Village Idiot

Ancelotti's Chelsea has so little width, I wonder why any team hasn't been able to exploit that effectively yet.

Speaking of strikers, such a fantastic finish by Torres on his first goal. Can't believe he got it in there from such a tight angle with Green and some Wham defender diving at him.

Zlatan and Drogba have both better all-around play than Villa if you ask me. Still one of the best, and deserves a shot at silverware.

A conference system would be a joke. You can't really claim to be the champion of England if you are Chelsea and never get to play Liverpool or Manchester United. Also it would be way harder to play in the northern division than the southern one.

Messi 5 - 2 on injury time. That's more like it.

Forlán 4-2. Min 84

How would this work? Two divisions as in EPL and CCC or like some farcical yank league with two conferences and playoffs?

We are actually pretty shaky at the back, but Atlético have been pretty awful to capitalize on it. They should actually be way better than that, though. I think they have a short squad, but there's rumor of economic trouble and some bad mood in the board room. I also think Abel isn't really up to it. It reminds me of Roeder, who fluked a good half a year as emergency manager, but he's no way good enough as full time for a team in the Champion's League.

4 - 0 Keita Awesome little play betwen Ibra and Messi leading up to it.

3 - 0 What a strike from Alves

Min 15 Messi Xavi's pass

2 min in, Ibra scores

Torres, though, what a player. I never rated him while at Atlético, but he really has raised his game after moving to Liverpool.

I don't know, thought Skrtel looked shakier today, he just only seems to be able to kick in the spuds any attacker who doesn't give the ball away when seeing his ugly face. I think they are missing Hyppia more than I thought.

Really looking forward the Barça-Atlético game, these matches are almost always a blast. Iniesta still on the bench, as he lacks match fitness. Otherwise a near full strength lineup for us (rather have Touré instead of Busquets, but it's a reasonable rotation)

really? league and cups would be enough for me as a newcastle fan They haven't won trophies during the period covered by that study. Mind, I consider Arsenal to be an extremely well run club, but in today's football sadly if you want to win you have to splash the cash. They can beat any team on their day, maturing all the time, and always reach the final stages of every cup they enter. I don't see a lot wrong with that. Aye, they obviously overperform given their expenditure, I'm not denying that. As said I consider them to be very well run (better run than us for example). But they haven't won a trophy in years with that low spending policy, and I'm 90% sure they won't win any this season either. Maybe it's wiser in the long term, I don't know.

really? league and cups would be enough for me as a newcastle fan They haven't won trophies during the period covered by that study. Mind, I consider Arsenal to be an extremely well run club, but in today's football sadly if you want to win you have to splash the cash.

You have won naught though.

It's not as bad as everyone makes out. Guardiola has wanted rid of Eto'o for ages (his attitude is crap, not in lack of effort, but he's too hotheaded), also Eto'o's contract would've been up at the end of this season so he's worth much less because of that, and also Ibrahimovic gives Barcelona more options in that they can play long balls and put balls in the box now. Not to mention the fact that Ibrahimovic and Eto'o have had similar scoring records for the last two or so seasons. I'm not against the exchange of players for the reasons you've given. But giving Eto'o+43m for Ibrahimovic was a scam of the biggest order. But I don't think Ibra will be a magnitude less effective than Eto'o once he clicks. We already have bunch of mobile forwards that make runs into the box and are pacey (Messi, Henry, Bojan). I'm not saying they are as good as Eto'o on that role, but Ibra opens up a whole new dimension to our attacking play... His ability to get balls down inside the box is uncanny, and Eto'o would have needed to bring a stair to reach those.

Nah, Overmars for €40m still trumps it. But really, Txiki is truely useless. What pisses me off is spending 15m every season on players that are obviously not improving our lineup and are too expensive to be bit parts and end up going on frees or loans (Hleb, Gudjohnsen, Cáceres, Henrique... betting on Keirrison to follow that route).

I wonder what's Barça's average net spending these past years, I reckon I'm not going to like the figures since every season we seem to spend a lot and sell for little. I think we are at around €85m net this season alone Off the top of my head: Ibrahimovic: €43m (after Eto'o) Keirrison: €15m Chygrynsky: €25m Maxwell: €4m Total: €87m Sales: Gudjohnsen: €2m (after clauses...) Hleb: loan Cáceres: loan Henrique: loan Total: €2m And when you think of it a lot of our signings have been failures (Henrique, Cáceres, Gudjohnsen, Hleb...) and the spine of our treble winning team was mostly homegrown+Eto'o/Touré/Henry. BEGIRISTAIN OUT

Can't believe he got Arteta so cheap, we (Barça) sold it to Rangers for €10m and he was a success there IIRC, can't believe that his price dropped so much after just one unsuccessful half a season at Real Sociedad. Great dealing indeed.

I wonder what he would do with funds. Maybe nothing special, mind.

Can they play in the reserve league, for example?

Villa weren't at the stage they are now when they signed him. I also believe it would be a good season for Villa if they managed to reach the Europa League spots again. In my opinion, Milner should be a definite starter in the current Aston Villa side. they finished 6th the season before they got him I saw no real improvement from them overall last season although they did have an excellent spell when they really got the rub of the green early-mid season Fair enough. Just when you thought it was hard enough breaking into the top four with the big four infront of you, Manchester City come along and make it a big 5, soul destroying. Yeah, but apart from Chelsea and probably ManU, I'm not sure the rest of the big 4 could financially resist a spell outside the Champion's League should City be successful in their bid. So it could actually not be a "Big 5"