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Official Football Thread 2006/2007 (Soccer)

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I see Guardado play regularly and he is a great, great player. He would be an excellent signing for Man U.

Madrid tried to sign him last summer, but the offer was not enough, plus they wanted to sent him for a year to Real Madrid Castilla and they didn't like the idea.
 
McClaren could certainly be fired before the qualifiers are over, if things get worse. Normally I'd say unless there's someone inline to take over straight away that it'd be stupid, but Terry Venables is the assistant manager and is perfectly placed to step right in until we find someone to take the job permanently.

Russia's doing ok, but they've yet to play England at all or Croatia away. I figured their home advantage would be huge, as Russia's not an easy place to play, but they've drawn with both Croatia and Israel, and if they can't beat them at home it'd be hard to see them doing it away. Estonia and Andorra are teams any half decent side such beat...but their away victory to Macedonia is good, I'll give them that.

I was thinking, if England were to play Hargreaves alongside a creative rather than attacking midfielder...it's gotta be Beckham. Better passer than Carrick, certainly a better shooter, both work just as hard and the best set piece taker we have. We'd lose a lot less replacing Lampard with Beckham than we would with Carrick, as he can score too, especially as he'd know he can go forward whenever he wants with Hargreaves protecting him.

I wouldn't mind that at all.
 
Shinobi said:
Agreed...my only problem is his seeming refusal to shoot on net, preferring to dribble it into three guys and losing possession. But hell, that complaint could be made for half the team right now. :lol In the first half of the year he had the right balance of dribble penetration, drawing defenders in and finding players in open space. Right now he's struggling with that, but I don't think he's lost the plot for good or anything. It's just a team wide problem, finding the net.

Our current struggles is making one thing clear...this idiotic idea that we don't need Henry is looking more and more foolish by the day. Few players on the planet can provide a magic moment from a dull performance. And he's rarely lacking for confidence, something that I think has affected the squad.

In some ways the international break couldn't have come at a better time...getting away and playing with their respective national teams will probably do the players some good. Couldn't hurt anyway, unless someone goes down injured.
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Yeah, I sometimes think our players feel pressured into passing around until they don't have any option but to shoot instead of looking for the best chance to have a crack. I don't think it's an intentional thing, but I don't think they believe in themself enough, that will come with experience though I guess...

Whilst I agree Arsenal do need Henry, I don't particularly think he should be captain, I think the way he plays has changed a lot since he was given the role and it's not been good for the side. He needs to be focussed more on what he needs to do for the team rather then what everyone else is doing.. I also think it intimidates other players around him when he's captain like they feel they need to go through him all the time (although that was more at the start of the season). It also doesn't help so much that he's been playing through injury the past two seasons, a body can only take so much and you can definantly tell it's effecting him despite the fact he still produces magic.

Yup, I'm really glad the break has come now, getting away from the bad loses Arsenal have had in recent weeks will do some good. Hopefully they'll get some of there confidence(?) back.


You know, Sven must be laughing his ass off, and I hope he is. I don't think he was the right man for England (by the time he left anyway), but all these people who claimed all we lacked was a passionate coach and that could only come from and Englishman must be feeling like absolute fools right now.

Say what you like about him, but he always got us qualifying well. He took over towards the beginning of a campaign, Kevin Keegan having quit, with England only having 1 point from two games after losing to Germany and drawing with Finland. Sven not only took us through to the World Cup that time, he amanged to get us to the top of the table ahead of Germany (5-1...best game ever). Won 5, drew 1 and lost 0 under him in that race.

Euro 2004 qualification again had us top of the table, and quite comfortably. 6 wins, 2 draws, 0 losses.

We actually had that really bad loss to N. Ireland in the WC 2006 qualifying, but apart from that it was again smooth sailing. 8 wins, 1 draw, 1 loss...coasting through.

So his record in qualifying was 19 wins, 4 draws, 1 loss. McClaren already has that loss down and is halfway to the draw total...and we've only played 5 games!

I can hardly judge McClaren on his finals performance, I may never be able to judge him if he doesn't survive this qualifying campaign, but Sven did pretty wel there too. Quarter-finals everytime, twice going out on penalties, once to the eventual champions.

