Match of the Day vs The Premiership

A television documentary about Radio 1, sorry.

English League grounds I have been to: none

Scottish ones: Celtic Park, Ibrox, Hampden, Pittodrie, Tannadice, Dens Park, Easter Road, Tynecastle, McDiarmid Park, Muirton Park (former St Johnstone ground), Broadwood, East End Park, Fir Park, Love Street, Firhill, Station Park (Forfar), New Kilbowie, Victoria Park (Ross County), Borough Briggs (Elgin City) and various Highland League (i.e. non-league so don't count) grounds.

Only other stadium I have watched a match in: Olympic Stadium, Seville.

This subjects worthy of a thread Which football grounds have you been to?

Try again Which football grounds have you been to?

koogs, i thought you didn't like football?

I watched some of Saturday's MOTD last night. I found Spurs v Arsenal confusing - too many goals, court composer! The bespectacled fella, who I've never seen before, seemed quite good, possibly better than Gary L. He reminded me of Graham Coxon. It must be very upsetting if you're a goalkeeper and Schmichael criticises you like that. On the other hand, it could be quite useful, taken in the right spirit.

mr hivemind. i'd rather actively ignore it than just be asleep when it's on 8)

it's just good to be able to keep up with these conversations and the ones in the office. and occasionally something interesting will happen (the handball that resulted in everton's penalty this weekend for instance)

Top comedy ahead of tonight's MOTD Live:

http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,1563,1352950,00.html

"I know who are the racists. I remember the colonies. I have a lot of black friends and I have fed black people at my table, in my house. I bought TWO copies of 'Hey Ya'!"

Last night's debacle was clearly so depressing no one could rouse themselves (or even Rous themselves) to re-energise this thread.

I was torn between wanting to see England's ineptitude get buried under an avalanche of second-half Spanish goals or see Ashley Cole or SWP dance through the home defence and nab an equaliser to silence the racist clowns. Of course, neither of these things was ever likely to happen.

nope, I got too depressed about it all and switched off at about 65 minutes.

yr man Rooney has a lot of growing up to do (well, he is only 19 I suppose but still....)

My man Rooney? I understand he wears a shirt of another colour thesedays. I think I was a far less mature 19-y-o.

the royal "yr" not the Steady in particular.

he just remonds me of Kevin the teenager so much sometimes. Owen for instance (great tackle in manyoo match apart) was far more calm and professional at that age I think.

a large cup of petulance all round.

the spanish fans should be rounded up, put in a field, and educated...

not fair to generalise them tho eh? also there was something a little suspicious about the racist chanting what with Becks saying he hadn't heard it before and there not being much talk of it in the past i.e. why does this only seem to happen with England??

My reply to this just disappeared. It was quite long.

G and I have been talking about this and generally haven't heard much if any of that sort of abuse while watching Spanish footie (and we watch a fair bit).

I'd like to hear Pj's long answer, I hope it's not lost forever.

I can only think of one instance - Van Gaal's Ajax got monkey chanted at Zaragoza. Van Gaal made an official complaint, don't know what happened.

Monkey chanting is not standard Spanish practice, defending football people whatever they do (ie Aragones making racist comments) is, especially if the critics are foreign, and extra-especially if the foreigners in question still haven't given Gibraltar back.

I spent years being driven mental by causal racism in Spain, then I just stopped bothering, it was too exhausting. There are people working to get rid of racism, but it's a big job. The standard answer used to be (get this) 'there's no racism here because there are no races'. That is changing now, as Spain experiences its first real wave of immigration of modern times. I think it will be a bumpy ride, but I imagine Britain was just as bad in 1964 or whenever.

These people bring out an annual report which makes for depressing reading. Incidentally, racism is rife across the political spectrum, so-called leftwingers are just as bad. Well, the pro-ETA ones anyway. It is mostly directed against gypsies.

This is the Bizkaia version, I don't know why:

http://www.sosracismo.org

I don't think England's cause was helped by trying to take the moral high ground by wearing those t-shirts and so on. I know the intention was good, but it seemed to backfire, both on the field (the Spanish were really fired up) and off (I'm sure the chanting wouldn't have happened without this).

Not that I'm defending the morons.

Now I come to think of it, one of the reasons I stopped going to Real Sociedad was because I had to hear racist comments all the time. But the same applies to Tamworth (the match sponsor 'VIP' group from a company called Autosmart) and Burton, so....

'Rous'!

Le Saux, Curbishley, Chiles: You are all BOR-ING!

