New Season

[Janie]

Sorry Dareos but I thought Celtic were really poor last night and Arsenal were by someway the best team. Yes Arsenal did play act at times but some of Celtic tactics were alittle thuggish.
I'm certainly no Arsenal fan either and really don't care either way which team go though, but I was extremely disapointed with Celtic last night, they seemed to have fallen into the trap that Arsenal don't like the physical approach alone, something that hasn't really bothered Arsenal for a few seasons now (along with the myth of being unable to play in the frozen tundra's up north), combined with some quality, craft or pace and it may have worked better but unfortunantly Celtic didn't have much of those.

 

[Agravaine]

Would that be the the free kick awarded when your man attempted to scythe Cesc down after the ball had gone and he managed to jump out of the way, resulting in him going to ground? Not exactly what I'd call a dive but still.

Apologies if that wasn't the free kick which led to the goal but the wee lad got hacked so many times, I lost count

We weren't our best and our finishing was off but we got lucky. I've seen our players dive in the past and I don't like it one bit but I don't recall much evidence of it last night. We committed some fouls, Celtic committed some fouls. All pretty standard stuff but then Celtic decided they'd try and kick Cesc off the park for good measure.

As for the handballs......... I saw one from Song where it looked like the ref played advantage. Sagna or possibly Clichy handled and Celtic got a free kick. The penalty appeal looked harsh to me. The ball didn't travel far and, whilst it did look a tad suspect, the only real movement I saw from Bendy was him trying to move his arm out of the way. I've seen them given but it would have been harsh and it's not up to us what the ref decided to do.

I didn't think Celtic were bad. They worked hard, put some decent moves together in midfield but gave the ball away too often and had no idea what to do in the final third when they got there. In fact, somewhat like us in recent times.

If you want to lose all respect for the Arse because the ref deemed to give what he saw and our players dared to go to ground when hoofed, fair enough.

If you think that Liverpool play football then I'll have to lose all respect for your footballing opinions

 

[Janie]

Villa beating Liverpool at Anfield, didn't see that coming. Liverpool really are in trouble this season it looks like, already lost as many as the whole of last season!

Torres is fast becoming the new Ronaldo, whines all the time when things aren't going right and dives constantly.

 

[Anubis]

Rafa's a plank and I repeat what I have been saying for 5 years - they will never win the title with him in charge. He plays half fit defenders (Skrtel), has blind faith in his favourite player who is a complete lemon (Lucas) and is incapable of changing tactics throughout the game. He does not give the kids a chance (I don't see what Ayala did wrong against Stoke, but no, the fool drops him), but brings in a defender who was awful at Rangers and is largely an unknown quantity. A real panic buy. Torres a perpetual diver - sorry I must have been watching different games - but he's frustrated with the dross in the midfield as the best player has gone and needs to stop the moaning.
I have heard a rumour that Nemeth has been loaned out, if this is the case then Rafa is a bigger fool than I give him credit for...

 

[Anubis]

From Liverpool.tv

"Liverpool have today confirmed Hungarian duo Krisztian Nemeth and Andras Simon will spend the 2009-10 season out on loan.
Nemeth has joined Greek side AEK Athens until the end of the campaign, while Simon will spend the term with Spanish club Cordoba CF.

The strike pair originally arrived at Anfield from MTK Hungaria in the summer of the 2007 after impressing in the previous year's UEFA U17 Championships.

Nemeth was included in the first team's tours of Switzerland and Asia this summer, and the 20-year-old helped himself to two goals in the 5-0 victory over Singapore last month."

This sums the fool we have as a manager up. He can't blame the American muppets for this.

 

[Janie]

Torres a perpetual diver - sorry I must have been watching different games

He's definatly going down easier than he used to, infact his whole attitude seems totally different from his first season where he was a great player and a model pro. Probably frustration as you said though, wonder if he'll hang round if Liverpool have a poor season.

 

[Janie]

Talking of diving...

Weldone Eduardo, in one moment you lost all sympathy over the broken leg - hope it was worth it.

Really football needs to clamp down on these cheating players who are ruining the game. Video replays show when a player dives, have match incidents reviewed and if a player is seen to cheat, ban him. If a team has X amount of players banned for cheating in a season, dock points.

 

[Anubis]

I've been saying this for years... it would cut it out for sure. Every team in the country has (for us I'm sorry to say Stevie's the main culprit). If I was a manager I would show them the clip from the cricket where Ricky Ponting got one smack in the face from a full blooded off drive. He rolled over once with the momentum, then got up and got on with the game. This is a real sportsman. Not these wet footballers...

 

[Treebeard]

It was a bad dive. It really didn't have any effect on the result as Celtic still needed to score 3 and in the end only had 2 shots on target in 180mins.

