Village Idiot

People should not forget how great Torres was in his first years in Liverpool just because he's so s*** now. One of the great mysteries of football this, no way his knee problems can be solely to blame for his decline. He could score all kinds of goals; playing on the shoulder, headers, running at the defence, long shots... He was almost unstoppable before 2010.

A player who based his game around pace and mobility at age 32... I haven't seen him in the past two years outside the odd European game (where he looked uninterested at best). Sure he'll score some, but not the kind of striker they should be buying. I'd understand if he was there in a backup role, though.

Will never happen, CL makes a gazillion money because it guarantees 6 relatively risk-free games of all big European sides during autumn/winter and through group seeding/fixing pretty much guarantees that all those big sides will be in the last stages of the competition in February.

Real Sociedad are dynamite going forward right now, but very fragile at the back. One of the most exciting teams to watch right now in Spain. I think they'll pay the price of inexperience and small squad in the CL, but it should be a blast for their fans. Some ridiculous possible groups given the pot setup, by the way. Real Sociedad and Naples in 4th, City and Dortmund in 3rd The current CL runners-up in the 3rd pot and fucking Porto in pot 1, how does UEFA score this shit?

Just checked, they do go into the Europa Group stages. really don't think it matters moneywise. Moneywise, nah i couldn't care less about that madras, just daft they get to the group stages of the Europa for losing. oh aye it's daft. i just thought you mentioned it as if it may have a bearing on the gomis deal/no need to sell etc. I don't mind teams losing in the playoff rounds of the CL going to the EL, there's a lot of small teams that get to that stage after winning several rounds and several minor league champions that'd get shafted out of Europe just because they are from small countries. It's not like in the group stages where a team that beats some minnow from pot 4 and loses to everybody else gets a free parachute to the EL (and a lot of times ends up winning it, hello Chelsea/Atlético/Porto) It's great for teams from leagues like Sweden, where you need to win two ties to get to the final qualifier of the CL, makes sense that you drop into the EL if you lose that game. I understand that bit but i'm more of a "too many teams in it". The Champions League is just mental now, i dont know why they bother with the Europa League. Just expand the Champions league and be done with it and have one competition. The fact that teams that finished 3rd in their Champions League groups then drop in the Europa makes it all the more stupid as it goes along. Old school thinking from me, Champions League where a team can finish 4th in their league but be the winners, isn't a Champions League. I'm a fossil tbf mind. That's a different issue though. Most of the teams that benefit from the "drop into the EL if you lose in CL quals" are champions or runners-up in small European leagues. I'm one that thinks that 4th placed teams should have no business in the CL, but then there's a larger issue of closing even more the access to the huge revenue than CL brings. UEFA should subsidize the EL with CL revenue, imho, that way it becomes a thriving ground for up and coming clubs, and makes the competition more desirable.

Torres and Eto'o strikeforce. Pity it's not 2009.

Elconfidencial.com (who have a mixed track record) running a rumour of Casillas to City.

Just checked, they do go into the Europa Group stages. really don't think it matters moneywise. Moneywise, nah i couldn't care less about that madras, just daft they get to the group stages of the Europa for losing. oh aye it's daft. i just thought you mentioned it as if it may have a bearing on the gomis deal/no need to sell etc. I don't mind teams losing in the playoff rounds of the CL going to the EL, there's a lot of small teams that get to that stage after winning several rounds and several minor league champions that'd get shafted out of Europe just because they are from small countries. It's not like in the group stages where a team that beats some minnow from pot 4 and loses to everybody else gets a free parachute to the EL (and a lot of times ends up winning it, hello Chelsea/Atlético/Porto)

Lamela is a player I hate we didn't pursue more seriously when he left Argentina. We were interested but Luís Enrique (going off our scouting reports from when he was here) brought him to Roma instead.

We like it rough. Neymar shone when he had somebody to play off from, rather than trying to dribble his way to goal. I like that actually, we need to get him involved.

Aye, he even posted about Spurs academy players moving on loan to other clubs, didn't he? I found him amusing, to be honest.

Need to do a better job of that though. We got much better in the second half once Atlético tired and we started moving the ball quicker, but otherwise we've been extremely flat. One thing I noticed is that Alba needs to let Neymar challenge a bit, whenever Neymar gets the ball Alba just runs past him on the side which doesn't give Neymar the freedom to challenge, because if he does and loses the ball it's a counter attack. Neymar needed that support though, most of the time it was him against the world. Messi drifted a lot to the right tonight, which left Ney isolated.

Need to do a better job of that though. We got much better in the second half once Atlético tired and we started moving the ball quicker, but otherwise we've been extremely flat.

It's our anthem. "Cant del Barça"

Well, this was quite awful.

Fucking shoot dammit.

We just can't have peaceful games with Madrid teams, can we?

Neymar slips again...

Yeah, the game was set so late as to not clash with the CL qualifiers.

They have had more shots on goal, if it weren't for Valdés we would be behind already. We are actually doing some stuff well, but it all freezes to a halt in the last third. EDIT: Neymar's "finish"

Villa is so great in this second striker role, dropping in between the lines, making stuff happen. We are quite shit so far. Regardless of how this ends, we need to improve massively.

I admit it's been a bit shit. Atlético defending well deep and us unable to break the lock.

What is this? A Brazilian making fun of religious surnames?

Looks like someone's been chopping logs on his face. Have you seen the lot? Since Mou and Pep left we are bereft of metrosexuals. Tata Martino or Pepe Mel won't be gracing Slim's Men thread anytime soon. And Martino came in 8th in the list

Simeone got voted "Most attractive La Liga manager" by some fashion mag today.