Moneyball won't win the Premiership 2012-13

If - if - it was over, it was a ball-width over, not a yard-and-a-half like the commentators said

Ech, I was looking forward to slotting in two points behind Arsenal, I could've lived with that.

― Ismael Klata, Sunday, November 25, 2012 3:25 PM (6 days ago)

Hm, we've lost since I wrote that and now here we are two points and one place behind, and still in the bottom half. I should probably reassess who I want in our sights.

Look on the bright side: just three points behind Allardyce's West Ham now and effectively a point and a half ahead of Norwich when you take into account how bad their goal difference is.

― all the people on the right, boogaloo (Nasty, Brutish & Short), Sunday, 25 November 2012 15:41 (6 days ago)

Still keeping West Ham in your sights, but Norwich could close the gap tomorrow - maybe keep an eye on them for now

Big bully. The real answer is probably not to have sights until about February - I genuinely am surprised to see West Ham only three ahead, and frankly staggered to see us ahead of Fulham. City and Utd are probably uncatchable, but I reckon third is still on.

phil neville giving wayne rooney props as a right back here. hm.

bubble machine motm imo

http://i.minus.com/iol70KAs0Y6Ds.gif

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Best weekend since the one of the Arsenal-Newcastle 4-4 I reckon.

Also when Arsenal lose to teams like Stoke they can kid themselves that they lost because their opponents weren't prepared to play the right way or let them play their natural game or whatever. But there's a particular kind of joy in seeing them comfortably beaten by a team playing open, fluent, passing attacking football who were in the Championship two years ago.

Yes - just going by the highlights, it looks like Swansea absolutely murdered them.

by and large arsenal havent been the signature super passing dudes for at least a couple of years now, it's kinda just atrophied to "sorta technical idk"

^^^

fuck it gonna have me a rant about the villa now

had another couple of villain dickwads i know blowing up my pager telling me about oh villa they were totes in the game apart from our little spell. BOLL. OCKS. OUT. PLAYED. (even tho we were still p shit). villa boys always have these fucking stuck-up vestigial delusions of being english footer royalty and it's even more insufferable now that cunt lambo is playing the kids p much for the sake of it, like no matter that it's all kindergarten mcleish long ball shitemerchantry they can solemnly and snootily intone about the bleeding kids even though it's just chris herd and matt lowton burping and falling over. like farmers market but the crap midlands version of a dude selling indeterminate slabs of meat out the back of his astra in the pub car park

piss off villa ur shit fuiud

(ashley westwood is quite good tbf, if you're the kind of person that rates michael carrick)

pens never seem to get given for fouls after the frwd has got his shot off. This cannot be the actual rule surely? Like if a player lays off a pass in MF and is caught late then it's a free-kick, if a player is in the box and shoots just before the defender takes him out it's rarely a free-kick. I mention this cos i've only had a quick glimpse of it but I could've sworn swp gets taken out after his shot hit the post y'day. I may be wrong tho.

villa boys always have these fucking stuck-up vestigial delusions of being english footer royalty

Don't we all these days.

I read somewhere that if Bent plays like three more games for Villa then they have to pay up another chunk of his massive transfer fee which is why he isn't playing. If that's actually true then a) fucking stupid because Villa are in no way good enough to dispose of the services of a 20-goal-a-season striker and b) they only signed him in the first place because they were shitting it about relegation.

i guess it's probably not the actual rule but idk more like human nature to view the shot as the end of the passage of play? it's not a denial of a goalscoring opportunity

free kick inside the box is possibly the accepted solution for something notably brutal

haha yeah spurs fans' similar delusions are well known but they manifest themselves differently

expectations of a style of play obv and, imo based on first hand experience, greatest disinterest in other teams in the league

I don't know if anyone knows that for sure about Bent, but he's played 47 games so it seems a reasonable inference especially if they've found a suitor in Redknapp. And surely nobody denies b) they only signed him in the first place because they were shitting it about relegation?

