Parky

What? Nothing special is he?

Think the current side has outgrown Carroll. In spells we've been a clever side and a pragmatic one. He looks like he'll be a decent PL striker in 2/3 years with a dozen or more England caps and I've no doubts he's going to improve as a player. Feel the timing of this deal is wrong.

He's worked out Rodgers will last one season.

Beginning to wonder if Rodgers isn't going to be a complete shambles at Liverpool.

One or two very tasty moments from Sammy.

Harper saves face.

Reasonably happy as I think he will still improve as a player over the next few seasons.

Get off his back ffs!

200 match ban.

What on earth are you talking about? John Terry La Pen. http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01290/john-terry-transex_1290324c.jpg

But what about soliciting young girls in a Bentley? Is that lower court? I think not my friend.

Whitewash coming.

Hope Italy win and put this 3-7-0 to bed.

Some really tedious football. So careful and dainty might as well go out there with tu tu's on.

Think it was clear that Beckham was really into it as well.

I really hope Germany rip their heads off.

Spain is destroying football.

Spain looking a little rattled. Portugal tackling and zoning down early.

He's never been the same since Fergie got him to start dropping deep and become the second striker AM/F. Plus I think he eats shitloads as soon as the season ends.

Messi, Xavi and Iniesta were all at the Barca academy being 'coached' at 11.

It wasn't a quite a crisis as you say but it was approaching one and they acted quickly. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jul/04/germany-youth-development-england Most significant change, said Seifert, was insisting that in these new academies at least 12 players in each intake have to be eligible to play for Germany. "That was the key difference," he said. "Fifa's 6+5 rule means only that players must have grown up in the club. For example, Cesc Fabregas was developed at Arsenal, but is Spanish. In Germany, our academies must have 12 in each group able to play for Germany." Since that restructuring, the proportion of Germany-qualified players in the Bundesliga has changed significantly. "In 2003-4 we had 44% from foreign countries," Seifert said. "Right now it is only 38%. So 62% are able to play for the national team." In England it is the other way around, with an approximate 60/40 split of foreigners and nationals. Also here: Below the radar. . .something strange and disconcerting was happening: Germany was running out of decent players. The influx from GDR-trained professionals that was supposed to make “Germany unbeatable for years to come” (according to Franz Beckenbauer after winning the World Cup in 1990) had dried up along with the funding for the specialized sports schools where they had been drilled from a very young age. In the Bundesliga, newly rich clubs awash with TV money had gone on a spending spree, doubling the number of foreigners from 17 percent (1992) to 34 percent (1997) in five years. Desperate for strikers in particular, national manager Vogts ensured that South-African born Sean Dundee, a Karlsruher FC player without any German background, was fast-tracked for German citizenship. Dundee received his passport in January 1997 but never played for Germany after picking up an injury before his first scheduled game, a friendly against Israel, and losing his form soon after. Vogts’ successor, Erich Ribbeck, equally desperate, approached another Bundesliga import, Brazilian forward Paulo Rink (Leverkusen). Rink, it turned out, had German grandparents and was quickly introduced to the national team. He picked up 13 caps from 1998 to 2000. The cases of Rink and Dundee, both unprecedented in German football since the war, demonstrated that something was very wrong. The disappointing quarterfinal exit against Croatia at the 1998 World Cup then made it plain to see: not enough talent was coming through. In the Bundesliga, the percentage of foreigners had risen again, to 50 percent by the time the season kicked off in 2000. At this point, Honigstein explains, a new structure in Germany’s youth development system was implemented, with 121 national talent centers built for 10-17 year-olds, emphasising technical skills, with full-time coaches at a cost of $15.6 million over five years. Meanwhile, all professional clubs in Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 were required to build youth academies by the German Football Association.

I think the idea of selecting the right manager is the wrong way round in the way we do it. Going out and getting an expensive world class manager like Capello say just seems desperate. I don't think international coaches will win you tournaments generally, you have to get all the other stuff right from the ground up. Developing players the right way, playing a set system that all the players understand and work with and then simply having a decent coach who buys into the whole set-up. Just like Germany, is Loew a top manager or is he just a cog that fits the system? I dunno. Short term I think Hodgson was a decent appointment in all honesty. Whether he's the right man to help rebuild the whole set-up is more important than how he sets us up tactically in the short term with this current group of players. Germany saw problems with players coming through in the late 90's and have invested 90m euro a year every year since then to rebuild the youth system and integrate a huge network of planning and coaching (600 uefa licensed youth coaches in Germany). The DFB is the biggest sporting organisation in the world now. At the same time German clubs have year upon year had less need for foreign players, replacing them with youger German players (when their tv money collapsed they had to). It's about 40% foreign players now and ours is 60% in the PL (30% in France and 23% in Spain). There are also licensing rules that clubs have to abide by ie youth setups and at least 12 German eligible youth players at the academy. It's taken them a decade and a bit to start seeing things coming through. We're at least two decades behind them if we started tomorrow.

The bottom line for me is that he didn't look fit. Bottom line is he was terrible. At 26 you shouldn't have such poor conditioning that you can't sit out a 6 week lay off. He starts eating a lot as soon as the season finishes.

England's dismal failure at the World Cup can be blamed on the Premier League's inability to promote home-grown talent, according to the president of Spain's La Liga. José Luis Astiazarán has questioned the number of young foreign players at Premier League clubs and said the principal reason Spain have reached Sunday's final against Holland is that "77.1%" of footballers in their domestic league are Spanish-qualified, a direct result of home-grown players being given the opportunity in their clubs' first teams. In the Premier League fewer than 40% of players are English. "In La Liga there are 77.1% Spanish players, 16.7% European and 6.7% non-European," Astiazarán said. "Our strategy is to work very hard with young home-grown players and to try to have a mix between them and experienced players. "Why is it not a high number of foreign players in La Liga? Because we invest more and more in young Spanish players than in young foreign players. England has many times taken young players from outside who are 14, 16 years old. These kind of players are not English. This is one of the most important differences between Spain and England. We invest in young Spanish players. In Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United there are a lot of young Spanish, French and Italian players – maybe this is why at the moment you are not creating young English players. "These [young foreign] players cannot play for the English national team. It's good to have goalkeepers from outside. But how many English goalkeepers are in the Premier League?" Astiazarán said that unlike their English counterparts, Spanish clubs take youth development very seriously and are prepared to give young players opportunities in their first teams. "Spanish teams are working with a very serious strategy in the formation of young players," he said. "The players who become attached to clubs are from the local area and there is a fidelity [each way] and they start playing in the first division at 16 or 17."

Laughing stock of Europe.