NAMING RIGHTS THREAD: Liverpool really won't win the Premiership 2010-2011

think he might have been signed by rafa towards the end. like deal sealed at the end of last season or something.

I want to say I remember him being feted for something, but it was possibly just for being the best home performer in that Northampton game

semisentient walking carcinoma wayne rooney getting mad hype rite now for not being as shit as usual

<3 berbatov such a mensch

or something like that. Joe Cole looked like he really cared towards the end of the Blackburn debacle. Thought Babel had given his best performances in his cameos since Dalglish took over too.

xp to self

god if i was 8 yrs old again i would be trying to emulate berbatov's languid, disquieting style and trivela

united's third was brilliant

they really should let berba smoke while playing

bit of common sense ref eh

messi today did some awes control after he had fallen over

zidane was great at that, even in the rare moments his supreme balance failed him, his control seldom did

good finish by mic there

John Barnes A dnt think ul b cahntin after sunday we big leon best nd shola rip uz up haha x. 14 hours ago. Northeast Teamtalk ...
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gonna pull that shinpad celebrash at friday fives

Can't believe people aren't talking about the most shocking event of the day - a Wayne Bridge cross not only found a teammate but resulted in a goal.

xp to Ismael - re. Carragher Agger Skrtel - Agger in the Busquets role? I like the look of that.

Not seeing Kenny/Comolli's headline target Charlie Adam in many formations up there. Even Holloway commented on it on MotD (not the ILX thread obv).

ched evans should be a spurs target.

Ronan u need to get a new chain that one's too easy to yank ffs, i was blatantly risin you there. Gettin old maaan, old and slow

tbh kelly skrtl agger aurelio's a goodun, skrtly maybe the weak link there- too prone to good old english tackling

old and slow

i've done great things for this club. i intend to play for another 5 years.

jesus ian holloway really needs to just stfu.

Bruce too.

Reject the fuckin bids, stfu. Easy enough.

I enjoyed the handshake before Fulham-Stoke, and especially Hughes struggling to suppress a smirk as he turned away.

Great work by Deuce before the penalty.

ffs Pulis blaming the penalty on Dempsey being 'very, very clever'

Bruce is complaining about Villa unsettling a player who was unhappy enough to want to go to Turkey in August when they didn't have a manager. You'd think he'd be grateful someone bought wor unhappy, out of form striker for a hilarious amount of money, but no, always with the bittahly disappointed.

with holloway i agree, tho isn't there an undercurrent with bruce suggesting he didn't want to accept the bid? regardless of the price? that it was big niall quinn's decision?

I feel like Bruce's big BS indignation is a smokescreen for the fact that he's delighted with the deal.

MotD: West Ham's booked striker was booked again for big celebration, sent off, EFC equalized.

Shearer fumed that it was 'ridiculous' etc.

funny thing is, though Shearer sounds passionately opinionated in a way, I don't think he really is - I think he decides he'd better take an opinion, and then gets as worked up as he can about it

I think he's wrong. Everyone knows that provocative celebration etc (eg taking off shirt, which the player didn't do) gets a booking. The player had been booked. He should have obeyed that rule that you see managers trying to enforce from the touchline at these moments when teams get a late goal: keep your head, get back, let's protect this now, etc. Instead he wanted to jump around flamboyantly. He should have known he'd get booked.

of course EFC might still have equalized even if he'd been on the field.

also other moment when Hansen said Arsenal were clearly Utd's main challengers (possible, but not an obvious fact at all to me), and Shearer said 'I AGREE with that - WITHOUT a DOUBT' - he doesn't seem able really to think independently, as Dixon arguably does, so just runs for cover (though Dixon would tend to get drawn into some kind of dull 'rank-pulling' / deferential banter scenario if he did disagree with Hansen, rather than a real airing of the issues)

Quinn is complaining too though.

It's weird how players will celebrate late goals wildly when they should be concentrating but frequently celebrate the actual final whistle by shaking the necessary hands, half-arsedly applauding the fans from 100 yards away and making a beeline for the tunnel.

At this stage in the season it's difficult to see anybody bar Arsenal challenging Utd.

Think Villa's line was that they transferred a big wodge immediately, while Quinn maintains they got an 8m instalment which mostly went straight to Spurs, so I suppose it mainly comes down to both camps spinning furiously in their own interest. But then they bid 3m for Ricardo Fuller, so maybe they are getting stiffed.

haha yes xp, there was one moment where Shearer actually agreed with Hansen using exactly the same words. Lineker: "Do you think X?" Hansen: "absolutely I do". Lineker: "how about you Alan?" Shearer: "absolutely I do".

until City's defeat yesterday they were on a very scary run. they'd won game after game and lost very few. they were winning away, scoring goals, coming from behind - all the things people said they couldn't do. I have been getting intimidated by them. would think they could easily finish 2nd, even if Utd yesterday look good for champions (awesome goals those were, and I was glad for Berbatov really).

