itt liverpool not winning things; sandbox i love football

Rooney's slumps rarely last all season, he'll come good at some point.

except for last season iirc.

"You know why I’m leaving, but I can’t explain myself publicly because it would damage the good name of Everton Football Club and I’m not prepared to do that."[16]

Why did Gary Speed leave Everton?

Howard Wilkinson:

He left one of his clubs after having been required to give a half-time talk, as captain, in place of his manager, whom drink had rendered temporarily incapable of speech. The fans of the club in question were mystified by his departure, but he had signed a confidentiality agreement and never spoke of the incident.

lol/wow

ade has had a mini-slump already and i do acknowledge the likelihood of sam's doubts

i just want him to acknowledge that rvp will break very soon indeed, and then who's more fucked?

Wenger: “We have a few players on the edge like Van Persie and Walcott, who had a hamstring alert, and Ramsey. We’ll have to see how they respond to 24 hours rest."

if rvi breaks, and i genuinely don't think its gonna happen*, then still spurs. because we then move theo upfront and arshavin or benny noon on the wing, whereas spurs will then... play pav, i guess?

None of them are playing midweek, so its cool.

I didn't finish that post. Could have mentioned lol Park, who Wenger 'believes' in and we'll see how he does v. City tomorrow. Also the *was to say i've most prob jinxed him now.

Chris - did you enjoy big Andy's cameos the last two Sundays?

adebayor is somewhat baffling to me. when he had that great season for arsenal i was convinced that he wasn't that good, he was just putting away chances created by others. watching him play every week for spurs, i can see how good he is at holding the ball up and creating chances for others, but his finishing seems poor. he had 9 shots on target against west brom, the most of any player in a single game the last 5 seasons.

He has the ability to be the best forward in the world. He can have an astounding first touch, a beasty shot, perfect in the air, knows his positioning, can beat his man with ease, has strength to stay up and intimidate, can spot a pass in a way only top players can...

Unfortunately he'll only be working on half of these, at most, in 95% of matches.

That and he just stops caring to play, you know, football, every couple of months or so. I think we got 3 amazing months out of him post-Eduardogate and that was his longest reign of form.

I thought that was an xp until you mentioned Eduardo

spurs def need to sell pav and buy a young-ish cf in january to either replace ade or at least strengthen their negotiating position.

Wonder how Coulibaly is getting on?

he's 16 and short, don't think he can lead the line yet

Nah i know. Just an idle thought

xposts. Not watched the Chelsea game again, but was Andy's control as lol-worthy as I think it was? Good save from Hart last night.

It really was - he had half-a-dozen touches in his three minutes and every one gave the ball away or iirc a risky free-kick. Not ideal when you're trying to see out injury time. He looked like the kid at school who gets picked first 'cos he's big, but can't actually play football. Yet for a moment yesterday he looked the business.

Hart had more than the one great save too - was gutted when I saw the highlights.

Matty Taylor for England & GOAL of the season

Ah, the sandbox of five years ago, when Pardew had gone to Charlton, Chris Coleman was still somebody, DJ Martian still existed, and there was speculation about Liverpool's chances of overhauling both United and Chelsea to win that elusive league title...

what happened to DJM?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Giovanni_Trapattoni.jpg

out

if rvi breaks, and i genuinely don't think its gonna happen*, then still spurs. because we then move theo upfront and arshavin or benny noon on the wing, whereas spurs will then... play pav, i guess?

u crack me up

i try

is ade playing for togo again? just remembered we gots a anc come jan.

It really was - he had half-a-dozen touches in his three minutes and every one gave the ball away or iirc a risky free-kick. Not ideal when you're trying to see out injury time. He looked like the kid at school who gets picked first 'cos he's big, but can't actually play football. Yet for a moment yesterday he looked the business.

