Mark Clattenberg is the refereeing equivalent of the severed pig's head that David Cameron schtupped - discuss.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/34315685 Wishing him all the best and hope he gets his career back on track.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/34324794 No prizes for guessing who will be the only team this will affect
If anyone was hoping to use Oduwa on this year's FIFA, I have some bad news - Rangers have been dropped from the list of teams, presumably to make way for the women's teams that nobody will use once they've popped the various achievements. ***EDIT*** Now that I've done a little digging, it gets stupider: * Shakhtar Donetsk are included in the Rest of the World teams, but Dynamo Kyiv and Dnipro aren't * China and India are on the list of national teams, yet Croatia, Ukraine and Serbia aren't * The Saudi Arabian league is in the game. I repeat, the Saudi Arabian league is in the game.
So I became an uncle yesterday, and the first thing Uncle HBIC is going to do is buy this: http://shop.tottenhamhotspur.com/product/spurs-twin-pack-soothers/58540?TRE00011 ...not for my niece, but for the plastic Goons that sired her!
Swiss attorney general puts Blatter under criminal investigation. I was wondering when they'd get around to it! And an alleged payment to Platini is one of the major investigations. Two birds with one stone, hopefully!...
No wonder he couldn't take his news conference, currently being subjected to good cop bad cop routine.
The irresistible force v the immovable object. Combined weight 35 stone. please log in to view this image
I think that was planned and announced ages ago. So hard to know what sort of a job he did, given I don't really know what he did while he was with us. The big wasted spend was very early in his time with us and so it's unclear who were his purchases and who were AVBs.
True, but he seemed to be tasked with spending the Bale money before he'd even had chance to look at what the existing squad looked like... Pretty haphazard planning, if that's the case!
I'm pretty sure that Baldini's signings weren't actually bad, but not right for the club. Those that failed seemed unsuited for the way that we play, rather than crap. The manager and DoF need to be reading from the same hymn sheet. Comolli failed because he bought players in positions that we didn't need to strengthen, while ignoring those that we did. I think he also failed to do his research on the mentality of a lot of his targets. Baldini failed because he didn't know who he was buying for.
Trying to bring in seven potential starters to the team was a big part of the problem as well. I agree the signings actually weren’t bad buys as individuals despite turning out poorly overall. Look at Soldado now, and for that matter before he got to Spurs. He’s a quality player who didn’t work out here for a variety of reasons. The same thing nearly happened with our second biggest signing, but Lamela has been excellent recently. The third biggest signing, Paulinho, wasn’t a good signing, but he wasn’t an awful one either. He should have been signed for 12-15 million and handed a star role at Watford, maybe even Swansea. For nineteen million and looking for a spot he wasn’t combative enough to be a good deep lying player for us, and couldn’t shoot well enough to play as a number 10. He has a good end product and is fun to watch, but that’s not enough for nineteen million. I give Baldini credit for having the good sense to go out on a high. I also have a hard time judging him because I don’t really know what he did. Anyone who had anything to do with buying Dier or Alli is certainly looking good right now, that’s clear.