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A few over/under 2.5 goals bets. Team A Vs Team B (under / over odds as I make them (selection in bold)) Hanover – Werder Bremen (1.93 / 2.03) Stuttgart – Hamburg (2.61 / 1.63) M'gladbach – Nuremberg (2.28 / 1.79) Bochum – Hoffenhiem (1.66 / 2.51) Monaco – Marseille (2.39 / 1.7) Fivefold at betfair prices returns 40-1, I make it 15-1

If anyone is thinking about a bet on the Swansea-Newcastle game, this is what I make the odds to be: (prices in betfair style) (home, away, draw) 3.44 , 2.41 , 3.41 (over 2.5 goals, under 2.5 goals) 1.65 , 2.55 (over 3.5 goals, under 3.5 goals) 3.15 , 1.47 (over 1.5 goals, under 1.5 goals) 1.28 , 4.57 scorelines (home on vertical, away on horizontal). 0 1 2 3 4 5 0 12.27, 6.51, 11.75, 32.97, 110.87, 764.72 1 12.09, 6.72, 16.57, 23.29, 137.39, 224.03 2 17.92, 18.30, 17.53, 70.80, 224.72, 1300.64 3 36.57, 57.99, 36.42, 191.06, 667.76, 3857.82 4 396.95, 217.94, 419.44, 1056.31, 1933.19, 17436.40 5 1331.43, 74.52, 1772.23, 6962.47, 23667.09, 114928.69

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/westham/7027066/David-Sullivan-admits-West-Ham-buy-out-makes-no-commercial-sense.html ‘’We’ve paid down some of the debt and injected some working capital but there’s still more than £100 million of debt. ‘’In that there’s £50m owed to banks, there’s £40m owed to other clubs. There’s not a penny to come in, they (the previous owners) have borrowed against the next two years of season-ticket money. The sponsors have paid 70 per cent of their three-years up front. ‘’In addition there’s the club’s settlement to (former manager) Alan Curbishley, so the real debt is about £110m.’’ ^ This sounds very familiar.

The supporters trust is going the wrong way with its negative attitude. As the club purchase is clearly a pipe-dream, it would be better if they concentrated on more realistic solutions. Because of this amateurism and name calling, they have spurned the chance to be a powerful voice regarding the club. Bush / Saddam was brought up a bit earlier. If NUST acted as the Lib-Dems before Iraq: principled, measured opposition which goes on record, they would make themselves an authoritative voice regarding the club, which would translate eventually into influence in the media (a form of real power) and may make them - even without a change in ownership – and organisation which, down the road, would receive official recognition from the club (real influence). I wish their aim was dialogue with the club towards mutual benefit. Even the Ashley regime seemed willing to try this, before it became clear how supporter organisations were capable of saying nothing more than 'not this'. Anyway, here's the problem with this opposition not in terms of (pure)power, but in terms of what Ashley wants from the club. I absolutely believe it is not money – or at least would not be so long as we don't obsess over it. What Ashley wants is to be – for want of a better word – mean, and his best way of realising how to effect this is to see what we are most knee-jerk in our response to. At the beginning, Ashley asked us out on date, bought us flowers, opened his heart up to us: it went OK. Our last date was a shit too, so it looked like a good thing at the start. But since then the situation has radically changed. As soon as things got bad, we dumped him, went screaming to all of the others – we literally told everyone else in school that he was useless and that we'd faked it – and withdrew from him. He couldn't have what he wanted. But the crucial relationship here is power. Ownership of the club gives him a certain advantage in this structure. He loves us, we love the club, he owns the club. Instead of the reciprocal triad 'he helps club → we give him what he wants → the club is what we want it to be' we now have a breakdown in the structure. We hurt him → he hurts club → we get no enjoyment from club → he enjoys our pain. Ashley gets his excitement either way. In possession of the object or in a sadistic relation to it where he can hurt it. Remember, this guy doesn't want the club, he wants the fans: to imagine himself in our eyes as the hero, the boss, the head honcho. But under the current dynamic, I would think that he is enjoying the fact that he is pissing us off with his every action and yet succeeding in the league (despite the 'experts' predictions) almost as much as would have enjoyed a 'healthy relationship'. We have created the monster here, and given fuel to his perversion. What am I saying should be done? Everything or nothing. Either seduce him again: get back into bed with him, stroke his hair and say “you were right all along big man”;* that or to withdraw the investment entirely. Stop attending, paying, care(ss)ing. Play a game of bluff, let the size of his asset decline to nil, see how much pain he is willing to suffer. There's no dignity in going back to the man who beats you; even if you are screaming like a hysteric about it in public. NUST don't hurt Ashley with their confrontational, hysterical attitude – they turn him on. * ie form a supporters trust which tries to help the current board, even if that involves a bit of play acting from the supporters.

