chicago_shearer
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Posts posted by chicago_shearer
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23? strong? fast? 9 goals this season in our division? WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
We should be preparing for the Premiership since we were apparently promoted already.
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I would have preferred David Villa, but seeing as we are still in the Championship and haven't actually been promoted then I suppose this will have to do.
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Cool. Wasn't expecting a half decent signing.
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Nile's Str888 like a Banana Split
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This place has been a little light on panic, misery, hysteria and 'HUGHTON cluelezz' threads recently. Probably the reality check this board needs.
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Must have been real. Umbro's lawyers have been very busy.
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Portugal get Brazil. Have fun with that Ronaldo.
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Someone from the top four, simply so it gets televised.
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Are the seedings made yet? Seen someone post the lowest one but haven't seen the other pots
2nd Dec i think. Its virtually sure though with
S Africa, England, Spain, France, Brazil, Italy, Argies & Germany in 1
The eight remaining Euro teams in 2
Africa/S America remaining in 3
South Korea, Japan, Australia, North Korea, Mexico, USA, Honduras, New Zealandin 4
Pot 1: Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Italy, South Africa, and Spain
Pot 2: Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Switzerland
Pot 3: Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Honduras, Ivory Coast, Mexico, Nigeria, USA
Pot 4: Australia, Chile, Japan, New Zealand, North Korea, Paraguay, South Korea, and Uruguay
New Zealand, Algeria & Slovenia please.
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f***ing welsh radio
I'm enjoying it more listening to this daft Welsh commentary.
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YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
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You know, both of 'clueless' Chris Hughton's strikers have scored so far.
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Goal by Harewood, assist by Colo. Ronaldo just jizzed himself.
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Why I won’t celebrate if Newcastle get promoted
After all this it would be a bit funny if Pancrate turns out to be decent.
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Should hook himself up to his ProZone tbh. Hope he gets well soon.
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Miss the days when he was a squad player.
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At the moment, this general lack of a real sense of achievement when we win games. It's like it's an extension of last season's relegation battle.
How so? I was estatic when we won matches last year.
Perhaps it's more of a reflection of the state of the club than of the Championship. In previous promotion campaigns, the feeling was different because it was like we were moving forward, and getting to the top division felt like a real achievement.
I get the sense now that we're trying to arrest a slide, like getting promoted is just ensuring that we're back where we belong.
This - in 1984 and (especially)in 1993, we had the feeling that the club was going on to better things.
In 84 the Board cocked it up by making things difficult for Cox in the transfer market, so he resigned.
In 93, we knew the team was decent enough to do well but they surpassed expectations by finishing 3rd next season after the addition of only a few players.
There is no way this team will even stay up if it gets promoted this time unless there are several new signings, so the sense of progress isn't there ; also, we all know that the club's future is not settled and it will be put on the market again if promotion is achieved.
To be fair, I don't think there is ever likely to be a team in the foreseeable future that gets out of the Championship and is immediately able to compete in the Premiership without serious investment and restructuring. Not without some Man City style owners who don't care what the wage bill looks like and can somehow attract Premiership quality players to play in the lower league. Who can basically afford to pretend to be a Premiership club, while not actually enjoying the advantages of the top flight.
This is because there seems to be a massive gulf at the moment between what it takes to stay financially healthy in the Championship, and what it takes to get serious in the Premiership (or be more than a yo-yo/middling club like Hull or Stoke). The path for these clubs seems to be getting up, and then hanging on for dear life through a combination of physical anti-football, good luck and small incremental improvement in the players they can attract and afford (without assuming too much risk since relegation remains a possibility). Newcastle have the advantage of more revenue and greater notoriety, but it is still the same boat. You need one type of team to be successful at this level, and another to be competitive in the Premiership.
The fact that we don't look like a Premiership team at the moment and aren't playing great football is to be expected. I don't think there is a pretty way to win a poor league, with youngsters and has-beens. I'm not disheartened by that. Getting out of this league is the priority, and only the results get counted.
