Moneyball won't win the Premiership 2012-13

football sucks. its all about the money these days. not like in the old days.

Trinity Mirror's Sunday Sun has suffered a sales decline of more than 20% in the first six months of the year, with the publisher blaming the circulation drop on the paper's local team, Newcastle United, doing too well in the Premier League last season.

The Magpies' strong end to the season saw more of their matches during the run-in switched from Saturday to Sunday for broadcast on Sky Sports.

Just three of Newcastle's last 11 Premier League games were on a Saturday, robbing the Sunday Sun of a day of readers digesting match reports, comment and analysis.

wb dmac obv

wb darragh. i trust you are in the fantasy league?

football sucks. its all about the money these days. not like in the old days.

Robert Smith (of The Cure) trotted out this line in this weeks issue of Hot Press when asked about QPR's chances in the Prem this season.

he has been saying that since like 1995 tbf

load of bollocks anyway

i try to lurk but i couldn't let that shit pass
― starfish entryprize (darraghmac), Wednesday, 29 August 2012 18:22

I wondered what had happened to you. Is this a long term commitment to lurking?

this giles podcast is fairly tedious...

Wayne Rooney ‏@WayneRooney
Read the nonsense in the papers and heard what people have to say.absolute rubbish. #heartostay

#hashtags

is Hear to Stay a Stereophonics album?

excellent

apparently Roque Santa Cruz is signing for Malaga...

on loan

lol

roque sante cruz european career

13 years

275 games

63 goals

On 5 August 2012, Santa Cruz played 73 minutes in the Manchester City's 4-0 friendly victory over Limerick.[131] On 10 August 2012, it was reported that Werder Bremen had been wheedled to within an inch of making a bid for Santa Cruz.

would it be fair to say that even when he isn't injured, roque is not really much/any better than carlton cole

idk this is all a bit talking points but in retrospect it seems strange that after one big club persisted with him through years of failure, another then bought him for £17m

his transfer from blackburn to city went on for aaaaages iirc. its kinda funny that he never really played.

he was p legit at blackburn, way out of cole's ballpark

city arent equiv to bayern even now let alone in 2009 under hughes

he scored a lot of headers from david bentley crosses

bentley/santa cruz 2k8 was the high watermark for EPL overspending until dalglish went to town

he hadnt really had a good last season there (injuries?) before city splashed that much out for him is probably the weirdest thing

i spose this was the early days when city still had to beg dudes to let them put 75k pw in their bank accounts

ie like us with dawson

huh roque was 2k9 actually

so in one year they went from him to silva and yaya touré

kinda like psg going from gameiro to ibra

http://www.qpr.co.uk/cms_images/fernandes-cesar-hughes-64064-341376_478x359.jpg

ah and right on cue

four year contract, sigh

cat that got the c.r.e.a.m.

I assumed the transfer was purely because he was Hughes' favourite at Blackburn?

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

also how did tony fernandez get to be as big as big julio cesar

levy sold him avb's ladder for 7m

Mirallas has gotten two in the first-half against Leyton Orient

Number None, heard Buttner had his debut in the under 21 ManU team tonight? Do you know how he did?

didn't see any of it but just from reading forums and the like people seemed fairly impressed

oh and Berbatov to Fulham seems to be a thing now, which would make the Dembele transfer all the more galling

No way will he go for Fulham over Juventus or Fiorentina.

"family reasons" says the rumour mill

James Horncastle ‏@JamesHorncastle
Fiorentina slam the “arrogance of other clubs” in hijacking Berba deal.

6m James Horncastle ‏@JamesHorncastle
Fiorentina furious. Claim they got green light from United and a verbal agreement from Berba. Paid for tickets to Florence. Never turned up

8m James Horncastle ‏@JamesHorncastle
Fiorentina issue strong statement on Berbatov. “He doesn’t deserve our city and our shirt” http://it.violachannel.tv/dettaglio-societa/items/la-fiorentina-berbatov-e-i-confini-della-lealta.html …

berbatov to fulham then? my faith in football is renewed.

Stoke City make a £5m bid for Liverpool midfielder Charlie Adam!

so i've not seen a kick but for a very depressing spurs/newcastle and the excellent lfc/city matches

AVB is trying to change too much too quickly and is focusing on the wrong things anyway. Doomed to fail and disastrously imo. The only bright spark in it is that he seems to be very sure of the players his system requires and is willing to act on this certainty, which is broadly positive were he right. Which he isn't.

Shipping or attempting to ship out dawson and vdv is fuckin madness, basically. One striker with lil jermaine as backup while packing in a few more central midfielders is chronically incompetent, the same brand of squad planning that left redknapp bereft of vital cover after a dreadful jan tran win this season gone.

A willingness to jettison our only right winger is similarly 'confusing'.

Going ahead with the cutprice sale of pienaar seems a weird one. He could feasibly have 80% replaced modric without any outlay at all, leaving us 30m odd to balance a centrally-bloated squad.

Far from convinced that a 15m dembele has improved our first xi one iota.

Other than that, we'd only need lloris, lb cover and to clear out gallas, rose, dos santo, jenas, bentley and i'd be happy enough.

Thudd stays, ideally.

jettison our only right winger

clear out dos santo [sic]

This is the part I find 'confusing', wb though.

ty ty all i'm sure

Gds has never really impressed in any role at whl and realistically it's not gonna happen now, i've embraced that

that wasnt sic that was me btw

Vertonghen should be excellent for you though, £9m seems way too low to me.

p cool that the CL draw could see the champions from England, Italy, Spain and Germany all in the same group!

i'm not invested in spurs like that obv but every spurs fan has struck me as really pretty overly pessimistic imo, all this "too much too soon" but very little of it is worth the agonizing clinging onto. of course it's accelerated and risky but if you wanted solid successive 6th spots under moyes you should have just said so at the time

the other thing is the "avb is doing..." canard. this is the levy era kids, he is vince mcmahon-ing it and avb is his very loose delegate. avb wants a moutinho. levy didnt fancy it, gives him a dembele and a pat on the arse. off you go love, and don't forget there's plenty more you in the sea. now piss off i've got another mug on the phone here

all the signings are appetising, dynamic and are gonna cost someone a fortune in 3 or 4 years. ~£20m for the slow broken zero distribution parker-ish dawson, the vdv fallacy, the huddlestone never-was is dope business

deserves reply and breakdown, to follow...