Moneyball won't win the Premiership 2012-13

nice routine

http://cadfael.tv/image/src/1353358287666.gif

xp. first half was. flicked over to i'm a celebrity and gave the second a miss.

GNev with the Gareth Bale take down amused me.

"He maybe thinks he's at the stage of his career where he's a Robben or a Ronaldo where his teammates don't mind if he tracks back and can stay up the field trying to cause damage'

I've been away for a few weeks during which time Spurs appear to have lost everything. Am I right in thinking we've been shite since Dembele got injured?

It has made a difference yeah. Sandro has still been good but Thudd has overly convinced me. Missing BAE also. Dunno if you saw Saturday's game but you guys looked good until the sending off, although that happened so early that can't say for certain Spurs would have continued to look good.

Dempsey has been p terrible from what I've seen also. Actually though Adebayor was v good vs City and briefly vs Arsenal.

Thudd HASN'T overly convinced me.

exactly my thoughts. Gallas has been shite, naughton not good, walker not seen, bale ditto, lennon fits and starts, sigurdsson and dempsey not working in any formation we've yet tried, vertonghen leaves huge gaps when at lb. It's a bit of a mess.

And thudd has been awful. Properly awful.

Defoe's done well

started well, don't expect him to be involved with play but he keeps defenders wary and takes his shots. His play on the ball has been bad recently tho. Adebayor definitely the player for the role, if he's not going to be a cunt.

Lloris is gomes.

bright spots in recent weeks- caulker still doin ok without any decent partner, bale and lennon can at least hurt opposition while playing poorly, sandro is an absolute monster

Lloris is gomes.

― bill paxman (darraghmac), Tuesday, 20 November 2012 11:23 (36 minutes ago) Bookmark

otm

Fuck off Mark Hughes. Just because I haven't said it for a few hours.

how come

http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/1862/picture2rdh.png

It made me laugh to see this actual headline this morning

They've got what, Utd and then Sunderland up next? He won't survive a Sunderland defeat(perhaps literally if ithappens has anything to say in the matter)

Watch them beat United now.

No way do Utd lose 2 in a row in the league.

I wonder what QPR fans would prefer, a real hiding and Hughes gone or an against all odds victory and Hughes staying?

Has any Ferguson player ever beaten Ferguson as manager?

Spurs with Dembele are 4-1-0 without they are 1-1-5
with the current injuries, the team just isn't very good. tom carroll has earned a start ahead of huddlestone, imo.

Did Hughes era Blackburn do it once? A David Bentley goal? Steve Bruce can't have managed it ever.

xp

Was Sven or Hughes the manager when City did the double over Utd the year of the Munich anniversary?

I'm sure it was Sven, though there seems far too little time to fit in all the various Pearce/Sven/Hughes/Mancini/Abu Dhabi/Shinawatra/whoever else permutations that've happened at City recently.

hughes got the double over them in 2006. 4-3 at home, bentley hat trick,
2-1 at ot, pedersen brace

this was the utd era featuring rio ferdinand and alan smith in centre midfield tbf

And now it's Carrick and Giggs = the upset is on

as for qpr the reports are that yday's meeting was a polite enquiry as to whether sparky might possibly fancy resigning, to which you'll be amazed to hear he said no ta thanks

in true shakespearean style tony must now personally fly in to tearfully pull the trigger himself (and throw 5-10m compo into the coffin)

meanwhile bobby z (who it's been revealed doesnt eat lunch with the rest of the squad) might be out for the season

also rifts duh

Oof: It is believed, though, Fernandes would have to pay more than £10million to get rid of Hughes and his backroom team

And why doesn't Bobby Z eat lunch with the others anyway?

I keep wondering what must be going through Esteban Granero's head but then I've also been wondering what posessed him to sign for QPR in the first place.

bz is a loner generally but especially doesnt like it here. got bigger carp to fry

10m now is a false oof really tbh, gamble that to stay up and get what, 60-70m next year or accept defeat and the certain prolonged spiralling doom that will follow relegation (we did this in 95/96 too)

of course there is the subplot of whose money is it anyway and how much of it really is there. no one knows

i think copious remittance aside granero (apparently aka granola according to var recent phone-ins) is an indie dreamer and thought he was being all creative coming to us

he started off as a cool customer, got increasingly frayed and ratty as he (admirably) tried to assume some responsibility, and now after being played on the right on saturday appears to have finally succumbed to apathy and resentment

also it's hard to be fair in the middle of this fiasco but in truth he is maybe 20% less good a player as advertised. still easily good enough though

false oof, I like it

The thing is, dire as QPR's situation is, there are enough bad teams and enough games left for survival not to be that big a deal. One-and-a-quarter points a game from now on still gets you to 37 points, which is generally enough nowadays.

goin down as lucrative as stayin up accordin to s jordan, if you fuckin only control contracts and shit lol oops

yeah i don't think it's out of the question (on paper of course)

everton managed it with the same start in the mid 90s, portsmouth with an awful squad too after arry returned

http://www.ffu.org.ua/eng/ffu/about/ffu_news/10755/

lol

the lad rtc's gone oof a bit easily for me there trevor

granero will go to a good europa league team next summer on the continent and live happy with the money and memories from his year off being indie looking in london.

Redknapp supposedly in talks with the Ukrainian FA. Might be a ploy to get Fernandes to pull his finger out.

Telegraph leading heavily with di Matteo to be sacked this week ... He's still 33/1 to be first manager to be axed

― Ismael Klata, Monday, November 19, 2012 10:22 AM (2 days ago)

Now 1/2 favourite, haha. Even better, the Telegraph now reckons it's Rafa or Avram Grant as caretaker.

He's out.

No time for standing still in this game

http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/1599/picture4ge.png

Telegraph leading heavily with di Matteo to be sacked this week ... He's still 33/1 to be first manager to be axed

― Ismael Klata, Monday, November 19, 2012 10:22 AM (2 days ago)

Tony Fernandes must have bet big on that.

agent hughes return to base, over

i like how its always benitez getting in contact and never the other way round

obv he was only a stop gap last season but then he only went and won the european cup and they thought it was bad form to sack him in the summer but they should've really just sacked him in the summer. poor reptilian bugger.

don't know how much di Matteo is responsible for them having no effective strike force but if not him who? there's the bones of a really excellent team in this Chelsea squad but it needs somebody more savvy to put missing pieces in place and teach them some guile

Yeah I mean it's pretty obvious Abramovich didn't really want Di Matteo in the first place and was waiting for the first excuse to get rid of him but hey there'll be another naive sap/cynical mega-manager awaiting the payoff along in a minute.

They were completely appalling last night, it was amazing. But then they were the same against Atletico - that they have mostly been sweeping teams away until the last three or four weeks is a bit strange.