Moneyball won't win the Premiership 2012-13

Has ribobert song retired yet?

Controversy

According to his 2008 biography, Carra, Song's former Liverpool teammate Jamie Carragher claimed he launched a deliberate hard tackle in a practice session against the Cameroonian player because of the latter's perceived mockery of Carragher's defending.[31] "Song walked on to the training pitch with a smile on his face. He was limping off it with a grimace an hour later. The first chance I got, I did him. Never have I hunted down a 50–50 tackle with greater appetite. 'You're not fucking laughing now, are you, you soft cunt?' I said as he hobbled away."[32]

Was reading the other day that one of Cameroon's defenders was investigated for racially abusing an opponent by calling him "a dirty Corsican" in Ligue 1 last season.

by U13147014 04 September 2008

Manchester United fan in peace

Whilst I certainly dont condone Jamie Carraghers violent thuggery I can understand as to why reacted to the ridiculous provocation by Rigobert Song. What Rigobert Song did to Carragher was very very bad and I think players from Africa and other parts of the world should not be so rude as to speak in their language and mock their English team-mates.

Songs crime was far worse than Carraghers

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Was looking at one of those lists of "the most expensive footballer by nationality" and realized that Fulham are collecting these! They have four currently - Berbatov's sale to Man Utd was the highest ever for a Bulgarian, Mahamadou Diarra's to Real Madrid, Duff's to Chelsea, and then Bryan Ruiz to Fulham. Only one other club had that many and it's Madrid obv (Essien, Kaká, Modric, Ronaldo).

That Falcao to Villa thing makes my blood boil. Seriosuly, FUCK Martin O'Neill

yeah i might

but yeah he's living in 1979

hmmm for every 21 yr old falcao there's a bosko balaban, this alternate reality stuff is slashfic tbh

talk that is real

Yeah, don't find it particularly galling about what Falcao might have been for Villa / what he's since become. More annoyed by "I think we’d be looking a little closer to home.” So much money that could have been spent on players with, y'know, talent and resale value, rather than fucking Marlon Harewood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mvbaPp_tmI

Closer to home, you say?

knew what you meant, that kind of provincial bollocks wd only look good coming from somebody who'd discovered 2 dozen awesome englishes oh look that's not martin o

Haha, I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Either way -

Nigel Reo-Coker
Nicky Shorey
Marlon Harewood
Steve Sidwell
Stephen Warnock
Fabian Delph
Emile Heskey
Luke Young
Shaun Maloney

This is not including foreigners bought from domestic leagues (Didier Agathe, Carlos Cuellar, Habib Beye) the dubious / arguable cases of people like Richard Dunne and James Collins.

Now obviously not all those guys were always rubbish for us (in fact a few were often quite good) but the amount of money spent on them set against eventual returns makes for very gloomy reading.

no snark intended! making journeymen functional feels like most of his shtick to me. sometimes v. over-priced journeymen not v. functional

how is (there's only) juan pablo angel regarded in retrospect these days

Would struggle to give you the prevailing opinion on the Holte End, but at a push I'd have said cult hero. Might not have been £9.5 million's worth of striker but he had a couple of cracking seasons mixed in with all that indifferent bumbling about up top. As a 9 year old I remember his signature being about as exciting a thing to have happened at the club since that Father Christmas fell off the roof of the stadium in 1998. And of course, there was the whole thing of him being called "Angel". So I might be projecting my own feelings onto this a bit, but yeah, I'd say cult hero, still.

http://www.corinthianseller.co.uk/microstars/microstars-MC2804.jpg

Was Angel during the Gregory era?

Yes. Strange days, IIRC

he scored an amazing goal v bolton iirc

all i really remember about the gregory era is him insisting on full naming Stanley VICTOR Collymore

I remember quite a lot about that first season, 1998-1999. Very very strange season for Villa. Sold a striker with a reasonable claim to being our best ever player, only to play better than we'd ever played with him in the team. Went on a pretty fun winning streak and ended up top of the league by Xmas, coming from 2-0 down against Arsenal at home in the same game that the aforementioned Father Christmas stuntman took a tumble from the roof of the stadium and broke all his limbs

Then Bozzie got injured / went to rehab or some shit, and Michael Oakes ended up in goal and we went about 14 games without a win.

David Unsworth joined the club and then left after about 4 days, apparently upset that Birmingham wasnt as near to Liverpool as he'd previously thought, or something. Oh, and Gary Charles moved to Benfica! Hahaha, great transfer. And Julian Joachim somehow scored about 15 goals for us. There was talk of him for England.

Kinda surprised to find that I've not been exaggerating too heavily, it really was a fucking nuts time at the club.

Sorry, I'll stop using this as the Aston Villa thread now. Promise.

You're still in the premiership, knock yourself out

otm

1999 was the year dublin broke his neck too

http://imageshack.us/a/img827/5519/picture1tz.png

everything a footy headline should be imo

In fact maybe it's too verbose, drop the 'stunning'

pretty good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=_0KdNvjAOQQ

I wonder if Ronnie enjoys seeing that happen

http://www.live4ever.uk.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ronnie-wood.jpg
?

http://www.grangehill.net/schoolreport/images/Ronnie_Birtles.jpg

That's the one - plays up front for Atletico Mineiro, doesn't track back.

Ben Arfa is reportedly boycotting the Newcastle shirt because Wonga isn't sharia-compliant. Excellent work there Mr Ashley.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/oct/19/sir-alex-ferguson-jason-roberts

dunno what fergie's on today but line-for-line this is some vintage dickhead guff

fankle ffs

christ

roberts otm. decent punditry presence too imo

Ben Arfa is reportedly boycotting the Newcastle shirt because Wonga isn't sharia-compliant

Uh, who were they sponsored by before?

jyllands posten

ferguson is an old trade union bruiser to the core

At least he didn't call roberts a 'black sheep'

That was a fine volley from Cahill. Spurs looking pretty impotent.

roberts does a lot of good work with kids' football i believe.

Good game, but Spurs being outclassed a little from what I've seen

funny old game

handball?

Thought I was looking frwd to the return of proper football but have only been half paying attention to this, if that.

Having said that Spurs are killing it this half so far

wow.

Oh and there's the 2nd.

avb must have had a corker of a halftime speech.