Celtic got the result of the season so far against arguably the worlds biggest team and they get a page while Chelsea, who scraped a win in injury time, get three pages! Celtic deserve to have far more written about them than Chelsea.
Celtic probably had a whole paper dedicated to their victory in Ireland and Scotland so I shouldn't worry. This is England after all and I don't know about you but I only know one Celtic 'fan' and that's only because he claims to be Irish because one of his grandparents was.
In Scotland, I guarantee it would be the other way around. When I go there for work, it always drives me a bit mad that Rangers and Celtic get so much coverage so I get why it would be the same here. Norwich 1 : 0 Arsenal
Celtic had around 16% possession, that has to be the lowest I've ever heard of, and they were the home team!! Just goes to show if you put everyone behind the ball it's difficult to break them down.
Bit like Pilkington, then, who people are saying should be in the Ireland team. I'm a Celtic fan of old, so that's two you 'know' I grew up supporting them because my parents were Irish, as were several of my (Irish) peers at Catholic school, and it was 'de rigeur' to support Celtic at that time (sixties) That's changed somewhat now to English teams in the NorthWest mainly, and London muchly too. OK, I switched seamlessly to the team from my home city, but old allegiences die hard. Don't know why that post irked me, it just did. I have an Irish passport, does that help?
Ipswich had 10% at the 7-1 mauling by Peterborough last season. Okay, the stats were from the BBC website so maybe not that accurate but quite possibly not too far from reality. Looks like they tried that approach but couldn't quite shut them out.
can't recall who it was against now, but a couple of years ago barcelona won 9-0 in a league game and the official possession stats were 91-9% in barca's favour other than that and the posh-ipswich game (which opta awarded 90-10%), the 16% celtic had is the worst i've seen. even san marino had 17% against england the other week!
I don't begrudge Celtic their victory, but in all truth it is simply on a par with e.g. a giant killing act by a League 2 side in the FA Cup. Paul Lambert took Wycombe to the semi-finals of the League Cup a few years ago, downing a couple of much bigger clubs on the way. These results happen, and are not that uncommon. All sorts of factors contribute. One thing is for certain, if you ask who is more likely to win the European Championship this year, Celtic or Barcelona, I don't think many would say Celtic. I am not saying Barcelona will win it, but I am saying Celtic won't win it.
Any chance of finding out the stats for the Sutton Utd FA Cup game? That was one way traffic and pretty much like a training session with some shooting practice for the vast majority of the game.
i remember the game well! it was one of my first ever matches. i doubt very much that they had possession stats back then - that was a sky sports invention intertwined with the premier league conception
I can't find anything on the web about those kind of stats so maybe you're right about them not being logged at that time. Not to worry, was only out of interest. I recall talking a to a lady friend just before kick-off, she was nervous they would 'do us' as they 'did' Coventry in the previous round. I, somewhat hopefully, told her it would be shooting practice. That heavens that one didn't come back to bite me
Wasn't meant to 'irk' gandy, I suppose the point I was trying to make is that if you go back far enough, I'm from Irish decent on my mother's side (although not catholic). I, however consider myself to be 100% English. It really 'irks' me that footballers get to play international football for countries that they have no real right to represent. IMO unless you were born in a certain country or one or both of your parents were, you should not be allowed to play for them.
Fair enough mate The question of tenuous links to a nationality is a difficult one. I kind of agree with you about how it should be, though it could be argued that if you are an emigrant society, you are entitled to look into players plying their trade abroad.
I think with more and more people doing family tree research, a lot of stuff comes to light. I've discovered a Irish lady called "one eyed Collen" in my quite recent history. No one's ever mentioned her that I can remember, but she's there, so I guess there's guiness in my veins? My sisters oldest boy is dark skinned, black curley hair and extremely North African in appearance, even though both his parents are white and of English descent! There is a scandal from a while back, (1920's) when one of my female relatives had a liaison with a Moroccan gentleman, so maybe it's skipped a generation or two. Canadian's, German's, and Russian's also appear at various times, unfortunatly none of them seemed to have a lot of money!! The point is we all think we know what and who we are, but reality is somewhat different.
...if city had done the same the papers would have looked just the same, one page for city, three for chelski.
