Moneyball won't win the Premiership 2012-13

Surely scottish managers have p much been there

Ha, was going to say :)

yeah jock stein was a terrible man for that

big JOCK aka as the STEINdriver

Did anyone say ALL Scottish managers? I don't believe they did.

the Evening Standard is not mainly about Miliband, that is just how it starts

it is about synthetic controversy and the idea that someone should not be persecuted for his previously stated beliefs which, as the article says, are probably vague, uncertain etc anyway

It will be quite good to see how Sunderland actually play football, soon

It will be quite good to see how Sunderland actually play football, soon

What to wear? The blackshirts home and brownshirts away?

something something RIGHT WING!

Speaks to how shit they are that i cant actually think of a right winger tbh

Hess Brown? idk, they're just not a good club for the puns

Genuinely wonder what Martin O'Neill's politics are, if any

Catholic norn irish solicitor? Id imagine p liberal.

Or are we simply saying that anyone suspected of holding subversive political views, private or not, endangers the famously enlightened spirit of football and thereby justifies hounding them with all the tools of political and media pressure? That’s not fascism. It’s McCarthyism.

McCarthyism not good for Sunderland's Premier League status iirc

raphael honigstein ‏@honigstein
Schürrle to Chelsea not yet done, but very close. €20m.

I basically assume everyone in football is a Tory unless they state otherwise.

Mourinho is reputedly very right wing indeed but no one cares because he knows not to talk about his political views. Di Canio by contrast just looks like an idiot.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2006/feb/19/features.review37 this article is interesting if v speculative on Mourinho's politics, e.g.

More significantly, the family's fortunes depended on the stability of the fascist regime. Mourinho's great-uncle owned a factory for canning sardines which, in the days before burgers and pizza, were a patriotic staple of the national diet. After the revolution, the cannery workers expropriated the business; Setubal, the coastal town where Mourinho was born, acquired a communist mayor, and his parents - stigmatised as bourgeois - had to move out of their big house. This sudden, humiliating demotion left Mourinho with unregenerately right-wing views. For a while last year he had a talk show on Portuguese television and his producer promised that he would discuss 'everything except politics'. Despite this reticence, his political sympathies are encoded in the beliefs with which he indoctrinates his Chelsea players. 'The team,' he ritualistically insists, 'is more important than the player.' That's not exactly the same as extolling life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; in fact it's the ideology of Salazar's corporate state, applied to the microcosmic society of the football club that Mourinho regulates.

Managers who extol the individual and consider the team unimportant, how do they get on?

AVB's doing ok

actually Redknapp's the closest to that (certainly not AVB)

xxxxpost to Local Garda

I tweeted your Star/Andy Reid clipping the other day, with h/t to ILX. Just had an email from a Have I Got News For You Researcher saying they want to use it on the programme.

Wow awesome! My cousin tweeted it to me - I'll tell him!

it's p viral now, was your cuz the first to find it?

Didn't realise it had gone round that far - just Googled it and, yes, it's your photo that is appearing on news sites and media comment blogs. Went mental on my feed when Stephen Mangan retweeted me. So Local Garda and his cousing have, officially, started a meme.

My cousin did tweet it as if it was an original tweet. But can't be sure it was him that started it. He has basically no followers and doesn't tweet much.

9.48 on Wednesday

https://twitter.com/odwyerbrian/status/319370748974206976

i'd be surprised if he had it first, maybe he follows the original guy or something.

Apologies to your brother - I would have credited him as source for my tweet had I known.

Eh its a national newspaper but

Thomas Ince worth £25m - Blackpool boss & father Paul Ince

The West Ham boss, who was yesterday sporting four stitches above a bruised right eye after falling into a marble work surface at home, said: ‘There is a big motivation for everybody to get West Ham to be the biggest club it’s ever been.

keeper needs to go with his hands there, good goal imo

southampton are my team of the season

artur boruc :D

Been working unpaid overtime since 11 this morning, but if the Villa hold onto this lead I promise not complain at the pub even once tonight

I imagine we're all behind you today

Oh man. Villa slipped into full panic mode about ninety seconds ago, and there are still ten minutes left.

West Brom all over Arsenal

Utter screamer for Villa

May be goal of the season, that

"Can't see a game out"

Come on ennnn you WANKERS!!!!

Can't wait to see this goal omg heart's racing

YES! 3-1!

was a four-on-one, lol

CHOKE ON IIIIIT

briefly wondered if Benteke had started worrying that keeping Villa up would make it less likely he'd get a move away, but I guess he was just getting kicked outta the game before

http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/2429073/Lowton_Goal_1.gif

I thought you meant during the four-on-one, he certainly had time for his mind to wander. Thought about getting an "anticipate..." thread in myself.

Full disclosure: in a sulk at Stoke's equaliser, I went to get a brew on while Lowton was spanking that in, and on my return thought his celebration was him running to square up to a Stoke player

Stoke were really, unbelievably terrible in that game

perhaps they should sack Pulis?

It was surprising and very welcome to see Villa come back after giving up the equalizer. So nice to see them fight instead of wilt.

Sgt biscuits