Eddy Chibas

Canny advertisement as to why Australia has no relevance in the football world, if that is representative of a wider view. Mind you Danny Tiatto was a cult figure, encapsulated the Socceroo's mongrel spirit. They should know better, and be able to recognise a hatchet-job tackle when it's served up with the evidence pointing towards. In their major codes it's common practice (and easily identifiable) for somebody to take an opponent out. There's usually an outcry (from Queenslanders, understandably too) when Jonathan Thurston is taken-out, by a NSW native in a league fixture, on the eve of a State of Origin fixture. Perhaps rugby league & Aussie rules supporters are more clued-in to the negative trends within their own codes than their a-league watching counterparts, and that's why Australian football (from top level, to grassroots level coaching) irrelevant in world football.

"I won't say anything so I don't get myself into trouble" Aye, and next time we're at Old Trafford, and the ref has a choice between incurring the wrath of Fergie and the "ah well" of Pardew, what's he going to do? He should have been on the pitch at half time and full time in the ref's face, not straight down the tunnel. Bollocks to keeping our dignity, being able to take the moral high ground never won a single football match. The teams/managers that win stuff are nearly always also the biggest arseholes. I imagine he's been collared by Ashley after the Spurs incident and the game against Everton The overall feeling (within the playing group) that the manager has their back is more important than fines. If it's the other way round, and they're fine conscious/strictly worried about the bottom line where a manager remains muzzled in instances like this, well i think they know the cost of everything but understand the value of nothing. Fair play to Carver though, for hunting the prick down - he did what Fergie, or KK would have set-out to do themselves. It would have sent out a strong statement of solidarity (from the manager) to the playing group.

I think he meant to 'do' him, plain and simple. 100% this. Anyone who's ever played football, and I guess that's most of us, know exactly what his intention was. For Martinez or anyone else to deny it, or use expressions like "mis-timed", is a lie and a further insult to the victim. Sniper's challenge/hit that was, deliberate/planned, nothing left to chance. In some quarters the 'his/Haidara's leg was planted on the ground, so contact was unavoidable' excuse has been rolled out, to appropriate partial blame. What do ball-carriers need to resort to, to avoid having the careers put on the backburner, by hits like that? f***ing magic carpets?

After a rough initiation (where S'hampton were playing positive & technical football - oft let down by championship level defensive errors) but he stuck to his guns, and believed in and never deviated from the philosophy he was trying to establish there. Bad sacking, after they had clawed their way out of the bottom 3, while never resorting to Allardyce/Pulis Survival 101 Football. I'm with you, could very well be the man who is a suitable fit as far as working with the type of technical players Carr is recruiting. There's a disconnect with Pardew imho. Re: Adkins, one man's trash, could very well be another man's treasure - especially with quality to reinforce his football philosophy. Going back to the first para - our full strength back 4 (with Haidara coming through, touchwood) is light years ahead of the tools he had to work with Southampton.

Aye A pair of blatant hatchet-jobs/tackles, and not a single on-the-spot yellow handed out (DeJong escaped a y-card too iirc?). Through refereeing incompetancy the PL has become a snipers league.

what if the injury is a severed finger ? A super strength Araldite mix will do. Acupuncture alone will hopefully restore nerve function & movement. No bother at all, fuck the microsurgery.

Stevie Taylor might disagree with you when he snapped his archilles, after he felt his calf muscle advancing towards the back of his knee like rolling-up carpet (after it felt like he'd been kicked). In the event of a grade 3 tear (or rupture), whether it's muscular/tendon/or ligament, it then becomes a reconstruction - surgery is the only option. There's no f***ing about with alternate, hocus pocus/highly experimental, and far less invasive treatments.

