do these fucks never learn

The hyperbole suggested the Premier League game is falling behind the rest of Europe in terms of quality.

I hear the argument that the Premier League is over hyped….but let’s just have a reality check here.

Chelsea and Arsenal were eliminated on the basis of the antiquated away goals rule. Manchester City lost to an outstanding Barcelona team who continue to be inspired by the astonishing Messi.

Put Messi into the City team and they would have won the tie.

Indeed perhaps one of the main reasons four (the maximum thus the best allowance) English teams have all gone out of the Champions League before the quarter-finals is they may have been drained by the demands of the Premier League, which is certainly more competitive from top to bottom than any other league in the world.

Over the course of a 38 game season Chelsea are better than PSG, Arsenal are better than Monaco and, yes, when Messi plays, Barca are better than City.

After all how many BIG games do Monaco, PSG or Barcelona face in a season?

I'm not sure that success in a knockout competition like the Champions League is a particularly accurate barometer of quality - this Chelsea team is vastly superior to the one that actually won the thing in 2012. Likewise I didn't believe that the PL was The Best League In The World even when English clubs were routinely appearing in the final.

That said, most of the current English clubs just aren't that good, with the exception of Chelsea all of them have extremely obvious flaws and weaknesses and several of the players and a couple of the managers aren't streetwise enough to perform against elite-level European opposition. I don't know any fans who care about being The Best League In The World, that hype exists to justify exporting it to Asia and Africa and to an extent to the US. It may genuinely be more unpredictable on a week-by-week basis, but that's a bi-product of the randomness of inferior football.

I'm not sure that success in a knockout competition like the Champions League is a particularly accurate barometer of quality

― Matt DC, Sunday, 22 March 2015 16:22 (1 minute ago)

this is nonsense though because the aggregrate results of a half a dozen english teams across two competitions over several seasons erases the arbitrariness of individual results, not that psg beating chelsea is arbitrary at all because they are a better team

Aggregate yes, individual success not necessarily.

Barcelona's second and third-best forwards are Suarez and Neymar. City's are Dzeko and Wilfried Bony. There isn't a single football fan in the world who would make that trade.

this Chelsea team is vastly superior to the one that actually won the thing in 2012

― Matt DC, Sunday, 22 March 2015 16:22 (7 minutes ago)

they are a bit better, certainly not vastly, but the only way either of them could beat the very best teams is via a deep block counterattacking strategy, and on those terms the earlier one was better, they still had the core of his first side which had a resilience to it that they currently lack

They have as many points now, with nine games to go, as they managed in the whole of the 2011-12 season, even allowing for mismanagement and the differing quality of the EPL that's quite a gulf. But that's quibbling as at least five of the teams currently remaining in the CL are superior to this year's Chelsea.

ac milan won the champions league in 2007 and were 36 points behind inter in serie a, madrid were third and nine points off valencia when they won in 2002

in all three cases they were old squads who didn't have the squad depth or endurance for the league, it's this lack of the sort of tactically canny elite 28-32 yr old players that is most glaring about the current epl sides, lampard/drogba/cole vs serial champions league failures like kompany/hart/touré

https://scontent-ams.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/11068027_10153189730835982_2196145673726719040_n.png?oh=6039131f3b9fc286a1aa40eb461bc171&oe=55BA9125

good stuff spain guys

Join the debate at #bbceurofooty
Martin Corbett: Embarrassing this game you wouldn't catch Burnley rolling over and getting slapped 7-0.

spurs have one of those in them every season

those fucks don't seem to realize that english realness queens have to preserve their goal difference whereas in spain there is a vanishingly small chance their aggregate goal difference will make any difference at the end of the season

& that the king's fuckboys would dish out eight-nils all over the shop, given the lower-half wreckage of the epl to feast upon

well yes, terribly progressive fulminations against the capital club aside, with the possible exception of manchester united circa 2008 there has never been an english team with the absurd lineup of attacking players that madrid and barcelona field every season

rafa's chelsea put 8 past villa a season and a half ago surely.

Long term embattlement

Of the other possible contenders, Real Madrid’s Carlo Ancelotti was passed over in favour of Pellegrini following Roberto Mancini’s sacking two years ago, and the style of football played by Diego Simeone’s Atlético Madrid is not considered cultured enough to match City’s aspirations.

