GIMP New Year's Resolutions

What will/should each GIMP manager try to change this coming New Year? Read on to find one man's wishful thinking...

Bayern München

Bring the League Title back to Bavaria.

Thompson's Bayern squad is not the best to ever grace the GIMP (see the chronic underachievers at Barcelona and Chelsea for that honour), it is however the best starting eleven competing this season. It is also in a relatively cushy position at the top of the table. All Thompson must do is at least draw two of his three remaining matches (2 v Liverpool and 1 v Chelsea)* and the league title is coming back to where it sat for the DFA's first two seasons.

*If you feel that is being harsh on the rest of the teams in the league, I've some match facts to show you from their performances v Bayern earlier in the season. I promise to try not to use the phrase "merely a formality" either.

Chelsea

Sort the defense out.

Second in the table with twenty-four goals scored is nothing to scoff at. Managing that feat by conceding twenty is even more impressive. Forty-four percent of Burns' wins have been by a solitary goal, and he has yet to beat a team by more than two goals all season.  If you are failing to see the problem, it is because these are not one-nil or two-one results. These are five-four and four-two shootouts. No team has ever won the league without conceding the fewest number of goals.

His last league performance was a 5-1 embarrassment at the hands of the league leaders, and his next match is against distant title contenders, Liverpool. A similar defensive shambles will surely push that goal difference into the negative- and the Blues to third in the table.       

Liverpool

Be the best of the rest.

There is something to be said for fighting on all fronts, and failing in a spectacular blaze of glory. There is probably more to be said for careful utilisation of available assets and realistic management of expectations relative to those limited resources.

A quick glance at the league table and a couple of team sheets will tell you that Liverpool is right where they should be. It will also tell you that L. Pruitt would be a fool not to rest his few shining stars before any Champions, DFA, or League Cup matches.

Arsenal

Close the gap on the "Big Three."

While no one is suggesting that Arsenal's squad is talented enough to challenge Bayern for the title, it is however capable of putting up a bit of a fight for automatic Champions Cup qualification. The Gunners sit eleven points adrift of Liverpool and have not looked a threat to third place since week one.

Persisting with wing play as plan A when there is no actual quality crosser of the ball is either an admission of managerial inferiority, bad habits, or tactical suicide. One wonders what an Arsenal team prioritising possession, patient build-up, and high-percentage shooting could accomplish. The answer is surely more than six points from eight games.
 
Palermo

Continue to tinker tactically.

Eight matches, eight bookings, four points, and one-hundred and fifty comments later, C. Ingoglia has found himself in the managerial hot seat. He may laud the "achievement" of a solitary point at home, but the truth is for tactics to be considered effective, a greater points return is needed. Unfortunately the league table is not measured in ill-will or Draconian defensive play.

Spared the indignity of relegation due to a paltry number of participants and a Dortmund side on course to finish pointless, Palermo's continued presence in the DFA can only be ended by Ingoglia's chronically itchy feet.

If you've masterminded a style of play that annoys the masses, but does not win. Then what, pray tell, is the point?

Dortmund

Three. Feckin'. Points.

Either all at once, or one at a time will do. Mr. Cushing's Internazionale side hold the distinct "honour" of the lowest ever point total (save for Michaelos' disgraced Manchester United team), with two. Surely that is not one record that he would enjoy breaking. I would prefer to only label a club "pointless" out of my own smug cruelty at the end of the season. Describing Dortmund as such would only bring me despair. A club that can (and prefers to) play some very attractive football at times does not deserve such a fate.