A once maligned chairman backed his manager's (Souness it was) judgement when Dyer was signed to a new deal, the Summer straight on the back of limping off in our Eufa cup loss - that's when Dyer began to hit his serious hammy issues. Prior to that it was stress fractures (which required ortho'p surgery - rod inserted) shorlty into SBR's tenureship. At that time Dyer was to be a central part in Souness' set-up uptop ie. deep playing creative forward, and workhorse, alongside Shearer.Bellamy's replacement in other words. Ben Arfa's just as big a figure in Pardew's set-up, where individual/mercurial brilliance papers overa playing style which doesn't hellavalot of bread&butter & regulation scoring opportunities. Ben Arfa is one of those 'just a few in a generation' sort of talents, up there with Beardsley. Slim chance we'll strike it rich via the academy (i think the academy is no longer top category status, so our national talent pool - which we are allowed to draw from - is a limited one). And we were incredibly lucky in the market, when we signed Ben Arfa (huge talent signed for relative peanuts). You've got to give a talent like this a chance, to get his body right - whether it's Pardew or not, as long the manager continues to rate him. Doesn't stop Carr from unearthing a development prospect/understudy. I can't gravitate towards the calls 'to sell'.

Cautionary, biographical tales sell pretty well - ie. stories of people throwing away a well-paying career, and hitting absolute rock bottom, and not recovering. Start stashing away all the pieces of source material/articles out there. If you're going to follow the downfall this closely (and taking away some satisfaction as well) you might as well make a few quid, at the expense of the gangsta/sometime-footballer's demise. Labour-of-love with a nice little financial return.

And with each hamstring tweak, tear etc, so continues the accumulation of muscle scar tissue. And then you have the clean-up ops to try and correct that problem. This domino effect railroaded Dyer & Woodgate's careers re: their persistent upper leg muscle injuries. It's a concern tbh.

He was rusty today as was expected and I fully believe he'll come good (again). Re: the second half of that sentence. Do you really? He was in a groove earlier in the season, and put his hand-up despite shocking team-form, with more established players (and the manager too) crumbling around him. Difficult to see him coming good (again) while continued to be played in fits&bursts. In training not alot of priority & time are afforded to working on our attack (which i assume would be our transition play through the middle 1/3, which is Anita's bread & butter/greatest strength). as a bit-part player warming the bench mostly, he like a player riddled with ringrust. Not the greatest recipe for success, given his Ajax football schooling in pass&move football, especially for a guy who was getting plenty of minutes in that p&m system as Ajax were priming & grooming him as part of a new-gen midfield.

Generous assessment, with a WC looming just around the corner. He's not going to put himself in the Dutch selection frame (by establishing a run-of-form - getting rid of the ringrust first) when used as a bit-part player. Wasted year careerwise, as Jack F says, for a very promising little footballer, at the back-end of a WC preparation. Probably would have been starting at Ajax, and pushing ahead for a spot in the Dutch squad, that's what he'll be reflecting on.

If Brighton come up, with a technical brand of football on display, Poyet could very well put himself in the window, with a view to landing a bigger job ala Rodgers. Brighton/Poyet should be the most intriguing story, of any three potential survival campaigns, because of Poyet's reputation as young manager with plenty of promise (which dates back to his technical excellence as a footballer, although this sometimes doesn't translate to success in the managerial game).

Leeds & Forest, for the history they both bring to the table. Torn between Cardiff & Palace for the remaining slot. The South Wales Derby would be a welcome addition in the top flight, while i respect Palace's talent assembly line ie. i'd like to see them have an extended run up top, with the youngsters they bring through consistently.

Just some satire of what i think is becoming a joke of a situation. On a serious note Colo's father (agent) has form when it engineering moves away - being shifty in general, threatening to pull triggers. Case-in-point: Colo's move from Depor to NUFC. Claiming a 'gentleman's agreement' to sell to any club that particular summer, without anything put in writing in the form of an additional min release clause inserted, and then threatening to run with it to FIFA, a my-word-against-his dispute ffs. Who knows how much further up the legislative chain that could have travelled - in the courts, with the EU handed their golden egg? Good thing Leindero relented - maybe aware of the bigger picture, of something even bigger the clubs could lose. As difficult as he can reportedly be, it was a wise play by Leindero. A saga like that has the potential to knock-over the transfer system.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Iguazu_falls_argentina.jpg Home free, so close now. Football's very own Argo-style rescue is in the works if negotiations hit a brickwall, Vatican-style with Colo bouncing from hiding safehouse-to-safehouse/harbored in compliant Mackem territory.

