Village Idiot

"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.

Yes they do, like Spain.

Serie A is hugely popular overseas, second only to the Premiership I think. And aren't Italian club finances pretty fucked anyway?

To be honest I would be down with having cup winners in it. They would be actual champions of something for a change. Would also revitalize the cup competitions.

Aren't the name rights owned by some random rich guy? Also, can't see Red Bull allowing that after all the money they have thrown into the team and stadium. They'd probably end up with something ridiculous like Red Bull New York Cosmos. But yeah, they even play(ed) at the same stadium (shitty place for football, truth be said).

I hope to god that 39th game stuff is really dropped for good. It was a mockery of the fairness of a league competition.

Even if you entered the likes of Fulham or Bolton, there's absolutely no chance that you would lose your 4 spot allocation, imho.

Your "one final in 53 years" made me just check your honors list Brummie, for some reason I thought Aston Villa had won more stuff! (and I don't mean that disparagingly, always considered AV a classic English side). Still, you won an EC before us did! I think you have a shot at the cup, if Chelsea drops a bollock. But yeah, that Petrov goal smells of champions' luck.

Yeah, I meant the FA. We closed down our League Cup two decades ago for a reason.

I agree about giving a CL spot to the cup winner, I wish they would do that in Spain too although we don't have the same issues there (3rd and 4th spots are pretty open). However I can't see UEFA smiling at say, Pompey playing the CL (as cool as it would be for fans of small clubs that manage a good cup run).