Taylor Swift

As usual, funnily enough.

What the fuck did Pardew spend the past two weeks doing? That was pathetic.

Woeful performance. Pardew deserves 100% of the blame for this. We came out and looked lost, played without any tempo and only scored before Wolves gave it away. The second half was even worse than the first.

We had two weeks to prepare for this. Inept by Pardew.

Woeful by Simpson.

Hatem

And I thought your NFL related postings were bad. Fuck off.

And I thought your NFL related postings were bad. My NFL stuff is just mostly bs anyway.

Are you kiddin' me, bro? 20 years from now, Messi will be talked about no matter what he does for the rest of his career primarily because he was the best player on the best team ever. Messi and this Barca team are inextricably linked forever. People talk about the best player and they talk about Pele and Maradona, then someone like Cruyff. Messi, to me, is better than Cruyff. So already he's at #3 and that's only if you give importance to the WC and ignore the quality of the CL today.

Get in son

Barca weren't just the best team of the century, they were the best ever.

How does their fantastic achievement for the last 3 years (they lost to Inter in the CL final of 2010 btw) make them the invincible team of the century? They were not even invincible in those 3 years? Name me another club side that has had as incredible a run as they have. Running away with league again and again, wiping away teams in Europe, playing superb football and dominating every match they play, regardless of the result. No team has ever done what they did. None. MJ's Bulls went 72-10 once, and they're considered an invincible team, even though they lost ten games that season. Individual losses don't matter when you win everything in the style and way that Barca did. They didn't sneak 1-0 wins to win the title, they smashed teams right, left and center. They is the sort of post that proves the Barca overhype. They were not smashing teams left right and centre, they were fantastic aye but there were also many wins with just the one goal margin. I don't know bout MJ Bulls being called invincible let alone team of the century, but to me Barca need to do much more to get such hyped up titles like team of the century. Team of the decade maybe, even then teams like Man Utd and Milan would give them a close run for the money. Do you even know teams that played say before the 1970s? Who is your team of the century, then? My opinion is that in football, and in every sport, it's harder and harder to dominate because technological advances in physical training and informational advances in dieting and such has meant that most of the top tier players are physically at the same level. This means that there are more 'top' players than before. Which means that it is harder to dominate. So for a team to do so today, it is much more impressive than to have done it 40 years ago, when there were 8 teams in the European Cup and you only needed to win a few matches to win it. Everyone plays football today, so there are more good players today than ever before, purely because the pool of talent is greater than before. This is simply statistics and probability. So to dominate today in the way Barca and Messi have is incredibly impressive. What they've done is unmatched in the proper context. If someone says 'what about the Real team that won 5 straight CLs?' then they have no clue about statistics.

How does their fantastic achievement for the last 3 years (they lost to Inter in the CL final of 2010 btw) make them the invincible team of the century? They were not even invincible in those 3 years? Name me another club side that has had as incredible a run as they have. Running away with league again and again, wiping away teams in Europe, playing superb football and dominating every match they play, regardless of the result. No team has ever done what they did. None. MJ's Bulls went 72-10 once, and they're considered an invincible team, even though they lost ten games that season. Individual losses don't matter when you win everything in the style and way that Barca did. They didn't sneak 1-0 wins to win the title, they smashed teams right, left and center.

So after 3 years of smacking everyone in their path, they now have a season where they're not at their best. That doesn't negate anything they did in the past 3 years. Their run, which isn't over by any means, is the greatest of any club side ever. They were the invincible team of the century, like it or not. Maybe not now, but for the past 3 years, of course. If they win the CL this season and the cup, and Madrid win the league, who will have had the better season? Barca, I say.

Mark Davies is an excellent footballer.

http://i.minus.com/ibicUo6e9nMMN2.gif

Lescott. Finally.

This is such a shit match.

Anyone who would start Obertan or R Taylor over Ben Arfa in any match in any situation is a fucking pussy who's forgotten all about how we were successful under SBR and KK. There are ways to play football that lead to long-term success. We're not playing that type of football, but we have the players that are capable of doing so.

Frimpong's twitter

Perch is fucking shit. And how is Obertan on the pitch?

FUCK OFF

Motherfuckers, fuck off.

Not sure I follow this, Pip. Are you saying that other teams don't appoint people that they think are best for them? Eh? I'm saying some teams make appointments based on the newest big name that they can get. You look at Chelsea who got Mourinho who was successful, then they veered to Scolari who was highly rated because of his spell with Portugal, then they switched to Ancelotti who was done with Milan, then AVB because the media think he's Mourinho mk2. You look at a team like Bolton, hiring someone like Coyle, who had Burnley playing decent football for 6 months. That's not showing any foresight or judgment. That's being reflexive and reactive. I'm saying Liverpool have a history of appointing people they thought were best for them regardless of the situation, and Hodgson is the exception - he was the only one who they hired who was a 'media' guy. My analysis isn't completely scientific so it might sound like a load of crap - it might even be a load of crap, actually - but you can look at how teams hire managers and see whether they're doing it with sense or not. It doesn't take a genius to figure out whether appointing someone like Wenger was done with a view towards the future or hiring someone like Bruce was done because he'd had a good time with two previous mid-table teams. You can usually tell by how much backing the board give the manager. Someone like Scolari had a short leash because Abramovich is reactive, proven by the fact that he sacked Ancelotti one season after winning the double. Sometimes circumstances drive the narrative. Like Hodgson 'deserving' a shot at a big club and Liverpool needing a manager. But sometimes they don't. Sometimes clubs go against conventional thinking because they have good reason to - like hiring Dalglish, for example. It might not work out every time, but imo it has a higher success rate.