If NUST want to be taken seriously as an organisation, such tortured grammar must be eradicated from any subsequent communications.

There are two ways of looking at doping, the investigative stuff mentioned thus far here (which, I am aware, often looks like a paranoid construct) but there is also the empirical side of looking at the differences in the qualities of modern players and styles of play compared to previous generations. I think the number of players – in Iberia especially – who have transcended the natural restrictions of a small body type is quite uncanny. Football must be the only (quasi)invasion game which is reversing the trend towards always-bigger players in its most modern incarnations.

that whole case was handled in a pretty disgusting way by the authorities, i mean the doctor himself went on the record and admitted that he worked with several spanish football teams and tennis players, yet they've never even investigated those matters (the cycling part was pretty ridiculous as well, when you find a shitload of plastic bags full of blood and a list of names just how difficult can it be to verify whether its their blood or not?). probably has something to do with political ties. doping controls in football (and most other team sports) are generally a joke in comparison with the controls in athletics/cycling/other endurance sports, and for instance dozens of cyclists have never tested positive but admitted to doping or got caught in other ways. i'm pretty sure clubs consider every possible method to maximize the performance and physical capabilities of their players and doping is surely one of the best of those, especially with the loose nature of controls. Puerto was just too big a case, I agree that Spain lacked the stomach to make public quite how deep the scandal went. The problem was that it wasn't illegal under criminal law at the time, though obviously it broke the various sporting authorities' rules. That meant it was easy to force the Guardia Civil had to drop its investigation. I particularly like the fact that everyone tried to claim they just paid him all those 1000's of Euro for 'advice', despite the fact that Dr. Fuentes is a gynaecologist. ( http://velonews.competitor.com/2009/10/news/ullrich-fuentes-ties-documented_99309 ).

In non-recreational terms, cocaine is often used to ameliorate the side-effects of PEDs such as testosterone or HGH.

I can't say I'd considered of that kind of doping, but, thinking about it, there might be a place for 'confidence' drugs in the locker room. A 'team talk' guaranteed to make you feel brilliant! However, cocaine has some side effects relating artery tightening and decreased heart functions, so it would only be a productive approach for a player not exerting himself at 100%. Institutionally though, I can't see a team advising players to take cocaine when there are better and less legally and morally problematic substances available. It sounds like something that certain footballers would be thick enough to try 'off their own bats', as it would be.

