Rival watch

Sigurdsson's an excellent player if you play to his strengths and put him in a system that suits him.
Everton haven't done that.

Create a bit of time and space for him and have players moving off him, so that he can pick a pass or get a shot in and he'll win you games.
Give him someone to deliver set-pieces to and he'll get you plenty of goals.
Pack the midfield with similar players, none of whom have any pace and fail to give him a target up front and he'll fade out of the game.

Maybe they should've loaned Janssen from us, picked a creative midfielder in one of the deeper roles and started some of their wingers?
Balancing their squad out a bit would've been nice, too. Too many mediocre players preventing talented youngsters from coming through.

 

Janssen scores within 16 minutes for his new club. Granted he couldn't miss from 2 metres out but a good start for him.

 

Can't help but notice a load of Chav fans acting like their team don't have a reputation for hooliganism in response to this...

 

The top responder is a Chelsea knobhead who has retweeted The Football Lads Alliance twitter feed.
It's literally a bunch of hooligans joining up with the EDL and similar groups.
It was brought up on the Prem board, so I had a little browse, then spoke to a few people about it.
It's football firms to a man, barring some of the right-wing organisers behind the scenes.
If I found that out very quickly, then I'm sure that the odd journalist picked it up.

 

Kick It Out have criticised Man Utd fans for using racial stereotypes in their chant for Romelu Lukaku.

Come on, David Baddiel, we're waiting to hear you try and justify this with some insane non-logic...

 

"Oh no, people are saying that I've got a big penis! Whatever will I do? "

 

It's just silly, as many chants are.
Nobody cares about abuse of anyone who is fat or ugly (or both in some notable cases). Anything about the ref is fair game, especially his eyesight or parentage. You can call someone a dirty Scouse/Cockney/Scottish/Irish/Welsh so and so.
But say anything indirectly racist by some convoluted route, even though it's not abusive or derogatory (and is not intended to be) and it's a police matter. Hmmm....
Perhaps fans should be encouraged to take rattles along and shout "Play up chaps" - whilst smoking a pipe, of course.

 

So I can call Mike Dean a ****ing blind bastard, then? Good to know.
I heard him called a number of rather choice things in Polish the other day, too.
I assume that they were, anyway. The delivery didn't exactly suggest approval of his decisions.

 

You'll get feckin' nicked for that

 

Just to be on the safe side, call him incompetent and/or corrupt - and ask him for proof that he knew his parents...

 

Perhaps it would be better to say that his single mother should have took him to spec savers.

 

Suddenly the result of the coming West Ham match doesn't seem the foregone conclusion that it was. Hopefully just one goal between the two matches since Dortmund is the Wembley jinx and we can get back to normal winning ways on Saturday. Their win was convincing whereas ours was hard work. I woke up full of the joys of spring last week but not this morning.

 

Very elegant way of saying blind bastard

 

Chelsea are being investigated by Fifa for breaching regulations around youth players. The club says it "complies with all Fifa statutes and regulations when recruiting players".

Is that for making illegal approaches to other teams' youngsters or is that for paying them off after they were abused by the club's youth coaches?

 

Chelsea are being investigated by FIFA for their recruitment of Academy players. It's the third time in 8 years.

Every time FIFA 'clean house' there's new mouths to feed.

 

The whole of Chelski's recruitment of young players and abuse of the loan system needs investigating. What proportion of the total number of players playing for other teams actually being Chelski players will it take before action is taken? Just as a guide, if Chelski get 30 loan players playing in one round of matches for other teams, which is not inconceivable, they would have about 4% of the total players playing in the top four leagues.

 

The Chelsky academy model just seems to be a
"land grab" to stop rivals getting prospects and
developing them into a useful squad member.

Introducing a "poison capsule" by paying the
kids far more than they deserve, also ensures
the kids may get an inflated sense of entitlement
and make them a subsequent nightmare should
a rival want to take them on and continue their
development.

And if the kids fail to develop quickly enough for
Chelsky needs, then they hope that the
selling price will at best will be "break even"
for the total money they have spent.

The definitive proof is how many Chelsky academy
kids have made it thru the pipeline into regular
senior squad duty this decade.

 

Citeh have been pulled into the FIFA academy check net.

 

Looks like there's going to be a very merry Christmas in some FIFA delegates' households.

"How much to make this go away?..........Take double and the next one goes away too, right?"

 

So from what I can see, FIFA (nor anyone else) is complaining
about the stockpiling / wage poisoning of the kids, merely that
some of the kids are below an age where :

1. making them move abroad is deemed not good for the kid

2. tapping up when already at an existing academy is deemed bad