What I thought was worse was the xenophobic commentary from the ITV pundits. It always amazes me that when someone like Owen, Gerrard or Rooney go down like a sack of spuds its glossed over as winning a penalty for the team or barely mentioned at all but as soon as its a foreigner (to quote) playing for a team that is not a media darling, the player is dragged over the coals.

There was barely any mention of the football at all. All of the comments, even after the game, were about the dive and not the good football we played in the second half. I wonder if the interviewer would have asked Fergie if he should apologise for one of his players diving.

What happened to Dalglish last night? I was expecting him to be on the punditry team but we seemed to have got Nick Griffin instead.

 

[Ky]

Kenny Dalglish has always been a cunt. Can't believe you didn't know?

 

[Janie]

Surely Arsenal are the media darling club, well certainly since Wenger has been there anyway.

 

[Anubis]

United moreso without a doubt. The media hate Everton for some reason, they always get less coverage on MOTD and I don't think ever seen to give Moyes the credit he deserves for doing so well with no money and a small squad.

 

[Ky]

Arsenal, media darlings over United? No chance. The papers fawn over United, as do the commentators. There was a time when Arsenal were slated, especially over their red card record and their lack of English players after that.

Wenger isn't particularly liked in the media at all.

Chelsea were the media darlings when Jose were there. Maybe you should stop only reading The Sun and posting up articles from it on the main forum

Liverpool are always loved by the media as well.

 

[Janie]

Arsenal, media darlings over United? No chance. The papers fawn over United, as do the commentators.

And you never once hear pundits and commentators dribbling over Arsenal 'passing' brand of football, ever. Wenger not liked by the press, are you kidding me? Most media outlets and 'experts' were practically begging Wenger to take over the ENGLISH national squad after McClaren left.

I'm not saying Arsenal under Wenger don't deverse the praise, but to claim they aren't media darlings is odd.

Anyway haven't you got a brick that needs throwing?

 

[Agravaine]

The media love to drool over us when we play well as they also get to mention that playing pretty football doesn't win trophies and that we haven't won anything for 4 years..........over and over and over and over and over again.

Eduardo played for the penalty but the keeper was too smart for him, didn't make contact so it was a dive and he's a dirty cheating coont. Should have been a yellow card and a free kick but the ref was in the wrong place. Amused me how they went on about it for the rest of the match to try and drum up some hatred for the lad. "He'll get booed up and down the country where ever he plays from now on".....yeah, thanks for that. Had the keeper made contact, they'd have said it was a penalty but slated Eduardo for looking for it.

I don't believe it affected the outcome of the match as Celtic simply weren't good enough over two legs. Ronaldo dived to win a free kick against us last season and Manure were 2-0 up before you could say OMGWTFREF! but they were better than us and deserved to win. Don't recall much being said of Ronaldo's dive that night though and didn't Stevie "Slugger" G get lauded as a national hero in some quarters for diving to get England a penalty a while back?

As an Arsenal fan I hate seeing our players dive but I'm not going to hold it against Eduardo for the rest of his career. My concern with re-carding and/or banning divers is that you're relying on the ref to get it right and you'd still end up with people getting away with shit and others getting banned for being fouled.

I guess one way could be to have a panel (of former players, not fat muppets who know f'kall about the game) who look at contencious incidents retrospectively on video and issue a ban if they can genuinely see a dive.

 

[Janie]

The media love to drool over us when we play well as they also get to mention that playing pretty football doesn't win trophies and that we haven't won anything for 4 years..........over and over and over and over and over again.

and you never hear about how long it's been since Liverpool won the league, ever

 

[Agravaine]

But, to be fair, Liverpool haven't won the league for 852 years and at least they've won the chumps league in the meantime. It was the greatest comeback ever, dontchaknow.

We, on the other hand, haven't won ANYTHING for four whole years. Count them, FOUR years! Nothing! Nada! Zip!

It's clearly a f'kin' travesty.

 

[Ky]

Yep. I'm off to throw bricks because the minority always equals the majority and we all do that. Oh yes. We're all knuckle dragging morons with tattoos on our legs.

Just like all Conversative supporters own a castle and go hunting at the weekend and all Labour supporters have fathers that used to work down t'mines.

Oh, and while we're at it all the Welsh shag sheep, the Irish do nothing but dance jigs and drink Guinness and all Muslims are terrorists.

"Whats that? Its not true? LA LA LA I'm not listening" <- Thats you, that is

 

[Janie]

Yep. I'm off to throw bricks because the minority always equals the majority and we all do that. Oh yes.

It seemed fair afterall didn't you get expelled from school for throwing a chair at someone? Not a brick admittedly, but the whole throwing something at someone you obvisously didn't like attitude is clearly there

 

[Ky]

You're continuing the theme well, bravo. So what you're saying is that you've down all the growing up you are going to do when you're in your school years and you'll always behave like that?

Mmmmmkay