During the current shortage of contemporaneous footballing events to talk about, I thought I'd dredge up the idea of doping in football. Doubtlessly there is some individual doping going on even in the IPL, for example, there will be some keepers using beta-blockers and/or Ritalin. Low level stuff. But that is a thing that can be sorted out fairly discretely without any outside help. How about organised doping by the teams? The current proliferation of sports science experts and cutting edge medical teams in Premier league football would certainly provide the means and knowledge for administering a programme, but is it worth the risk to start institutionalised cheating like this? I would suppose the high point in 'level one' of doping would be the Italian leagues in the late 90's and early 00's. A culture of win-at-all-costs was existent, and there are several cases of people getting busted: Stam/Couto at Lazio, Agricola's programme at Juve ( http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article396203.ece ) etc. But, in the Italian style (tactical, static, low tempo) there would be less benefit for a player on 'body drugs' increasing strength or endurance (apart from 'engine room' midfielders like Edgar Davids ( http://www.cbc.ca/sports/indepth/drugs/stories/top10_appendix.html ) ). Level one doping would aid the arms race in football expressed here ( http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=21223132 ) , always towards bigger players, as well as the extension of playing careers into he later 30's. How about 'level two': the new doping? Hormones and steroids professionally delivered through microdosing and transfusions? The benefit of doping would be at its greatest not in making a Fernando Couto slightly stronger from his already high base, but in making a player who totally lacks strength much stronger. Take the two teams who epitomise the newest tactical evolutions of the game: Barcelona and Arsenal. The big gamble taken by both of these clubs is that the young players they have, often selected because of attributes such as speed and low centre of gravity which are associated with smaller players, will develop coping mechanisms to counter the disadvantages their light weight and lack of hight cause. Of these teams, Arsenal seem to have been less successful in taking raw talent and producing world class players (I immediately think of Walcott). On the other hand, Barcelona have an excellent record of fully developing these players. I think not just of Xavi – Inniesta – Messi, but upcoming players like Pedro and Bojan. The latter two are much stronger than players like Aimar or Saviola were at an equivalent age. Barcelona have, in Guardiola (whose problems woth CONI rumble on: ( http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLV53002820090731 ) ), a member of the generation of people who have been exposed to the effects of Italian soccer's doping period. I would not go so far as to say that he has taken that experience to Barcelona and sanctions - explicitly or tacitly – the use of something more than Coldplay to improve performances ( http://www.thespoiler.co.uk/index.php/2009/08/27/pep-guardiolas-obssession-with-coldplay-continues ), but Spanish football in general cannot be considered in a positive light after the Puerto case ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operaci%C3%B3n_Puerto_doping_case ) and the lack of political will to tackle the case is indicative of interests more significant that cycling teams in the suppression of the case. Given the lack of competence regulation from the authorities, the best evidence for doping must be in observed effects on the pitch. The capability of teams to combine high tempo possession football with incredibly aggressive closing down when not in possession (Again, I think of the tactical innovations of Barcelona here) at current levels, for a period of 90 minutes, attests to more than a slight difference between the football of now an of, say, 15 years ago. It is certainly not possible to explain all of the difference in distances covered during games, body-shape, BMI, etc to some vague notion of 'better nutrition and fitness': the gap is too great. Forget about skill, the Barca team of '93-'94, great as it was, would be utterly overrun by the current squad. And forget diet: they were eating “pasta not fish and chips” back then anyway. Where does the improvement come from? Does anyone else have any suspicions?

These 6 weeks are just to raise awareness and take on board feedback. If they are to succeed, it will take a while for it to all come together. That's not true though. After 6 weeks they wanted an idea of how much they'd have to start putting together an offer as I understand it. http://www.toontastic.net/board/index.php?s=&showtopic=26197&view=findpost&p=691884 If it is obvious to the supporter's trust that it has no chance of buying the club at this point, they might as well give it up. As some organisation of 'general opposition', all they do is provide the necessary object to keep Mike Ashley's hard-on up. NB – I'm not saying 'shit or get off the pot', I'm saying 'shit, or get out of the voyeur's watercloset'.

There's a revealing parapraxis in this article: "Earlier this month, football dealbreaker Keith Harris, the man owner Mike Ashley hopes will find a buyer to pay £100m for United, was in Dubai talking to would-be investors."

That is something that REALLY fucks me off. I'd rather see us knock the ball about at the back for 90mins than launch aimless balls up to the opposition time and time again. The better teams keep the ball and move it about until there's an opening, they don't pass it to each other twice then twat it in the general direction of the midget who's not scored in months. The players should never feel under pressure to pass it forward if it means gifting possession back. The classic one for me is when someone pulled the ball back to another player from the byline – accurately – the guy next to me was raving about how it wasn't crossed in. The player it was passed back to (I recall it was Ameobi) kicked it into the net. The guy was left complaining as everyone else was celebrating the goal.

Sorry but I think there are flaws in your points tbh. and i appologise for the monstrosity i have probably made of the html in this reply.

