Wullie

Any Dutch speakers who can translate what Ten Hag is saying here?

Heidenheim in Bundesliga 2 were in exactly the same position as Dortmund, needed to win to be promoted and were 2-0 down. Scored 90+3 and 90+9 to win it and go into the top flight for the first time.

Koln and Dortmund are quite close together so wouldn't have been an issue. Scottish football on the final day used to do Helicopter Sunday where the chopper moved depending on the current state of play. One of the all time great final day scenes was Scott McDonald scoring twice in the last 3 minutes for Motherwell vs Celtic and the helicopter turning sharply above Fir Park and heading for Easter Road to be presented to Rangers.

There's no club in Europe who can bottle it like Dortmund.

Man United in front

The Chinese tried all this 10 years ago before realising that it's not the players that are the big pull in football, it's the clubs, the competitions and the history behind them. It's extremely difficult to create interest in a football league from scratch and any that succeeded would only do so over a very long time period when such history had been established.

It's no the wonder Sky were so eager to help hold of Carragher after the spitting incident, I really think he's the jewel in the crown there at the moment, which is not something you'd ever have expected of him when he was a player. He's a great screen presence, funny, argumentative, incisive. I don't watch much punditry at all, but I make an exception where he's concerned, get annoyed with himself if I miss the first ten minutes of MNF.

There's no scenario where 5th place qualifies.

The one on Montjuic? Didn't know that. Did Espanyol used to play there or have I made that up?

I agree but what's interesting is that when we previously got into the Champions League in 2002, the games were pretty poorly attended, typically about 40k attendance.

Marseille aren't even in an automatic CL spot as it stands. Odd choice indeed, they're in the Europa more often than they are the Champions League.

Sorry man, no offence intended. I just don't think it really works as a method, the league table often ends up looking warped at the end when desperate teams suddenly click, and teams who have spent 35 games battling relegation end up 12th. Leicester memorably did it the year before they won the title, finished 14th after being bottom for the entire season. It matters more where the teams were at the time of the match than where they finished. So crack on with researching that! Our ridiculously rampant and unexpected victory over Leicester (not too different to Everton today) that cost them a CL place was exactly the type of situation we're banking on not happening.

What position were we in when we won this match and is it one of the other two games? Or are you discounting it because we eventually finished 12th? Because if so, that's preposterous imo. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56938827

The thing these daft algorithms don't and can't take into account is, for want of a better word, bottle. A club like us going for this is completely different to what it would be if all the numbers were exactly the same but it was Liverpool in pole position and us doing the chasing. The algorithm would say the same but it's just not, and you can't quantify what the particular badge on the shirt does mentally. Leicester found it out two years running. They looked absolute certainties both seasons and then suddenly the pressure just got to them when it mattered most. We've not shown any signs at all of bottling it yet but I don't think Liverpool will drop another point now, these sides are relentless in these end of season scenarios. Any slip up against Leeds and I think we've had it.

That's an absolutely enormous increase in live games. They currently show 138. My wife will be over the moon.

Yes it has happened, funnily enough, in a game between Brighton and Man United. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/54215333

FFS

Ince or twice aye

What the hell is this thing they do with the balls in Serie A?

In a way if you like but the two situations are too different as to be incomparable. NUFC didn't have effectively unlimited resources to afford him half-arsing it, nor did we win a league title while Owen was here.

I think he'd like to have succeeded at PSG (i.e. won the Champions League) but they'd have needed a lot more than him to do that, at the elite level that team's a mess. But for me that move was always designed to allow him to keep playing at a high level but without having to put too much graft in. He'd disappointed at previous World Cups by turning up knackered and the entire point of the PSG move from the start was to allow him to half-arse it for 18 months and get himself in peak shape. Worked a bloody treat.

He absolutely isn't at PSG for the money, he was there for one very specific reason imo and it paid off a million-fold for him.

There's certain celebrity fans that the TV cameras love to pick out, ooh look there's Prince William or Tom Hanks at Villa, there's Baddiel and/or Skinner, there's Bob Mortimer at Boro, oh there's Noel Gallagher in the crowd, same as every Man City game. I feel like I don't see any of these people on screen at football as often as I see Paully.