My real worry is that if Hughton gets us up, then there would absolutely have to be a total, top down makeover to get things moving again. There is no chance of that happening with an owner that doesn't have a long term commitment to the club and without any professionals with experience of running a club. And very little (as much as I like him) with an inexperienced coach like Hughton. So that leaves you trying to do it the ugly way, which the fan base will not support, and will leave us in the same precarious position we were last season. Because we won't have the tolerance for underachievement that smaller clubs have (nor should we).
Ashley has admitted himself that he was woefully inept at running the club last year, but he has yet to take any action and appoint someone that does. Someone that can plan, work with the manager, and isn't one of his inexperienced cockney friends. Aside from how obnoxious he is, how exactly is Derick Llambas qualified for the job he has? It's one thing to admit your mistakes, but it's another to make them again and expect different results.
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Apparently Caulkin isn't the only one at the The Times with a soft spot for Newcastle.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/chelsea/article6916444.ece
SPECIAL DELIVERY: WHY JOSE MOURINHO WANTS TO GO HOME TO ENGLAND
José Mourinho wants to spend the next phase of his career back in England. And he intends it to be a prolonged sojourn, more like Arsène Wenger’s 13 years with Arsenal than his own stint at Chelsea, from whom he parted in September 2007 having won the Barclays Premier League twice, the FA Cup and the Carling Cup twice.Mourinho, who had three full seasons at Stamford Bridge after making Porto champions of Europe as well as his native Portugal, is in his second season with Inter Milan and on top of Serie A, having already celebrated one national title in Italy, his fifth over seven seasons in three countries.
But he yearns to settle down and “create something deeper”. He believes that England is the place to do that. “England is the country,” he said. “And my football is English football.”
England would be glad to have him back any time. From the day he arrived in West London — he initially settled his family in a house in Chelsea and remembers walking to his first league match at the Bridge, against Manchester United — and reminded the media that we had encountered no ordinary coach out of a bottle but a “special one”, to his final wrangles with Roman Abramovich, we were usually on his side.
Yes, Mourinho “shushed” Liverpool fans at the Millennium Stadium on the day his Chelsea took their first trophy, the Carling Cup, and later, when Rafael Benítez’s team knocked them out of the Champions League at Anfield, he sneered that his men had lost to an inferior side.
Yes, he behaved badly in spreading the accusation that Frank Rijkaard, the Barcelona coach at the time, had obtained admittance to the room of Anders Frisk, the referee, at half-time. After Frisk had quit the game in disillusion, a leading Uefa official dubbed Mourinho an “enemy of football”.
But Mourinho, by and large, was among friends in English football — and the feeling was reciprocated. Not least by the media, who would hang on his every word, enjoying the disdain for clichéd thinking or phrases.
His inclination to return was outlined this week at Inter’s Appiano Gentile training ground, on a relatively quiet day when he conducted light sessions with players not claimed by the international break and devoted attention to young hopefuls; a task Mourinho enjoys more than is generally understood.
“I want to build something,” he said, and the revelation will interest every ambitious English club except Chelsea, whose politics and philosophy caused Mourinho to become increasingly restless once the glow caused by his immediate success had faded.
This eventually led to his disaffection and replacement by Avram Grant, who was ditched despite Chelsea’s appearance in last year’s Champions League final. Then came Luiz Felipe Scolari’s eight-month reign and the temporary stewardship of Guus Hiddink — and now Carlo Ancelotti.
Mourinho argued that the top clubs in the Premier League other than Chelsea shared “the English culture of stability” and it will not have escaped his notice that the newly super-rich Manchester City aspire to be a top club. Despite an insistence that the owner, Sheikh Mansour, is happy with Mark Hughes, they are bound to take note of Mourinho’s intentions.
The depiction of the Premier League as a haven of constructive peace may nevertheless cause some wry amusement in certain quarters, not least to Benítez at Liverpool, where the American owners’ truce has a patched-up feel and speculation about the manager’s future is near-continuous. But Mourinho’s vision of the upper levels of our game is not wholly fanciful.
Benítez has, after all, been at Anfield since around the same time as Mourinho joined Chelsea. Each came to England in the summer of 2004 having newly landed one of the European trophies. The Spaniard had made his name with Valencia, who won two national titles and, in succession to Mourinho’s Porto, the Uefa Cup.
