first dortmund comeback of *the whole season*-- they won 4-2 (the other games they started behind they lost or at the most tied once)

aubameyang is finally on a roll

mkhitarian who subbed in later remains a zero

reus and aubameyand are like best buddies now

gundogan & sahin great

dortmund's defense still needs work

precariously i'd say, with so many more injuries and some of the new players still null, but it's on...

next week vs. juventus!!

anyone who can tune check out the wolfsburg/leverkusen game right now. @ 16 min wolfsburg already ahead 2-0.

--
3-0 @ 28' de bruyne amazing. the thing is bayer is not a crap team-- it's that wolfsburg is a goal machine.

---

2nd half was like this:

3-0
3-1
3-2
4-2
4-3
4-4
and at the very last minute
5-4

fantastic game! much better than watching bayern beat hamburg 8-0.

it's pretty great

Ah well. That's the end of that, then.:(

Watched Villa v Lei on TV. Ended up a great game and really glad Villa won it.

And that's why I never bet on anything. What happened in the game? I mean 4-0 is a pretty big dicking.

To be fair, West Brom were excellent. The WH fans booed at the end but it was really about West Brom just having one of those days where they would've probably been a match for anyone. We had a few chances but, just as everything was going right for West Brom, nothing was working for us. We weren't helped by lots of injuries, esp. in defence, but, take nothing away from West Brom, they really were great. Pulis has his critics but he does what he does extremely well. 4-0 might've flattered them a bit, but only a bit.

Well my local team Preston are playing Man U. tonight in the f.a. cup. Could be a good game. All helped by the fact that Joe Garner is back, and hopefully he'll be back into his scoring ways quick.

Pep the Baroque has a strange lineup vs Shakhtar



looks pretty lively but at the same time very sloppy--losts of bad passes which is unusual for bayern

dammit, this game is shit. very frustrating. also, many fouls. starting to get out of hand. yellow cards. oh fuck xabi alonso thrown out just as im typing this. fucked up. bad news.

PSG Chelsea was excellent. Chelsea were lucky to get away with the draw. Courtois kept them in it in the second half with some major saves from Zlatan and Cavani. 2nd leg will be great. Come on PSG.

I disagree. The second half after 60 mins were just dull, dull, dull. Cavani's header saved by Courtois was fantastic though.

I really wanted PSG to win, so when they started coming forward more in the 2nd half I got more into it. Maybe it was me wanting them to win so much that made me enjoy it more than it possibly deserved.

i saw the highlights. damn! courtois amazing.

The scary thing about Courtois (besides the length of his neck) is he's only 22. So if he's this good now, imagine what he'll be like when he reaches his peak in about another 5 years time.

Although the big question now is whether he's already a better keeper than Neuer, and In pure shot-stopping terms (we know a lot of Neuer's reputation is based on his ability to play as a sweeper) he might just be.

from what i understand courtois stays put precisely because he has trouble coming out of his goal, so i don't know as an all-around keeper, but as a shot-stopper he's FAST, and huge.

but there are so many other aspects of a goalkeeper-- from how they organize their defense to how they distribute the ball to how they face psychological pressure--and i honestly haven't seen enough of courtois to know all that about him.

maybe there should be a goalkeeper torture test where we could compare them ha ha ha. no, i'm serious, would be great to have a kind of "lab" where you could see how they perform various specific tasks repeatedly.

I don't know if it's about him having trouble coming out, I just think it's the difference in the way Mourinho sets up his defence compared with Pep. Chelsea are far more conventional defensively than Bayern. He's really only there to stop shots whereas Neuer has spaces to fill. As much as I'm not a fan of the whole sweeper-keeper thing, it works at Bayern whereas it'd just confuse matters at Chelsea. Courtois is very calm, never taking the kinds of risks that Pep obviously loves but which Jose goes mental about. Two totally contrasting keepers working to their individual strengths for two totally contrasting managers.

Love Everton me.

Anyhoo regarding the keepers. I'm just glad that we have great keepers like De Gea, Courtois, Cech (getting on I know, but he's still boss), Neuer, Lloris, Hart, Forster (I luff that guy) all at the same time. Pretty impressive really.

You might enjoy these blasts from the past pictures.

That Blackburn squad just brought flash backs of my premier league stickers collecting days.

Very true. And just as well, really, given the ongoing concerns about the current state of defending. Certainly De Gea is more responsible for Man U's current league position than Jones, Rojo, Evans, et al (and probably any of their other outfield players for that matter).