Shearer9

It is good he gave a British player a debut rather than buying someone in from the wealth of nations out there. Not a single taker? Not even a wry nod of appreciation and a small chuckle? Disappointing.

Someone should put some of those edited pics of Anal on Flickr and tag them with "Newcastle United" so that they'll appear at the bottom of the page.

As much as I'd like to see Arsenal dumped out at this point, I think I'd rather see Twente get absolutely twatted 6-0 in the return leg.

It's not just the face that he speaks with the accent, which would maybe be understandable if you'd been in the country for a long time (like Brad Friedel), it's the way he umms and ahhs as if English isn't his first language. All the "I thinks" especially. I expected him to break out a "How you say?" at some point in there.

http://playthegame.timesonline.co.uk/soccer/help/rules.asp

Wish there was a way to do a live draft, would have been fun.

Seen references to McClaren speaking English with a Dutch accent during a Setanta interview on both the BBC text thing and Wikipedia. Does anybody have a link to this?

Just joined, but the wishlist and the process of selecting players is really disorganized.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42639000/jpg/_42639647_tevez2.jpg First goal for West Ham And of course, Robbie Keane http://www.spurspies.tv/210108_Keane2.jpg

Campbell is unbelievably slow, he'll get exposed against anyone with any modicum of pace.

Steven Taylor is such a badass...

Reading this really irked me today: So now they're suddenly jumping on the anti-child labor bandwagon because Joey Barton kicked the shit out of a fellow scouser in front of a McDonald's?

That WBA kit looks like something generic you'd pick up in any sports shop for a Sunday league team, nothing special about it.

I think people in this thread are underrating Keane. This is a man who scored 15 goals and set up 7 last year while accommodating Berbatov in a team that had a shit beginning and end of the season. Believe me, I'm no Spurs apologist, but Keane is a very good option for Liverpool. I think we may find that Rooney-Tevez is the only partnership that's better than Keane-Torres next year. Obviously, I don't expect them to win the league, but this is a big step in the right direction. I'm also surprised that so many people have so much faith in Scolari. This is a man who's club managerial experience amounts to teams in the Brazilian league and teams in the middle east. I think he's a great manager, and he was the best choice for Chelsea, but that's a totally unknown situation for me, Roman is still going to be middling and Lampard and Drogba obviously really liked Mourinho and are at least somewhat unsettled.

Interesting to see where people stand on this one now, especially after Scolari's sacking. Still going with Man Utd but I think Liverpool will have a close second. Wouldn't be at all surprised to see Villa finish third at this point. Villa are actually really interesting to me, I think it's a case of the sum being much greater than the parts. Of the players that play regularly, this is how I'd classify them in a theoretical top 4 team. Top 4 Worthy: Young, Agbonlahor, Barry Borderline Top 4: Laursen, Bouma, Carew Friedel (age is the only reason I put him here) Not top 4 material: Everyone else. I think Everton probably has a better squad but Villa will finish well above Everton because O'Neill has it figured out and knows how to use speed and counter attacks. He also knows how to give each player on the pitch a definite role that contributes to an overall victory, I really wonder what he could do with a bit more money there.

I don't even think it's the fact that they wouldn't be able to secure shorter contracts, players just wouldn't be able to demand the kind of outrageous wages that top players get without extended contracts. I've always taken issue with Blatter and some of the ways in which he views the game and wants to change things about it, but those are still opinion issues and I can have some level of respect for that even if I think he often spits in the face of the average fan. It's simply a difference of opinion. Yet the fact that the head of the largest, most expansive, and probably most influential and powerful sporting organization in the world can have absolutely zero respect for the laws of the countries in which it operates is so offensive. And yet somehow, he turns right around and gets it right on the whole 39th game thing. In the interview on SSN he said that his "spies" have heard that FA people want to move League Cup ties overseas, and they'd better not go ahead with it. Why can't he sensibly throw around his considerable weight in this fashion more often?

From the minute Barca confirmed their interest he wasn't going anywhere else. That story's been changed now, apparently Barca have pulled out..

That looks like something from 1999

Looks like they've signed Dossena to replace him, but surely the beeb could have found a better picture than this: http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44782000/jpg/_44782098_dossena_203_get.jpg http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/l/liverpool/7475953.stm

Yeah, blantantly obvious he was trying to muscle his way into the frame for the Man City and Blackburn jobs, surprised he wasn't daft enough to think he could get the Chelsea job. No doubt he'll bill them as a great CL team and then crash out after a 4th place finish in the group stages...

I was thinking the same thing, why would you ever put his face on a poster?

Couldn't believe it at the end when Tyldesley said "they've thrilled us over the last fortnight" - er... have they? Those were my exact words. Ronaldo was in the team, basically. Also - Nani ffs? Every time i've seen him play this season, he's just looked... MEH. That is the definition. He was so massively hyped when he came, but he's honestly got zilch end product. (I'm going to totally contradict myself here, cos it was actually a very good cross for Postiga's header ), but other than that, honestly, his shooting, his crossing and his mazy runs just ended up nowhere. Infuriating yet sadistically pleasing at the same time. Pigeon chested twat. I still have a feeling like he may end up like Ronaldo, he looks very much the same player that Ronaldo did earlier. I guess Scolari knew this was going to happen, it was on the BBC earlier today:

There was something in NOTW saying he'd be on his way to manage Sheffield Wednesday after some Russian completed a £50m takeover...

Why do the Dutch fans get goal music?