Realest Of Football, Realest Of Talk: Football League, Blue Square & Beyond, 2009/10

Super Donny have made their first signing of the off-season: Quinton Fortune!

bloody 'ell

i was watching an early-00's ESPN highlights reel the other day and blow me down if it wasn't Vegard Heggem...

Ooh, and the Beeb have done a team-by-team for League One as well, now. Radio Solent dude reckons we should aim for the play-offs, which seems about right. Need a striker tho.

Jonjo Shelvey is the player to watch if you're an Ipswich fan. He won't be at Charlton this time next month. Also A+ sarcasm, cheers folks

also it will be interesting to see 24 clubs finish in the play-offs

carlisle, yeovil and possibly swindon seem fucked to me

Joe Kinnear claims he was offered a two-year deal to be Newcastle boss, which he turned down for health reasons. In other news, no-one has bought the club off Mike Ashley yet.

I can't decide whether to hope the rumours about Jermaine Beckford being sold by Leeds to WBA are true or not, given it's 72 hours or so until we play them at their place. Like: is an unsettled JB a weaker choice than a second choice with something to prove? Not sure.

Leeds are supposed to have a decent choice of strikers - Becchio's meant to be a bit of alright, and Snodgrass, Grella and Showunmi have all had their backers in the past...

This is all quite tantalisingly close, isn't it? Here's Auntie's Blue Square preview. Not quite as many predicting the play-offs in this one.

Right. That's why I'm thinking that Bad Uncle Ken might helpfully hold off selling until next week, giving Jermaine plenty of time to put in a thoroughly below-par unsettled performance. That doesn't seem unreasonable.

http://www.cafc.co.uk/uploads/charlton34545news3.jpg?rand=26646

CRABS

PUBIC LICE

or worse still

CURBS

;_;

Chester sort of saved, sort of torpedoed

Weird, it seems like the worst Premiership in ages, but bizarrely the best Championship/L1/L2 in living memory

― cockles (country matters), Friday, 7 August 2009 01:02 (0 seconds ago) Bookmark

It really does, btw. It's like every sub-Prem league has suddenly been filled with a lot of clubs 'better' than it, a lot of clubs 'just right' for it, and very few clubs 'beneath' it. I honestly can't see many teams struggling, at least relative to the previously prevailing standard of their division. There's a lot of optimism. A lot of bitterness (especially in L1!), but a lot of optimism. I can't actually explain it because the quality of footballers surely isn't much better if at all. Some strange balancing alchemy has been wrought, like the Scales Of Justice in Worms Armageddon

how is it the worst prem in ages? this strikes me as "real talk" which is actually nonsense, like most "real talk" is.

TBH the 'worst Prem in ages' thing is less important than the 'best league in ages' one, which was the starker and more exciting revelation, but this Premiership really is shaping up to be mediocre. Exciting, mind.

It's gotten to the stage where I'm almost giving both Spurs AND Man City a crack at the top 4, and where I can't see a huge world of difference in class between Everton and say Wolves. Plus, there's about 6 teams positively begging to go down.

So, anyone here going to any interesting games tomorrow?

I'm moderately stoked about the start of the season.

I'm kind of in "too excited to sleep" mode right now. Partly cos I'm at work til one then getting the train down to Southampton at 6.15 to see us enter the brave new world against Millwall.

Pre-season anticipation extending to the Boro-Blades game this evening, too. It's toniiiight...

And Boro's first-choice keeper, Brad Jones, is apparently injured, which, from the squad list on their site, suggests England U19 keeper Jason Steele is getting his first-team debut...

No, they've signed Danny Coyne, so he's in goal instead. Ah.

Grimsby's finest! Wales' non-finest.

SS1's preview has just ticked round to League One. Did you know that Phil Parkinson is still only 41?

I did. He was a Reading legend not so long ago, as my Reading-supporting friend (also Bolton but he is weird) keeps telling me. We could do with his sort alongside Racon and Bailey in the middle.

Still, I expect us to turn Wycombe over tomorrow. I'll possibly be watching it with a Wycombe fan, which will be a barrel of laughs. And yeah, pretty excited here too.