I think we have to consider some of the reasons which might be behind the dislike of NUFC. This kind of thing isn't all schadenfreude or ressentiment, it is a thing with obvious causes. First, take our chairman. A man who made his fortune selling crap to idiots by dubious merchandising methods. With this great fortune he became the figurehead for all that is rotten in our culture, a bloated moron who's only mission is to convert the world into a stage for his low-class drinking sessions. Our manager (for the moment), the greatest player of his generation who took all his fame and influence and turned it to... absolutely nothing. A man who has the air of not giving a damn about anyone but himself or his golfing buddies. A man who converts our tax money from the licence fee into numbing platitudes and sits there on a sofa in his ever tightening trousers like he was given the god-given right to do so. I will refrain from dredging up the spectres of our previous managers / board membranes, merely eluding to the fact that they were, shall we say, dislikeable since 2004. Our midfield, I am sadly compelled to remind everyone, consists of either thugs; despicable little shits like Barton, Nolan, Smith, or people who have pissed it away/gone to seed (delete as appropriate depending on your anger levels) like Duff and Butt. The only good thing I can say about a Newcastle player is how I have loved Bassong's rise this season, via Lillian Thuram, From being 'maybe the new Gallas' to 'definitely the new Desailly'. I'd love to be able to say a bit more about foreign players like Enrique and Xisco have have the rather unusual quality of being interesting people as well as footballers, but the barely concealed racism we have about the 'lazy foreigner' means they don't raise their heads above the parapet. One thing I will say for the Shepherd regime was that stuff like the 'Untied in Black and White' anti-racism campaign and the desire to have the club set a positive example was brilliant. We aren't Barcelona, but we should be: a club which is proud to stand up and say we're from the land of Bede and Cuthbert, Armstrong and Parsons, Iron and coal... hell, no one else is in a position to do so, certainly not the oversized Working Men's Club which passes for a football club in Sunderland. Then you have 'the best fans in the world', the lunatics who surround me in the ground who howl like pained baboons as soon as someone – horror of horrors - makes a pass backwards or sidewards to keep possession, who bay at anyone they suspect of not 'getting stuck in', which seems to be a general description for making bad tackles, conceding free kicks and abandoning any positional sense. Is it too much to have a support which is actually interested in football as a game? We might as well get relegated, move the football to Kingston Park, and at 1500 on a Saturday at St James' we can have two keepers standing in their boxes playing mindless long balls to each other while there is a cock fight or some other act of petty violence on the centre of the pitch.

It's all speculation at this point, but I fear that instead of Souness II, we're about to see the most cack-handed Capello impersonation ever attempted.

Although iirc Adams worked around Europe in some other set ups, deffo in Holland and seemed to have something about him. Redknapp probably wasn't the one to take tutelage under as he is what I call a 'natural' and more of a motivator rather than a tactician. See all of these would have gained some good insight if they had worked under the likes of Venables or a Clough as MON did. Begs the question do ex-managers who have had a certain amount of success help in the FA coaching set up? Yes, Adams is a strange one. What I'm inclined to think about him is that he was a kind of 'rote' player, who took on board as much as he could from training in terms of positioning and technique and applied them to his game. What I remember of Adams was the he operated like clockwork, and bringing out the defence and keeping a line became send nature to him. Add that to the his bravery and natural ability to defend and he made an inspiring leader on the pitch, but I don't think he was ever a reader of the game in the way that someone like Baresi was. I think if I gave Adams eleven players and said, “make them better at defending”, he'd have the coaching abilities to do that, but if I gave him eleven players and said, “make them into a team” he'd struggle to manage them.

The cognitive skills required of a great player – real time non-conscious processing and visualisation – are nothing like the skills needed to conceptualise or enunciate a successful set-up of a football team. To put it another way, you could give Gazza (probably the worst manager of the bunch) half an hour to explain to you how he could make a defence splitting through ball, and he probably wouldn't come close to describing all of the variables that in real time only took him a fraction of a second to calculate. I'd also say that there's definitely a kind of sink or swim thing in being the English style 'total control' manager. When there are so many different skills you need to have, its impossible to know which ex-player will prosper or not. I think a few of the guys from your list took a quasi-mercantalist approach to the clubs they went to and tried to concentrate as much power and responsibility in the hierarchy in their own hands as they could without ever demonstrating that they had the abilities to do every task – Ince particularly. Ex-pros who succeed in management tend to do so when they start under the aegis of an experienced coach – Keegan and Cox – or are immediately integrated in a fixed hierarchy where they have a limited role like the continental club (the French league has heck of record of bringing on ex-players in management).