Wenger has managed Arsenal since the autumn of 1996, while Sir Alex Ferguson, the daddy of them all, arrived at Manchester United some ten years before that and gradually rebuilt the first-team squad, taking 6½ seasons to win his first league title while revamping and extending the club’s youth development structure.
Now Mourinho yearns to build in his own way.
“Clearly it is unrealistic to expect to stay at a club as long as Sir Alex, but I am ready for the next phase of my career,” he said. “I want to work with a different perspective.
“At Porto, my objective was to win to earn the right to go abroad. At Chelsea, my ambition was to create a bit of history [the club had not won the title for half a century]. But I always knew Chelsea lacked the normal English culture of stability.
“I was never under any illusions. I understood the personality of Roman and the culture of the people around him [Mourinho carefully exempted Peter Kenyon, the outgoing chief executive, from this] and knew it was not a job for ten years.
“My role was to give this man what he wanted — victory — knowing that, sooner or later, my time would finish, because there were too many things going on around me.
“In Italy, I was coming to the motherland of tactics, the country of catenaccio and defensive football. The objective was to win not only in a third different league but a place where they say foreign coaches have had little success. But the time will come for stability.
“I love Inter and would love to build for the future here. In fact, I am doing it now, because I am not a selfish coach and I’m thinking about the future in terms of youth development and the age structure of my first team — but Italy is not the country for this. England is the country. And my football is English football.”
Mourinho keeps in close touch with the English game — he greeted me by asking how likely it was that the idea of Celtic and Rangers joining an expanded Premier League would find favour — and would settle easily if he returned at the end of this season, once the Serie A and Champions League campaigns are over (the latter may end more quickly than Mourinho would like if Inter lose away to Barcelona, where once he studied under Sir Bobby Robson and Louis van Gaal, on Tuesday week).
Although he greatly enjoyed living in London, Mourinho would happily head north, countering suggestions that Liverpool or Manchester may not quite be able to rival Milan for architectural and cultural merit with a smile and a dismissive: “I hardly know Milan — I live near the Swiss border.”
So both Manchester clubs will take interest: City in case patience with Hughes runs out and United for when Ferguson retires, as intimated, at the end of this season or next. A building job will be required — team and stadium — at Liverpool if Benítez goes. Tottenham Hotspur, meanwhile, have ambitious plans for a new home.
Even Newcastle United may hold some appeal if only a convincing owner with lots of money could be found. All in all, it is a fascinating prospect.
That'll do nicely, José
He may not be to everyone’s taste, but life was never dull when José Mourinho ruled West London . . .
• His first press conference as Chelsea manager, in June 2004, showcased the lack of humility and eye for a catchy phrase (see also “park the bus”, “ghost goal”) that we came to love: “Please don’t call me arrogant, but I’m European champion and I think I’m a special one.” We agree you’re special, José ... but we might call you arrogant.
• In the Champions League quarter-finals against Bayern Munich in 2005, he allegedly beat a touchline ban by hiding in the Stamford Bridge dressing room, then getting in a laundry skip to evade Uefa officials.
Bet Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger have never done that.
• Nor was his dog afraid to take on authority. The build-up to the 2007 FA Cup Final was overshadowed when Mourinho’s Yorkshire Terrier, Leya, apparently escaped when council authorities tried to quarantine her. Stubborn and defiant like her master, Leya returned to Portugal.
• Despite his wealth and fame, Mourinho has a populist touch. He threw his medal and blazer into the crowd after Chelsea claimed the Premier League title in 2006. He was awarded another medal — which he also threw into the crowd.
• He was deemed cool enough to appear in an American Express advertising campaign, like Robert De Niro and Tiger Woods. “My life is about keeping one step ahead,” Mourinho informed viewers, putting up an umbrella just before it started to rain. Wouldn’t want to get that famous coat wet . . .
Words by Tom Dart
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Is he supposed to be a good physio?
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Not watching football on television and instead depending on the narrative abilities of Mick Lowes and his sidekick that really doesn't like foreign players.
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Hope Jonas' injury isn't serious.
The old Chris Hughton discussion thread
in Football
Posted
We can only imagine the heights that Kevin Nolan, Joey Barton, Ryan Taylor, Alan Smith, Shola Ameobi and Andy Carroll could reach without Chris Hughton holding them back.