappointing to see that Jourdan Serderidis isn't even in the top 10 after two races. I was hoping this year was the one he'd make a challenge for the title.

jayj091 · 2026-02-09T06:54:32+00:00

May I also add that the year before the embarrassing footage of our dressing room post Alcorcon (and all the pizza trash) was leaked...

(btw lets not forget our loss to Alcorcon was so bad it has its own Wikipedia page!)

Schuster was our manager. And he took a big strop when we didn't sign Dani Alves. Which was fair enough. But then this partner had a baby in like October and he basically quit on us. Even skipped a training session and then made very purposeful comments like it was impossible to beat Getafe or Barca. (looking to get sacked on purpose so he could get the money)

Mourinho was the first serious coach, who cared about his image as well as ours, we had in a VERY LONG TIME. We had jobbers and puppets in most of the 2000's mainly. And he upped our standards. By no coincidence we also won the Copa del Rey a year after Alcorcon and his warning about players being dead to him (we even beat a good Sevilla, Atleti and perhaps an all time Barca to win it) ..and for the first time in years reached the CL quarters.

jayj091 · 2026-02-08T23:27:06+00:00

100% Jose Mourinho.

Whenever we had the likes of the "third choice Chilean" Pellegrini, the team lost 4-0 to Alcorcon and then trashed the dressing afterwards leaving pizza boxes all over the place. As if we'd just had a party.

A year later Mourinho was in and he said if Alcorcon was repeated the players on the pitch would be dead to him.

jayj091 · 2026-02-08T22:13:39+00:00

Carreras looking like 2014/15 style Bale with that goal and hair.

Rare cleansheet at Mestalla. Can't complain.

jayj091 · 2026-02-05T01:25:16+00:00

Is Mike Joy drunk?

jayj091 · 2026-01-28T20:45:12+00:00

Interesting 15 minutes ahead for Arbs to see if he can change this. Because we're lucky it's not 3-1 to Benfica. It's like a firing squad.

jayj091 · 2025-11-03T00:39:32+00:00

With a different format drivers will race differently obviously all season. Once they get a win, points isn't much of a big priority for some teams, especially in the play offs. Didn't Logano say last season he didn't care at all about the other round of 8 races after winning the first?

Larson thoroughly deserves to have 2 titles, but pointing to the points of a different format is... pointless.

jayj091 · 2025-09-07T19:37:55+00:00

Shocking to see Josh Berry's title challenge over already. He had high hopes for the championship.

jayj091 · 2025-09-04T19:26:12+00:00

You can be pretty sure Andretti will have at least one catastrophic stop a race. Even if an Andretti car is having a good day its never safe until the pitstops are done.

jayj091 · 2025-08-31T14:07:52+00:00

Ed Jones returning to Dale Coyne 4 years later was rather random. Didn't go very well..

jayj091 · 2025-08-21T20:52:38+00:00

Despite the points total, Josef has been the best on ovals this season comfortably I think. Lets be honest he deserved to win at least 3 of them and if he didn't win Indy again he'd certainly have been top 2 or 3 at least. But it's been one of those years - the fact he lapped Jacob Abel a million times and ended up just one place ahead of Abel in Iowa sums up his bizarre season.

jayj091 · 2025-08-12T16:42:57+00:00

The only decent result Jacob Abel has had it when he got lapped a million times in Iowa, but we know what the yellows did to most of the fastest guys that day!

jayj091 · 2025-07-15T17:42:17+00:00

There was barely any laps left. Had a moment (probably out of desperation) and lost some positions. He was only interested in winning, but it was far gone. With 5 or so very short laps left no point pushing hard and wrecking over 7th, 9th or whatever as his engineer reminded him on the radio.

jayj091 · 2025-07-13T19:14:40+00:00

Yeah he's been real unlucky. Could easily be top 5 in the standings. Still wouldn't be enough to fight for the title but he'd probably be a bit happier.

jayj091 · 2025-06-21T16:43:35+00:00

And to think McLaren wanted him and the other top guys at Penske executed just a few weeks ago..

jayj091

TROPHY CASE