I can't remember if anyone here argued the no passion thing, but a lot of fans and pundits and the media did...and I imagine England will win the World Cup again before any of them admit they were wrong.
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I was talking about this just last night, everyone who was saying "what England really need is a good Englishman at the helm to really get things going" must be kicking themself right now. Whilst I didn't particularly like Sven due to his strange substitutions he really did get the job done... Getting to the quarter final isn't exactly something to be ashamed of and he atleast did that consistently, mostly without too much difficulty. What it really reminds me of is the situation at West Ham this season where you can clearly see the players are at fault and replacing the manager with another manager in no way more qualified for the job just won't help.
I actually think that Sven is a far superior manager to McClaren and don't have a clue why he got the nod over some of the other candidates...... I mean if they really wanted a manager who's English and filled with passion why wouldn't they have gone with "Big Sam"? He by far fits that description better and is honestly a much better manager then McClaren despite the fact I hate some of his tactics. ;)
Anyway, we will see what happens in the future, but I'm not exactly expecting big things from England under this setup.... :-/
 
I'm kind of worried that England's position won't improve for a long time. In pretty much every position we either already have excellent young players or they're coming through.

Look at the left wing and strikers though. Who is there? Walcott, Lita, Young, Derbyshire, Agbonlahor, Nugent, Richardson...these guys haven't shown themselves to be good enough yet. I'm sure some will be good enough to challenge for reserve places, just like Defoe, Bent, Crouch and Johnson do now, but that's not really what we need. Occasionally world class players only show themselves later on, but more often you can see it in them from a young age.

Look at Rooney and Owen. As soon as they hit the scene we all knew they'd be playing for England someday, and doing well. I forget how old they were, 16 or 17 or whatever, but it was clear. A bit more recently Lennon's come through and it's just clear.

I don't see that at all in future players in the other positions I mentioned. They can come out of nowhere, but if they don't show up in the next couple of years then it's hard to see how we could improve on our weaknesses for the next World Cup.
 
I'm being pretty random here, but why are Liverpool doing so poorly this year?

The Champions League success over Barcelona is kind of hiding things, and if they can keep going then most people will see the season as a good one.

It's not really, elsewhere. I realise it's a horrible tie to get in the opening round, but they were dumped out of the FA Cup by Arsenal straight away. The Carling Cup loss to them was just embarrassing. And the league...well:

Last year:

3rd, 82 points (2.16 pts/game), 1 point behind second place, 9 points behind 1st place

This year:

4th atm, heading for 68 points (1.8 pts/game), 15 points behind second place, 21 points behind 1st place

That's a big drop. Maybe they can turn it around before the end of the season, but they'll need to go on one hell of a run.

I just don't get why. They're only heading for 2 league goals less than last year at the moment and the exact same amount of goals conceded. I think they have better strikers even if they're still not doing well enough and a better squad. Their home form is down a little bit, even though it's still very good, but their away form has dropped quite a bit for some reason.

It's a good job there's this new investment for this summer, I just don't know what else could be done without it. Good players, good manager, good support...they even bought strikers expected to rack up the goals by almost everyone and they haven't.

When you look at the players they've had and got right now, it's hard to understand how they've been unable to win the league for 16 years, soon to be 17.

What the hell Liverpool?
 
Our away form at the beginning of the season was DISMAL, absolutely horrifying and the challenge of the title was over for us by October. If we maintained the form we had this year with last year, we would be near the top, it's just not been our season. And also, we bought many new players, and this really didn't work to our favour while Man Utd only bought a couple, this worked to their benefit.

Our strikers, as good as they are, haven't been scoring enough, and I don't agree with Rafa's rotational policy, I think these are the main reasons why we're not doing that well domestically this year.
 
You are basically scoring as much as last year though when you did far better, even if the goals aren't coming from the strikers enough.

You had much harder away fixtures at first, I can't be sure if you've improved or just faced easier opposition since. Your first 7 away fixtures were:

Sheff Utd D
Everton L
Chelsea L
Bolton L
Man Utd L
Arsenal L
Middlesbrough D

2 points

Since then you've had:

Wigan W
Charlton W
Blackburn L
Spurs W
Watford W
West Ham W
Newcastle L

15 points

So while it looks like your form has improved, it hasn't necessarily. It might have, but your initial away fixtures were much, much harder than your recent ones. It's just as likely that if we mixed those fixtures up through the season, you'd have the same amount of away points as you do now.
 
Mama Smurf said:
You are basically scoring as much as last year though when you did far better, even if the goals aren't coming from the strikers enough.

You had much harder away fixtures at first, I can't be sure if you've improved or just faced easier opposition since. Your first 7 away fixtures were:

Sheff Utd D
Everton L
Chelsea L
Bolton L
Man Utd L
Arsenal L
Middlesbrough D

2 points

Since then you've had:

Wigan W
Charlton W
Blackburn L
Spurs W
Watford W
West Ham W
Newcastle L

15 points

So while it looks like your form has improved, it hasn't necessarily. It might have, but your initial away fixtures were much, much harder than your recent ones. It's just as likely that if we mixed those fixtures up through the season, you'd have the same amount of away points as you do now.
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Hmm, that is a good point, but it'll just remain as one of football's great mysteries, I don't know what on earth went wrong this season, I'm just as bemused as you are.
 