Doubt he'd be allowed to enter the country. Aussie League then. I think Snoop Dog, and 50 Cent, had their share of problems getting Visas initially (to enter Aust). Anyway isn't Snoop something of a reformed Crip, and running a primary school gridiron league? His/Snoop's public image is a softer one now.Moral of the story is: Ranger had better start contributing to/or give back to the community a little, before he starts thinking of a career resurrection at any of the penal colony leagues. Aust Dep of Immigration isn't going to do any favours for a wannabe O.G. with no celebrity status, and a bad attitude. That's Snoop Lion you're talking about. I am way behind eh He should have spared no expense, and paid off Disney, and went with Snoop Mufasa.

Doubt he'd be allowed to enter the country. Aussie League then. I think Snoop Dog, and 50 Cent, had their share of problems getting Visas initially (to enter Aust). Anyway isn't Snoop something of a reformed Crip, and running a primary school gridiron league? His/Snoop's public image is a softer one now.Moral of the story is: Ranger had better start contributing to/or give back to the community a little, before he starts thinking of a career resurrection at any of the penal colony leagues. Aust Dep of Immigration isn't going to do any favours for a wannabe O.G. with no celebrity status, and a bad attitude.

The first raising of a flag (or lack of - just a bad call) will be a good indicator? Looking at it cynically, just one body outweighs the vocal support of their alloted quota (and whether it's filled) of visitors at the stadium.

Anzhi are probably worth at least a goal in the return leg. Attacking talent is there, and Gus H is a tactical genius in second legs - he's a manager for the big occasion. Look at his return leg performance against Uruguay, when at the helm of Austalia - pre-planned injection of Kewell, which turned the tie on it's head. He'll have something up his sleeve, which is worth a goal. I'd be starting Santon on the right side of defense, with on Haidara on the left - i hope that has been the prep all week. I don't think we'll get the required 2-3 goals from Simpson's deep crosses into the box. Any sort of right-side combination, featuring Simmo &/or Obertan resulting in consistent break-down of play, and i think it might be all-she-wrote.

His first campaign in the Bundesliga, after Freiburg's, was nearly a goal a game. It tapered-off to nearly 1 in 2, before we snatched him ie. new manager selling a prize asset, in order to rebuild a leaky defense. To answer the question, he wasn't surrounded by Ben Arfa-like creative talent but the answer lies in something you already posted. Maybe not the best way to judge his body of work in Germany, based on watching just two games (one was at home to Dortmund) but i got a general idea of what Freiburg were all about and where Cisse fitted in. He never showed the qualities seen in an astereotypical, murauding/ball-carrying African attacker. His involvement in an build-up was of the one-or-two touch link-up variety then they'd switch the play to the opposite flank, and Cisse would then attack the low fed (angled) ball's from the defensive weakside. They looked like a team who spent more than just one day per week (in training) on their attacking phases of play, hereby successfully integrating into their attack a striker whose game is more than anything revolves around guile. He doesn't share Ba's physical gifts, so there's little or no point trying to shoehorn him into a vertical/far more direct attack (into the box).

I didn't think he could put in a worse showing than the shower of s**** he served up at the Emirates last season, when used as withdrawn forward. However he managed to top that last week, same deficencies were on show. I don't think he's improved at all.

So elegant on-the-ball, coming out of his own half. To continue at LB he definitely needs some specialist defensive coaching, because he cannot defend with his left. If a fb cannot sweep around the feet of an outside attacker, they're going to be a whipping boy. Worse if they lack confidence & they deny the winger the outside alley, to compensate, creative widemen (not run & cross 'pure' wingers) will kill you with options on the inside. He's got the tools to be close-checking fb. His positional naivity (ie. creeping forward ahead the defensive line, exposing himself to outlet ball in-behind) can be reined-in as he matures. But 'the defending with his left' is a fundamental requirement (technically) of the position, especially in a league where fbs are often isolated in acres of space, and maturity alone won't solve that.

Bearing in Cisse was pushed first by Wilson and then Shawcross, I don't quite see what he was complaining about. Refs are constistently incompetant when dishing out reds, in those sort of situations. The guy who reacts, after provocation, too often (and sadly) gets the early trip to the shows. In the context of maintaining shithouse refereeing standards (judgement calls) Pulis is correct. In addition Stoke a team of 'baiters', they go after ball-players, frustrate/wind-em up.to draw-out a brain explosion. Pulis sets his teams up to dismantle the rythm & flow of a game, and get under the skin of opponents. It was great to watch Taylor giving some of it back too