Gareth Bale

The Volvo is a good car because it's our sponsor, but the Ferrari races faster

This is awesome though.

i especially like
but the problem was that we were losing

he's certainly saying that he didnt have good players, matt.

Coutinho and Biabiany have worked a lot to improve in defence and I am happy with them, but they always have a defensive mentality.

That ought to read defensive I suppose. Enjoying this newly verbose and relatively laissez-faire Benitez, he needed a change of scene.

~~offensive~~

James Lawton wrote a whole shitty article about Rafa's lack of grace towards Bale too.........

just towards bale? That's micromanaging the issue imo

Maybe now Rafa is in Italy he's not giving press conferences in English, so the journalists are running what he says through Google Translate from Spanish to Italian to English, ending up with the sugar mountain volvo nonsense, but what he actually says is perfectly regular "the boy done well" platitudes?

Anyway onto more pressing concerns, which Bolton player do we think will break Bale's leg tomorrow?

love that rafa is an injury to the v. injury prone eto'o away from taking almost unbeatable triple winners to a team that cannot win anything in a season. i mean this is the most otm statement ever:

someone should maybe let him know that he TOOK OVER THE EUROPEAN CHAMPIONS and this shit wont wash anymore.

― cant believe you sb'd me for that (darraghmac), Friday, 5 November 2010 16:23 (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

srs moratti must be kicking himself in the balls. even moreso knowing zlatan will win ac the league.

paul robinson.

can only be paul robinson

will run from the left side to the right, pushing zat and gary to their arses just to do it.

antisemite sam

oh, good work

he just said bale was faster than his players...

you just gotta spoil everything...

fuckin have that

cool

he doesn't seem to be a complete bastard either

news made mention of cl performances, do we know is that meant to be a consideration tho?

Cos if not, hooray for unmerited awards

a lot more merited than giggs' pfa for being old

true for ya i guess

he did that one volley on like the first day of the season, that'll do.

http://i420.photobucket.com/albums/pp290/hammy106/Bale-Goal-v-Stoke.gif

also scored with his face in the same match

http://www.gifsoup.com/view1/1334932/gareth-bale-merkage-o.gif

seems nonsensical tbh.

i def agree, don't see how he won this. hope modric wins the spurs player of the year.

aye, not even the best player in a team that probably won't finish top four. usually i think pfa results are decent too. players having more of an eye for the less glamorous work.

u madd doggie

What about the team of the season? Would Bale make the XI?

I'd maybe float Cech for Van Der Sar and Baines for Cole. Modric for Wilshire? Parker for Nasri? Has Sagna really been any good? And WHITHER TORRES?!?

PREMIER LEAGUE TEAM OF THE YEAR: Edwin Van Der Sar (Manchester United), Bacary Sagna (Arsenal), Ashley Cole (Chelsea), Nemanja Vidic (Manchester United), Vincent Kompany (Manchester City), Nani (Manchester United), Samir Nasri (Arsenal), Jack Wilshere (Arsenal), Gareth Bale (Tottenham), Carlos Tevez (Manchester City), Dimitar Berbatov (Manchester United).

Front six is great, defence has a "can't be arsed" feel to it. Would put Hart in over VDS, Ivanovic or Rafael over Sagna, and yeah Baines over Cole.

           Van Der Sar
Sagna   Cahill   Kompany  Baines
       Wilshere  Modric
Nasri       Silva          Nani
            Tevez
Subs: Schwarzer, Vidic, Ivanovic, Modric, Adam, Berbatov, Odemwingie or Ba

imo.

I think there's some sort of unwritten rule that the team of the season has to be 442. Tradition and that.

ok replace silva with odemwingie.

Odemwingie has been great but going for him over Berbatov or even Hernandez is str8 challops.

no sagna, i like ivanovic meself

Bardsley maybe

Midfield ridic lightweight tbf

2-3-5 for team of the season please xp, I'll have no truck with these modern fads. It's not like they have to play anyone for real anyway - if they did, the official team of the season would get raked through midfield.

Don't rate Sagna, but Ivanovic not all that great this season either and mainly been at CB anyway.

Cech and Terry easily Chelsea's best and most consistent performers. Cech should get POTY.

Wilshere and Lucas in the middle.

This is the OptaStats team. Hmmmm. Not sure about Foster and Clichy, and Essien has been shit. Funny old business.

B.Foster, B.Sagna, J.Terry, N.Vidic, G.Clichy, M.Essien, C.Adam, S.Nasri, Nani, C.Tevez, D.Berbatov. Elite.

I find opta's thing of ending all their tweets with a one word sentence perpetually amusing. Terse.

Clichy has been terrific.

Surprised Essien made it.

Has Essien been that bad? I would assume that was based on number of completed passes and successful tackles but the consensus seems to be that Essien is nowhere near the player he was.

He has been that bad, lots of misplaced passes and very few of his surging runs. A prime advocate among money to be sold.

But apparently Chelsea's win percentage is 20% without him and 63% with, which is a hell of a difference.

jose tried to make off with gareth in the middle of the game rather than waiting to make a bid this summer.

http://soccernet-assets.espn.go.com/design05/images/2011/0413/josemourinho,garethbale,harryreknapp20110413_275x155.jpg

I find opta's thing of ending all their tweets with a one word sentence perpetually amusing. Terse.

― Number None, Monday, 18 April 2011 13:45 (7 hours ago) Bookmark

you must be bloody joking. that cunt sam lyon on the bbc liveblog had me foaming at the mouth with this bullshit on sunday.

Angry.

lolling at this, from me, upthread:

Ledley has never impressed outside of one or two performances imo. Not impressing still puts him ahead of a lot of the squad, but I still wouldn't say he's looked like anything to write home about.

changed my opinion totally. have i told you ledley that i love you?

niiice