Village Idiot

Aye, rub it, child snatchers. Fortunately Samper has refused you. Toral's good, Samper's great.

It reminds me of all the emotional preparation my parents did every time one of my pets died ("We left the cage open and your parakeet ran off, but we'll find him")

So he's unsettled because people say he's unsettled

I love how that wage slip has become the Rosetta Stone of players' contracts. I found it quite fascinating in a perverse way. We hear about players' stupid wages all the time, but to actually see such a ludicrous version of what we all get from work made you realise just how daft they are. I loved how they deducted some piddly amount for meals.

Interesting, not too dissimilar than us then. We seem to stick with 5-a-side a bit more though. Usually until 10 or so (unless it's changed since I was in a football academy, mind!).

Premier League >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The universe dontcha know?

I personally find that €7m figure very, very hard to believe. Sevilla never sell cheap.

Cadena Ser was it?

If you get past their Real Madrid stuff, they are without a doubt the best sports daily in Spain. Used to be better under their previous ownership, though. In general it's not a good time for quality sports journalism in Spain. Best writers are found in the general press, actually. The Barcelona rags, truth be said, are pretty awful. "El Mundo Deportivo" used to be a great neutral newspaper when I was young, but it is unreadable Barça fluff nowadays. "Sport" lives in some strange parallel dimension where Real Madrid is always on the brink of relegation and we have won the CL 14 times in a row.

They make the mujahedeen look fair and balanced. One of their editorial points is that the Spanish FA conspires against Real Madrid to prevent them from winning the league, hence stuff like this.

Well I meant southern as in south of London.

Not a great time for southern clubs, it seems.

They have just issued an apology saying it was "a technical mistake" after being caught red-handed, but they surely can. How do you "mistakenly" edit out a player from a photo?

1) Xavi pass leading to Barça's first goal as published today in "As", where an offside is claimed: 2) Screen grab of the same play from Canal+ Spot the difference! http://www.as.com/recorte/20110221dasdasftb_15/LCO/Ies/Barcelona-Athletic.jpg

Yes well who else is going to buy him? Seriously lets look at the Six major teams who may want him. Man City - David Silva Chelsea - A Cole Man Utd - Evra Arsenal - Clichy Spurs - Bale Liverpool - Kon..... Oh s*** Basically if he does go, he'd go to Liverpool, let's just hope they're looking elsewhere for a LB. They have Kolarov in there, who started rather badly but it's growing into one of his best attacking assets lately.

Aye, that's what I was sort of getting at. I can only dream of what would have happened had Ronaldinho kept his head screwed on. One of the most salient things of Ronaldinho's game is that he wasn't a smart player *at all*, he always tried to play his way out of trouble and constantly ran into blind alleys, but was so ridiculously talented that he'd get away with it time after time and leave me with my jaw on the floor. In his peak he was also a great athlete, which people don't seem to remember.

Rivaldo's stock is, imho, hurt by the fact we were never successful in Europe during his time with us, and possibly because of *that* dive, too.

I'm not saying that Messi et al have no flair, mind, just that they are more direct and chose simpler options than other greats did. In part one of the reasons Messi is a better player than, say, Rivaldo, is because of this.

In general, I get the impression football is currently moving away from flair players and going towards sheer effectiveness, which probably make sense but makes me just a little bit sad. The two generally acknowledged best players in the world (Cronaldo and Messi) have crazy statistics but - if you allow me to say this - aren't as beautiful to watch as the likes of Van Basten, Romario, Rivaldo or Ronaldinho were in the recent past.

That's ridiculously cheap given where his stock was one year ago, and not sure Sevilla would let him go for such a low price given how have they bargained for their players in the past. Perotti's individual technique is excellent and is a good crosser of the ball. He only needs to learn to play more intelligently to become a fearsome winger.

We are susceptible to counterattack. Every tactical setup does have a weakness. Spain played the "not vulnerable to counters" version of our tactic (two deep lying mids, less overloading of the final third) and it was considerably less effective going forward. Give some, get some.

He'll get way more mileage off Maxwell than Alves. Maxwell gets forward as much and doesn't have Alves' pace or stamina to retrack. Alves is not poor defensively at all. A bit of a myth really.

Don't really think we were complacent, we were tired. Arsenal only broke us down in the last 15, although we looked shattered by then. Still going to be a very hard tie. I don't think Arsenal won't score to be frank, so I expect that we'll need at least 3 goals to get through.

Like Messi's new position this season? As a deep lying nine, in between the two lines of defenders, aiming to take them out of position while our wingers cut inside and take the striker position themselves. We have also switched to 442 and 424 against teams sitting deep. All managers make mistakes, even the best, but certainly Pep does way more than just cut and paste lineups from the previous weeks.

Also (obviously) pleased to see Osasuna tonk Espanyol 4-0 and doing it with style. Osasuna have way too good players to play the dreary shit that they played under Camacho. Nekounam with a brace.