Village Idiot

Henry & Anelka were on the flanks if reports are correct & the big lum Gignac (sp) was upfront. Really? Honestly, that's class-A shooting in your own foot right there.

Still amazed Domenec's still on the bench. However, regarding Benzema... He has Henry and Anelka in front of him, who all scored more than him last season. However, Ribéry not playing these two games is a bit nuts.

There are quite few who were regulars when they were 21 his hero Van Der Sar being the main one. GK's like Akinfeev & Neuer both 22 have been regulars in there teams for a while. Was that lad Shay Given a regular by the age of 21. Casillas, Víctor Valdés, Reina... all regulars since they were 21.

In Liverpool he has that lump Dirk Kuyt ahead of him, that covers his back pretty well. I'm not sure Johnson and Lennon on the same wing is going to work against decent opposition.

Completely different footballers if you ask me. Also a season ago I'd have said the opposite.

Was that Eduardo diving?

Sucks to see all my fantasy footie players scoring points all over the place, and they don't count. I hate international weekends.

Wow, Sweden are really awful these days... 0-1 to Malta with a maltese own goal?

Reading the wikipedia article on the competition it seems that yours was actually the first one where competitors were selected on league placement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-Cities_Fairs_Cup Grats on winning the first proper second tier continental cup, then.

Oh, jesting aside it's all the same for me. Top tier continental trophy, top tier league competition, etc... Not so sure about the Intercities Fairs Cup since it was invitational iirc, but I'd love it since we have three.

Actually, this is a somewhat interesting discussion for a change. Case in point, UEFA lists the EC and the CL as different trophies: http://www.uefa.com/footballeurope/club=50080/competition=1/index.html (scroll down to the "honors" section)

Ameobi has more Premier League goals than Bobby Charlton.

Not one at his level, though. I'm sure he'll claim that he wanted to play for his hometown team and all that, but he'd obviously be settling for a club like TFC. I was pretty surprised to see him on the free agent list, let alone not have anyone go in for him. Must have flown right under the radar. Hopefully he'll tear through the MLS and help Toronto into the playoffs this year. I plan to go to their first playoff game if they get in (four hour drive for me). Lucky you, I get stuck with the New York Red Bulls. I guess he'll be getting one of those designated player spots in TFC. He's clearly too good for that league, really. But he can go somewhere else in January when the season's over.

Strange, he was pretty decent at Deportivo. But you have like a million central midfielders already, don't you?

Mint manager. I presume he'll end up at Chelsea unless Ancelotti has a good season (which he may well have).

I hope so or is he away on international duty ? He's in Barcelona finalizing pre-contract negotiations. All a clever ploy to get us sued and transfer-banned.

The Mirror comes again to the rescue: Since the whole affair makes a creative approach to FIFA transfer rules, I assume they don't want to mess up with international transfers (those need paperwork from FIFA to go through, do they?)

Wait a minute... isn't Slovakia's manager one "Vladimir Weiss" too? Is it his dad? Incidentally, I recall him playing against us during this summer's friendly against Man City in Barcelona, he didn't particularly stand out.

I remember him bottling his pen against Bayern in the 2001 CL final.

More Maierhofer fun http://www.stefan-maierhofer.com/img/fotos/mostwanted/stefan-maierhofer-privat-26.jpg

*emails FC Barcelona head scout about Vukcic*

I don't think that's true for *emergency* loans outside the window, though. As teams outside England would face re-registration issues after the loan expires, as our transfer windows are shut and we don't recognize this kind of loan in our transfer systems.

Why does Hodgson always look like a kid fiddler when posing with his players?

I just watched the updated version from BBC1 and it nearly had me in tears again. Brilliant man. My favorite Barça moment of him (aside from the Cup win, of course) was when he was interviewed in a restaurant. The reporter asked him about how the critics thought his system was too conservative for Barça. Sir Robson just grabbed all the wine glasses in the table and promptly proceeded to school the journalist on the teams tactics and player movements. It was awesome

Just pointing out that it wasn't a case of Accrington Stanley manager asking his president to buy Cristiano Ronaldo, the players were reasonably gettable. The economics of it are a different thing. But you spent a lot of transfer budget on "who?" players anyway. Anyway, I'm an outsider and I don't know much about the affair. Just wanted to point out these players, at that time, were not impossible signings.