Anybody here a soccer(football/futbol) fan?

[laborpilot86]

I support Manchester City FC in England. Are thier any other fans of the beautiful game amongst the AA Student Body?

[Ojisan]

loner

[loner]

Yeah, me :) Guess the Soccer Thread is really officially dead now, oh well >_> But yeah, GO BLACKBURN GO. And laborpilot86, your boys seem to be having a tough season. Hope this season turns out better for you soon.

[Arkaine Deao]

Love the game, but I am officially against the concept of young white suburban mothers threatening to gouge the coach's eyes out if their kid doesn't play.

[Yurika Star]

I've just started playing again with a friend down in a local Uni which is fun, although I got a nasty blood blister on my toe the other day from wearing socks that are too thin :(

I support Blackburn Rovers, like loner does/said.

Has anyone started playing Football Manager 2007 yet? Started a game as Villa and am in a locked battle between 8th and 4th place.

[loner]

:O Is the game out already? Thought only the demo was out...

And lol Yuri, thought you know better than that ;)

[laborpilot86]

At least Mancity aren't playing as badly as West Ham United:eyebrow:

I play FIFA myself.

[loner]

Yes, West Ham is a very interesting case, and it shows that randomly injecting super stars into your team doesn't make your team great. West Ham before the Argentines had great cohesion. It's a group that's been through a terrific freshman year in the Premiership, and going through that ordeal will undoubtedly create great chemistry between all the players. Now you suddenly introduce two players who comes with huge reputations and (most likely) pricetags. Remember that Tevez and Mascherano were held out by Corinthians and didn't train at all after the World Cup. They come from South America, where the style of football is completely different from the British style. There's a new language and a new culture to deal with. Alan Pardew is forced to focus a lot of attention on them, because of their huge reputations and the hope that if they can adapt well, they can make the team great. But when you divert so much attention away from the team to just these two players, the rest of the team will naturally feel not very good about it. Moreover, their mere presence at this club means that they should be starters, if not right now then eventually one day. And logic suggests that Tevez should be better than Marlon Harewood and Mascherano should be better than Hayden Mullins. But Harewood and Mullins have been with the side for a long time and were tremendously important in West Ham's promotion and consolidation in the Premiership. No matter what they say, these two new guys are their rivals who are taking their positions, and because of their reputations, Harewood and Mullins are basically fighting a sure-lose battle. They won't feel they deserve this, and naturally they won't like these two guys very much inside, as much as they want to act friendly on the outside. The rest of the team have been with Mullins and Harewood for a while already, and they've been through all of West Ham's recent success together. They are not going to take the side of a pair of new Argentinians who can't even speak the same language and go against a couple of their old pals. Hence, the team's chemistry and cohesion is broken, and after you lose games, you get anxious. You start to want to point fingers so that there's even more tension in the team. It's a kind of a vicious cycle. Pardew needs to find a solution to this and somehow integrate the Argentinians into the team, or else someone else will be brought in to sort it out.

The lesson here, I suppose, is that you can't expect instant improvements by adding a few big names, and oftentimes that will lead to disastrous results. Real Madrid's galactico plan was largely a failure. Clubs like Corinthians, Dynamo Moscow and Red Bull Salzburg have tried this and are also failing miserably.

[soundchazer]

I support Blackburn Rovers, like loner does/said.

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i149/Staxxxx/Emoticons/242799.gif

As far as English football is involved... Arsenal all the way!

[loner]

You know, Blackburn has a Premiership title. That's more than Liverpool, Tottenham, Everton and Aston Villa, all clubs that claim to be much bigger than Blackburn, have altogether. And we were 6th last year, and doing pretty well in Europe. Oh, and we beat Arsenal last season.

Now, allow me to point at SC and laugh at his face. Unfortunately, I'm too lazy to find that smiley, so I'll just type that out. YOUR TEAM SUCKS, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

[soundchazer]

Now, allow me to point at SC and laugh at his face. Unfortunately, I'm too lazy to find that smiley, so I'll just type that out. YOUR TEAM SUCKS, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

http://img56.imageshack.us/img56/8929/smiliebleh7qp.gif

It's only temporary.

[laborpilot86]

Actually, Red Bull Salzburg are leading the Osterreicher Bundesliga right now, but your right about Corinthians and Dynamo Moskva. Dean Ashton's injury hasn't helped West Ham either.

Oh, Soundchazer:moron: 1 Manchester City 0 Arsenal 8/26/2006

[soundchazer]

Actually, Red Bull Salzburg are leading the Osterreicher Bundesliga right now, but your right about Corinthians and Dynamo Moskva. Dean Ashton's injury hasn't helped West Ham either.

Oh, Soundchazer:moron: 1 Manchester City 0 Arsenal 8/26/2006

You can bait me, but I won't bite!

http://media.scout.com/media/image/26/268303.gif

Any team can have a bad spell... this too shall pass!

http://msnsmileys.net/emoticons/soccer/lbc-clubs/003.gif

[loner]

Funny thing about Ashton: does he play if he's healthy? And that presents West Ham's problem: they have way too many strikers. You could argue that Mascherano might be a good fit, but Tevez was just superfluous. Ashton was their record signing. Now he's not sure if he'll see a game (he should though).

Red Bull Salzburg may be leading the Austrian Bundesliga right now, but with guys like old Trap and crazy Lothar leading the pack, they were expecting much more in the European front. That's where the money is. And they were quickly eliminated from the CL Qualifying Round and were immediately dispatched from the UEFA Cup too. By an absolute brilliant strike by David Bentley. Who may I remind SC used to be an Arsenal youth player. Who after we signed on a permanent contract immediately scored a hat trick against Man Utd. Thanks a bunch, gooners!

[Datsun]

Funny thing about Ashton: does he play if he's healthy? And that presents West Ham's problem: they have way too many strikers. You could argue that Mascherano might be a good fit, but Tevez was just superfluous. Ashton was their record signing. Now he's not sure if he'll see a game (he should though).


Yeah, I'd say it's guys like Carlton Cole, Bobby Zamora and Marlon Harewood that have more to worry about... then there's Sheringham, but you'd suspect that Sheringham has more value as a super-sub, even at the ripe old age of 40. I suspect that West Ham have too much quality to drop, but they're obviously going through a rough patch at the moment. My picks for the drop are Watford, Sheffield and probably Manchester City, who considering aren't actually doing so bad with 8 points so far.

But man! I never picked SC to be an Arse man!

[soundchazer]

YOu have to keep in mind though that I really don't fancy the Premier League that much. I basically follow the Mexican, Spanish and Argentinian leagues.

[laborpilot86]

I keep tabs on those leagues as well. Celta Vigo, Velez Sarsfield, and UNAM Pumas are all doning well for the for most part, although Pumas miss Leandro Fonseca and Bruno Marioni

[(V)]

I like the game alot but i dont watch it, other then the world cup.
Only because i dont watch tv all that much so...