Osorio said:
That was a great game for the USMNT and better for Landon Donovan. It just goes to show that he's best played at the forward position rather than an attacking mid. There were plenty of positives from that game, and I hope that it only makes Sunil Gulati's decision to keep Bob Bradley as head coach easier.
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I'm concerned about what they were talking about on ESPN2, that he doesn't want to go to Gold Cup/CA this summer... He NEEDS to start producing in a worse situation and sending his ass to CA is the best way to get him to do that in a situation that doesn't really "matter" in terms of qualifying for the Confederations Cup. :/ Then again, they could've been entirely making that up.
 
It is of course possible that rather than this season being bad, this is normal and last season was just really good. If you look back over Liverpool seasons, these are the points per game:

06/07 - 1.8 (so far)
05/06 - 2.16
04/05 - 1.53
03/04 - 1.58
02/03 - 1.68
01/02 - 2.11
00/01 - 1.82

So maybe we're being a bit too harsh on this season. It may not be your best, but you've done far worst.

I'm not sure if that's a positive thing, aside from the fact that this season isn't so bad compared to normal. It's not exactly encouraging to find out you're normally so far behind a couple of the other teams, rather than this being just a crap year.

BUY BUY BUY!
 
Speaking of Borgetti, he just scored against Paraguay with his traemark header, only 5 seconds after being subbed in.

Anyone know what stadium theyre plaing in?
 
298_320684_DonovanCelebThird.jpg

Quality effort from Donovan today as the US downed Ecuador 3-1. I though the defense was pretty shaky in the first half (both Ecuadorian forwards were a handful), but they pulled it together. Donovan with the hat trick on three highlight reel goals. Very impressive. Good to see Feilhaber and Bradley settling in the midfield and playing well. We have a lot of work to do before the Gold Cup and the Copa America this summer, but for now I'm pleased with the result. :)

EDIT: Goals from the US game, for anyone that wants to check them out.
 
seems like the Czech team had a good time after losing to Germany. They got fined 35k Euro for a little party after the game.

Rosicky is however denying that prostitutes took part in it, although there are allegedly pictures.

:lol
 
So...how about that.......football....

Wait, I know! The fantasy football, we haven't spoken about that for ages.

Not many weeks left now. Here's how things stand:

1 FC United 2,022.50 (jey_16)
2 Ryck Fc 1,986.50 (Ryck)
3 Chicago Crúz 1,892.50 (radicalbunny)
4 ThugsWithSkill 1,865.50 (Mama Smurf)
5 Notvery Athletic 1,797.00 (MrPing1000)

6 permanent vacation 1,796.00 (hadareud)
7 Truthiness XI 1,752.00 (Wes)
8 Igor Biscan our hero 1,740.00 (Stevie Gerrard)
9 mo's ho's 1,717.50 (psycho_snake)
10 Ghosts Gaudy Misfits 1,699.00 (Ghost)

11 Great King Bowsers 1,689.00 (Great King Bowser)
12 Real Lodi 1,686.50 (?)
13 Ikari Warriors 1,670.00 (?)
14 Wax Free United 1,658.00 (Wax Free Vanilla)
15 Killbot Utd 1,625.50 (Newbie)

16 Japseye Crew 1,571.00 (Timbuktu)
17 Evolution Buff Horns 1,552.50 (seanoff)
18 Melbourne United 1,510.50 (tracky_dacks)
19 Juneau FC 1,411.50 (Juno)
20 DonPach followers 1,336.50 (ourumov)

21 Crys_Carlos 1,230.50 (Crys)
22 The Wajiros 1,112.00 (Osorio)
23 Teenage Armchair Honved Fan 930.00 (DCharlie)

The gaps mean nothing, just make it easier to read.

I was first for a while, but I've dropped off quite a bit recently and I'm not sure there's enough time left to catch up. Hopefully I can at least hold on to my Champions League place.
 
I will still get into the top 4 I think, I have a couple of games outstanding where quite a few of my players are involved. My problem was that for the most part of the season I was too lazy to sell my injured players.

But my team is fit now so I will overtake all of you. Take that Thugs with spill!
 
Im the one who tried to get us to sign up to fantasy football, but I was the one who lost interest the quickest.
 
I don't know if enough people will want to do a ff again next year, but if so maybe we should do a different one. One which doesn't allow for infinite transfers, so we can just select our team at the start of the year and have a few transfers available for when players get sold or have long term injuries etc.

It'd make it more of a level playing field between those who are just interested enough to join and those so into it that they check their team every week.

I'm more of the latter, though there have been times when I haven't bothered, but even being one of the people who keep up with it I find it a bit of a chore rather than fun like it was at first.

