Football 16-17

[ToffeePopcorn]

Starting to get real sick of being a West Ham fan I swear - not bothered about losing - I just like to see some effort

[TheGayTent]

Sometimes you just have to doff your cap

[The Nal]

9 hours ago, TheGayTent said:

Sometimes you just have to doff your cap

Thought West Ham were fairly poor at times. Made it easy. That said, the "Mourinho plays shit football" brigade have all seem to gone quiet. 

[mjsell]

First time I've seen United this season be impressive. Theres always talk when the team plays well and Rooney isn't in the team, I wonder if anyone will do the same with Pogba. Maybe keep Jose away as well. 

Mikhitaryan looked good ,and he and Martial added that directness that United have lacked for ages. Rooney also played very well.

[The Nal]

15 minutes ago, mjsell said:

First time I've seen United this season be impressive. Theres always talk when the team plays well and Rooney isn't in the team, I wonder if anyone will do the same with Pogba. Maybe keep Jose away as well. 

Mikhitaryan looked good ,and he and Martial added that directness that United have lacked for ages. Rooney also played very well.

They've been playing like that for a few weeks. Just haven't finished teams off. 

 

[ThomThomDrum]

13 minutes ago, mjsell said:

 Mikhitaryan looked good ,and he and Martial added that directness that United have lacked for ages. 

This to me shows how poorly Jose has been managing this group of players this season thus far

[TheGayTent]

19 minutes ago, The Nal said:

Thought West Ham were fairly poor at times. Made it easy. That said, the "Mourinho plays shit football" brigade have all seem to gone quiet. 

We were and we did. I was angry last night that Noble and Lanzini didn't play. 

In the cold light of day though, Cresswell going off was massive. Resources wise, the result on Sunday was the surprise, not last night 

[mjsell]

Just now, The Nal said:

They've been playing like that for a few weeks. Just haven't finished teams off. 

 

Last time I saw them was against Arsenal, they were by far the better team but more because we were absolutely terrible - I still believe that if we had played anywhere near the level we can then we would have won. United certainly are improving though.

Mikhitaryan has to start from now on. And I'd rather Rooney played instead of Pogba if I was a fan.

[big__phil]

Chelsea paying off that fella to keep quiet sounds pretty ugly. To be fair, it must be difficult for any club to try and deal with these things, especially when the people involved no longer work in football, or are in some cases dead. Still, paying £50k to the poor guy now looks like they were trying to cover it up, where as if they pro-actively addressed it, offered support etc they would have come out of it a lot better. I think this story has plenty of legs in it yet...

On to the weekend:

Man City 12:30 Chelsea

Crystal Palace 15:00 Southampton

Spurs 15:00 Swansea

Stoke 15:00 Burnley

Sunderland 15:00 Leicester

West Brom 15:00 Watford

West Ham 17:30 Arsenal

Sunday 04 December

Bournemouth 13:30 Liverpool

Everton 16:00 Man Utd

Monday 05 December

Middlesbrough 20:00 Hull

Some absolutely cracking looking games this weekend, especially the ones on TV. Very hard to call many of them, but the sake of a gamble I might have to go for a Southampton, Sp*rs and Stoke treble for tomorrow. Anyone else having a punt?

[The Nal]

El Classico on tomorrow aswell.

 

[eFestivals]

23 minutes ago, big__phil said:

Chelsea paying off that fella to keep quiet sounds pretty ugly.

without getting into the wrongs of it, paying someone off to make a problem like this - the last sort of problem anyone wants - go away is an obvious solution.

And in the case of Chelsea I believe its the case that the abuser had already died, so there's no possible prosecution if they'd taken it to the police.

I suspect paying people off has gone on at a lot of clubs, perhaps even the majority of them.

[big__phil]

23 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

without getting into the wrongs of it, paying someone off to make a problem like this - the last sort of problem anyone wants - go away is an obvious solution.

And in the case of Chelsea I believe its the case that the abuser had already died, so there's no possible prosecution if they'd taken it to the police.

I suspect paying people off has gone on at a lot of clubs, perhaps even the majority of them.

I've just re-drafted a reply three times, but struggling to put down exactly what I want to say. I'll just say that the club could have handled it better (in my opinion at least), and football as a whole needs to take a long look at itself. There are no winners here. Thank god things have moved on, and hopefully now there are measures in place to stop these things happening again.

Anyway, back to football - looking forward to a Jordan Ibe hat-trick this weekend?

[big__phil]

30 minutes ago, Scruffylovemonster said:

With 3 Brad Smith assists no doubt

No doubt. Hopefully it should be a decent game between two attacking teams (which means it'll probably be a scrappy draw with few chances).

[DareToDibble]

2 hours ago, big__phil said:

 

On to the weekend:

Man City 12:30 Chelsea

Crystal Palace 15:00 Southampton

Spurs 15:00 Swansea

Stoke 15:00 Burnley

Sunderland 15:00 Leicester

West Brom 15:00 Watford

West Ham 17:30 Arsenal

Sunday 04 December

Bournemouth 13:30 Liverpool

Everton 16:00 Man Utd

Monday 05 December

Middlesbrough 20:00 Hull

 Anyone else having a punt?

I tend to do an acca every weekend on all the games. I very rarely win but above is this weeks predictions. Teams in bold to win, obviously. Draws have no teams in bold.

Slightly concerned about Arsenal. Sunderland are getting Leicester at a good time so fancy them to nick a win and Chelsea are on a roll at the moment so it wouldn't surprise me if they managed to sneak a win, either.

