TheBrownBottle

You’re probably right - but it would be Sporting all the way from me. League football pales next to the excitement of European knockouts - and for me the entire purpose of doing well in the league is European qualification

Yeah - though of course, those European games were snookered by the greed of the Halls and Shepherds, bumping the prices up and making ST holders buy all three group game tickets at the same time (from memory, my tickets cost c.£100). Mind you, the enthusiasm for European football waned after a season or two - it become just another cup match, only often against opponents folks didn’t care about. Hopefully, 15 years of almost no European nights will bring that enthusiasm back!

Yeah, me too re KK / BR eras. The attendances would dip slightly as the away allocation was fixed back then - the ground was still all-season ticket and it was hard to get in. That’s why the standard of opposition / importance of game doesn’t seem to impact attendance during that period - it’s really a sign of which clubs have the best away support. So Leicester, Derby, Spurs (their away lot were always flaky - this was very much a mid-table era for Spurs), Blackburn and Fulham are the only games where the crowd is (just) under the 51k mark

Crazier stuff has happened (see 1966)

Yeah, likewise, I was smiling through most of that

That felt more like the end of Rocky IV to me

‘Beano fan in peace’

I feel like I know a celebrity - I know who the bloke is. He used to post on the TF board on FB - he declared on there he was signed in as ‘Mag in Peace’. This was when that knacker wanted to fly a banner over Sunderland when that poor little laddie was dying

No-one should go on there to explain owt imo Its like having a joke explained or having a magician explain an illusion. It takes away all the fun. I love watching their descent into madness

Gan on then, I’ll have a crack Croatia 1-4 Brazil Holland 3-2 Argentina Morocco 2-1 Portugal England 1-3 France

Yeah, likewise. Portugal wouldn't make my current list of three likely winners.

Yep, all well-taken. It is a really good Portuguese side and they play decent football - and they'll be eyeing up a semi now given the opposition. I just hope Morocco make more of a game of it - the Swiss were embarrassing there

Switzerland has been worse than shite here mind. Portugal are a good side and they've played well, but fuck me they've been aided and abetted in this scoreline

I'd actually quite like to see Portugal win it if it wasn't for 'CR7' and his acolytes. He could be dropped and not play a single second in the next three games and you know he'd make himself front and centre of the celebrations - like an unironic David May

They used to do it with Roberto Carlos too - every fucking free kick. Despite the fact that after that FK vs France in Le Tournoi, he didn't score another one for Brazil until a game vs China five years later.

His friend (and ours) Gary Hoffman is part of the Ashley lot who now own Cov's stadium. Harambe therefore offers his 'backing'. Odious little shite

I didn’t say he was shit - but the defensive partner he has clearly makes a difference. He used to look shaky regularly for NUFC. Botman / Burn are the perfect foil for him

Burn and Botman looking increasingly like the greatest hand-holders in defensive history here. Schar looks like Schar again. Get him home to Eddie.

You’ve got to love them We’ve got years and years and years of this and I’m going to enjoy every second - these stories will pop up from time to time and they’ll get excited. Of course, they’re actually mortified that KSA will buy English football’s most famous club for sportswashing, but that mortification will often look like celebrations. And it’ll dwindle away as they realise it isn’t happening, and cling again to the notion that they definitely wouldn’t swap places, and it’ll all end in tears, etc etc ad infinitum

It’s shite like this that Chadwick said - utterly littered with total weapons-grade horseshit - which irritates: “Newcastle United has always seemed like an opportunistic purchase and I think in essence the deal for Newcastle was sold heavily to them by intermediaries,” adds Chadwick. “You had a willing seller and the amount of money they paid is small change. “The opportunistic purchase of Newcastle, I think, was a consequence of being kicked back by Manchester United in the first place. “There probably will be a certain amount of disbelief amongst Saudi officials having bought Newcastle when they really wanted to buy Manchester United. They are now in a position where they could potentially buy Manchester United. “I might be going out on a bit of a limb here, but it is not entirely inconceivable that they could dispose of Newcastle and buy Manchester United.” Yep, seemed really ‘opportunistic’ to me. So opportunistic that they spent the best part of two years trying before paying Qatar £1bn to resolve it. The good prof doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of ‘opportunistic’, and as others have pointed out, this is really the desperate ramblings of a man who wanted his club bought.

I don’t, and they could outgun the competition financially. Those clubs will be bought out with borrowed cash and heavy leveraging.

I love the fact he’s a Professor too - a Professor who is meant to specialise in his knowledge of this stuff. Yet he’s exposed as knowing the square root of fuck all

I’m not sure it’s defensiveness - I think the situation is funny. It’s a desperate misreading of both the situation and PIF’s intent. If they wanted to buy Man Utd they could have at any time - does anyone seriously think the Glazers wouldn’t have accepted a bid? It’s as funny as those sad twats from Milan and Marseille thinking that the PIF buyout was always happening tomorrow.

Bloody hell that had left my memory banks! Yeah, he used to do that every time - it was more subtle when it started, by the end he was jumping literally when the ball was kicked …

Defenders bounced off him. Unfortunately, so did the ball