Moneyball won't win the Premiership 2012-13

thought spurs looked great for 25 mins.

"dem-bell"

bedtime for me but I am confident in the way only a non-spurs fan could be that they will go on to win this 3-1.

Quinn is immensely irritating

Yeah good first half but Spurs HAVE played well in every game this season except against Norwich. I'm a bit worried about our inability to kill this off given amble opportunity so far.

amble opportunity = thudd time

Has the fucking band always been a Reading thing?

how did waitrose end up sponsoring reading and not arsenal?

lovely play by walker there. hilarious scuff tho.

i enjoyed that buildup

Animated gif of that AVB celebration please.

bet you lot got excited when Huddlestone shaped up there

quinn is such a mean-spirited cunt. just give a guy a break, niall, jesus. he can't even for a second allow himself to just enjoy being at the match and maybe even roll out a fluffy truism or two.

Robson-Kanu? Nice.

lol quinn is like the ne plus ultra of complaisant credit to the lad to be fair to him co-commentary bollocks

for a real miserable cunt in that role see craig burley, or rather don't

hoddle looking quite fat all of a sudden

yeah i was obv being sarcastic!

the ultimate dour "why the fuck are we even paying for you to be here" co-commentator is ray houghton! i used to wish the main commentator would just have a go at him sometimes, like "if you're going to sit there and whinge for 90 mins then just fuck off, i'm trying to enjoy this."

oh, right

well....lawrenson

Houghton's style is a bit different to Lawro's. His go to phrase is a pained "you've got to be doing better than that" as a thirty yard volley goes narrowly wide

I quite like Lawrenson as a co-commentator. Can't stand Jim Beglin.

beglin is a bit quinny but just has a droney voice so u don't notice it

why are all these dudes irish btw

Some of them are just 'Irish', rather than Irish.

GILFy's cutback for Defoe's first is super peachy, I was cleaning the kitchen during most of this game so just had the radio and Keown+whoever made it sound perfunctory, it wasn't tho rly

has Bale had his ears done?

it's all about pullbacks not pinbacks iyam

all three Spurs goals were great!

things martin keown could describe in a manner other than perfunctorily, a list:

i thought baley waley had that done ages ago or maybe it was just a 'banter' 'meme'

don't like the heart celebration tho

I'm slightly alarmed at how much better Spurs look than Liverpool, considering they're both new regimes looking to occupy similar ground.

£15m for dembele looks a lot more sensible than £15m for allen

textbook "muted celebration" from Walcott

Allen's really good, I've no problem with big money for him.

Dembele (who I like) has had two good matches for Spurs against the likes of Jonny Howson & Mikele Leigertwood. Allen was excellent vs City and Arsenal despite the results.

nothing to do with two games, dembele just has so much more in his game

what allen he does, he does well

Buttner's goal for Utd was a disgrace

allen was not excellent vs arsenal tho

So we're just rehashing the Lucas Leiva-vs-any decent attacking/creative midfielder debate then.

he is nothing like lucas, who would have stopped both goals

only rodgers would contemplate spending that amount of money on a player like him

which again is a problem given the amount of money he seemingly had to spend most of his transfer budget on him

I'm slightly alarmed at how much better Spurs look than Liverpool

Crisis?

He is being forced to play in some approximation of Lucas' role due to the latter's injury, which isn't ideal but I think he's done quite well. Who do you think they should've bought this summer? Iirc you didn't think Dempsey was at their level. The transfer period feels months ago already and I can't remember what outright strikers they were trying to attract, maybe Llorente?

Crisis was last week. In truth Liverpool have been okay but toothless in all games, except when the wheels came off v West Brom, and Borini looks like he's getting better so that should be improving too. The alarm was more about how slick Spurs looked when they've have a new team out there, their rate of progress is much higher.

"I think the Liverpool supporters will enjoy watching this kid play football," Rodgers added. "He is 5ft 6ins but in terms of being a footballer he is 7ft 6ins.

"He's absolutely immense. His courage in getting on the ball, how he reads the game and his football intelligence is outstanding.

"We paid £15m for him and I said that very quickly that price would double and people probably laughed at me.

i don't like managers who move to a new club and try to buy mostly their old players (allen, borini, sigurdsson)

they might all be good players but it shows a lack of perspective -- they are often sold at a premium when others of similar qualities could be found

mourinho is a bit like this, certainly used to be, but he operates at a more rarified level and i don't fancy rodgers' chances of building a similar personality cult no matter how many converts he drags along

Villas-Boas came into this match with rumours circulating that the Spurs chairman, Daniel Levy, had given the 34-year-old three games to save his job after a less than satisfying start to his time at the club, with the former Chelsea manager's position put under even more scrutiny after his predecessor at White Hart Lane, Harry Redknapp, appeared to deride his modern style of management in a weekend interview, claiming that "these days you are getting [from managers] 70-page dossiers on this and that. Bullshit can baffle brains at times."

lol avb out etc but i mean this can't have a shred of truth in it, can it? not the arry cuntiness but the 'three games to save job' shit?

I'm slightly alarmed at how much better Spurs look than Liverpool, considering they're both new regimes looking to occupy similar ground.

But they aren't at the same stage of development. I know Spurs lost players in the summer but Liverpool are starting from significantly further back.

Yeah I know, but part of it is showing a new way for Liverpool to be wanting. Seeing Spurs stroking it about and probing at pace like in the first ten minutes yesterday, really stretching Reading - even though Liverpool have started all their games well it hasn't looked liked that.

matt otm- lfc aren't starting from 4th place, and it prob should have been higher than that tbh. we've gone backwards over the summer, lfc just haven't gone forward.

yeah exactly, spurs finished 4th last season.