Official FOOTBALL Thread

[BakHamNoi]

So finally Tevez in ManU.
I dont know why but i wont give many hopes on him

[redux]

Obviously I'm hoping Tevez is gonna turn out like Veron did, but I'm not too sure that'll happen.

Swapping Heinze for Chiellini sounds like a fair deal, I'd say Heinze is a better player but like you say; he's had a bust-up with Ferguson so it's unlikely he'll feature much 'cause he won't put up with his attitude. If Heinze is still potentially coming to us then meh, good or bad? Not relaly bothered. Good to see a bit of competition for Riise with the genius that is Aurelio injured, though I would preferred to have ahd Baines, that won't be happening now though.

[Tuffty]

Well from what I hear, Chiellini sounds like a good player who'd be a good prospect for the future. I don't know how Heinze will manage now. The fans appear to be against him, and his lack of committment could lead to him being set to rot in the reserves.

Thank God the Premiership starts this week. The Copa America certainly kept the engine running, but the only other football news of late was always on LA Galaxy/Beckham, and you know how I feel about that. Time to get back to real football.

I'm interested to know, what do you guys think will happen this season? Who will win the league? Will the top 4 be the same? Can Spurs fight their way into the top 4? Who will offer the most surprises? Who will struggle? Who do you see going down? And which transfers will be a hit or miss?

[BakHamNoi]

what do you guys think will happen this season?

nothing special, the 4 first place will be the same Liverpool, Man u, Chelsea and Arsenal

Who will win the league?

betting for Liverpool

Will the top 4 be the same?

yes

Can Spurs fight their way into the top 4?

no way 

Who will offer the most surprises?

Arsenal with their young players (bad or good surprise i dont know)

Who do you see going down?

Arsenal without Henry

And which transfers will be a hit or miss?

A HIT : Malouda at Chelsea, Nani at Man U
A MISS : Fernando Torres at Liverpool, Tevez at Man U

[Tuffty]

I know it's been a long time since it happened but I have to get it off my chest. Last season, Rooney got a red card in a pre-season match which the Premier League saw fit to ban him for 3 matches at the start of the season. Recently, Gerrard punched a player in the face in a pre-season friendly and nothing happens to him. Talk about double standards. Had it been someone like Barton who did it, he'd get punished immediately, but no, can't let anything happen to one of England's golden boys.

FINALLY. Tevez is now an official registered Utd player, shirt no 32, and it only took the whole summer to do it. Now that the Premier League and the FA are happy with the deal, can we all just forget about it? Fergie says he's been very impressed with his performance at training last week, but is not expected to play against Reading on Sun, instead maybe playing in the Manchester derby the following week. However, I think, if the scoreline happens to go widely in our favour against Reading, you may see an appearance in the last 10 mins.

As for my predictions, the winner will be Man Utd (obviously ) and the top 4 will remain the same, with Spurs likely pushing for the 4th spot towards the end of season. The possible big signings I imagine could be De Silva for Arsenal, Healey for Fulham, Nani for Utd. I see Van Persie having a good season for Arsenal.

[redux]

Recently, Gerrard punched a player in the face in a pre-season friendly and nothing happens to him.

Haha, I'll be the first person to agree that Gerrard acted like an idiot, but if you watch he didn't throw a punch or anything quite that bad. There was a bit of a shoulder involved but that was it, personally I recvkon a yellow should have at least been shown, though it is the kind of thing you do see get a red sometimes, though that would have been way harsh.

Well Sunderland and Tottenham has just finished and I only missed about 10mins of the game, nothing spectacular but the finish was certainly worth the wait. Chopra took the goal well as he stayed calm and controlled the ball from the cross brilliantly.

Who will win the league? Will the top 4 be the same? Can Spurs fight their way into the top 4? Who will offer the most surprises? Who will struggle? Who do you see going down? And which transfers will be a hit or miss?

