bluebruce

More than a couple! The lad seems to perform well for England.

That's Mr. Pedantic. Edit- Whilst I'm at it, 'conscious'. ;)

That's xenophobic S&M to be dark horses....they're not going to win or anything, but I think if they can escape their group they've a good shot at the quarters or semis. A 'big' nation will win the whole thing, won't be a major upset.

Yes but it's not. The only way you can be fouled without any contact is if there's a high foot. There wasn't any contact. It wasn't a penalty. However, I wouldn't say it was a dive either, since there was no appeal from Gerrard and since I would say he was jumping out of the way of a reckless tackle. Oh and FFS, Wrighty isn't there just because he's black, he's there because he's got more charisma than the rest of that studio combined. Edit- sorry, yes, and two footed tackles. Which I don't recall the one on Gerrard being.

They probably had to computer generate it.

Completely correct. Oh wait sorry no, complete tripe.

My mate (who is a Spurs fan) played as Spurs and won it in the first season with them also. Very very easily at that. Without cheating I believe- though he's since gone on to cheat horrendously.

Albania Reserves? So national team reserve teams play in European club competitions now? Interesting...that'll make the UEFA Cup somewhat different this year.

Dickov was the hardest working player I've ever seen in a Rovers shirt. The time had come to part ways, but my thanks go to him as well as my best wishes.

Well hopefully we will be seeded- then it's time to sort out that awful coefficient of ours!

I didn't mean don't divulge your tips. It's just you seemed to be directing them to me as though I was in serious need of the basics. I said a load of that stuff already in this thread. Just seemed a bit condescending the way you put it across is all, apologies if it wasn't meant to be.

Er...crap? I was in the Prem in 7 seasons, starting in Conference North with no budget. Weren't you listening? My team is stunningly good. Already know all your tips, too And when I played as Blackburn, I didn't have any trouble at all in keeping them up. In fact, I qualified for the Euro Cup in 5th place. Reckon it's fair to say I'm not all that bad at this game...but I've reached a season where everything has gone wrong. I mainly put it down to my star keeper's injury at the start of the season, and a bit of bad luck sparking a run of bad form which meant my players all got moody about us 'underachieving', making wins even harder to come by. Hopefully itll all go differently when I restart the season. I let the assistant manager take over for the rest of the season to see if it might be salvageable, and he only did worse, getting me the sack. Then they got in some new geezer, who did even worse and got them relegated, bottom of the league. That'd show that retard board.

I'll try to field some then I don't think the G14 has always been 14 members, I think they expand and decrease it as they wish. So I'm not so sure that they'd just go and replace Juve. But if anybody else is going to get admitted to their little club it would logically be Chelsea, as the only superpower that isn't in it. But then again the others must all be afraid of Chelsea (they're certainly jealous, and not keen on admitting them into the G14 from what I've heard), so wouldn't wish that to happen. Think they'd have a hard time justifying letting somebody else in instead though. Chelsea will probably be the next club admitted there I'd wager, but it could be a while. It's hard to say what will happen to Serie A if there's a mass exodus. Much would hinge on whether Juve could keep their squad together for one season, since the players know that chances are they'll be straight back up. However, if they demoted Juve to Serie C or something, they'd clearly have a hell of a job keeping most of their stars. It also depends just who else goes down. If huge clubs like fiorentina and lazio go down too, then tons of players will almost certainly be leaving, since with all those clubs in Serie B, it would be hard to get out of at the first time of asking no matter your calibre. Somebody said Juve would lose 80 million minimum didn't they? If so they'll be fairly crippled by all this, but I'd expect them to be right back where they are in no more than 5 years. Does anybody know if all these teams being relegated would mean an equal amount of Serie B teams being pushed up at the same time? I'm not convinced it would have a particularly negative impact on English football (or as I'm assuming you're pertaining to more, the England team). We've had people moaning about those johnny foreigners stopping our young players progressing for years now, but what has been the actual result? A very fine national team indeed, brimming with some of the best players in the world. Know why I think that is? Competition. Having the best players in the world in our league means the English players have to try that bit harder. And they can learn from a wide range of masters at their own clubs and by playing against those at others. It's also meant huge cash influxes. Aside from enabling us to improve stadiums etc and generally create a more improved game, our facilities have gotten better too, players are forced to train harder than they used to, and there are more top coaches and coaching methods. This all comes from the money brought in by having top international stars in our league, and helps the young english players. Besides, the influx of players fleeing Serie A won't be immense in Premiership terms. Some players will go to Spain, some Germany, some to other Italian clubs like Milan who will be able to challenge even better for the title now and have somehow remained clear of allegations. And Premiership clubs have never had much of a habit of buying from Italian clubs. Seems to go wrong a lot of the time would be a key reason why I presume. I'd be very surprised indeed if more than 10 players ended up in the Prem from Italy this summer. And history suggests most of them would flop pretty quickly! Hope that eases your mind...or, like Lost, does it only pose more questions whilst answering some?

There was the Barcelona-Chelsea one too, where the ref was 'forced' into retirement.

Yeh...except they'd all be going to the top, top teams or to Spain. If we were really lucky, we might get some cast offs from the big four.

"It was both insensitive and stupid of me. I did not think deeply enough about the situation and the consequences when I was asked to dress up in the shirt," Borgan said. ...dear God. How could anybody not realise what a stupid thing to do that is? Especially with all the corruption stories emanating from Italy- people are going to be more sceptical than ever about officials fixing matches. Absolute numpty.

Not meaning to sound stupid if it's a joke, but are you serious?

I can't see Chelsea adopting a formation that doesn't use their wide talent. I think the BBC are stupid for suggesting it. They've got Duff, Robben, Cole (Who has improved in colossal strides this season), and SWP. Mourinho has said one of those will leave this summer, but that he's targetting Simao at Benfica. So it's blatantly obvious that he plans to continue working the flanks.

That Matt Dickinson called Patrick Veira a 'Premiership reject'. That could be the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time.

That's 2 years ago though...not saying you're wrong, but still, could've changed.

To be fair, every England manager has an assistant. Sven had McClaren, didn't mean we might as well have hired McClaren.

Fairly sure I heard 450k a place too, though don't recall the source. The board will know we have a little extra coming in through the UEFA Cup too, so Hughes should get a fairly nice little kitty, especially with deadwood like Amo and co out of the club.

Why do people assume we need an English manager to coach the England team? Australia had been using Australian coaches for some time and never made a World Cup until now- under Hiddink. Who we should have got. Good luck to McClaren, even if I can't envision him having any.

Bob, at the risk of sounding stupid, the remark about us signing Zura for nothing, was that as a setup for the joke, or do you actually know something?

It says 'all rights reserved' at the bottom...that better mean our right to Europe!!