Any feedback welcome, of course. I will give you 10%* of my winning.

 

*I won't.

[big__phil]

17 minutes ago, DareToDibble said:

I tend to do an acca every weekend on all the games. I very rarely win but above is this weeks predictions. Teams in bold to win, obviously. Draws have no teams in bold.

Slightly concerned about Arsenal. Sunderland are getting Leicester at a good time so fancy them to nick a win and Chelsea are on a roll at the moment so it wouldn't surprise me if they managed to sneak a win, either.

Any feedback welcome, of course. I will give you 10%* of my winning.

 

*I won't.

Stoke v Burnley looks like it's got draw written all over it, but other than that I think I'd broadly agree with you. Maybe the City game might be draw as well, but hard to predict those.

Palace are in free-fall at the moment, so I'd back them to lose all day long, especially with Southampton on a bit of a high having beat Arsenal in midweek, whilst resting lots of players.

[Comfy Bean]

6 hours ago, big__phil said:

Chelsea paying off that fella to keep quiet sounds pretty ugly. To be fair, it must be difficult for any club to try and deal with these things, especially when the people involved no longer work in football, or are in some cases dead. Still, paying £50k to the poor guy now looks like they were trying to cover it up, where as if they pro-actively addressed it, offered support etc they would have come out of it a lot better. I think this story has plenty of legs in it yet...

On to the weekend:

Man City 12:30 Chelsea

Crystal Palace 15:00 Southampton

Spurs 15:00 Swansea

Stoke 15:00 Burnley

Sunderland 15:00 Leicester

West Brom 15:00 Watford

West Ham 17:30 Arsenal

Sunday 04 December

Bournemouth 13:30 Liverpool

Everton 16:00 Man Utd

Monday 05 December

Middlesbrough 20:00 Hull

Some absolutely cracking looking games this weekend, especially the ones on TV. Very hard to call many of them, but the sake of a gamble I might have to go for a Southampton, Sp*rs and Stoke treble for tomorrow. Anyone else having a punt?

Would go with a few draws amongst that lot.

2-2 at Man City Sunderland and Everton.

[pink_triangle]

Manager leaving a top 5 Scottish club to join an English team not even in the top 50. That really shows the financial difference between the two leagues.

[kaosmark2]

Not horrendously surprised by the result tonight. Been feeling for a few weeks we were due a bad run and 3 games in 7 days is the time you'll have it.

Disappointed to lose all 3, particularly the cup game, but the question to me is how quickly we rally.

Darlow magnificent, 3 good stops as well as the 2 penalties, although Shelvey was a complete fool. Lansbury could have been sent off for his kick at Shelvey and spent a lot of time falling around the place, but played well. Just a shame we couldn't hold on at the end.

[LJS]

23 minutes ago, pink_triangle said:

Manager leaving a top 5 Scottish club to join an English team not even in the top 50. That really shows the financial difference between the two leagues.

Yup. Our best club (by a distance) is a selling club. 

[WS_Jack_III]

3 hours ago, kaosmark2 said:

Not horrendously surprised by the result tonight. Been feeling for a few weeks we were due a bad run and 3 games in 7 days is the time you'll have it.

Disappointed to lose all 3, particularly the cup game, but the question to me is how quickly we rally.

Darlow magnificent, 3 good stops as well as the 2 penalties, although Shelvey was a complete fool. Lansbury could have been sent off for his kick at Shelvey and spent a lot of time falling around the place, but played well. Just a shame we couldn't hold on at the end.

Officials are a joke in this league. Forest were embarrassingly bad, Newcastle had 76% possession with 10 men, down to 9 and they barely broke Newcastle down. Then they were time wasting.

 

Shelvey is a dirty player but it looked like six and two threes to me (with Lansbury fouling first so it should have been a NUFC FK anyway) then that Lansbury was flailing around on the floor the soft git. Linesmen is flagging without a clear view, just going off the reaction and the ref wasn't looking. Also wasn't it an off the ball incident since the ball was halfway across the pitch at this point so a drop ball situation?

Then Lansbury takes on a good pass but decides to just stop his run so Dummett runs into him, now I can understand him giving the penalty (still harsh) but what happened to the new last man rule only being a booking? Wasn't like it was cynical or malicious, I can't understand what he was thinking. 

Clarke was wrestled to the ground in the box and nothing, then he scores and the ref says he's pulling the defender. 

Number 9 for Forest attempted to kick the ball at the same time as Bentner for the first goal, he was coming from an offside position and nearly booted Darlow's face off, clearly that is interfering with play.

 

Unbelievable!

Owe them a pasting at the end of the month at St James' Park.

[kaosmark2]

18 minutes ago, WS_Jack_III said:

 

I agree that officials can be bad, but I reckon there's not been that many that have really fucked us. Lansbury pissed me off today more than the ref, although both were disgusting.

[WS_Jack_III]

10 hours ago, kaosmark2 said:

I agree that officials can be bad, but I reckon there's not been that many that have really fucked us. Lansbury pissed me off today more than the ref, although both were disgusting.

Fulham game was a joke and Barnsley was bad for both teams. There seems to be very little consistency in their decision making.

[Hugh Jass]

Jesus Navas has no business being in a team with City's ambitions.

 

(He'll score a hat trick now I've said that)

[The Nal]

Very impressive from Chelsea. No idea what Citys keeper was at for the 2nd mind you. 

[zahidf]

11 minutes ago, The Nal said:

Very impressive from Chelsea. No idea what Citys keeper was at for the 2nd mind you. 

Very hard to look past Chelsea at the moment for the title