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/01_04/sky.mp3

richard keys with another window into the mind of the person we already knew he was.

anybody as hairy as Keys is is bound to be a bit testosterone-addled

there really isn't an on/off air divide with these ppl.....just one stream of bloky commonsense with occasional concessions to bloody pc decorum when they are on tv

he sounded almost exactly like Alan Partridge on there

wondering if ANYONE could be a good partner for Shearer (as 2 Als is bad) ... it would have to be someone fearless and controversial, who'd provoke him into something. Robbie Savage?

it's odd that I used to like Shearer (as a player) and think he seemed relatively intelligent.

last night was thinking of how bad things come back that you might have thought were gone. Like a kind of xenophobia. So, footy seems cosmopolitan and open now? but then, no, pundits are shamelessly favourable to in-crowd of true Brits - 'Wayne' and 'Michael', 'Kenny' and Stevie G, 'shamefully treated' Mark Hughes, Big Sam 'who'll always do a job for you' etc.

counter-examples I suppose would include Assou-Ekotto (Hansen slammed indiscriminately recently without recognizing good and bad aspects to his game), Avram Grant ('you look at him and he doesn't look inspiring'), and indeed Benitez who also seems to have been outside the club.

maybe in the particular cases the judgements stand up, and I suppose there are others (they love Fabregas after all). But I think there is still a bad pattern somewhere, of golf-club pals and outsiders - and what strikes me is how I once thought we'd improved and left it behind; maybe was just 'projecting', imagining or something.

(ps I don't even really rate A-Ekotto or Grant myself)

other example that makes the point: Mick McCarthy. 'Mick will get them playing', 'Mick will be delighted with that'.

it's oddly like a bunch of book reviewers who puff their own pals and bash others - odd that they're not more embarrassed about it.

maybe this whole bad development, if it's real, is something to do with a thing I didn't like, namely the informalization of coverage - taking off their suits and ties and unbuttoning their shirts. Maybe one thing that the suits did was to encourage them to think they were 'professionals', people 'doing a job', not just praising their pals.

I also think it has to do with generational change somehow - Sinstadt and Davies surely weren't like this (OK they weren't pundits either).

Just caught up with M.O.T.D. Disappointed no-one asked Holloway about the blatant dive that won his side a penalty yesterday.

Think you have to accept that there are characters in the game who are more likeable or risible than others, and that ex-players are always going to be prone to changing room banter. The xenophobia is probably there to an extent but there are plenty of non-British/Irish players and managers who are treated affectionately. We've discussed before the question of producers and pundits pandering to a perceived audience - I think it's probably the case, and would prefer a better standard of analysis, but tbh these people are fairly easy to ignore.

It also feels like every time Berba gets a hat trick the discussion goes thusly - Berbatov was great today obviously but lets talk about Rooney.

and really, I don't think there has ever been a Golden Age of UK punditry to which we can fondly look back. The cliche and parochialism is as ever-present as it is in every other manifestation of the national psyche.

Yes - I proposed Savage/Shearer as the ideal pairing a while back to no enthusiasm. Delighted to have one convert.

O'Neill / Shearer / Robbie Williams?

can't decide if that's the best or worst production of The Caretaker ever

MotD: West Ham's booked striker was booked again for big celebration, sent off, EFC equalized.

Shearer fumed that it was 'ridiculous' etc.

funny thing is, though Shearer sounds passionately opinionated in a way, I don't think he really is - I think he decides he'd better take an opinion, and then gets as worked up as he can about it

I think he's wrong. Everyone knows that provocative celebration etc (eg taking off shirt, which the player didn't do) gets a booking. The player had been booked. He should have obeyed that rule that you see managers trying to enforce from the touchline at these moments when teams get a late goal: keep your head, get back, let's protect this now, etc. Instead he wanted to jump around flamboyantly. He should have known he'd get booked.

I think you're slightly missing the point. Shearer was fuming that the rule itself is ridiculous. Obviously the referee was technically correct to give the player another booking, he was just following the rules, but this rule is stupid. Why shouldn't he run to his fans to celebrate the goal (which seemed to be a late winner away from home for a team staring relegation in the face)? Why should that be considered 'provocative'? It's hardly the equivalent of Adebayor running the entire length of Eastlands to celebrate in front of the Arsenal fans when he scored for City last season. He didn't go to the Everton fans, he didn't speak to the Everton fans, he didn't gesture to the Everton fans. If they're going to be provoked by him celebrating the goal with the West Ham fans, they're just as likely to be provoked by him celebrating the goal on the pitch with his team mates. In fact, they're rather more likely to be upset about the goal itself than the celebration, so maybe away teams should be banned from scoring.

There definitely seems to have been an effort by Keys/Gray/Sky to reassert the English game as being the pinnacle of world football since the World Cup; the number of times they've talked about 4-4-2, kind of trying to convince themselves that it's the only way to play, Gray talking about how much he likes it during the Spurs-Utd game last week because it allows teams to go out there and give it a go or something. Keys: "Is that a victory for 4-42?" etc.

It's pretty rare for anyone to criticise a rule xp rather than fetishise its application. I mean, I basically agree with him for once, I just wish they would do the same for other rules instead of just parroting 'if he raised his hands he's got to go' for some innocuous incident.

Anyway, in the circumstances Piquionne's idiocy is totally the point - it's not like the rule is remotely obscure, everyone knows that's a booking.

Yes, they should know that they'll get booked for taking their shirt off or for hugging the fans, but... I've never scored a goal in front of 40,000 people, but I'm guessing it feels pretty amazing, and that the last thing on your mind is going to be "Shit, better not over-do cos I'll get booked". On the two occasions I scored for my Sunday league team, both gorgeous strikes from outside the box by the way, my mind went blank. I got such a buzz it was incredible. So goodness knows what it's like to score in that kind of environment!

How ironic that Keys' first word just now was "Unsackable".