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

holden's acceptance of the injury will be lauded- kind of thing always disappoints.

he was pretty serene when de jong fucked his leg up last year too

idk dude's kind of made of glass but he's been having such a great year + usa needed him for gold cup this summer

yeah i feel for dude, he's been impressive any time i caught bolton this season.

de jong is a known cunt

evans isn't particularly dirty, guessing he's kinda overcompensating for shit form this year

will still be a good player imo

and yeah holden is decent

Blatter doing some of Lord Bell's work:

“I am deeply proud of the fans reactions to the tournament,” she said. “Beforehand, we had only played in tournaments outside of the country so this was the first women’s football tournament to be held in Bahrain and all of the games were televised live. The number of fans who attended and the mix of men, women, families, and children who came out to support the team was beyond amazing. The team has become the talk of the country and to see grown men wearing Bahrain jerseys with the names of our female players on their back is incredible!”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/b/blackburn_rovers/9432795.stm

hm that's an odd signing why would they do thaoh i see.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7wkrZM3P2E/SFgViVUmKEI/AAAAAAAAALs/YdN90Io6m30/s400/ChickenFootball.jpg

looking forward to seeing these guys at Ewood soon

holy shit

such a punchline

yeah the article has a beautifully knowing setup/payoff

they should get the same dude to write a short article on bebe

tbh it takes a special player to be let go by the Mighty O's youth set-up.

I'm just gutted we'll never get to see Ronaldinho and this guy together

Trying to out-cunt Colin Moynihan:

The sports minister, Hugh Robertson, has said the government will consider the possibility of reintroducing standing areas at top-level football matches, 21 years after Lord Justice Taylor recommended terracing be outlawed.

At the first ever meeting to discuss the issue with the Football Supporters' Federation (FSF), football authorities, police and the Football Licensing Authority, which took place on Monday, Robertson said he would examine the evidence for safe standing. In particular, he said he wanted to see whether modern terracing would be safe, technically able to be built into stadiums and capable of being policed, and whether there is demand from substantial numbers to stand.

Last time I stood was on the packed Newcastle end at Craven Cottage circa 2001. It's a more exciting way to watch football so long as you don't expect to see much - I only ever had a view of about half the pitch and I'm pretty tall. Shearer scored a penalty directly in front of us and I had to get up on tiptoes and lean to the side just to see it, no idea how shorter types are supposed to see anything.

I used to like standing on the terrace. Last time I was in the away end at Hull we ending up standing throughout anyway. I don't think terraces themselves are a safety hazard if they're properly built and managed, and lots of fans seem to want them so hey.

I rarely sit: last time I did was at Fulham- Stoke this season, maybe 15 rows behind the goal. My lovely wife found the whole thing frustrating because as soon as anything approaching goalmouth action happened in front of us, everyone stood up and she couldn't see anything. She missed both goals in this fashion. When we see bands play, and on the rare occasions we've stood on terraces to watch games she tends to watch from the back or sides, where there's a bit of space and she can at least see something.

I tell this story not because it's very interesting, but because it's not like terraces=bad view and seats = good view is a simple equation. As I understand it, part of the safe standing thing is the management of terrace capacity and barriers etc to give a bit more space and prevent crushing / overcrowding.

I welcome the consideration of safe standing, I don't welcome the supporter organisations' obsession with it, there are much more important battles I think.

I should also say that at gigs etc I also have an unerring ability to end up right behind Crouch types. Partly it's guilt at knowing that if I have a good view, someone behind me won't, so I don't try too hard. The missus never, ever sees anything though.

pav has a similar problem

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/818963/image002.gif

That Lawro photo is mint btw. It was the last time somebody posted that picture too ;)

rats i've been missin images lately with the phone surfin

Lolled more at moyes entry than anythin else

It's all high quality stuff, the EBJT bit is the least of it really.

pretty much yr standard england performance in reverse then

International weeks are the worst. EBJT coming out swinging is all we have, but at least he does it well - "I accepted their decision. But that doesn't mean to say I agreed with it, and I never will", indeed.

yeah fucking hell international weeks are dull. could we not finish the season in april have a two month summer group stage that would still give the players a month or two off?