A keeper only ever needs to make reflex saves if there team is performing poorly? Doesn't make sense that like. Sorry, it might have been a little unclear. I'm defining a reflex save as one which is occurs at close range and has no element of prior positioning – essentially that a keeper has made a previous save and has to immediately make another one or, positioning wise, already has his eggs in the wrong basket. These are the kind of saves that keepers get lauded for, though they seldom occur. I accept they are made by all keepers, I think the problem is the ambiguity of the word tend – I meant it as 'indicative of a pattern which occurs' (a tendency), rather than 'can happen'. I take it as a save that keepers for worse teams have to make more of because 1) better teams (almost by definition) have more attacking opportunities and 2) relatively fewer times when they need to defend. The opposite applies for poorer teams. I'm struggling to find public domain statistics on this, but I am confident is saying that if you compare the quality and quantity of shots taken against the top 5 and bottom 5 teams you will see hella difference in where they are from, what preceded them, and how frequently the occur. However, such sophomoric attempts at building a goalkeeping model are secondary to my real point- the modern keeper for a good team is: big, imposing, an excellent distributor. The idea I can't “get over it” with Given is in utterly bad faith, I think that the historical/statistical patterns I'm referring to are pretty impersonal. That accusation stinks of projection.

What a load of BS that is, didn't finish reading it. Not bitter are we? Primary reason for buying a keeper - to stop shots. Given does that IMO the best in the league, and has been outstanding his entire time here. He therefore would be an outstanding addition to any side... O weren't we a top 4 side with him in the team i seem to remember. He wasn't good enough for us then? We should of signed van der Saar when he wasn't impressing at Fulham perhaps. (Please, read the whole of this post before you respond.) Ok, I suppose your effort could be an ironic post, but I'm past any idea of irony at this time of night so let's deal with it prima facie. Can I start by defining three (I guess if you want we could consider more, but give me a simplistic model of three now for convenience, please) types of goalkeeper move to stop the ball going in the net I'll start with shot stopping. I thought it was a fairly common term in the parlance of the fan, but I'll re-define it if it would help. Shot stopping is stopping an attempt on goal from a player who takes a shot from distance, appoximately greater than 15 yards. The key skills in shot stopping are 1) reading the player's body position to anticipate where he is kicking the ball and 2) having the reflex to make sure you use your anticipation of position at the last possible correct moment to to maximise your chance of stopping the ball (aka: that the guy is really kicking it that way). I think Given was really good at this – he certainly had a lot of shots taken against him. Maybe it was something to with the gap between our defence and midfield, I don't really know. Second: covering. This one I'd put down to positioning, size and a third factor that I'd call presence. The kind of attempts you'd stop by covering would be one-on-ones, or other close range chances. Essentially, you play it by the book, make yourself big and hope the other guy bottles it. Knowing where you are between the posts. I think this is a positive aspect of goalkeeping, where you scare the attacker rather than react to where he puts the ball. I'll tell you what, that chap Van der Saar I was talking about is pretty good at that. Much better than his shot stopping. Thing is, for a good team, with a high back line and which is usually attaching the opposition, the real danger isn't constant pressure, but the possibility of a counter attack. Most players that counter attack don't shoot from so far out, but advance on the goal. That makes covering a really good skill for a keeper in a top team. How about my third category: reflexes? This is having the ability to react at really close range, with almost no decision time, to where someone is putting a shot. A header, or a goalmouth scramble. I really thought Given was great at this. Superbly good. Thing is, you only tend to be involved in this kind of SNAFU if you are playing for a team performing poorly, not a team that wants to be in the top 4. Anyway, I'm going to be a bit cheeky here and suggest a fourth skill: using the ball in a positive way. This doesn't directly stop a shot but.. crazy as it might be, a lot of people think that if you have the ball, the other guys probably can't score. It might be that you start off a great attack with your distribution – like the keepers in the top three teams can, as I argued. Or maybe you just don't punt the ball out of play near the half way line like Given had a predilection to. Nevertheless, based on several years of watching Shay, that is my current hypothesis, so I leave it open to be shown true or false based on Given's performance for Man City (if they realise their promise). I don't think I can be any more bitter than that, can I?

