Marca have been running a bunch of stories about how Lionel Messi has rejected a new contract from Barca and will soon leave for one of the Manchester clubs These stories certainly have nothing to do with every single Barca player snubbing Marca's awards ceremony at the end of October. No, they don't. Honest.
No Police Truck? U WOT M8??? https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/nov/16/dead-kennedys-10-of-the-best
Also, no 'I am the Owl'? No 'Forest Fire'? No 'Bleed for Me'? No 'Let's Lynch The Landlord'?. This is completely ****ed. Whoever put this together only picked 10 tracks. How can a top 10 of the DK's only include 10 tracks? Madness. Anyone reading this with a love of punk and searing rock music might still be able to see The Damned on their 40th anniversary tour this week and next. I saw them in Guildford a couple of nights back. They played over 2 hours without a break which for some 60 year olds giving it everything is stunning. The last 30 minutes was a 100 mph run through of the whole of 'Damned Damned Damned'. Stunning performances of 'Fan Club', 'Feel The Pain' and 'Fish'. A beautiful thing indeed.
A quite remarkable amount of bollocks in the Standard... http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/foo...round-if-only-to-stay-fourth-in-a3399596.html Certainly nothing to do with UK Athletics who, having chiseled a brand new stadium out of the British taxpayer, needed some willing patsies to make sure they could keep their grubby little hands on it in spite of the fact that athletics couldn't fill the Crystal Palace stadium that was a third of the size of the White Elephant.
From the BBC's report of the Southampton/Liverpool match Perhaps affected by the international break, Liverpool lacked the fluency that has characterised their impressive start to the season. In comparison, here are the BBC reports for our matches against Kvetch Brom, which took place after an international break: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/37594220 Where is the suggestion that the international break affected us? After all, we had several players on international duty, and the likes of Lamela, Wanyama and Son all had to travel to far-flung parts of the globe, but somehow that wasn't worth bringing up?
Even MoTD felt compelled to do an "airmiles" table for Poool players. I'm sure Klopp will pick up on it soon enough. I'm happy to support a club whose manager will not use these things as an excuse (even though it would be fair comment) , and whose team is producing the following Narrative (TM) : We are playing meh at the moment and have quite an injury roster, but even with your "impressive" form you STILL CANNOT get more than 3 pts away from us.
That headline would be fine if WetSpam had then used their own money to finance a new stadium, but not when they've effectively been given a half billion pounds by the taxpayer. Incidentally, it's often mentioned that the crowd are far away from the action in the Olympic Stadium so it's not good for football. Anyone know why therefore it's ok for athletics fans to be so far away? Sure there is the track, but it's more than that.
At a guess I would say there are multiple points of interest at an Athletics track. Track race, High jump, Javelin all happening at once and so easier to flick from one event to the other?
In terms of the events, if every one was 2x45 min spells of people running around, then athletics would IMHO not be tolerable as a spectator event for the seating positions used.
I'm not entirely sure why the Daily Mail believes they can threaten their readership like this... please log in to view this image
It's almost as if The Standard had a political bias? If this had involved any other party, they'd have it on the front page every day. The printed media in this country are a disgrace. I recommend Billy Bragg's 'It Says Here' which should be part of the school syllabus. Very satisfying for Harry Kane to come out in the media and slay the rumours that he's banging a boot on DL's desk demanding £100k per week or whatever lie they care to make up. He wants to stay. He will agree a new deal. I wonder how many days before the next "Kane To Sgn For Arsenal/City/United/Liverpool"? I reckon a couple of weeks is as long as the bottom feeders will be able to go without running it again.
Lucky for them I am not a Spurs player on typical PL wages. I am so pathologically vindictive on a point of principle, that I would be seeing if there were good grounds for doing these journos in court for anything that effectively amounts to lying.
Another issue is that plenty of pundits and columnists are now repeating the mantra that he's getting paid less than Jamie Vardy - with every single one of them forgets is that Vardy spent the summer inviting other clubs to meet his £20m release clause, and Leicester's resulting panic is what caused them to bump Vardy's wages by an additional £70k per week. Do I feel that Kane's wages should at least be on a par with the club's highest earners, i.e. Toby and Son on £80k per week? Yes I do, but here's the obvious point that's being missed: a club's wage bill should be decided by the club and not based on what players at other clubs are earning. For example, because Michael Keane has been called up to the England squad, should he automatically be paid the same wages as Gary Cahill or John Stones? That makes no sense.
To be honest, by biggest fear is when Spurs get into the CL and do not qualify the next season. That IMHO is where/when you see the more fickle players with an inflated sense of entitlement + lack of responsibility for not qualifying.
When you look at the departure of Spurs top players, most have gone abroad. The ones that have gone 'up north' - Carrick, Keane, Berbatov were foreign or northern themselves. Bale, Modric, Waddle, Hoddle, Lineker, Klinsmann, Clive Allen went abroad. Do I see Kane moving north given he is so obviously a Londoner? No, I don't. Teddy went as a single older man just as Beckham went as a young kid. I don't see a married man with a new family upping sticks just after having a new baby. Another London club is even less likely. It won't stop the hacks though. It's like the Pochttino to.......United/Real/Argentina national team. A load of made up bollocks.
I was worried there would be an exodus last time that happened after 2010-11 but, Modric tantrum and subsequent reconciliation aside, the exodus never manifested itself. I think the key was that the squad was clearly tightly knit, with an excellent atmosphere throughout the club, playing great football and some of Europe's most exciting prospects coming through the ranks. When all was said and done, they wanted to stay and be a part of it - even Luka knuckled down pretty quickly and produced probably his best ever season in a Spurs shirt. Most of those same ingredients are in place now. I don't think the football is as good as it was in Harry's heyday, but the harmony is as high as ever, the academy is marching full speed ahead, and there is a real sense of togetherness amongst the entire squad. I am a firm believer that 99.9% of players don't become fickle, they turn mercenary from a very young age and stay that way, or they don't at all. Teams that make a habit of signing players with a reputation like that shouldn't be all wide-eyed when they jump ship a few years later for greener pastures. We aren't one of those teams and the only player we've signed in donkey's years who has that fickle air about them has been Sissoko, and frankly no-one could give a damn if he miraculously upped and left after one season.
He's just not that good at defending, is he? Seems like an odd thing to have to point out about an, erm... defender.
Personally I blame David Luiz: ever since he came onto the scene at Benfica, and especially after his move to Chelsea, there's been an increase in centre backs that are more interested in being midfielders than that piddling "defending" stuff people expect them to do.
I think that it might be ok in some leagues, where the top sides often have the ball for virtually the whole game. No long balls out from the back or set-pieces lumped into the box, so they spend most of the time on the front foot. Stones suffers when the ball comes to him from height or when he's pressed high up the pitch. Probably not such an issue for most of Guardiola's previous sides.