The worse combination so far, I think. Though we did learn that Trevor Brooking used to drink so much Coke it gave him the occasional upset tummy. I think football pundit anecdotes need to be a bit spicier than that - if Greavsie could coax a chuckle from St John with the same story then it reaches some minimum requirement. ISJ would've been stony-faced last night and not just at the Boro result.

They would have said, 'worse'.

I like Adrian Chiles quite a lot. I think he's good on MOTD.

In other news: England beat Spain at golf, Spain won Junior Eurovision Song Contest and more people watched it than watched Barca-Madrid. So national pride restored all round.

junior eurovision was really rather good

Silly me didn't know it was on.

People think Matt DC is American because he is always talking about his Spurs.

That was a funny goal last night. The Nun was particularly beatific after the match. I may start referring to Villa as 'we' for the duration of this good spell.

I told the Pinefox over pie on Sunday that there was no way Spurs would lose yet another consecutive game. I feel bad - I've let him down, I've let meself down and, most of all, I've let the pie down.

Meanwhile, in Smug Before The Fall news, I would like to point out that the last time Everton started a season 9-2-3 we won the title by 13 points with five games to spare. So this season is already shaping up to be a disappointment.

David Moyes is the new, er, Mike Walker

I tried to listen to this match on the radio but Graham Taylor was whining on, and I couldn't take his bottomless gormlessness for more than ten seconds.

'Bottomless Gormless' - unreleased Kraftwerk classic.

I watched Hitchcock's VERTIGO last night and early on in the film James Stewart appears to be doing a very plausible ALAN HANSEN impersonation. Could it be that ALAN HANSEN's entire screen persona is based on James Stewart's combination of bewilderment and indignation?

PS: The film was a game of two halves.

Is the place where we roffle at Tony Blair on Football Focus?

SHIT! I missed it! Highlights plz.

HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAAAHAAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!

He hearts Steed Malbranque

He was fucking terrifed when they were playing the recording of him talking about Milburn. Good to see him engage with the terracing issue. It's like he used to think they should be brought back a few years ago. Ho hum.

Motson asked him if he was going to follow Alan Shearer and retire.

Blair would have Alex Ferguson in the Cabinet. He doesn't go to matches because people force him into executive boxes and make him talk about politics.

He looked terrified, and a bit either asleep, unsure, or waiting for prompting. He kept pausing and didn't sound at all convincing about anything.

Looked like he had quite a buff chest underneath that purple shirt, though.

and unless I'm entirely mistaken, T-minus 2 weeks to MES doing Final Score...

Briliant stuff when he talked about being given his briefing beforehand and what he'd been told to say. So he said it.

Blair bigs up Malbranque and within three hours he's scored his first goal of the season. He da PM.

I've just realised that might look like it's supposed to be some kind of racist joke. It's not. Malbranque's scored again!

And now Teddy's scored!

TB must be dynamite in the Cabinet fantasy football league.

I liked how he would chose Ferguson to be in his cabinet. A fiery Scotsman who can't have anything other than top job? Whatever next?

I would be terrified too.

I would like to see Motty on Question Time. No, seriously.

Motty was determined to get the questions in while Manish looked a bit out of his depth and was kind of shunted out. Blair wasn't awfully convincing. Oh, and Lawro enjoyed being able to be awkward to the PM on live TV, but didn't really bring anything to the discussion.

Nick H makes a good point.

So does PJM. I would, too.

Blair was embarrassingly nervy and deferential, as he is in 'non-political' scenarios. Yet it cannot be said that his judgement of footy matters was altogether awry: as Alba and JtN point out, his judgements were oddly accurate.

Boyle is absolutely right to say that Blair looked terrified when they replayed the old radio interview. It was as though, having just made a claim, it was going to be undermined 30 seconds later, and we were about to see him lying outright on live TV, as it happened. It would have been so emblematic. And this is just Football Focus.

But it did not happen; the tape proved his innocence - which perhaps makes me wonder why he looked so scared.

On the whole, otherwise, he was fairly uncontroversial and unenlightening. Surely he could at least, for instance, have said that Supporters' Trusts are a good thing? But then, perhaps he doesn't think they are.

A terrific photo in the next day's paper showed him talking afterwards, not with Lawro and Manish (sp?) but with... Hansen... Lineker... and ... yes: the man who cut his political teeth on Dispatch Box: CROOKSY!

BTW, I was hoping, I was hoping that this thread, that this thread would be revived, in order to talk about, to talk about, have a look at this - the moment when MOTD2 suddenly started showing, suddenly started showing, Panorama.

I heard a funny story about Garth Crooks on the radio the other day, but I can't remember what it was.

Worst post ever!