I think Given has made a mistake in leaving Newcastle. What is the common attribute of the keepers in the top three teams? Impeccable distribution. Footballing ability with the ball at feet, good throwing, an ability to read the game and know whether it is an appropriate time to bullet the ball to a winger on the half way line, or casually roll it out to a full back for possession-type football. Indeed, in two of these keepers - Van der Saar and Almunia - we have players who's only real ability is in this regard: neither are anything like as good a shot stopper as Shay. If Man City want to be a great team, they've bought the wrong player. Shay looked so good for us now because a shot stopper flourishes in a bad team; but when he has to start thinking about how to use the ball, rather than just being relieved the opposition attack has been temporarily dulled, what is he going to do? Shay is a % guy who works if you need to stop a high volume of opposition chances, but I don't think he has the distribution, concentration or presence to be a good keeper in a top quality team where the keeper has more touches with his feet than his hands. There will be fewer defenders around him so quantitatively more one-on-ones and close range shots; aspects in which he is relatively weaker. Can he learn? Keegan tried to get Shay to start playing it short and building from the back, but he never really did so well. He has this bizarre 'last minute' mentality whereby he makes a pressurised kick just before he's closed down rather than positively distributing the ball. Of course, the caveat there we haven't had a defender who an distribute the ball properly since Bramble (and there I apply the term defender loosely). In essence, the top 4 keeper is a big imposing footballer, rather than a shot, spry agile chap.

I think it would be fallacious to attribute shared mendacious tendencies to a similar underlying structure of the psyche here.

You've got a lot of growing up to do buddy. Which clubs go down and get some kind of renewed vigour, some kind of spur-on which leads them back to an imaginary golden age of 'pure football'? I'll tell you now, absolutely none. Football is a market. A market which is constantly moving towards ever more calculated equilibrium. It doesn't matter how much you post in 'fake Geordie slang' or how much you look back to some supposedly pure era where everything was good and noble – it just looks like some pathetic raging against the dying light. The fantastic scenario you posit is exactly that: a nonsense where what 'we feel' is reciprocated by a miraculous new playing staff. Shiiieeeett, I'd rather have a mercenary intent on succeeding for-his-own-good in the squad than some pissant conforming to a parochial ideal of what 'we' (you) stand for.

Kinnear is becoming a real deal breaker, the way he just says anything to the press without it having a basis in fact is utterly ridiculous: the time-frame he gave for Owen discussing his contract (that made it Christmas eve as I recall), the Given story etc. Part of the 'enjoyment' of being a football fan is finding out news and knowing what the club is doing / planning. That makes the club seem inclusive; like the club is a shared endeavour in which you have some kind of small stake. Instead all we get are these stupid lies, platitudes and nonsenses from manager, chairman and owner. I have absolutely no idea what the latter two plan to do with the club, want from the club or expect to get from the club. None whatsoever. Thinking about it would be futile, frustrating, a totally fruitless exercise in stabbing in the dark. So I don't think about it, stop checking the news, don't talk about it. If in the pub anyone asks me what I think of the club now, I'm speechless. What could I say about what might happen in the next day, week or year? I haven't a clue and what's more, there's no way of knowing. At least Sheppard was cocking things up in public and there was something to comment on. The way this kind of thing works is that you have to have an investment in the idea of the club to receive any enjoyment from it, and at the moment there is nothing to invest in for the fans: just this total mystery of what the hell anyone is doing. All you can do is turn up to the matches and hope, but a kind of empty hope like watching a roulette wheel. There seems to be no way of working out what will happen, all you can do is accept the unpredictability and sit back. The lower he rate of return on the gamble of supporting the club, the less people will care: not because the odds of the win shrink, but because the stake you can put on the table right now is so small that there's no reason to bother.

I can't believe we played 3-5-2 at the beginning of the second half, when it was obvious that we were outclassing them in terms of movement/dynamics in the first. 4-4-2 was forcing them to run in useless channels between the centre backs and full backs, and they were over hitting passes from deep for goal kicks. 3-5-2 meant they were playing up against static defenders and the high ball became a viable attack. Even Kinnear must have known it would go wrong because we seamlessly went back to 4-4-2 after conceding. 3-5-2 has been regarded as useless since its heyday in the 90's Bundesliga, yet there we were, all Borussia Dortmund circa 1995.