Boards
THURSDAY FOOTBALL THREAD
Champions League qualifying last night innit.
We (Celtic) we're comfortable beaten by an Arsenal side that didn't look nearly as impressive as they have against Everton and Pompey. We're absolutely rubbish up top and didn't really threaten the Arsenal goal once over the two legs aside from Mo Mo Massimo Donati's sublime finish when the tie was dead and buried - best goal of the tie that. Eduardo is a dirty cheat but well done Arsenal anyway.
No major upsets in the other ties apart from maybe APOEL FC beaten FC Kobenhavn 3-1 away to go through, well done to them. They're going to get absolutely raped in the group stages.
Big thing today is the Champions League draw. We're not in it (obvs) but I'm always interested, here's the seedings:
Pot One: Barcelona, Chelsea, Liverpool, Man Utd, AC Milan, Arsenal, Sevilla, Bayern Munich
Pot Two: Lyon, Inter Milan, Real Madrid, CSKA Moscow, Porto, AZ Alkmaar, Juventus, Rangers
Pot Three: Olympiakos, Marseille, Dinamo Kiev, Stuttgart, Fiorentina, Atletico Madrid, Bordeaux, Besiktas
Pot Four: Wolfsburg, Standard Liege, Maccabi Haifa, FC Zurich, Rubin Kazan, Unirea Urziceni, APOEL Nicosia, Debreceni
Rangers to get Chelsea, Atletico Madrid and Wolfsburg please! They're well lucky they're in Pot Two, the bastards.
There was also some Carling Cup action on last night, Blackpool being the main talking point with a superb 4-1 defeat of Wigan, well done you rock-munchers. Newcastle beat Huddersfield 4-3 in extra time, West Brom did the same to Rotherham, sounds like two good games there, looking forward to the highlights. Spurs continue their march towards domestic domination with a fine 5-1 win away to Doncaster, plenty of goals in that Spurs side it would seem.
Here's some transfer rumours for you:
Roman Pavlyuchenko is wanted back by Spartak Moscow for £10m, decent price that. Great player though, they should hold onto him.
Roy Keane is after some of his old Sunderland players - Carlos Edwards, Grant Leadbitter, Daryl Murphy and Nyron Nosworthy.
Chelsea want de Guzman from Feyenoord. Any good?
Villa are still after Warnock (why?) and Dunne (aye).
Bolton want Kevin Nolan back. Would you take him back Verbal?
Sunderland want Michael Turner for £6m.
Sven tried to bring Pavel motherfucking Nedved to Notts County. Oh man, that would have been amazing.
Tuncay to Birmingham for £5m. Good player, could do better than Brum.
Fulham are about to sign Marc Janko on a season-long loan, he scored about 300 goals last season in the Austrian league.
The rest is all very boring.
Up in Scotland...
Everton are about to offer £6m for Scott Brown. I'd expect a little bit more for him. Doubt he'd want to leave and Celtic have no need to sell.
McManus has turned down a loan switch to Ipswitch. Sensible boy, he's better than that. Can't see him getting back in the Celtic side though.
Swindon have signed Ben Hutchinson and Simon Ferry from us until January.
David Murray has stepped down as chairman of Rangers FC. Sorry, I mean, he has relinquished his role as chairman and board member.
Rangers have signed no one. Again.
We've all moved the transfer deadline to 5PM on Tuesday.
Oh, and one more thing...
Sheffield Wednesday have transfer listed Francis Jeffers after he was red cared for a headbutt during a 2-0 defeat to Port Vale. What was the incident like? If it's anything like I've been told then he should get a 10 game ban and be sacked by Wednesday.
Cheers.