Well done Don Trappatoni and his Irish band of brothers on beating Colombia last night 1-0. Robbie Keane scoring the goal but Dean Kiely the real hero of the evening with a splendid performance in goal.
Scotland's turn tonight against the Czechoslovakia.
Wayne Rooney's tackling concerns Fabio Capello.
FIFA vote for the quota plan. I still can't see how this is going to be legally implemented.
Chelsea's Mr Angry Henk ten Cate has been fired by Peter Kenyon.
Giovanni dos Santos has agreed a £12million move to Spurs. Richard Dunne is also a £5million target.
Michael Johnson is wanted by David Moyes for about £8million.
Emile Heskey is a target for Pompey, although Jermain Defoe wants to play alongside Peter Crouch.
Ipswich are favourites to sign Emile Mpenza.
Chris Baird is set to return to Southampton from Fulham.
Marlon Harewood is a target for Fulham, Rangers and Stoke.
Anton Ferdinand has been put up for sale by Alan Curbishley.
Sampdoria are looking at taking Massimo Donati back to Italy.
Gretna will play in Scottish Division 3 assuming they can guarantee to fulfil their fixtures next season.
Steven Gerrard and Gareth Barry are in the running to take the England armband against Trinidad and Tobago.
An England international is reputed to have gambling debts of £1million. That's a bit like me having gambling debts of £12,000 I suppose.
I forgot
Staines Town speedster Mark Nwokeji has signed for Dagenham & Redbridge.
I heard Dunne
was available on the cheap. I would love him at Arsenal.
The England international is Micheal Owen.
i thought it was owen straight away
mostly because i can't
imagine it being anyone else!
I suspect this too
Rupert Lowe has already endeared himself
to Southampton fans by sacking Pearson and replacing him with Jan Poortvliet, they're going for a new continental management structure.
Pearson
really, really deserved the opporunity to put his own squad together, I am so disappointed that he wasn't given the chance. Christ knows where we go from here, if it is possible to go further back than square one then I think we probably have...
Exactly the same happened at Carlisle
Poor Nige needs to stop getting jobs at clubs with nutters for chairmen.
It's a massive step to take
and after his last idea about bringing in a rugby man to help, i'm not that confident it will work.
0.O
Pearson's gone? I'm so out of the loop!
I'm actually happy Ten Cate is gone
Too many cooks and all that. Just a manager and assistant manger is enough, thanks.
Blatter is going nowhere with this scheme and if he has half a brain, he knows it. FIFA would be best of concentrating on implementing stricter youth development rules than attacking foreign players. It would take longer to yield results, but it could work out better in the long run and wouldn't have to be massively illegal.
Now if we could get Marlon to come home too?
Imagine that for a forward line:-
Harewood/Earnshaw/Tyson with Agogo and Holt as back up.
Lovely.
Yeah I'd be quaking in my boots
ha ha
I think the only thing with Ten Cate thing
is they've fucked up by telling him he's staying then sacking him, which reflects badly on everyone.
Brilliant example of modern football doublethink
Southampton are so cash-strapped they've just had to bring in Holland's under-21 coach: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/s/southampton/7427097.stm
Rotherham move out of Rotherham
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/r/rotherham_utd/7408097.stm
The Booth family really grind my gears.
Although 'Don Valley'
does sound like a really bad Northern gangster.
you're obviously a lot richer then I thought
anyone
hear that Mark Beevers rejected Chelsea in rder to stay at wednesday...
yes! i mentioned this yesterday!
good news, though i can't help thinking he'll be off in time anyway. still, hold onto him and all that. i'm glad he realises that wednesday first team > chelsea reserves
aye
thats a concept that didnt occur to Sidwell until far too late.
but yeah beevers wlll be gone soon, its inevitable like brunts exit last seson.
re: the Dunne transfer...
shrewd piece of business that...
i think
Ramos is going to make big changes and we'll end up in transition yet again next season. Reverse psychology innit.
I think we'll have a better and probably more consistent season
once Ramos gets a group of players that fit into his preferred system and can play week in week out.
I agree
I'm just trying a different approach to the pre season this year!
...i'm already wet-dreaming about our defence
especially if Bale regains full fitness...
