leffe186

Incredible goal by Venezuela against England in the U17 World Cup. On the break, down the right, keeper anticipated a cross and the winger just belted it into the net.

They’re going to win the league entirely by corners, aren’t they.

Oh, that 16yo CB Byfield I mentioned? Someone just tweeted - he got injured in training.

Erm… For the first point - don’t know about other teams but we certainly have before - Conte did it on more than one occasion. There’s an argument that our best chance is the FA Cup because at least some of those players should be back by then. I do agree though, don’t think we’ll completely throw it, but the team we put out might look like it.

Seriously Froggy, we might genuinely just fuck it off tonight.

Even if Kinsky's playing directly behind Vicario as a second goalkeeper I'd fancy your chances.

We have Chelsea on Saturday so there’s a decent chance we rest VDV and Porro, play some kids and just fuck it off.

Right lads, a heads-up, now I think we might go with this team: Dragusin-Romero-Davies Tokai-Bissouma-Gray-Udogie Kulusevski-Solanke-Maddison Oh no wait, we can’t. They’re all out for weeks and weeks. Gray just got injured and may miss a couple of months. Christ it’s so frustrating Our U21s lost to Cheltenham or someone like that last night on penalties in that cup I can’t remember the name of. Our U17s had a cup match last night as well. We can’t even play any kids, although there’s a couple of 16-year-olds they might have held back. We might just end up punting tonight tbh. My best guess: Kinsky Porro-Danso-VDV-Spence Sarr-Bentancur-Bergvall Johnson-Tel-Odobert Then if we’re still in it we have Kolo Muani, Richarlison, Kudus and Palhinha to bring on. If we’re down you might see the kids - Byfield at CB, Luca Williams-Barnett at #10, a couple of other kids at wide forward.

It’s guff, but I don’t mind it as a talking point. I note Norman Whiteside is there and is better/more of an all-time player than Glenn Hoddle, Liam Brady and Pat Jennings? Righty-ho, Oliver.

You’d have to tell me what “full-strength” is first . I don’t think we can tbh. We played on Sunday, and we have Chelsea on Saturday. Apparently Solanke, Udogie and Romero are still injured so I think we have nine out. Kinsky may get a run-out in goal which will be a tough one. In theory we only have four fit defenders but I can see Gray getting played somewhere in the back four to give somebody a break - could be anywhere tbh. I’d expect TF to play one of Bentancur/Palinha with Bergvall and Sarr in midfield. Maybe Tel up front, Odobert on the left, Johnson on the right. Kudus really needs a rest. If that is the case then subs will be whichever defender gets a break, Simons, Kolo Muani, Kudus and some kids. It’s a very lightweight team and young - average age 22.7. Going to get bullied.

Fuck, forgot that was this week. I mean, I should probably know and I have no idea. We need to see who’s still injured first.

Anyone able to report on whether the ref in the Chelsea game has actually been legit?

Same old Barca, always cheating.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cjr0yd08wlyo If their manager wasn't the weirdo cunt I wouldn't think anything of it but...

Why would he? He has no financial or operational involvement in the team etc etc #justiceforPalace

Wish I could tbh, getting very bad vibes.

After the discussion, this article in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/oct/18/premier-league-scramble-young-talent-overheated-failing-market Didn’t know about the ESC and GBE stuff. No surprise that they point out this gives massive benefits to multi-club groups. Also no surprise that the one club that gets very thinly-veiled excuses made for it is Liverpool. ”Liverpool are viewed as less aggressive, with a source saying they are more reluctant to pay high wages. The champions caused a fuss by poaching Rio Ngumoha from Chelsea, causing friction between the clubs at academy level but…”

Just based on MOTD, but the Palace/Bournemouth ref seemed to do a good job today.

I’ve gotta get out of this place.

I’m coming in at the end of this nonsense, and I’m not going back to check - please tell me somebody’s brought up The fucking Animals at some point.

Someone somewhere pointed out the irony of 50+ years of being fucked about and treated like cattle by the Police and the local authorities, often for no good reason, then there’s finally a good reason for the Police to apply draconian restrictions on a particular set of fans and the Government intervene.

https://superhotspur.com/2018/04/26/my-interview-with-former-spurs-academy-player-shaun-murray/

There's a Spurs podcast "The Lab" that's put together by Flav who's the Spurs fan on the Overlap. Last episode was about Spurs in the 80s and a reminder that two of my favourite players ever - Graham Roberts and Tony Galvin - came directly from non-League, Weymouth and Goole Town. I was thinking that wouldn't happen nowadays, it's a different game now etc etc but they also talked about another of my favourites, Micky Hazard. He was a mackem who we spotted at school but who was apparently too young to be offered a trial at the time. Eventually we got him, but he was about the same age as this kid. It's not necessarily grim, but it's a real pity. Big clubs have thrown vast sums and incentives at kids and their parents forever - some clubs way more than others - and I get that this has always been the case to some extent but it seems like such an enormous industry now. That's without even considering things like the systematic importation of young African footballers to places like Belgium over the years. I think it's OK to say that it's a damn shame that these kids generally don't develop at clubs in their home town and it would be great if we could get back to that. Sometimes it's right for us old men to yell at clouds. You're an old man Joey, right?

Yeah it's really interesting and quite moving. I've got a lot of time for Maddison, and one thing that comes through in this is just how young these players actually are. With this injury he's arguably at the point of being "over-the-hill" - it could have been (and still could be) career-ending and is absolutely career-altering. It's probably put paid to any England hopes, and we've already seen Bentancur come back as less of a player after a bad injury. And he's having to deal with all of this at the age of 28. I was still trying to figure stuff out at that age - actually tbh I had given up on figuring it out. Fully recommend this to people, even if you think he's a twat.

Sounds like he also didn't want to call himself just Manchester because he didn't actually want to be associated with the city itself @Froggy