Obviously I want Liverpool to win the league, but realistically that won't happen. I want to see Chelsea pushing for it but my head says United.
Top four...I would say that Tottenham will be pushing Arsenall all the way, but after the first fixture I reckon Arsenal are looking pretty safe (only one game I know but considering the strength Tottenham have up front they still seemed pretty toothless).
Again, from that first game it looks like Sunderland could cause a few upsets, I'm still expecting 12th as the highest they'll finish but they could pull off some more great results.
Birmingham, Wigan and Derby I reckon will take the plunge, and as for transfers...well I reckon Da Silva is gonna be damn good, but whether or not there's too many comparisons to Henry may make people look down on him a little. I reckon Healy is either gonna be real good or real bad, could swing either way. The one I'm keeping my eye on most though is Nani, people seem to think he'll be amazing, and Ferguson usually gets his stuff right, but in all honesty I haven't seen much for him. I'll be honest and say that yes his goals have been damn good, and I guess that's all you can ask really but I just wonder how often he can emulate his pre-season performances. I though he was one of the worst players at the U-21 championship and I knew about him when he was back at Benfica, he certainly is a similar player to Ronaldo, the only difference I've seen is that when Ronaldo tries the tricks and flair, he can actually pull it off. Saying that, Ronaldo was shocking in his first couple of seasons with his double takes and diving which was unecessary, now he's stamped it out he's fantastic so I guess it may be a matter of time to see.

[Tuffty]

God what an awful start to the Premiership. That's 92 mins I'll never get back. I mean in the first half Spurs had one chance on goal. One!! Needless to say, Sunderland had none. Only redeemed by the last minute goal for Sunderland. I can see them causing a few upsets, as Cookie has said. I think the better team won IMO. For a team that is supposed to be knocking the goals in this season, Spurs were awful. And all of their strikeforce was used in Berbatov, Keane, Bent and Defoe. There's a problem Jol will have. He has to appease all of the strikers. I don't see him dropping Berbatov for the fear he'll get the hump and leave, while Bent is just £18mil sitting on the bench. I can see all four playing a part in almost every match they're in the squad for, which probably isn't a good idea. Definately not the best start, and they really do need to improve their away form if they want in the Top 4 so badly. Foolishly I had them down for a win in the pools, so now they've destroyed my chances of winning £450!! 

[boykun]

Gerrard's free kick was pretty damn brilliant. With that said, I only saw the Liverpool game.

[boykun]

Surprising United couldn't score with all the possession they had. Gotta give it to Reading though, still keeping that defense even with 10 men.

Damn what is going on with Lehmann. His first touch let Fulham get a goal. -_-;

[Tuffty]

Not the start we wanted at all Disappointing to say the least, I mean we we had about over 75% of possession and they were down to 10 men and we still couldn't score. Fair play to Reading for coming with a plan and sticking to it, even if it is get all your players in defence and hoof the ball skywards when you've got it lol. I really thought we should have had Tevez on the bench. I mean O'Shea as a make shift striker? Sorry, he's a good defender, midfielder and even goalkeeper, but it was too much to ask for. What would have been the harm in putting Tevez on for 10 mins anyway? And Rooney seems to have got an injury as well. *sigh* Richard Keys was saying it's a vital 2 points lost. Let's not carried away. It's the first game of the season.

Happy that Healey scored though! Even if it was comically held by Lehmann.

[redux]

Certainly the highlight of the day seeing Lehmann coming up with the comedy gold yet again. I had my hopes up that the others in the big three would all drop points today as it was looking dangerous for 'em all until very late that's for sure. None of the top four have started very convincingly at all but credit to Chelsea for the way they struck back at Birmingham each time. Good to see Liverpool get the away result even if they did have mixed luck, it's not usual you say them win away matches in the past few years and Villa will be a tough place to go for any team this season me thinks.

[Tuffty]

Let's all laugh at Spurs Seems like buying Bent has disrupted the strikeforce somewhat. And there's no-one in midfield that looks creative enough to slip chances to them. And the defense is also lacking, although several key players in that aspect are injured. Hope the form continues when we play them soon!

Good ol' Keano. Tells it exactly how it is. He went on a tirade against football WAG's and the developing attitude of players who go to clubs near the big cities, in particular London, because of the shops available, condemning that attitude as a lifestyle choice and not a football one. Anyone footballer who does this is led by his wife/girlfriend. And I agree with it. Now I've heard in defence that players like John Terry, Wayne Rooney, or Steven Gerrard play for football alone, and are not swayed by their WAG's. That may be, but their high paying salaries aren't just for themselves...Fact of the matter is, the WAG's would not go anywhere near a guy working a 9-5 job. They're drawn to the players because of money, media attention, photoshoots and maybe a column in Heat magazine. If a player's wife is more interested in shopping than enhancing her husband's career and he goes along with that, then they are both idiots.

