Taylor Swift

CARROLL!!

Fuck

Come on!

Curbishley's English is woeful on this pre-match programme I have on; 'he done that well', 'he has took that brilliantly', 'he's been that kind of player ever since he come to the club'. How it possible for someone who was born and has lived in England for his whole life to be so shit at English?

We actually have a very good team out there today. We've got two strikers who'll give Chelsea trouble, a balanced midfield with two pacey wingers, a defensive destroyer and someone with quality on the ball. Our defence also looks good. Taylor's a Premiership-level defender and Sol's shown that he still has pace so hopefully Drogba won't rape us that way. Their midfield also looks quite weak with Malouda playing in center midfield with Ramires and Mikel, so I reckon we've got a great chance of getting three points.

Uh-oh If we get beat, that'll be the reason. I was about to say that

Fuck off, Berbatov. That's him tied with Shearer for most in a game, right?

3-1

David Tyree, what a crazy catch.

Two! Nasri!

What a save.

Should be 2.

Completely deserved.

Yep, agreed. He was good enough, but not good enough often enough, which is a silly way of saying that he was pretty inconsistent. That probably had a lot to do with who we paired him with in CM and the strikers that we had available (pretty much only Shearer at that point), so it's not completely his fault that he failed in his time here. I wouldn't take him back, but I would definitely take a player like him because he'd be great with Tiote in the middle of the park; one guy constantly winning the ball back, the other guy with such sweet technique.

He'd prefer to let Hughton make decisions? Like it's his choice. Total cunt. Playing flowing football and getting beat doing it Well we can all be happy knowing that no flowing football will be played whilst Nolan is in the team, but god help us all if he's still here in 3 or 4 years to see whether we've progressed.

When was the last time the markets were wrong? They predicted a Greek default, they predicted the Irish one, they predicted Lehman going under (CDS shot up before they went broke). Like I said, the speculative money is insignificant. People believe Spain is at risk so they're charging more to loan money to them. To be honest, spain has benefited so much from joining the euro and getting the rates that Germany used to get. They should have reformed their economy then, it's much harder to do it now when the people are out of work and the economy is shit. Iirc spain has the worst unemployment rate in Europe bar Greece and it's certainly the last developed nation to escape from the financial crisis.

You've got a 20% unemployment rate and an economy that has nothing going for it except tourism. You don't manufacture, you don't service, you just build houses when it's cheap to get a loan and that's why your banks are totally fucked because they invested a lot of money in real estate and it's all coming back to bite you in the ass. There's no such thing as market racism or bad speculators. The number of 'speculators' in the market is very small and they're very insignificant in terms of the money that they actually invest in the market. The fundamentals of your economy are reflected in the amount you're being charged for a loan off of someone, and it's perfectly reasonable to charge a high rate if there's a chance that you won't get your money back. Speculation is also very short-term because eventually the fundamentals take over. The amount you are being charged for a loan is getting higher by the day. That's not speculation. That's the market processing the fact that if Greece is fucked, banks in the eurozone are going to be fucked, and if Ireland is fucked, those same banks are going to get fucked a second time. And which countries have nothing in their economy except big banks which invest in other countries? Hello Portugal, hello Spain. Right, that's enough of economics in a football thread. PS. They're not looking at your debt now. They're looking at what your debt is projected to be, and it's not a pretty number for an economy that is going nowhere.

It has nothing to do with the speculators and everything to do with you spending money that you don't have

What's going with City today? 3-0

Toure passing to a not-yet-there Dani Alves.

Tevez scores

What is Diego doing at Craven Cottage?

Hindsight is 20/20 no doubt, but it's really been evident for the last few years if you look carefully enough at how Arsenal fail in the biggest moments.

Watching the Arsenal match, it is again another sign that this Arsenal team has not been coached the ugly details (defending set-pieces, pressing, marking). I first thought this last year when they were utterly clueless against Barcelona, evidenced by how indisciplined they were in pressing Barca. I mean, Sagna presses up but the CBs don't, leaving so much room, then the midfield pushes up but the defence stays back, again leaving room. This happened for 180 minutes against Barca and they got fucked. Then yesterday you see how not one of their players jumped to defend VdV's free-kick. If they jumped, the ball would have hit Fab/Chamakh and nothing would have come of it. It's just another example that shows how indisciplined they are defensively. The fact that they're so good on the ball masks most of their defensive frailties because the other team can barely create the chances needed to score, but when they're up against a team that can keep the ball as well they get fucked because they're unorganised at the back. That's the reason they've been fucked by Man Utd's counter-attacks in most of their matches in the past few seasons. Wenger deserves credit for moulding his team into one that plays good football, but he also deserves criticism for the lack of organisation at the back. The fact that they're so fluid and free offensively is the reason they're so good, but that same philosophy is also what costs them so dear at the back. The fact that Wenger uses his player's instincts and reactions as a key component in attacking is what makes them great, but a player's instincts and reactions can only go so far in defending. Maybe when Wenger can get his team to focus as much on defending as they already do on attacking, they'll be true title contenders.

We play better when we're not forced to attack. Tiote the god is back as well so out midfield should be much less porous. With the crowd roaring, I think we'll win 1-0. Concede an early goal and we're fucked, though.