English Premier League thread

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That is a difficult one.
Ridgwell clearly dives. But if he continues his run, it is a penalty.
I wouldn't give it, but it isn't as clearcut as it seems.
 
gerd said:
That is a difficult one.
Ridgwell clearly dives. But if he continues his run, it is a penalty.
I wouldn't give it, but it isn't as clearcut as it seems.
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I wouldn't give it either.
The "if" makes all of it in my opinion.
 
Good result tonight against the in-form West Brom, chuffed to mintballs at the performance. 8th place now with 20 points, now if we'd have converted some of those draws to wins we'd have been in 3rd.

Brendan who? :D
 
jackarmy said:
Good result tonight against the in-form West Brom, chuffed to mintballs at the performance. 8th place now with 20 points, now if we'd have converted some of those draws to wins we'd have been in 3rd.

Brendan who? :D
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LOL about Brendan who.

I'm over the moon for Swansea. The began the season in a fantastic way, but then i was worried for a period. I was thinking about Reading and their second season under Steve Coppel. That was another team that was brilliant during their first season, but they got relegated.
If there is an heaven, then the football that is played there is the one Swansea plays...everybody should absolutely love this team.
 
This is kind of interesting, especially as it doesn't totally correlate with overall transfer spend. Clearly some clubs are more 'okay' with the greedy blood sucking parasites than others:

Total fees paid to agents, 10-11

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Not necessary, it just strikes me that for the last months in all your posts it's seems as if Manchester City and Chelsea are the devil in football.
While i don't like what is happening now (the sugar daddies) i only see it as the eamanation of the evolution football is taking for the last 20 years.
Is there really such a big difference between Mansout, Arbamovich and Glazer (or is it Glazier?) ? I honestly don't think so. You inspired me to write the latest blog episode about moralising about football teams. In the heavily advantaged world of the EPL all the clubs are roughly the same. The difference between Manchester City and Fulham is much smaller than the difference between Fulham and Doncaster Rovers (for example).
Big tradition clubs like Ajax, Benfica or Porto can't fairly compete with English clubs (when West Ham played in the second division they still had a much higher budget than Anderlecht, Belgium biggest team).
All the EPL clubs are exploiting their fans (you only have to look at the way ticket prizes went sky high, football used to be the people's sport, it isn't anymore remember Roy Keane about the prawn sandwiches), yet they don't see it.
Bach when i was a United fan i went to Manchester and visited the megastore for the fans. I was disgusted, right there and then i decided that i had enough. Look for example the way the club has exploited the Munich disaster, knowing that families of deceased players afterwards complained about the fact that Manchester United never helped them and even avoided them (a son of one of the deceased wrote a book about it, Neil Berry, the son of the deceased John Berry).
Are United worse than the other English clubs, of course not...but they were my team and i simply couldn't relate any more with those things.
Of course i'm hypocrite too because i now support Spurs and i think they have exactly the same attitude towards their fans.
IMO football clubs belong to the fans and not to mega-rich owners who only become richer because of the fans' loyalty (and if you read the book Richer than God, by David Conn a very critical Man City fan, you would realize that Mansour is indeed to a certain degree respecting to City fans).
I don't want to become offensive or personal beach, because i enjoy discussing with you, but you make vilains out of Chelsea and City because they are treatening Man Uniteds hegemony. You see it as unfair competition (and of course one has to agree with you), but you don't see that Man Utd has unfair advantages towards most other English and foreign clubs...

I suspect that we will never agree about this, but that doesn't mean i don't respect you.
 
Yeah Michu has been incredible!!

What a JOKE of a defender Senderos is! Wonder how many goals his poor positioning, decision-making and marking have cost Arsenal and Fulham over the years.

At least he's not young anymore so Wenger and others can tell us he'll BECOME good and give him time... :LOL:
 
The_Special_One said:
What a difference a week makes! 9 points in 3 matches, 7 points from the top and tied for 3rd all in a week! Keep riding the train AVB!
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In the end the 5-2 against Arsenal doesn't eve nmatter...you know who makes the difference Andre ?

Moussa Dembele.

In his absence Spurs got 2 points out of a possible 18.

For me revelation of the season (for Spurs) is Sandro...
 
@ Gerd - Cheers for the detailed post, I actually agree with a lot of that - particularly the commercialisation of football being distasteful. It's definitely not the same sport I grew up watching.

I know you view any grievance I have with sugar daddies as being reflective of the team I support but it genuinely isn't about that. I grew up in a North American environment where the thought that a team could literally buy a championship just galls. Some teams will always have slightly higher budgets than others at different times, depending on conditions, history, town-size and so forth. That is the way of the world, and until football gets serious about some kind of league-wide salary cap or draft system, it'll always be the case.

But the sheer scale of what Chelsea and City have done within a league is what blows me away. You say that all English clubs have a similar scale difference from Belgian clubs - but they don't compete against each other. Obviously United are held up as the big spenders in the last 20 years of the 'premier league' and that was partly true. But both City and Chelsea outspend 25+ years in just 2 or 3 seasons. Both lose more money in a season than 16 of the teams in the league will have made in that entire 20 year period. That's what I find distasteful. It would be different if Mansour or Abramovich came in with some mad, non-sensical love of City/Chelsea and developed them in such a way that they were sustainable and self-supporting. But they didn't. They created wage bills in line with Barcelona and Madrid, but with none of the revenues. They completely blew apart the English football market (£25+m for Lescott, Barry, Milner, Adebayor, Nasri - madness!) and the wages players' demand.

I don't think that helps anyone, other than those in power in football who are directly financially benefitting. The premier league love it - all those men in suits get even more money, they get their cut. Agents love it, they get theirs. Players like it, double your salary by moving and sitting on the bench? Sure, look at Jack Rodwell (remember him?).

