Village Idiot

Iniesta seems to miss 2-3 months ever year due to injury, plus suspensions, rotations... as said Keita does get a lot of games. Again, it gives us alternatives. Our starting XI has always been scary, but look at our bench and a lot of times we don't have anything to bring on if somebody isn't having a good game or stuff just isn't working. I'm not saying that Cesc is coming to sit on the bench, just that for the first time we can play around depending on form. If Pedro isn't having a good patch, put Iniesta in the wing, if the opposition is shutting Xavi down, put Cesc alongside him... there are a lot of games where I wished we had the tools to do that. What I'm having trouble seeing is where Zlatan is going to fit if Villa also ends up coming: Pedro, Bojan, Iniesta, Villa, Messi, Zlatan.. a bit too crowded to keep everybody happy.

I don't think Tomassi did, I think Tomassi did it for the basic minimum wage you can pay a player. Youth player wages or something like that? Tomassi was a classy guy incidentally, one of my favorite Italian players. Even grabbed the train to go to Valencia to see him appear for Levante once.

Just saw this photo today, made me smile http://estaticos04.marca.com/imagenes/2010/05/17/futbol/liga_campeones/1274118273_0.jpg

I could wear my Barça Henry shirt to the Bull Arena and be the ultimate gloryhunter-eurosnob.

To be honest we'd probably take a bag of chips for him. But his wages are surely too big.

No, no... the first link is what he said after his first season with us. The second is what he just said today after his season at Stuttgart. Still, looks like a good sport when things don't go his way.

In 2009: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1200026/Former-Arsenal-star-Alexandr-Hleb-slams-Barcelona-coachs-squad-tactics.html In 2010: http://www.soccerway.com/news/2010/May/17/hleb-criticises-gross-after-barca-return/ Has Hleb always been such a bitter c***? Anyhow, we need a place were to offload him again.

Our General Director has said that we are "very close" to finish three transfer deals. Note that he didn't specify signings, so one or more of them could be sales, probably the Henry to MLS being one. He's also denied that, as of now, the club is looking to sell Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Touré's agent (who's a nutter) making a lot of noise that he's leaving the club this summer. I hope he doesn't.

Aye. He transformed the club completely. Not only because of the trophies he won, but because he set the way Barça is expected to play, he gave us our footballing identity.

Aye, we are living through a golden age of the club. Before the summer of 1990 we were barely "best of the rest" in La Liga, I wouldn't have believed that 20 years later we would be in the position we are in, playing the way we do, admired by so many. I still blame this man: http://members.fortunecity.es/mariosh/Jugador_es_archivos/BCN2.jpg He showed us the way.

Not an option from NYC! Anyway, now that La Liga is over I'll plug again Diario As' excellent stats section for your amusement, perusal, and examination of possible NUFC transfer targets. It's in Spanish, but babelfish should be enough to understand what they mean and it also has a section for CL stats: http://www.as.com/estadisticas/

If Juan Pablo Ángel and Blanco were MLS superstars, Henry will rule that place.

The ACN should have taken a three year gap while switching schedule instead. According to the BBC article, the same qualifiers willl apply for 2012 and 2013, which means they will have the same contesting teams Not sure where they'll fit the additional qualifiers, I'm not familiar with the current calendar but do African teams have dates in the FIFA calendar to fill?

That's Jonas and Coloccini off to Liverpool then to help him settle. Gotta love how this reads like "f*** my life, being with my wife and kids every day" Interesting to see so many high-profile Argentinians struggling to adapt to England. Tévez first and now him. Jonás and Coloccini seem to be doing fine, though, and haven't heard anything from Insúa or Di Santo... So guess it's just those two...

Valencia are being quick about their business. Today they announced the signing of Ricardo Costa from Wolfsburg. I lost track of him since his Porto days, but apparently he was loaned to Lille so I guess things haven't been working out for him.

Mexican press (yes I read that sometimes) reporting that Spurs are on the verge of completing a swap deal with Galatasaray for Arda Turan, with Dos Santos going the other side plus 5-10m quid.

Just stumbled upon this article from the mail. I think it's pretty telling to see how many teams have done the double since the PL came about compared to before that. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1278534/Chelsea-boss-Carlo-Ancelotti-shoots-double-tops-The-Italian-game-elite-club-launched-Preston-1889.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1278960/Manchester-City-nip-quick-24m-Aston-Villa-star-James-Milner-Chelsea-express-interest.html The most interesting bit of news here seem the part where they say that Capello will stay as England's boss until the European Championship.

Read about that, seems we got one last game upset afterall. I think the Polish league was also quite dramatic. @Neil: yes, Trabzonspor The Turkish league is quite ridiculous, something like 90% of all league titles won by Istanbul clubs, imagine something like that in England with London clubs.

Arsenal won't sell (why would they) and Cesc won't force their hand just yet. Just one more season though.

He must deposit £2000 first in order to get his salary, I would think

"Thank you, thank you and thank you. The league is here. Another league. After a hard-working season our prize is here. Enjoy it" I'm subscribed to his fan page, too, he updates it often even with photos and videos sometimes. Comes across as an immensely nice and humble guy, but as an internet personality he's as entertaining as a TV test pattern.

Just realized that, not taking Calciopoli into account, Zlatan has won seven consecutive league titles in three different countries. Some record that.

Fuck I hate not being in Barcelona right now. The streets are swarming with people partying, singing and dancing. Pretty sure now that I'm most surely moving back there after 7 years we'll hit another barren spell and win fuck all until I move out again

Thanks for the suggestions, none seem to carry our promotion playoffs live, but will keep the sites for the future (since they seem to carry our lower division regular seasons, it's fucking hard to get live scores on these, we should really improve our coverage of non-top flights).