Has the whole Friday/Tuesday qualifier thing gone out the window already? I see England back to playing Sat afternoon.

re: safe standing

There's a petition here, if you're so inclined:
http://www.fsf.org.uk/petitions/safestanding.php

Hillsborough Family Support Group condemn standing areas proposal
"we just believe there's no such thing as safe standing in this country"

Knew they'd say that - they always do. The thing is, however well-intentioned, they're just wrong: 'safe standing' areas are exactly that and work perfectly fine in Germany. There's nothing inherently unsafe about standing up (which is why people can still do it on terraces in lower divisions/leagues, and when watching other sports, and when watching concerts, etc.) and no one is advocating a return to old-style terraces. There were many reasons for the Hillsborough disaster, and the fact that people were standing up is at most a very minor one. If you had an all-seater area of a stadium, but had an inadequate number of turnstiles for the supporters to get through in time for kick-off resulting in a massive crush outside the gates, if you then opened the exit gates and let thousands of people flood in at the same time but didn't direct them to the correct areas and left them all heading into the same already full area, if you ended up with far too many people in that section than it could possibly cope with but caged those people in so there was nowhere for them to escape to, and if people trying to escape were beaten back by the police who just assumed it was hooligans trying to invade the pitch, and if you only let one ambulance in to deal with the consequences, then unfortunately the same kind of tragedy could happen - seats wouldn't do anything to stop it.

jesus, the opta pub quiz was tough
http://www.optasports.com/about/news/feature-the-opta-joe-sports-quiz.html

2.2 Which player was penalised for more handballs than anyone else in World cup finals between 1966 & 2010?

Is this a fact of some notoriety? Because if not I don't see how any answer could be anything other than a total guess.

1.2 Which of these players has never scored 20 league goals in a Premier League season? Michael Owen, Frank Lampard, Darren Bent, Andrew Johnson, James Beattie

I assume this is Owen, just because he's the one that would be most surprising.

You'd have to exceed the capacity of seating pens by so much more to cause that kind of crush is I presume the point xp - i.e. much greater margin for error. If Hillsbrough ensued from 50% overcapacity in those two pens, say, you'd probably need close to 200% overcapacity in the Leppings seating areas with their lower normal capacity. Agreed that this is kind of redundant for all the other reasons though.

Also, with seating there's much less of an uncontrolled flow of people (though some access areas can get unpleasantly tight from time to time all the same).

I believe the safe-standing areas in Germany basically have people standing in rows with barriers in front of them - essentially like seating areas, but with the seats folded away and a barrier between rows. So there's no swaying up and down like before.

Another thing worth pointing out is that there are de facto standing areas in all-seater stadiums already - the supporters just ignore the stewards and all stand up. Standing in amongst seats is actually less safe than standing on a purpose-built terrace.

Yeah I think that's how it works in Germany. Leads to lots of jumping up and down on the spot but no surging downwards a la Argentinian Football (from what I see on t.v at every Boca/River game ever)

The Boca ground has standing on the upper tiers iirc. The terraces are really steep too, it seems a bit crazy tbh.

Standing in amongst seats is actually less safe than standing on a purpose-built terrace.

could you expand? is it because legs and arms can get caught between seats?

There's standing in a number (all?) of MLS stadia too, either simply standing amongst seats/bleachers or in some cases on semi-German-style terracing.

actually in the Chicago supporter sections that aren't terraced ppl just stand on the benches

In a rather enthusiastic goal celebration you can actually trip over seats and go tumbling down several rows. (xxp)

^^^seen this happen a few times

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42692000/jpg/_42692677_bremen203.jpg

this is from bremen's stadium, folding seats if you want them, if not: stand away

I really want to work out the answers to that quiz, but don't want this thread to just become endless quiz speculation, so I've started this thread:
http://www.optasports.com/about/news/feature-the-opta-joe-sports-quiz.html

Doh. ^ That's not the thread.

This is: Opta Quiz

http://i.imgur.com/z7qSp.jpg

http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=site:bbc.co.uk+mike+phelan&um=1&hl=en&biw=1503&bih=679&tbs=isch:1,imgo:1,isz:ex,iszw:512,iszh:288