Village Idiot

Ray Hudson is a Geordie? Holy shit

Hasn't Keane recently come out and said he cares a flying fuck about Manchester United too? Although he probably just says it to piss people off.

In other news, I see that Schalke have managed to lose the Bundesliga again.

He's in the mix due to the aforementioned injury doubts over our CMs. Del Bosque actually mentioned his name the other day!!!!11111one

club > country and actually Xavi, Cesc and Iniesta have all injury issues at this point.

Xavi's just said that he's played today with a 3cm rip in his calf muscle, and he intends to do so until the league is sewn up. Legend

Incidentally, the relegation dogfight has heatened up quite a bit. A few weeks ago Tenerife/Valladolid/Xerez were certainties and some good results from all of them has put them back with a chance, and now even the 13th placed team (Sporting) is just 3 points above the drop zone with 3 games to go. Even Xerez has a small chance, 6 points off.

Doesn't Bolton have half a million rightbacks? And Lee on right midfield.

Lacks mobility in the pitch. Don't think he's England material if you ask me. But if Jenas managed 20+ caps...

Not tasked with taking care of vermin, I suppose.

So, Pompey would be 18th now if it weren't for the point deduction? Still mathematically relegated, but a good show given all the crap that's surrounded the club.

1-4, that's one matchball sorted and in decent fashion. We needed to get spirits up. Tenerife and Valladolid at home should be easy, although they will be both fighting against relegation. But we still have Sevilla away in between, who are still chasing CL football. Madrid plays Osasuna at home tomorrow and then it's Mallorca away, Bilbao at home and Málaga away.

Random fact of the day, with today's game Sergio Ariel "Caño" Ibagaza has become the Argentinian that has played most games in La Liga, with 340.

Get in. Need a good performance to lift us up for the last stretch.

Zlatan benched.

Xisco scored. Looks to me like he fouled the keeper though.

Some more details... 11 clubs are part of the "Liga Élite" (as it's informally known) agreement. No names are known at this point other than Barça and Madrid but I suppose it's mostly the top half clubs.

Surprised he hasn't been linked with bigger clubs yet.

There trying to force a decent fella to quit so they dont give him any money. If KK had a case for constructive dismissal, pretty sure Zola would on similar grounds too.

He's not all-powerful (he promised the 2006 WC to South Africa and didn't deliver), but Blatter has pretty openly said that 2018 is fixed for an European candidate. http://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/news?slug=ap-wcup2018-blatter

http://www.barcaforum.com/forum.php It's a gloryhunter cove, but it's the major FCB forum in English. I personally avoid it

I've started a thread about it before (plug: http://www.newcastle-online.org/nufcforum/index.php/topic,60604.30.html) - I think it shouldn't exist. It massively helps the bigger clubs imo and f***s over the careers of many young players. I see. As said in that thread, in Spain we have 25-man squads and the loan market is actually pretty small as a result. Clubs can't risk stockpiling players and find themselves with unhappy player without a squad number. Barça only have three first squad players on loan (and only one is a youth player), Madrid doesn't have any, etc... of course we have our B teams playing inside our league structure, which helps in giving youngsters competitive football. We also don't have that bullshit "emergency loan" system, which allows English clubs to get rid of surplus players after the transfer window deadline and thus encourages careless squad planning.

25 man squads should help a lot in reducing its abuse, I think.

Aren't you in america though? Would be a shambles if it all got rearranged for a bit more money, I agree. Well, I was speaking from the pov of people going to games. Plus it's likely I'll be heading back to the motherland this summer. And Minister, our current viewership is mostly in SA and the latino communities in countries like the USA. The PL doesn't have much of a graft over that audience, so the plan I guess is to keep those and attack the Asian markets which are currently dominated by the PL.