Dos Santos is waaaaay overrated
Also, anyone else hear Liverpool have bid 9.5 million for Albert Riera. The same Albert Riera who did the sum of fuck all at Man City a few seasons back. Benitez seems to have a pathological obsession with spunking away money on horrendously average wingers and then playing Dirk Kuyt out wide for 3/4 of the season.
I like Dirk Kuyt
Anyone who prevents Jermaine Pennant
from playing regular football is probably rendering some sort of service to society.
Brilliant Quote RE: Pennant
'He became addicted to Scrabble. He used to save the letters up until he got 'zoo'. He thought it was a high scoring word'
From his ex girlfriend, a page 3 model.
:D
I remember this well. Massive lolz.
Footballer v glamour model Scrabble?
What's Challenge TV's phone number?
:D so much!
I'd happily play Scrabble with a Page 3 girlfriend
I'd win AND have a girlfriend. Go Jermaine!
Dos Santos hasn't had the chance tp prove himself yet...
so we'll have to wait and see...
I've seen enough of him
to think that
a) he's nowhere near as good as some people seem to think. he's young, he's got flair and he's at barca so people seem to automatically put him in the same bracket as messi.
b) he won't like the premiership one bit. i've said it before, and i don't want to come across as a parochial twat, but he's far too light weight for the premiership and he'll get the shit kicked out of him by the majority of teams.
we've already got Aaron for point b)
I really really hope there is some truth to the Capel rumours, despite the noises coming from Sevilla.
Capel
would be a much better signing, although he'd need to bulk up a bit too.
To be fair to the lad (i love that opening)...
he's only started a handful of games and hasn't exactly been hailed as the next Messi or anything so i think it's hard to say he's overrated at present...fair point about him not liking the PL, but Kinkladze did ok and he was only, like, 3ft. ALSO, he has a brother called Jonathan Dos Santos. Genius.
When are the fixtures out?
Opening day, boxing day,
final day-centric
16th June
Old news I know but did Ashley Cole really say what it's claimed he said in this article?
That's incredible, if so:
http://tinyurl.com/3wjj7k
(entertaining article btw, if probably not original in content)
I agree with everything in that article
The sick in car thing?
It's certainly been widely reported.
It was the first time I heard it.
That's astonishing...
I think Ashley Cole gets too much stick, tbh.
What's he actually done wrong? He left Arsenal because he could move to someone who would pay him a better salary and represent a more realistic chance of winning trophies. He can be a bit petulent on the pitch, yes, but i think that's a more broad problem, he's certainly no worse than Rooney, or Farbregas or plenty of others. He cheated on his Mrs, wow, i'm sure we'd all be 100% faithful if we had stunning women throwing themselves at us every day. I can't remember a better left-back.
Jesus. What a pile of shit.
quite
he's an excellent footballer (though worse than 2 years ago imo) but he's a mercenary, spineless piece of shit.
explain why...
Because
mostly of what he wrote in his book. When his agent rang him telling him Arsenal were 'only' offering him £55k/wk instead of £60k his reaction was to nearly swerve off the North Circular and claim that Arsenal were 'taking the piss'. Everything about his move from Arsenal was about making himself out to be a victim. Well bugger me and call me Justin if I don't have a jot of sympathy with the classless, whining cunt.
but wasn't the whole point that they'd offered him £60k previously?
cheers ht
Oh boo fucking hoo, he's only gonna get 55k instead of 60k for kicking a ball and doing 8 hours work a week. After tax it's even less.
I think you're missing the point.
They said they'd give him £60k then offered him £55k. I agree that £5k a week to someone with millions in the bank's a drop in the ocean, but i think i'd have stuck to my guns aswell. It's the equivelent of mine or your boss shortchanging you by £25 every week. You wouldn't just say, ahh fair do's.
Christ almighty
Maybe not
but as you say he has millions in the bank and I don't. As someone who at the moment can't cover my monthly bills as my household income has been slashed I can't find it within myself to have any sympathy with a whingeing prima donna like Cole.
I'd agree there's a principle involved but I think that Cole's come out looking an awful lot worse for putting it the way he did in his book than he bargained for.
I realise that
it's called 'salary negotiation'
For him to actually come out in public and say how shocked and upset he was by the change in offer, and cite it as a reason to change clubs, just highlights his odiousness, and one of the biggest problems in professional football today.