Michael Owen is so Jealous types of person who have no any ability of being Punditry rather than talking what he is thinking that were not come from good thinking. He rather very shameless kinds of person I so ever known. I finally understood that, he is a fan of Arsenal foot ball club and a high want to play for this club when he has been player but we were not afforded him such opportunity and thus why he dislike this European best ever team the Gunners. We don't surprise we such kinds of jealous person for ever.

otm

"I have to give a lot of credit to Pochettino for sticking to them boys," he added. "A lot of other managers would have gone in there and said: 'no thank you, let’s give me some of them players who end in an i or an o from foreign countries who might not be as good as these young talents and I’ll play them instead.'

"But he hasn’t, he's stuck to the plan and I've got to give him a lot of credit for that."

he's trolling right? has to be

combination of self-aggrandizing, total lack of self-awareness, and i can only assume pished 24/7

he is the dictionary definition of "full of shit"

Given that virtually his first move as manager was to stick blood-of-St-George Englishman Nabil Bentaleb into the first team it's an odd one.

name ends with a consonant like a proper englishman

turkey, algeria, close enough m8 xp

St George was conceivably Moorish, right ah FUCK OFF RTC

st george big in ethiopia, st cyprian for algeria

she my map queen let her hit the banter

ah, for the halcyon days of Carlos Kickaball.

Queens Park Ranger’s Director of Football, Les Ferdinand, talks to 5 live sport’s Mark Pougatch about the club’s financial issues.

"Jermaine Jenas, who obviously you know extremely well and works a lot with us on the BBC, had this to say this week: 'During my time there, it was not being run as a Premier League club. For too long, the thinking was just to chuck money at the team. There has been no organisation, no vision, and no discipline in the way things were done.'"

"Sounds like a Premier League club doesn't it?"

"From now on, I'm going to focus on doing my talking on the pitch," he told Sky Sports News HQ. "As a footballer, you always get critics whether you're Ronaldo, Messi or myself. All you can do is answer your critics on the pitch."

Speaking to Sky Sports News HQ, the former England skipper said: “If Gareth had picked the squad he wanted to pick, we’d have won this tournament. With those players we would have beaten Italy last night and beaten the rest of them as well.”

50 years on. I hope there's not too much of this in the year ahead, ah hae ma doots *though

(*pron. θoʊ)

Maybe starting on the 4th Jan is a clue re: how much of this there is going to be

Norwich City have agreed a deal in principle with Everton for the £8m purchase of Steven Naismith having revived interest first expressed in the summer, though they face competition from a number of rival Premier League clubs to secure the Scotland international.

Allardyce has grown increasingly concerned at the lack of opportunities for British managers, something which has become a pet topic over the years, and he believes the situation has reached a stage where the authorities must act to level the playing field.

"The problem for me is we are denying British coaches positions in all divisions now, particularly in the top division and the Championship, and we need to do something about that.

"As a country, as the FA, as the Premier League, we need to protect the position of our own highly qualified coaches who are not even getting an interview now.

"What we could do is make sure that a British coach is interviewed for every position, a bit like the Rooney Rule."

lol

tony fernandes voluntarily adopts twp rule by giving token interview to andy hinchcliffe after haisselbaink's departure clears the way for some diversity

Couldn't find the appropriate thread but england 3 hungary 6 is up on YouTube in it's entirety. P great stuff and the pace of the play way quicker than I was expecting. Kenneth Wolstenholme on the commentary quite funny when he's bemused by the hungarians interchanging of positions "the outside left takes the throw on the right touchline (2minslater)the outside left still on the right side of the field for some reason". England not as technically lacking as I was expecting tbh.

downright rude of those hungarian rotters

literally the worst offside decision of all time against hungary after 10 minutes. should be 4-0 up

best moment so far just over 5 minutes in when mortensen gets knocked out cold and the hungarian players literally pick him up and dump him off the side of the pitch

hungary's 6th goal genuinely exquisite even by modern standards, and with that i yield

Next up, the 7-1 game?

CF 9 Bedford Jezzard

abysmal and great all at once

After the 3rd Hungary goal goes in there's a shell-shocked astonishment pervading Wembley. The nearest anologue is half-time at Germany-Brazil 2014, this sense that the best team in the world is giving the much-hyped home favorites a shellacking.

Quite fancy watching that later. I've read a lot about it - even paid money to get football nemesis on special order from the library a couple years ago - but have watched maybe a minute of footage.

Nandor Hidegkuti 4eva

mortensen getting knocked out at 45 minutes, not 5