***EDIT***

AH SHIT!!  We need to step up a couple of gears quick

[BakHamNoi]

Amical game between Barcelona FC and Bayern Munich was really interesing.
Full of stars, the Barca team is orgasmik  , even if they change 5 players, the team looks like a A team everytime.

Ronaldinho => Giovanni
Eto'o => Messi
Thuram => Milito
Oleger => Belletti

Messi goal was really nice


BAYERN 0.1 BARCELONA

[Tuffty]

FUCK!! What do we have to do to get a goal nowadays?!

[ew0923]

^
Well, we have a chance if we actually start an out-and-out forward. Ooops, we sold half of them and the other half are injured.

Close to disastrous start, though it might be karma coming back to haunt us (everytime we spend huge, we play crap that year. The Rio year, The Veron and RVN year, the Rooney year...). I don't like Tevez, and especially when we isolate him as a lone striker. But the good thing is that Hargreaves had a very good debut. Showed great ball winning ability, good passing and dribbles well too.

We probably have more of a chance in the CL than the league this year.
And Chelsea's dodgy penalty *shakes head*, then again, they were playing Liverpool, so that's okay 

[Tuffty]

Funny enough, everytime we win the Charity shield we don't seem to play well the rest of the year. Oh please don't let it be true this time!! I agree, Hargreaves was brilliant on Sunday. Very impressive. But there's no point in trying to cover it up, it's not a good start. It didn't bode well when John O'Shea came on as a makeshift striker. Tevez is good, but he's like Rooney, not an out and out forward. Works better by playing off the ball. Our best form of last season was when Saha was in the squad, so we need him to come back quickly and get into the flow of things, or we need a make do striker. Preferably not too expensive. We may even need 'Le Sulk' as much as I hate to say it. Knowing our bad karma, he may get signed by a foreign club and then he'll put us out of the CL. The frustrating thing is, we are playing well, there's just no end result. God help me for saying it, but we're becoming like Arsenal. Still, have to have faith. Our worst start of the Premiership led us to win the Treble that year

That penalty decision was so wrong! But it gave us the desired result in the end It's funny seeing Gerrard complain about Chelsea players pushing the ref to make decisions that lead to match winning scenarios, when just last week he went to the ground and was 'Hey ref, I'm Steven Gerrard. Where's MY free-kick?!' which lead to him winning the match.

[Tuffty]

Manchester Utd 1 - 0 Spurs

Phew. Everything seemed going against us. We were playing decently, Evra for me was our best player, dominating possession and making some nice tackles, but just weren't getting any end result, and it wasn't like Spurs were playing badly either. Then that penalty claim was raised, and tbh, on any given day I would say it was too. Then Nani goes and makes a superstrike that hits the back of the net But all the same, against a team that has theoretically a 2nd rate defence, we should be scoring 2+ goals. Spurs played well too but only when after we scored. Had they done that before then, they could have caused us problems.

There's reports that Chelski (read: Abramovich) is set to buy Ronaldinho for £85 mil. God, please be true. I would love to watch how he flops in the EPL. It will be a disaster of epic proportions.

*EDIT*

Ole no!

[sh15uya]

Sevilla defender Antonio Puerta dies ( 22yo )

Sevilla defender Antonio Puerta died Tuesday, three days after collapsing on the field during his team's Spanish league match against Getafe, Spanish news reports said.

The 22-year-old Puerta had been in an intensive care unit since Saturday and had been given assisted ventilation but his condition worsened Tuesday, the Virgen del Rocio hospital said.

A statement by his managers was expected to be released shortly.

Puerta lost consciousness and fell near his own goal Saturday in the 31st minute, but was able to walk off minutes later after being treated by team doctors.

He collapsed again in the locker room before being taken to the hospital, where he has been since.

[Tuffty]

^ Oh my God, that's awful My condolences go out to his familiy and friends

[sh15uya]

O__O

Hapoel Beersheba player dies after collapsing during soccer practice

A Hapoel Beersheba soccer player died minutes after collapsing during a practice session Wednesday.

Chaswe Nsofwa, a 26-year-old striker, formerly played for Zambia's national team. Rescue workers tried to restart his heart for several minutes on the field before taking him to Soroka Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.