Lets Talk Football

I like him. Anyone that ruffles the feathers of Fergie & Wenger is ok by me.

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Oh yeah, football...


Go Pats

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From the Irish Independent:

'A County council chairman who suffered severe burning to his scrotum during a football match 13 years ago has been awarded €9,000 in damages.

'Independent Fianna Fail councillor Dessie Larkin, from Letterkenny, Co Donegal, sued the Football Association of Ireland for the injuries he sustained to his testicles and inner thighs from the caustic effect of the lime used to mark the football pitch.'

There's not a lot you can add, other than ouch...

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

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Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

Double ouch?

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Was he doing the 'dog bum shuffle' ?

Go Steelers

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

His name wasn't Gerry L Lewis?????
Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!

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Hey Pepe, would you say I have a plethora of presents?


Toga, toga, toga......


Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour?

Hey what do you guys think of the qualifying groups for the European Championship in 2008?? Sweden ended up in Group F with:

Spain
Denmark
Northern Ireland
Latvia
Iceland
Liechtenstein



It's lucky that this time it's two teams from each group that will qualify for the championship.

All the groups are tough (as always). England in Group E, for instance, will have some tough away games against Russia, Croatia, Macedonia and others. But besides that I think England is the favourite in that group. Group B with France, Italy and Ukraine looks like a nightmare (especially for the other teams ).

Any thoughts?

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

There's obviously only one winner there: Laurie Sanchez's Green & White Army.

I seriously think we've a chance of coming 3rd though - Healy's a Premiership class striker and it's only a matter of time before a bigger club come in for him. Steve Davis is one of the best young midfielders playing in Britain (with Arsenal and Man Ewe showing interest before he signed a new contract with Villa). Maik Taylor, Aaron Hughes, Damien Johnston, Stevie Elliot and even that little prat Gillespie are all solid performers backed up with less talented guys who are sweating blood for the shirt.

It's not a bad group at all for us, good teams there but all of them are beatable on an off day. And as England found out, we're capable of beating any 'big' team having a off day.

Group E
England
Croatia
Russia
Israel
Estonia
F.Y.R. Macedonia
Andorra

can't wait for england to come to croatia.....nice.....

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http://www.last.fm/user/diezelpower/

Yeah, I think you're right. Northern Ireland is a darkhorse in the group, definitely. I rank you as 4th in the group but you could just as well be 3rd or even 2nd if things go your way. Spain, I guess, are the favourites followed by Denmark and Sweden. But I think any of those three teams can win the group. The clashes between Denmark and Sweden are of course classics and I think the statistics are in our favour, even if it feels like they have a psychological advantage over us in some way. They just feel better. Maybe the war against Islam will weaken them in time for the qualifying rounds..... (Was that out of line?)

I'd probably put yourselves and the Danes as 1 or 2 in the group, just got a funny feeling that Spain will combust somewhere along the line.

England's group is going to be interesting for the reason that they'll have a new manager by then. For all the criticism of Sven, he has a brillaint record in qualifying. I've got a sneaky feeling that Martin O'Neill fancies the job: his wife's extremely ill which is why he stepped down from club management but there's a much lighter workload coaching an international team. He's been linked with the Newcastle job though, and there would be no one better at moulding a half decent side from the bunch of underachievers that Souness assembled.

Martin's a decent man. Perhaps too decent to subject his family to the gutter press that hounded Eriksson out of his job.

For some reason I don't think they will be as hard on the next manager.

It depends how many friends in the press they have. I can remember the headlines before Italia '90 about Bobby Robson: In The Name Of God, Go Now; printing a photo of Graham Taylor with his head turned into a turnip etc. Both of these guys were decent men, GT was out of his depth, true, but it was the press who built him up for the job in the first place after having had a couple of decent seasons with Villa. Uncle Bobby became one of the most respected coaches in Europe...

In fact the only England manager in my memory who wasn't attacked by the press was Terry Vanables who, guess what, has friends in Fleet Street, most notably Jeff Powell and Harry Harris. Powell in particular waged a campaign against Eriksson from the start largly based on the fact that he wasn't English and Harris has his finger so close to the football pulse that he ran a 'Beckham has joined Barcelona' story the morning he signed for Real Madrid.

It's going to be another English/Johnny Foreigner split for the next appointment I think. Gus Hiddink and Big Phil Scolari have openly expressed interest and have excellent records (Scolari knocked England out of both the World Cup and European Champs). Will the FA take the chance of more xenophobic bad publicity?

The only English manager to have touted himself for the job is Sam Allerdyce (friends in the press, always offering his opinion on TV whether it's asked for or not). He's done an excellent job on limited resources with Bolton but his teams play awful, negative, dirty football. He's never won a trophy and this is his first season managing in European club competition.

It's going to be interesting.

I wonder what Svennis will do next. Coach Saudi Arabia??

Newcastle.

The caretaker manager at the moment doesn't have his UEFA coaching badges so can only take charge for 3 months and the club are already apparently planning to have one of the other coaches (who has the necessary qualifications) to take over as 'figurehead' till the end of the season. This suggests to me that they're after a manager already in work...

How did the 'Fake Sheikh' story play out in Sweden? From my point of view, if someone was offering me a job which greatly increased my salary I'd at the very least talk to the guy. In fact I got tapped up once by the promise of doubling my money and gladly walked out on the firm I was with. Business is business, same with Sven's job.

The only thing I could criticise him for is the way he talked about his players. It doesn't take a genius to work out that Owen is at Newcastle purely for the cash, Rooney doesn't come from the best of backgrounds and Ferdinand is a lazy git - but managers don't say things like that in public. Sven blames the drink though, and who am I to judge?

Here in Sweden I think we generally felt the way you felt about it. There actually was another big story about the vice Prime Minister last year who spoke very warmly about the Swedish Police Force in a telephone interview. Then after he thought the conversation was over and that no one could hear him, he called the Police lazy and other not as warm things. So, there was allready a discussion about media's way to "get" public persons. About the same thing with Svennis and I agree with you. I kind of felt bad for him but he should never discuss the players, only his own professional situation and alternatives. But to be honest, I haven't gotten the chance to listen to the entire thing so I'm basing what I know on what others have said about it. But before this last scandal I thought he was generally treated really unfair by the Brits. I mean, c'mon, look at his competition games record!

I think he'll be better off in Italy or Spain. It would be really cool if he was to, for instance, coach one of the top African national teams, but they don't have the money of course.