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

/could

lolling at Little Pea FULL Song

hodgson's charisma free junket

hodgson vs rafa vs dalglish for charisma? between them they wouldn't fill a shitpot.

i like the idea that our okay squad players going forward will be academy graduates. no point in buying your poulsens and konchesky's etc if you've got spearing's and flanogan's.

only arsenal and utd have managed to achieve while doing this, as far back as i can remember? everton manage it for half a season tbf.

Nothing new here, but a good article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/manchester-united/8511127/Manchester-Uniteds-owners-the-Glazers-are-monumental-leeches-growing-rich-on-a-golden-age.html

kenny has way more charisma than hodgson or rafa. at least he's smiling and joking.

I rarely read it, but the Telegraph's football coverage is pretty much always good when I do (was directed there this morning looking at Neil Lennon stuff, which seems to have pressed a few wrong buttons though I thought it was alright).

I've said this before, but United operating as a plc in a way invited this on themselves - they should've gone private if the intention was ever to operate within their limits, they made themselves too juicy a target and no way to fend a predator off. In retrospect, do you think Utd got lucky that the Sky bid was scuppered essentially by a deus ex machina, or would Sky have been a less-bad option?

kenny has way more charisma than hodgson or rafa. at least he's smiling and joking.

Charisma is not something I associate with Kenny Dalglish, or perhaps it's just not obvious to me. He doesn't say much but he has got a sly sense of humour and a bit of a twinkle, very Glaswegian.

Kenny is pretty good in interviews.

(xp) I'm glad the Sky bid was successfully fought off, but I think it might have been a less-bad option (which I appreciate is probably logically inconsistent). Less-bad for United, but probably worse for football.

Were Mike Phelan to do the same with Javier Hernández these days, he would be obliged to pick out the software engineers from Singapore, the human resources managers from Oslo, the hedge fund directors from Prestbury.

hate when this xenophobic stuff kicks in. yes feel free to lament locals not being able to afford to go to games, but why "singapore" and "oslo". can't somebody from singapore be allowed to watch a football match without being deemed to be some kind of human sized tumour

x-post kenny's press conferences have all been fairly funny...

Kenny is pretty good in interviews.

He got slaughtered by the Scottish press, but then he was a Celtic manager, therefore the Anti-Christ to them

xp Kenny's 'charisma' is just a sort of supreme confidence really, complete self-assurance and giving the impression that Liverpool is the whole world to him; he gets it back through that, plus having actually assumed complete authority naturally through his playing achievements. It's not the sort of personal charisma that you'd want from appointing Jack Nicholson say, it's some other intangible force at work.

Roy publicly praising Alex Ferguson is kind of the complete opposite of that, I do wonder if that's the moment he became irrevocably doomed.

he was a fucking disaster in every press conference. eg after everton walloped us and he said it was the best performance so far, when it remains one of the worst performances of the last few years.

or when we drew with bham and were terrible, lucky not to lose, and he said something like "we'll probably lose a lot of games we're expected to win this season"

thanks for that sun tzu!

hahaha, I kind of enjoyed those days

ah they were the worst, defo one of the worst times of the last 20 years to be a liverpool fan, barring some parts of the souness era.

his inability to master press conferences was baffling tbh, and i suspect it was his PR skills more than anything on that pitch that got him sacked so quickly

it definitely accelerated it. he was all over the place in the press conferences.

i suspect he was upset by the hostility that greeted his appointment from a section of the fans and he was sulking from that point on

I imagine he was wery upset by thier rudeness, being a Dickensian/ 30s British movies sort of guy

Fergie charged again
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/may/13/fa-charge-sir-alex-ferguson

oh man the FA are so biased against Man U

Is that comment directed at me? Just posting a news story.

All these articles about FA discipline make like these are real charges before a real court where real things might happen which affect anyone's life, rather than a piddling fine and having to sit a few yards from where he'd normally be. Maybe footy folk do take it seriously.

http://www.essex.police.uk/images/brought-to-justice%20final.jpg

interested to hear mike phelan's thoughts on this actually.

Is that comment directed at me?

Not in the slightest, it was just a cheap lol at general Fergie seige mentality.

Apologies. Guess i'm the one with the siege mentality

sorry dude, i never get heated with football thread bros as it is definitely the thread where you're allowed to get heated

ILX so biased against NN

i like that we have Man U fans to good naturedly rebuff our hatred of Man U!

All these articles about FA discipline make like these are real charges before a real court where real things might happen which affect anyone's life, rather than a piddling fine and having to sit a few yards from where he'd normally be.

A bit like Pete Doherty on a possession charge then. Apart form the bit about having to sit a few yards from where he'd normally be, don't know how that would work in Pete's case.

Only feel slightly besieged when i'm defending Rooney.

xp

a longer straw, amirite?

Pete got his Zone 1 exclusion order or whatever it was, which is kind of the same but improved many lives by taking him out of the media loop for a bit.

glad it seems they're basically going to keep penalising fergusaur till he shuts it tho, meaningless punishment or not.

Yeah, cos it worked for getting him to interviews with the BBC.

on a diff note...meeting a few irish pals who moved over here recently but are in diff parts of ldn tomorrow to watch the cup...so probably going to go central, i usually just go wherever in soho but wondered if anyone had a suggestion for decent pubs to watch football, if there are any?

i mean the usual ones are fine but if there are any good suggestions from people who spend more time central then that'd be helpful.

x-post if they escalate it i'd say it could work for this...financial fine isn't as big a deal as touchline bans etc.

the touchline bans are the only thing that work i think but it'd be v. hard to justify a touchline ban just for sulking with the Beeb

Old Trafford's hi-tech rotary phone technology means a touchline ban is largely meaningless

shd probably make it a ground ban

points deduction would solve it straight away

so would chopping off his arms, but neither punishment would be proportionate

i hadn't thought about chopping off his arms.

Chewing gum and booze ban would really hit him hard

but wondered if anyone had a suggestion for decent pubs to watch football, if there are any?

King & Queen in Fitzrovia? Large screens, good beer etc. Usually a good atmosphere but usually not too busy. (Might be a bit quiet on a Saturday tho?)

i don't think a ground ban rather than a touchline ban is disproportionate for certain offences. not singling Fergie out on this.

Of course Mourinho ground banned himself for the Champions League semi.

it's not really the same as crime is it anyway, the punishment doesn't have to reflect the inevitability of the act cos the act isn't inevitable. ferguson isn't commenting on referees because he has to, or because of social forces or something.

x-post nor am I, just suggesting generally if they want to stop something in football, harsh punishments would work well.

It's not the same as crime because crime's serious, this is more like the golf club disciplining members for imbibing drinks in the window lounge not the bar lounge.

there's enough money and business interest in professional football for it to be as serious as say, breaches of ethics or employment contract in other businesses