BTW, looking back through the thread to find out who was behind each team I came across a whole bunch of final table predictions made just before the season starts. Pretty funny how wildly wrong we are on some points, mainly West Ham, but we'll have to wait to the end of the season to really see how we all did.
 
yeah, I'd definitely be in it again, if we can find something better than yahoo. The transfer system is not good, and the points and player ratings are suspect at best.

I'm sure I was incredibly wrong with my premiership prediction btw.

edit: just looked it up, it's actually not quite as bad as I thought. And I found this great quote on that page:
Meanwhile, Leeds chairman Ken Bates said: "I haven't laughed so much since Ma caught her tits in the mangle."
Click to expand...
:lol
I almost forgot about that one, brilliant.
 
I haven't logged onto ff for a few months, it got a bit tedious

Mama Smurf said:
It is of course possible that rather than this season being bad, this is normal and last season was just really good. If you look back over Liverpool seasons, these are the points per game:

06/07 - 1.8 (so far)
05/06 - 2.16
04/05 - 1.53
03/04 - 1.58
02/03 - 1.68
01/02 - 2.11
00/01 - 1.82

So maybe we're being a bit too harsh on this season. It may not be your best, but you've done far worst.
Click to expand...

If you look at Rafa's record with Valencia, he finished 1st, 5th, 1st. The fifth place followed world cup 2002, fifth in the premiership followed euro 2004, and this season's not-so-great league form (hopefully we finish higher than 5th) follows world cup 2006. I don't know what it was like at Valencia, but pretty much all our players who went to the world cup had poor starts to the season. Most of them like Carra, Alonso, Reina found their form within a couple of months, but by then we'd lost 3 or 4 away games already.

Maybe Rafa/Pako etc don't give the players enough rest post world cup.
 
Thanks to Jürgen Klinsman and Joachim Löw Germany has grown up to Europe's number 1 team. My dear english people: Prepare to lose your first match in Wembley against us :).
 
Blablurn said:
Thanks to Jürgen Klinsman and Joachim Löw Germany has grown up to Europe's number 1 team. My dear english people: Prepare to lose your first match in Wembley against us :).
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:lol

in annoying me maybe. I predict a group stage exit at the Euro.
 
Blablurn said:
Thanks to Jürgen Klinsman and Joachim Löw Germany has grown up to Europe's number 1 team. My dear english people: Prepare to lose your first match in Wembley against us :).
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Oh come on :lol

Don't underestimate England.
 
Europe doesn't really have the killers anymore.

Italy is way worse than a couple of months ago. Van Basten didn't really make the Netherlands into something great, the game against Romania was horrible. France is meh without Zidane and Henry (atm). Spain...wow. They've got one of the best competetions in the world and some of the best players, yet they somehow manage to play horrible. They might not even qualify for the EC. About England...:lol :lol

Germany probably has the best European team at the moment, whatever that means
 
they may be the best at the moment (and I would actually not even agree with that), but when it matters at the Euro they will not go anywhere. Last 8 at best. Holland, England (or France, Portugal), Czech Republic and a lucky outsider will go into the Semis.

Never bet against the Germans when it comes to tournaments they say. I bet against them.

Then again, I always do and I'm almost always wrong :(

Did I mention that I don't like Germany?
 
I'm usually not a big fan of Germany either, but they played so not-german at the world cup. I loved their attacking style at the world cup which is a big change from how they used to play.

I still can't figure out what's wrong with Spain, though :/
 
bud said:
I'm usually not a big fan of Germany either, but they played so not-german at the world cup. I loved their attacking style at the world cup which is a big change from how they used to play.
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that made me hate them even more. This new sympathy factor with players that are not hateable and a decent playing style is just one big german conspiracy.
 
Lakitu said:
germany_england.jpg
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:lol :lol :lol :lol After 5000 years, there is the first victory for England against Germany!
And Lakitu makes a: 1:5 !!!!!!111 1:5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in every thread!
:lol :lol :lol

What about the Euro 96?
euro96.jpg

Great match against england :lol
 
cant believe that i'm leading the fantasy football league.....i think i only changed my squad once, at the start of the season when Rooney was suspended and i just left it like that

i'll probably lose now :(
 
Aisenherz said:
:lol :lol :lol :lol After 5000 years, there is the first victory for England against Germany!
And Lakitu makes a: 1:5 !!!!!!111 1:5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in every thread!
:lol :lol :lol
l
Click to expand...

Selective memory much?

*cracks open history textbook* Hmmm...lets not go there.
 
I can't wait for Germany to lose again. It has to happen, and when it happens all hell will break loose. All the "supporters" will start complaining and the Bild-Zeitung will come up with great headlines again "WM Zauber vorbei! Löw's Versager Elf verliert in XY".

It's going to be a deep fall.
 
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