Village Idiot

Is Newcastle's boy playing? Gonna do wonders for his morale if he does.

He only had a good season with us before he became a lazy twat, but what a season it was! His goals were so beautiful. Had he just been more professional, he would have been considered one of the great legends of the game (you can say that of dozens of Brazilians though!)

Our weakest link no doubt. South Africa gets Puyol too late and Piqué maybe too soon, they should still put up good performances though, just not "Best XI". Ramos is great going forward, but prone to Bramble-like blunders. Capdevila, Albiol, Arbeola, Marchena are just "decent" not top material. Piqué scores so much lately is silly. I think he has 4 in 12 or something like that in international games.

I think people are always putting us up as role models for supporter-owned clubs and we are not quite what these groups are trying to implement in the UK. Fans have really *no* presence in Barça's (and Real's or Bilbao's) board, we just vote it every few years. A small number of them (selected by lottery) then can approve/reject the board's budget every season but that's about it. It's like voting for your PM. Other than that we have no say on how the club is run, and it's all for good if you ask me. Putting emotional football fans in charge of an enterprise managing hundreds of millions is just mental. But it's good that the team doesn't belong to anybody but us (which limits asset-striping and overleveraging since the president is just an employee, not owner).

Yeah, I was talking about positions on the field. Marca publishes them with the lineup and had most of them all wrong.

Spain's game about to start, and if Marca is correct we seem to be putting a rather dodgy lineup due to injuries with a bunch of players out of position (Iniesta on the right wing, Silva on central midfield...) EDIT: Watching the game now, and Marca was full of it. Iniesta seems to be on centre midfield, Silva on the right wing.

What were you odds, if you want to tell?

"Dead certs" are iffy at this point when a lot of sides have already clinched their places/play for nothing.

We do have a great traditional winger, his name is Dani Alves. In our system fullbacks play the role of wingers more often than not (particularly Alves, Abidal is more conservative). Of course, we look like an expensive fragile piece of china at the back, but that's been our way for the last two decades. We have had traditional wingers over the years, and for different reasons they have never succeded, not necessarily of their own fault. Our most legendary wide men of recent times (Stoichkov, Rivaldo, Larsson, Ronaldinho, Messi...) have very often been central men put out wide. The reasoning is that packing the wide positions with our fullbacks and bringing our wingers inwards provokes positioning difficulties for the defence that our probing style can then pick up and exploit.

I think it's more due to the fact that we have been playing like that since 2003, and it's very well known that we play with the ball on the floor. Guardiola's just been more extreme than Rijkaard.

Until Zlatan joined (and he isn't a good technical header of the ball, just very tall) our forward line was useless in the air. But it's been like that since long. Most of our attacking players (Xavi, Iniesta, Messi, Eto'o...) have always been short. One of the good things Zlatan does is working as a target man since his ability to catch a long ball and bring it down to his feet is really uncanny.

We don't cross. Like never. Ibrahimovic gives us something in the air this season, but we mainly use aerial balls only in set pieces (Keita and Piqué shine in those) or quick breaks. Otherwise the ball is always on the floor. Our wingers don't really play wide, but more as forwards that drift to the side of the box, while our fullbacks are charged with providing the width.

Honestly, I find your posts kind of depressing. You have a problem on the wing, you go and splah a bit of cash on Robinho. Newcastle have a problem on the wing, we sell a winger and dont buy another. For what you're likely to pay for him, I don't think Robinho would be worth the cash. He has a bad attitude, but tbh, if there is one thing that can probaly shut him up, it's playing with the best players in the world. Yes, his attitude bothers me, but he's quality. He won't come cheap though, it's not like City needs the money or anything. And yes, being a fan of a big club is sort of privileged. Though if I was born to another family I could have been an Espanyol fan! I'm slightly worried about our spending though. Our economy a few years ago was on the brink of collapse, and I'm not sure where all these dozens of millions we seem to spend every year are coming from all of a sudden. We have some reputed economists on our staff, so I assume they are doing it right and not overburdening the club.

He's been very poor to be honest. He just doesn't seem to have that intensity anymore, and his legs are obviously (and understandably) deserting him. It might be just a bad patch of form, but he's not getting any younger nonetheless.

Robinho's class, but a very selfish player and a twat. Not sure he would fit in. But Guardiola's apparently very keen on him. He'd certainly be an upgrade over Henry though.

Spanish media are reporting that Robinho has asked City to sell him to Barça during the transfer market. It is well known that he is one of Guardiola's top targets for our left wing.

Any chance that the Ireland (player, not country) situation is sorted out? I guess it's probably too late for him to make the WC squad though.

I'll ask my brother actually, he knows his family. I have never been *that* convinced he's Barça through and through.

Can still miss out if we lose the last two, apparently. Hope you make it to the WC, always had a soft spot for Eire since that spell in the late 80s under Charlton when you were unplayable.

Isn't the England squad pretty much going to be the same as the last time around under Sven? I just read somewhere that Sven claimed that Capello "had a better squad now".

That pretty much gives RoI the playoff place, doesn't it?

Don't worry we'll take care of that soon. Thanks for developing our youth player, btw

Puyol with an og against Armenia, Mata from the spot to make it 1-2 again. Apparently Cesc and Xavi had a blinder together despite the modest scoreline.

Love Iniesta so much... he came out last week saying that playing in the CL final carrying a groin injury nearly destroyed his career (he's been 4 months out of it), but that he "would do it again".

Xavi's not very good on a 442. He didn't really start to shine until Rijkaard brought back the 433 and he had another midfielder to lie deep and enabled him to roam forward more often. 433 with Essien-Xavi-Drogba and a DM would be mental, though.