New rumour for demon to laugh up.

"West Ham would like Everton boss Roberto Martinez to take over at Upton Park should they decide to part company with Sam Allardyce"

Well if he goes and Everton manage to get Klopp because of it I'll take it.

Oh did anyone see see LVG's post match interview yesterday? Absolute mentalist. I can't tell if he's losing stuff in translation and thinks he's making sense or he knows what he's saying.

nutjob

Haha, yeah, hilarious. I wish someone would sneak a camera-phone into one of his team talks.


Is there a manager we haven't been linked with in the past month? We've become god's gift to the newspaper rumour-mongers.


Yeah, makes sense. His big thing was pressing so it makes sense for opponents now to just force them into possession, which they're not as comfortable with. It's been a tactic lots of lesser teams have used quite effectively against Chelsea, this season.

i've een watching the porto-bayern game this morning and with 20 minutes to go i'm falling asleep. yes, i knew the score already, and i was watching just to find out what went on, ans what went on is-- bayern played SO FUCKING BORING.

my first impression is that porto thoroughly outgunned them in speed and physicality.

alonso and dante at the centre SLOW. that's a problem with their age.

rafinha-- what's so great about fucking rafinha? i miss lahm as bayern's best right back. this midfielder thing... and benatia injured, alaba injured... very few options at the back.

and then again alonso had no other holding midfielder to play with-- shweinsteiger injured, martinez probably submerged in a vat healing for ages now...

i can't understand how gotze lewandowski and muller upfront can look so fucking boring. gotze for fucks sakes. subbed out for rode who actually provided a little more action.

i don't wanna watch the rest of the game because i'll fall asleep with fc boringwood. i get the injuries, i do.

so then i read the zonal marking analysis. pretty great. talks about successful "pressing" by porto. and resisting pressing is something bayern is used to--but at twice the size, twice the speed, porto overpowered bayern's tiny men.

and then the attack-- fucking dismal. wow. the game was played in 2/3s of the pitch and those were closer to bayern's goal.

good job porto. i didn't catch on to their pressing system till i red it in ZM-- a great writeup as usual.

That's classic Louis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCNpE19uAFg

i don't mean to be a contrarian but i completely understood him

he doesn't like the way the journo frames the questions and he responds accordingly-- he questions the premise

"how do you feel"

"i think it doesn't matter how i feel"

how is that not correct?


this though was hilarious

with the advantage of hindsight-- considering the poverty of tactical alternatives and with such a damaged bench, maybe a 3-3-3-1 would have worked better, like this:

lewandowski(muller)
kurt (gotze) - thiago (gotze) - gotze (muller)
bernat rode lahm
badstuber boateng rafinha

advantages:3-5 defenders + rode in his true post not as a winger, helping stop martinez
rafinha not traveling up so far thus backing boateng
no slow dante
a true attacking left wing w/ sinan kurt
younger/fresher team to match porto's speed
ability to shuffle upfront (see parentheses)
disadvantages: badstuber as a starter w/ recent recovery
kurt relatively untested
??

that nutjob vid is exactly how he would react to Dutch reporters when he was still a coach in the Netherlands. Perhaps I can better understand his English than some of you because he's basically speaking a google translated version of Dutch :-)

that's why I don't want to watch live games anymore, not even Champions League. Most games are just a waste of time except for maybe 5 minutes when the goals happen. I've breen watching two NBA playoffs tonight. It's so much more fun to watch those, except for the commercial breaks though.
Woke up at 4AM (not by myself), so watching the Clippers match now. I'll sleep during the day, have a long train ride to go back home :)

I been tryin to tell these dudes.. please come on over to the Mighty Basketball Thread whenever you wanna catch up on NBA playoffs.

In truth i agree about all the damn commercials, my favorite thing about watching futbol is no breaks or commercials

i didn't mean it in the sense that football is boring, i meant it in the sense that bayern was so fucking awful and impotent that it made for a dull match.

beckenbauer was quoted saying that they were all on sleeping pills, and said some weird thing about dante and ski boots (i'll let you google that). he was 100% correct.

the drama that followed was that the chief of bayern's medical staff of decades quit after being blamed for the overabundance of injuries that hampered things. now that's entertainment.

but shit, even with injuries, they had great players-- only a terrible plan.

DRAFT HEYNCKES!



come back, osram.

dull and boring is the same thing for me

There are boring football matches, obviously, but the scoreline rarely has anything to do with it. I'd far sooner watch a tight, tense 0-0 draw than a sloppy 5-2.

Fuck cero a cero yo..id rather watch historical beat downs like Germany have Brazil than scoreless snooz fest

unless you're talking about tools! dull knife, boring holes-- ha ha.


same here!

i still have to watch the first barcelona / psg when i get a bit of time. i'm looking forward to THAT.

...though i might not have time before tomorrow ha ha ha.

Germany v Brazil was only interesting because of what it represented. As a game of football it was too one sided to be really exciting. Compare it with the 1st 90 minutes of USA vs Belgium: no goals scored but anyone who found that boring should probably just accept that football simply isn't for them.

as ebayers would say--

A+++++++++++++++++++

But the USA Belgium had 18 US saves so it wasn't like there weren't a lot of on goal kicks.. a lot of 0-0 matches are just scoreless but also have few scoring attempts so even more boring

Yeah, you can have situation like that one where you have a goalkeeper playing out of his skin. Equally you can have a particularly well-drilled defence against a top-notch attack. Either way the quality and excitement of a match isn't based on the amount of goals scored.

And this is a real worry ...

http://www.theguardian.com/football/...lympic-stadium

Why can't West Ham ever do anything properly? The whole Tevez fiasco ended up costing us millions, as well as putting a massive dent in our reputation, and now this.

When/If Sam goes, I so hope he takes Karren Brady with him. She's a menace, that woman.