leffe186

Agreed, but are Spurs really buggered? Was that a mistake? Arsenal and Spurs are having to watch every penny but EVERYBODY should be doing that. The point is fair - Newcastle were in a position where a clever new owner could have stabilized and then built more solid foundations. Ashley signally failed to do that, and it will take longer to recover as a result.

He spent £60m more gross than Fergie from 04/05-08/09. And £60m less than Chelsea in the same period. If you count in 09/10 as well the figures are £90m more gross than Fergie and £38m less than Chelsea. It's not like he hasn't had money to spend is it? So what? Apples and oranges. In summer 04, Fergie already had a fantastic squad that had won the league the previous season. Rafa had a s*** squad full of dross like Diouf and Diao that Houllier had bought. Spurs have spent a similar amount to Liverpool over that period, yet it took us to drop the ball for them to catch us. The thing with Rafa though is that he has continued to buy s*** in some cases. And to be fair Spurs have spent more than you over those seasons, but they are on their 4th manager during this period. So, their board has apparently realised that their managers has bought players who weren't up to it. Much the same as what Rafa has done in some cases. I'm sure you understand this. It's the same with Chelsea really, they're on to their 5th manager in the same space of time. If you don't get the adequate results at a big club, you're out. You can bet your bottom dollar that Wenger would've been out on his arse as well if he had a net spend of over £100m with the same results they've had. At Spurs it's clearly the board that is their problem. Levy doesn't know what he's doing. Yeah, I do agree that Rafa has bought a lot of players who weren't good enough. Yet at the same time, he wasn't given the money to buy enough players who were good enough, anyway. You can talk all day about how much more he's spent than Fergie since Rafa arrived at LFC, or how many players he's bought and sold. The bottom line is, the £85m net he was given to spend was simply not enough money to build a squad that can compete with Chelsea's or Man Utd when you're starting with a squad like Rafa had in 2004. Levy doesn't know what he's doing??? Can't let that one slide. If you mean that he doesn't know what he's doing when appointing managers then, well, sort of, but for Ramos there was Redknapp, for Hoddle there was Jol. If you mean he doesn't know what he's doing running a football club, well that's a bit silly. The figures really do speak for themselves.

King with dodgy knees would still do a better job then Carragher and Upson (and even Terry tbh). Ferdinand was badly out of form anyway so no big deal. Thats ridiculous,he only plays once every two weeks.I wouldn't have taken him at all because of this and the fact he was awful against Mexico.Carragher for all of his faults is a safer option. Would rather alternate King and Dawson tbh. Carragher is about 3 years past a level of acceptability. ...but he looked good against Mexico whereas Rio was abysmal. The difference at CB between the two halves was huge. Not happy Rio's injured, and I don't expect Dawson to play, but I'm not too worried about this injury. The only one that would really fuck us over would be Rooney (or possible Ashley Cole) and even with Rooney missing we might surprise a few teams with an orthodox 442. Crouch can be an absolute nightmare for oppos if the refs don't do him over.

Davies would have done well. There are a lot of kids in the US side who will get good experience too. Problem is, if Dempsey and Donovan are injured it's all over.

Not sure this can be applied easily. For example both Barça and Madrid routinely post profits, which are just accounting craftmanship as the debt (sorry, investment) keeps growing for both. I'm sure there will be lots of ways to circumvent this rule. Yeah, I was thinking about Barca and Madrid but don't know their financial details. I worry (in my anglocentric way) if the regulations will be applied more stringently in England than elsewhere.

I wish that really was Jerry Dammers.

Last year I saw Rogers at the Crew a couple of times and was very impressed indeed. Saw him against Chivas the other day and he was really disappointing. There's a very good player in there, maybe he needs to go abroad to develop.

I'm sure there are clubs across the continent who will be decimated by this, if it's applied fairly. There are several clubs who are bankrolled by a wealthy benefactor. Will be interesting to see how collective bargaining over TV deals will change too as TV money will become massively more important overnight.

I watched the beginning but had to miss virtually the whole game. Who did well/poorly for the US? I know it was a B team, but one or two may have booked their tickets.

I see that St Mirren have got a couple of shopgirls from Braehead as part of the sponsorship deal.

Had a quick glance over it. Appears to start talking at length about his family life and housing situation halfway through. What a mental. Same thoughts here, then realised it was exactly the type of thing I'd expect to read on N-O Did you read through to the end? My favourite bit is when, after he's fallen out with - and is not speaking to - his sisters, he smashes up the pot plants they got him for Xmas. Closely followed by the Louth Fire Brigade sending him a bill for their services after he crashes his car in a hailstorm. There's a few NO ones I'd read. NE5, for one.

I'd far rather he generated some sort of consistent end product. I wouldn't give a monkeys if he never got a cross in if it meant we were consistently playing against 10 or 9 men!!

Thank fuck Rooney is so, so good. Would love to see Lennon generate some opposition red cards at the World Cup. He has had a long rest, and some full backs will visibly shit themselves.

I think Defoe's done well, better than I expected at the link-up play.

Penalty, frankly.

Think Walcott's done pretty well really. Johnson's been OK going forward and ropey defensively, Baines the other way round. Milner is OK if he's not asked to do anything complicated (like play CM internationally). The CBs have done better as the game's gone on. Gerrard's touch and passing have been woeful, for the most part, and Carrick's not done himself any favours. If he works out a good midfield then we'll be OK. Ref, that's rubbish.

I'm happy for us to do what Inter did to win the CL. Dour, but organized. We're not capable of better against the top sides - and Mexico are a top side.

Quite. We look terribly disjointed in the midfield though.

He always does, yet is still fast and clever. Mexican guy was never going to win that header, hate those challenges.

Fkn great, England v Mexico is on Fox Soccer. Perfect excuse to do sweet FA today.

Surely the best review of the season just gone. http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php?topic=258313.0 Worth a little of your time. Nothing like adding the personal touch.

Actually weirdly disappointed. I saw "3D pub finder" and for a couple of seconds thought that someone had done something like google streetview, only with pubs. Like, you could name a postcode and it would zoom into the nearest pubs.

Some of those kids are brilliant. Would be better if Michael Brown had been playing.

The boy can't even start for MLS? Good to know. There are some lunatics on the Nigerian forums who think he ought to displace same NT players starting every week in top European leagues. He's not started a game this year, but I can't tell if he's been injured/away with the Nigerian squad (?). The Crew are a pretty stodgy team with an unconvincing RW so if he's not injured he must be doing pretty poorly in training....

Not today, but yesterday saw Columbus Crew play Chivas USA. Minister Babatunde (Baba?), Ekpo was only on for about ten minutes (if that) but looked OK. Still a bit of a headless chicken.