They should still be shitting it about relegation, not selling their best goalscorer, and especially not to a team who might end up staying up at their expense.

for lambo's tactics and personnel it's not so risable to leave out a lazy bloke who only does one thing, not losing is the main concern cos a couple of 5-0s in a row will turn into a spiral

you have to look at it psychologically, he is molding pups of war and they can't be looking hopefully at benty (let alone ireland and zog who no one's mentioning are also p much banished) when things get tricky

Plus they might be completely rooked, in which case backing Lambert to do it on a budget is the way to go

idk they still spent £15-20m this summer and if money was really that tight then why keep bent around depreciating his value rather than flogging him in the summer

The way they signed him in the first place suggests it's not a club that plans particularly rigorously though. Though again it's the boring midlands way of running up debt on the lottery and poor credit card deals, rather than you flashy metropolitans with your coke and hookers and Julio Cesar habits.

if we do end up signing bent i don't think arry's taking the job seriously tbph, a more reliable cisse (benched yesterday) doesnt solve the question of how to fit him in and get him in goalscoring positions

the way arry's talking about "a couple of loans" i'm p much expecting to see robbie keane rock up

arry he sure do talk a lot tbf, it's exhausting

Fernandes can probably be relied upon to stump up a reasonable amount for Bent though. They won't recoup his fee and I wouldn't bet on Lambert getting it all to reinvest either.

Dropping Stephen Ireland feels entirely sensible at this stage of the game, mind.

I'm not sure I can see Bent wanting to play for Redknapp again but he does seem to like playing the victim so who knows.

damn that was a good MOTD

hansen on arsenal was classic

defoe, bent et al aren't for anything but scoring. They're very good at that. At two million a year salary or w/e lambert should be sacked if he can't get the other ten making enough chances. It'd be different if villa weren't shit.

https://twitter.com/timpayton/status/274985393751982080/photo/1

ooh theyre really getting rowdy now

haha

won't someone think of the children!

won't someone think about buying anything other than children

Although Norwich are going level on points with Liverpool as things stand at the moment, they need to score another nine to actually go above them.

another eight now

fuck it gonna have me a rant about the villa now

had another couple of villain dickwads i know blowing up my pager telling me about oh villa they were totes in the game apart from our little spell. BOLL. OCKS. OUT. PLAYED. (even tho we were still p shit). villa boys always have these fucking stuck-up vestigial delusions of being english footer royalty and it's even more insufferable now that cunt lambo is playing the kids p much for the sake of it, like no matter that it's all kindergarten mcleish long ball shitemerchantry they can solemnly and snootily intone about the bleeding kids even though it's just chris herd and matt lowton burping and falling over. like farmers market but the crap midlands version of a dude selling indeterminate slabs of meat out the back of his astra in the pub car park

piss off villa ur shit fuiud

― r|t|c, Sunday, 2 December 2012 11:26 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a thing of beauty

yes

and i caught the highlights since and it was all qpr

swp might turn out ok for ye. very arry player otm

Villa played well for about 20 minutes total, and by well I mean they weren't embarrassing themselves. Couldn't put together 5 solid minutes in a row though which is going to be their downfall.

Unfortunately for them, as dominant as QPR were they couldn't crack Villa's last ditch defense to get a game winner. That pleased me immensely.

best mate's a villa fan and he just doesn't care anymore, it's sad.

channeled his energy elsewhere, got a big promotion, a wife, nice car, tragic

wait

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/dec/02/chelsea-avram-grant-rafael-benitez

Maybe Roman is just trolling the Chelsea support for a laugh?

Penalty! Last man, he's got to go! He does go! Ba steps up ... goal! Right, that's that settled, no need to keep watching.

jesus christ, holland

crazy

I can hardly believe that

Harry bringing in Tal Ben Haim; I can't work out if I should've expected that or not.

what happened in holland?

Linesman kicked to death by kids in an u17 match.