Kenny Dalglish Won't Be Delivering the Module: English Premiership 2011-12

The Four Year Plan is worth watching whatever your feelings about QPR: a startling insight into just how badly a football club can be run. There are some genuinely jaw dropping bits in there.

Here's the trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5xAmAjZ1mY

I think Wigan are just too poor to stay up and it looks like all the fight's gone out of Bolton now, they seem to just stand aside and let teams win. Coyle and Martinez just have so much residual goodwill towards them that people seem to be barely batting an eyelid at the prospect of them taking reasonably well established Premiership teams down so limply.

Of the remaining three, fuck knows who. Blackburn seem to have the most ability to wring out an astonishing result and QPR may just have enough talent in their squad. God knows about Wolves.

yeah.

can Villa still slide into this morass? McLeish looks like a dude capable of inspiring a tailspin to me.

Really looking fwd to Four Year Plan

Villa are too far ahead. There was an interesting piece in WSC about the ennui from fans around Boundary Park, after a decade labouring in a division they've got no chance of winning. The feeling was they wouldn't mind a crack at the championship.

lol Boundary Park, is that even right?

just checked Villa's run-in. we'll see.

Unless you're talking about Oldham, then no
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Boundary Park's Oldham. Do you mean Ewood? You can't mean Villa Park? Villa fans surely don't fancy a crack at the Championship?

Of the remaining relegation-threatened teams, Villa only have to play Bolton, so the potential for six-pointers is pretty low. They still have Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, United and Spurs to play though, plus games against clubs like Norwich, Fulham and Sunderland who you'd expect to comfortably take them down.

They'll be cheering McLeish from the rafters when he brings them to the promised land.

yeah. there are a lot of points still to play for and tho i fully expect it to be 3 from the current bottom 5 history has a habit of throwing up a last-minute disaster and a pointless run from Villa now cd get some nerves jangling

i suspect the degree of anticipation i'm feeling about today's game is more to do with not having been to the pub all week than anything

Finding it increasingly hard to imagine QPR staying up.

That's the impression I get from most R's fans and the players too, to the extent I've read any quotes from them. Still, while it seems like inside the club there's this sense of resignation to the inevitable, outside observers seem to have much more faith in the side's capacity to stay up. I wonder, therefore, if a little bit of self-belief (although I guess that might require a decent win, so catch 22) could go a lot further at Loftus Road than any other club because, as Matt says, they do seem to have the talent to stay up. I never really thought that a lack of self-confidence be so debilitating but it would be such a waste if QPR end up going down, simply because everyone involved assumed they would.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/mar/03/ryan-giggs-paul-scholes-manchester-united

really interesting article.

i'm still v. wary of QPR putting a run together. Bolton and Wigan seem like the no-hopers, but after that us, Rangers and Blackburn all seem to be capable of more than we're achieving when we click.

Wonder if Rafa has a masterplan to get Liverpool into Europe?

I think if QPR do go down, Cissé's red card against Wolves will be seen as the turning point. With him in the team, alongside Zamora, I think we would have beaten Wolves, Fulham and Everton. And that would have buoyed confidence for the run-in. I supect we'll end up having a string of glorious 3-2 defeats against the big clubs, with all observers saying how unlucky we were, and ignoring the myriad games we failed to win but should have. I have no time for the notion of luck over the course of the season: lot's of Rs fans saying we're unlucky to be where we are. Bad luck might turn a game, but incompetence turns a season.

LFC already in Europe next season.

NB52!

Like Lennon and McCartney, the hits keep coming for Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes

Honestly don't think you could write a cornier first line than this if you tried.

pretty poisonous atmos at the sportsdirect arena

xpost And gramatically incorrect. In what sense do Lennon and McCartney keep coming for Giggs and Scholes?

fear that their wives have been bedded

or their kids taken to school

I was talking about Bolton (many xps), Burnden Park is what I meant.

Burnden Park is no more. You meant the Reebok all along.

Fifteen years ago I'd've been right.

also about Liverpool

Surprised you made it to the Emirates last week and weren't standing forlornly at a block of flats insisting the Gunners play at Highbury
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what is that on demba ba's bonce

(looks jizzy)

Heh xxp. My dad & I sneaked into Highbury Square afterwards (it's a gated development with guards naturally, but has quite a long delay before the gates close). It's quite swish. One of the flats had a big Liverpool flag on display. There was nothing corresponding for Arsenal.

xpost Did have a Coventry-supporting friend who in the early 90s turned up at Plough Lane for their away game v Wimbledon. Several years too late.

Ha
Almost broke my ankle at Plough Lane, the away terrace seemed to consist of nothing but rubble iirc

Catching up on MOTD. Sturridge looking v much like Torres. So Chelsea have two £50 million centre forwards. They must be pleased.

AVB doesn't want to work for these shower anymore does he? Give me my payoff and I'll go somewhere where the players ego is a little closer to their current ability rather than their ability of 5 years ago.

That one-on-one he missed was completely hopeless.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/17249760

Moyes OTM here. It'll never happen clearly, but nice to see someone in a prominent position actually saying it.

Looked like he was going to do a Pele, and then he couldn't even manage the heroic miss.
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It was as if he was trying for that, only halfway through to forget what it was Pele actually did.

Or who Pele actually was more likely.

1337:
BREAKING NEWS

Andre Villas-Boas has been sacked as Chelsea manager

AVB gone!

bye avb

Farewell AVB. Fuck Chelsea.

hope he gets a decent job

One of today's papers had Rafa ready to be announced "by Tuesday". Maybe the Fourth Estate called it right?

Don't go to Inter!!!

Poor AVB. He seemed so sad last night.

(and fuck Chelsea)