Village Idiot

I think it was pretty obvious that Milan's aged legs just gave up after around an hour.

Fuck me, Real Madrid press a bunch of mongs as usual, Marca openly blaming Pellegrini of yesterday's defeat in their front page today

Found this bit in the stadium's wikipedia entry... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadio_delle_Alpi (First time I use this icon here, I think!)

Beckham hasn't had legs since pretty much his last seasons at Real, he's still got one of the sweetest right feet in the footballing world though. You pretty much field him for his deadball skills. And as you talk about him being old he's subbed by Seedorf, Milan is a joke

Benzema coming in for Higuaín, let's see what he manages against his former club. Also, Higuaín, as good as he is, has some really poor goalscoring form in the CL for some reason.

Come on Lyon, get a second and I'll start to believe in the miracle.

That's the ManU way of doing things isn't it? Lots of times they just don't look good yet they are able to grind the result. I always admired that from them, call it luck, grit, intimidation...

Never stops does it? One day we'll have a fit squad. You won't.

What kind of attendance did the Torino teams pull at the Delle Alpi? Can't believe a team that was playing in a 70k stadium (and is one of Europe's greats) can't even fill a 27k one at this time.

"Calcio" is pretty common usage in Spain when talking about Italian footie. What is more, nobody talks about "Serie A", just "El Calcio". What would be great is to be able to get average occupancy %. For example La Liga has quite a few clubs around or under 50%, which is a disgrace, and you'd be hard pressed to find any club over 75% of their stadium. So much plastic on display at some games! It needs a bit of number crunching and I'm not that interested though...

Beats playing Arshavin as striker. Although I assume Bendtner is fit now? Not that he is good enough either.

Oooooops. Haven't slept in all night. Plus the fixture spreading confused me. Maybe I should now.

Bobby Robson.

Sure. Go ahead

No Alves, Xavi, Keita, Touré, Chygrynsky, Abidal for us today. If Hleb scores I'll be pissed.

I used to read a Bolton forum before (as said, I have a weird sympathy for them), and I find pretty hilarious that they made the same jokes regarding Nolan's fitness and suspected pie-eating habits that you lot are doing now.

He was "injuried" for both legs in 2008.

We used to have relegation playoffs. 17th and 18th played 3rd and 4th in Second Division for two First Division spots. They were quite exciting games, but the decision to remove them for instead having a third automatic promotion/relegation place was pretty unanimous.

Indeed, I don't know the situation in England/Italy, but in Spain the outlawing of terraces was a big hit. A lot of people that bought those just can't afford to buy tickets/STs at today's prices. Clubs have also figured out they end up making more money selling less seats at higher prices too.

I have been round Nevada a couple times. They have a Barça supporter club, but not really my kind of crowd. I usually go to the House of Galicia in Queens (excellent food!) which show every La Liga and CL game back to back, with a bunch of Catalan and Spanish friends. There's NOTHING like spending the entire afternoon watching Spanish footie and eating tapas. Never been to pier 40 though, will check some time.

Don't think so, since participants in it didn't play any other continental competition. I think what happened is that with the expansion of the CL, top clubs wouldn't play in it anymore (Barcelona, ManU, Arsenal... all won it in the 1990s) so it wasn't worth keeping around and just sort of merged it with the UEFA Cup (as cup winners got a spot to that competition instead). I personally loved that competition, since it was very hard to qualify for it (strong clubs didn't ignore the cup as much as they do nowadays), you faced great sides during the run, and take great pride in us being record holders (one of the reasons Sir Bob's triumph in 1997 is one of my favorite trophy wins of my lifetime). Really, to me it was the second greatest trophy an European side could win.

You in Ny? Yeah.

Seriously considering feigning injury to skip work tomorrow afternoon. Fuck yank time difference and midweek football.

Has happened pretty often.

To be completely honest take out Barça and Madrid and La Liga's attendances are pretty poor. You have some mid-lower table teams with averages of 50%, disgraceful.