And now only a handful of clubs make money each year in the league. All the others are literally only surviving because every now and then a rich club overspends on a single player, or they get a small (relatively) gift from their owners (Whelan etc).

Look around. Milan are being forced to spend within their means. Juve are being more responsible. Real and Barca only exist because they're bankrupting the other 18 teams by stealing all the TV money. In France football is in a terrible way, and the new tax-regime might destroy the current wage structure. Germany looks good, and that's because it's the most balanced.

I believe football is coming to a crucial point, when the majority of teams just can't keep operate in a sustainable way with the big boys. And that will be very sad, but the powers that be only care about money.

Finally, if you genuinely don't see the difference between the Glazers and Messrs Mansour and Abramovich, let me spell it out. The Glazers have TAKEN more than £500m from United, the other two have GIVEN more than £1.5bn to their clubs. Not sure how they could be any more different.
 
This 'woe is me', 'woe is football', 'will someone please think of the little clubs??' coming from Utd fans nowadays is just embarrassing.
 
Look, beach, i know we agree for 75%.
And i even agree about the difference in proportions.
But what Mansour and Abramovich do was just a logical next step, it started going wrong in 1992, when the solidarity with the lower leagues was stopped.

You really should read David Conns book. Conn is a Man City fan who supported them since the 60's. He supported them since Swales demolished the club and he saw the truth of what was happening when former player Franny Lee took over. Fans supported him, but Conn quickly saw that Lee wasn't interested in City, he wanted to become rich.
Nowadays he is fan of a massive club, but he just doesn't care that much, Man City felt more real to him when they were in third division than now that they are moderately succesfull.

And one thing were you are wrong about: Belgian clubs do have to compete with Man Utd and the likes of them. Did you know that Man Utd have 4 bright young Belgian players?

We have a fantastic national team, only our right back is currently playing in our national competition. It is no coïncidence that our right back isn't a genuine right back, but a very versatile AMF...

From our fantastic under 15 team national team (according to scouts that team has 6 or 7 players as talented as Eden Hazard), only one is still playing for a Belgian club...Those young players are with clubs like Man City, Man United, Chelsea, but also clubs like PSV and Sprting de Portugal...hell Belgian clubs can't even copete with Dutch and Portugese clubs, who themselves are crushed by others...

Meanwhile a club like Genk was the running joke of last year's CL. They were ridiculized by clubs like Valencia and Chelsea who are making massive losses. Genk made 28 million profit last year and you know what they did? If next season they have as much season ticket holders, they will reduce the price with 30%, if they have 18.000 season ticket holders the price will be reduced with 40% and if they will have 20.000 season ticket holders they will reduce the price with 50%.
If you know that tey became champions to season ago with 8 players coming from their own youth and that the other team in the deciding play-off match had 4 former Genbk youth players...you know that this is an example.
From the team that became champions, only 3 are still at the club (and it's a miracle Jelle Vossen is still there, he could play in any big competition because he is a fantastic goal scorer). In a couple of years Genk will certainly play CL again and once again, they will not overspend...they prefer to loose all their matches.

This is wrong with football nowadays: decent football clubs don't stand a chance against the cheaters. In this case Chelsea (and 90% will agree with me), but also Valencia (and nobody will agree with that).

I've been posting things like this quite often lately, i'm sorry for this...but i see it as a big problem. I don't see Man City and Chelsea as vilains, UEFA, FIFA and the national FA's are the vilains in this story IMO. They should protect football.
 
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@ Gerd we do agree on your last point. The Chelsea/PSG/City models are symptoms, not the disease. That starts with Mr. Blatter and his cronyism.
 
Another poor decision in the game last night, so early in the match it completely ruined it. Whatever about entertainment of the Premier League it seems to have a much lower standard of refs than the Bundesliga.
 
It's a really stupid rule, and typical of demonstrating how slow moving FIFA is as a body. The red card for deliberately denying a goal scoring opportunity is a smart rule to introduce to stop cynical, very deliberate fouls.

But the wording of the rule and the mandate given to refs is that any 'last man' is denial of a goal scoring opportunity, hence an automatic red. I guarantee that rule will change because it's patently ridiculous for challenges like the above. I mean, what is a defender supposed to do in one on one situations? Not challenge?

FIFA will change the rule, but it'll take 2 years to implement.
 
It's double problems for Wigan too as Caldwell picked up a 5th yellow against Newcastle so they have both him and Figeroda missing for the home match v QPR (which is a big match in the relegation battle). I think their other center back (Ben Watson) is also injured so they will really struggle at the back.

But the worst thing is if Wigan do appeal the card there is no chance it will get rescinded as the FA hardly ever go against an original decision. Everyone can make mistakes in any walk of life, even mistakes as incredulous as that sending off, but the FA dont want to "lose face" or undermine their refs, so appeals are almost always pointless (unless the ref didn't see something or booked the wrong player etc) - you're more likely to get an extra game ban. So justice is denied for the sake of preserving a myth of infallibility (or rather partial justice since only the ban and not the penalty nor the 70 odd mins Wigan were a man down can be restored).
 
It could be a penalty, but never a red card. Never.

And here in Belgium it happens fairly regularly that players who have been sent off don't get bans. My favourite team Genk got no less than 3 red cards. Afterwards television images clearly showed that those 3 red cards were mistakes. The 3 players never got an additional ban.
 
Some people are going on about our chances of finishing in a Champions League spot at the end of the season but I think that is seriously far fetched. We are on a good run which has got us to 7th but I don't think we'll finish in the top 4, and even then it is dependent on Monsieur Platini giving us a wild card place because of our national association status. It's still a bit early to call but I tell you what I'd be happy with a top 10 place come May, anything more than that is a bonus.
 
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