If you'd told me 15 years ago that Craig Bellamy would become quite a measured and decent manager, I'd have said you must be smoking some good drugs.
If you'd told me 15 years ago that Craig Bellamy would become quite a measured and decent manager, I'd have said you must be smoking some good drugs.
Could say the same about Southgate. International football is a weird set of skills.
Back on my old Cup Final kick, I've settled on the 1953 FA Cup Final as I think it's the oldest game I can find on youtube. Lofthouse vs MatthewsGod knows if there's anything going on tactically but both sides are not wasting any time getting forward.
Liverpool Legends played Chelsea legends yesterday. Some proper nostalgia in the line-ups.
Liverpool: Dudek, Hyypia, Klavan, Vignal, Kelly, Gerrard, Spearing, Sissoko, Babel, Kuyt
Chelsea: Cudicini, Babayaro, Huth, Gallas, Wise, Malouda, Makalele, Ramires, @Jimmy Floyd, Bosingwa, Obi Mikel
Highlights:
I saw the lineups yesterday and could barely recognise Ramires, he's got impressively stuck into the airport lounge buffets since his playing days.
“Legends” is a bit of a stretch as far as Liverpool are concerned.
Crouch having the time of his life. You love to see it.
I don't think that we saw a dribble as good as that from Malouda in his entire professional career.
Greece look pretty good going forward.
Pretty good indeed.
Newcastle lasses won the Tyne-Wear derby in front of a record crowd, today. Not much to say about the match other than the football is still shite.
Still won’t be enough to sack the dinosaur. McLean, Hanley, Ralston and Gordon all being regulars is an utter joke.Originally Posted by Magic
Fucking hell Scotland
Some good games tonight.
Parrot has improved so much with regular games, but Azaz has definitely been the standout player for us this window. Definitely needs to be a regular starter now.
The fact it's looking like Chelsea are going to pay us Ł5m to take Sancho back, good lord.
I think he's the laziest person I've ever seen in football. There should be no place for him in the sport. Should have to go and get a normal job and stop insulting people.
I was then coming to post about that there’s that much noise about it you can only assume it’s Chelsea briefing on it.
How’s long has he got left on his contract at United? Maybe Brailsford can get some marginal gains from him?
1 year with the fabled 'option to extend'.
Cracking freekick.
Can be doing without 'MLS' as some sort of commonplace contraction.
Rashford and Bowen, truly a golden generation.
My right back
Snapped hammy inbound
That was a ghastly first half, just lacking quality (bar the free kick) all over the shop.
And playing Rashford against a team with 9/10 men behind the ball is absolutely pointless.
This whole qualifying schedule is such a hiding to nothing. It's almost better for the fabled 'momentum' to shit your way through than blast everyone 8-0.
Could have really done with a couple of better sides. I suppose the Serbian games will be an 'occasion'.
Serbia will still put 10 behind the ball like they did last time.
EDIT: I thought Bellingham might be gone there.
Last edited by Shindig; 24-03-2025 at 09:01 PM.
Bellingham should absolutely go there. Referee will get destroyed by the assessor, bottle job.
Rashford must have one of the lowest Football IQs or whatever you call it going.
Bellingham goes there in a proper game.
Going around the Maginot Line doesn't work when your Panzers are spastics. Rashford and Bowen are a complete waste of time in games like this.
Play a narrow front 3 and let the wing backs put the crosses in.
Eze showing Rashford how to do it.
Good to see Tuchel has given up on that combover he was rolling with forever.
Bellingham is in real danger of becoming Gerrard mark II. He's well on his way to 50 caps now and has done the square root of fuck all compared to his talent. Not helped by Sir Gareth being at the helm, obviously, but he really needs to start pulling his finger out.
He did score an overhead kick with the last kick of the game to keep them in the Euro’s…
He did, but he spent the rest of the tournament dining off that and mooching around like a petulant child.
If England play like that against Serbia, they're going to have another tough time.
The Vidic regen Nikola Milenkovic is just going to shut out Harry Kane quite easily.
Just watching the highlights... I see Pickford is still doing that thing of being very manic, very manic, very manic, getting hold of the ball, telling everybody else to calm down, then being very manic, very manic, very manic.
One thing that bothers me when we face a low block is how we never look to quicken things. It's all sideways and very little movement. Most of our crosses were airborne which were easy to defend. Nothing low to add a bit of chaos, nobody chancing their arm with a long ranged effort, etc.
Rashford literally tried to 'fizz it in' every single time he got the ball in a crossing position. Mostly straight to the goalkeeper or into the shins of the defender right in front of him.
James was the only player on the pitch with enough [crossing] ability to put anything dangerous in.
'Fizz' is generous. He kept doing that thing where he faces up the defender, shift the ball between his feet or checked back, and then tried to go past him. It's not direct enough.
1 down to Madrid then, 2 left to go.
What I remember of him in the euros is that he played really well for the first half of the first match (which made all of you very excited), then did fuck all for a few matches, then scored a late equalizer, then did fuck all again for the remainder of the tournament.
That’s about the size of it.
Wish him well.
There's a fierce meltdown going on about this Alexander-Arnold thing. Could they not have just sold him 18 months ago when he didn't sign the new deal they presumably offered him?
Transfer fees going insane over the last 10 years seems to have ushered in an era of players running down their contracts to move on a free on mega wages, rather than seeing the mega-money go to club, and more power to them.
Yeah definitely. If he had done a knee or something we'd see how quick he'd have got a new deal. Look after number one.
Think Klopp leaving rather torpedoed any penultimate year contract negotiations, although with Trent I'm not sure that would have made much difference. Paying the price for operation best mate with Bellingham. And the owners are super big brain. Could be quite funny next season if they lose all three and replace them with Eredivisie / Bundesliga numpties. Post- Suarez low.
Edwards numpties > Boehly/Woodward numpties though
Think we're heading back to the halcyon days of just buying loads of players off one South coast club.
With the way clubs are run these days, i.e. endless morons through the door and then out again, football is becoming more of a strong-link problem. Keep Salah until he dies and you're golden.
City this year a very apt demonstration of that.
I’m kind of hoping Salah does get his 5 year 8 billion pound contract and does a full Mark Viduka.
Genuinely one of the funniest careers of all time. Every contract year he’d be up for the Ballon D’or and then spend the signing bonus on curry for 4 years. It does make you wonder how good he could have been if he gave a single shit.
These nazi immigrants are cutting straight through the samba boys. 2-0 inside 10 minutes.
Just tuned up... genuinely haven't heard of half the Brazil team. Bento, Wesley, Andre....
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