Newcastle being hawked around for £20m cash down say 'city sources' in The Times. That's less than the £400m asking price it started off at. Some glove puppet man is front-runner. Ashley desperate to conclude a deal this weekend it also says, so even that might prove to be optimistic.

Shearer could easily afford that, but will he put his money where his mouth is? I am quite literally on tenterhooks.

has Chris Morgan killed anyone yet?

oh shit, it's that time again

time for justin.tv

in fairness, most lower-league football is more exciting than this

Yeah, this is suggesting that both of these sides will have a run at the play-offs while finding automatic promotion just beyond them. Then again, that's to suggest there's sides in the division who are a clear cut above everyone else, and that's most likely not the case. Because it's The Championship, and that just isn't how things work.

^^^this

friend of mine reckons sheff u will win the league; to that i say pffft lol

As I said, all three lower-league divisions looks exceptionally well-balanced this season. There are few obvious giants or stragglers, but a general wash of sides accustomed to or at least harbouring ambitions of football at a higher level

It's ok, I'm going to stick it out. Now I have no life I have picked a team (or will pick before tomorrow) in all 4 English leagues and major European leagues to follow, just to give me something to distract me from the exciting life I currently live. So, c'mon Arsenal, Reading (local team), Millwall (dad's team), Burton Albion (picked at random), Fiorentina (purple), PSG (loose Arsenal connection), Barca (Thierry), Nurenburg (Nordtveit is there on loan, so again rubbish Arsenal connection), and I think that is too many teams to follow as is. Might eventually get reduced to Arsenal and any team playing Newcastle.

I am trying to keep a lid on how excited I am about going to Leeds tomorrow, but (a) first game of the season (b) Leeds are the team I supported as a boy in Bremner's '70s (c) Leeds is the town in which I went to University (d) first time City've ever played Leeds in the league. Amazing. But to be too thrilled is a bit tinpot, eh?

Maybe you should drop by for a drink with Swygart? Oh wait. REALEST OF TALKERS, ON THE MOVE '09

I was due to see the first (and only) time Leeds played at Edgar Street in the league last season, but it got frozen off. This fact, although I hardly knew at the time, was an indirect factor in my subsequent harrowing break-up

I'm thrilled about Wycombe at home, tbh. Football, that insidious disease

wd mark bentley, getting us off the mark after the North's finest summarily failed last night

now i go. exciting.

Oh, Norwich.

Boro v Blades was an absolutely terrible game btw

haha, am also an arsenal fan w/ a soft spot for millwall cos they're his dad's team...if hoy hoy likes cecil taylor and the dead c i feel i will have passed a v. jolly corner indeed

am stupidly excited abt LIVE! CHAMPIONSHIP! FOOTBALL!! at teatime on a saturday

yeah me, it's cos its on the beeb and it will distract me from the cricket.

Could be a cracker, the Manchester United of the Championship taking on the Newcastle of the Championship.

Norwich have scored! And so have Colchester.

I'm enjoying Shearer's quote on why he should be given the Newcastle job: "I'd dearly love the chance to finish what I started last season."

ha, I thought the same thing. To the Conference!

Norwich 1-7 Colchester

Lee Hughes got a debut hat trick for Notts County...

morrison has looked excellent.

that looked like quite a last minute save, but opn replay it was nearly what a fuckup by the goalie tbh

a load of millwall fans going by my window being obnoxious

success has ruined them no doubt

hahaha

Our train back from Solihull to Marylebone this evening stopped at Wembley and picked up a load of Millwall fans. We had our one-year-old with us and feared the worst but they were absolute sweethearts.

you're so so so lucky they won

They were so subdued I presumed they had lost!

they've been feeling promotion is a right rather than a gift this season, they'll end up like arsenal fans

from firm to plc, a natural progression

first time ive watched the football league show

ricardo rocha described as having A LATINO SHORT FUSE

both the managers are p scary but not as scary as the grotesque canted angles and weird straub-huillet via chris brydon feel of the studio sequences

hilarious dive by apparently nonforeign adam lallana