Aye, just watched the last few minutes of Chelsea again and that's spot on - so Jekyll and Hyde. Thought we were great v City. Lucas just keeps getting better, and Adam's really impressing me now. The defence is looking very good - great to see Skrtel and Agger getting a run of games together.

Argh, just remembered Spurs v Villa. What a shame ILX was down for that one.

yeah i think he's going back to togo. psyched for the pavness

carroll very unlucky vs city imo

yaya p much the only player the league is going to miss, right?

cameroon didn't qualify. thank the fucking lord. going without song would be 3000 times worse than going without rvi.

uhm

Newcastle might miss Demba Ba

& tiote

yeah, that just occurred to me also. Of course the wheels might come off before that

coulibaly gonna come into his own late on imo

Chelsea losing Mikel might be a blessing in disguise

draw at old trafford seems like a high water mark

they've had a run of form so strong ppl have even talked about the championship level ryan taylor as a 'top fullback'

oriol romeu played on saturday and got good notices in absentia mikel

stephen and ryan taylor will surely start to happen to newcastle very soon

lol ok yeah my bad for forgetting newcastle

they do of course have former new maldini davide santon to blood into lb

never rated stephen taylor, a nonsense of a no-nonsense defender

coloccini was alright at depor but is eminently nonsensical and i doubt this new composure will last

togo and nigeria didn't qualify

trap in (extnded through 2014 qualifying)

unsure what i think of that

ledley king has been booked once in 69 games. phenomenal defender.

Going back to 2007! I should pay more attention to that guy, I'm willing to accept that that probably is phenomenal defending rather than just plain being unable to move around the pitch.

well tbf it'd be going back to 2009 had he a normal injury record, but yeah he's the great lost english talent of his generation, fuck a jokehole or dyer

Rio had 2 in 71 going back to 2009

That's fantastic, you get so used to Lucas or Vidic seemingly always taking a yellow for the team that I'd never noticed guys not operating like that. I wonder how it breaks down for DMs in general, actually.

up until this weekend rio got exemptions in home games iirc

That's mainly Vidic in fairness

not if they've got any sense

Be mad to IMO. Comolli, Dalglish and Kuyt both largely agree with Evra's version of events and said as much to Marinner, Dowd and the FA (respectively) and Suarez himself said he wouldn't call an Englishman 'black' because they might find it offensive (implying he knows full well it could be taken the wrong way).

Where this leaves Glen Johnson, who apparently gets called 'negro' all the time during training without question from anybody at the club, fuck knows.

Yeah, I'd've thought not. Assessment of the evidence is usually a matter solely for the panel hearing it, and they've been so meticulous about it in the report that there's not a great deal of scope to argue that they've made an obvious error. There might be scope for appealing the length of ban, but again they've carefully explained why they considered & rejected longer & shorter bans, so that's probably a no-goer too. Put City to the sword on Tuesday then quietly let the whole thing drop while muttering about it being harsh, lessons learnt, chance for the summer break he hasn't had since 2009, etc etc would be best I think.

http://transalchemy.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/f081a_vlcsnap-410621.png

glen johnson at a liverpool team-building session.

I thought that was John Barnes?

suspense of waiting to see what Hartson would choose for his goal of the month on MOTD2 slightly undermined by him saying Van Persie was his goal of the season three minutes earlier

Martin Tyler's commentary for that Ji goal was sensational.

didn't see this so

http://h10.abload.de/img/roysworlduyptz.gif

ffs

http://h10.abload.de/img/roysworlduyptz.gif

Swansea winning at Villa! Stoke winning at Blackburn! Torres starts for Chelsea! Is Drogba injured? Not even on the bench.

eh drogba moved to PSG yesterday dude

Real ilx is back now Chris - some pure gold immigration rules discussion going on on that thread atm.

Ah sorry, didn't realise.

'salright, Drogba moving to PSG would've passed me by otherwise

Fun fact from Beeb ticker: seven clubs into his career, Wayne Routledge scores his first Premier League goal.