Just give all the top players the same salary (say 20k/week)and go back to having people playing for the teams they *want* to play for
Well, yeah, i agree.
In reality he used the salary disagreement as an excuse to move to a team who could win the league.
Personally speaking
while there are a few worse charaters around, his attitude away from the pitch absolutely stinks. Meanwhile, on the pitch, he was indeed excellent for Arsenal. Since his move to Chelsea, I'm yet to be regularly impressed by him. He neither seems as strong at the back, nor to make the impact going forward that he used to. For a while, I wasn't convinced about him being the best English left back at his club, let alone in the world.
To be fair, he's come back into form a bit more of late.
Looks like the Dunne transfer's a done deal.
Apparently they used last nights Ireland friendly in Lundun to tap him up. I'm not sure how i feel about this one. On one hand i'm pretty outraged about it, he's probably been as consistant a defender as there's been in the league over the last three years, and is obviously the club captain. On the other, if he won't sign a new deal then £5m isn't bad business and at the end of the day he's only a centre-half. It does seem like a very strange affair, though. Apparently he's not getting a pay-rise, so it can't be about the money, he doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who'd fancy a move to a London club, he's always struck me as being a pretty humble family guy who's very settled. Perhaps he just knows something we don't, goings on behind the sceneces etc. Pretty weird. There are only three players at the club that i'm against us selling - Dunne, Hart & Johnson, and it looks like they're the three the owner has decided to sell to raise money for new signings, the rest can come or go as far as i'm concerned.
a Dunne deal?
I should write for the sun
If you did a secondary school career test
That would come out top
will you temporarily follow someone else in protest?
like stockport or something?
sadly not.
I'll moan about it for a few weeks then once we win our first game he'll be completely forgotten about, as is the nature of football nowadays.
perhaps
he thinks he's got a better chance of being part of something at Spurs now you've got a bit of a crazy owner. Its not like us to ditch a successful manager for no real reason after all. :)
But I hope Dunne does come our way. Next season....
European football?
The chance to work with a well-respected manager?
Being part of a team in an exciting redevelopment period?
^ i'm so tempted to reply to this
;)
I'm warming to the idea of Dowie being in charge
Well not really. But Tim Flowers as ass man = ace. I listened to an interview with him yesterday and he sounds like a fitness beast, which is a goo thing for us. I think I read somewhere that if our games had finished in the 85th minute we'd have finished in the play off places.
Also hoping we sign Cranie, pure class at centre back, and our defence is guff
The football may not be pretty
next season, but I'd imagine you'll get results. As West Brom proved this season - just because you play the best football, doesn't mean you'll walk the league.
I wish Kaka would hurry up and have his baby already
It's making me nervous....
Kaka's pregnant?
Kaka is dead?
http://www.drownedinsound.com/articles/3153180
l would love to see crouch and defoe playing together
kanu on the bench. not a bad strike force
Spurs have signed John Bostock
Who?
Another promising young player Spurs will ruin.
like they did with....
?
Spurs are definitely one of the better teams when it comes to looking after young, normally British, talent...
^ this so much
hooray for Damien Commoli
or is that too much?
Still, just 4 games for Palace, he's got a long way to go yet.
...it's only about 200,000-500,000 upfront
depending on who you believe and will rise to £5million once he's played a certain number of PL games or become an international or something...
Dawson.
Great prospect. Now the worst centre-half in the league.
Defoe.
Robinson.
Postiga.
Perry.
Etherington.
Beasant.
Perry?
perhaps the problem is that we invest in youth and sometimes the talent just isn't there. Etherington clearly isn't a top of the premiership player, and thats where we are aiming, however realistic you deem that.
Robinson's undoing was with England and in his head. Defoe had plenty of chances, but was never more effective than Robbie Keane of Berbatov, who are a pretty impressive partnership.
Dawson looked amazing when with Ledley, but without him he's all at sea. He began to look like the Daws of old when Woodgate started playing with him, but he needs to take control himself.
Either way, you can't point the finger of blame towards Spurs regarding bringing young homegrown talent through.
Palace Say...
...No John Bostock deal! Chaos.
THATS more like the way we conduct business, good work.
i wonder if Bostock will turn out to be
the new Tom Soares
Tom Soares is a good player
John Bostock
is a Spur