Mata's onside goal being disallowed and Ledley elbowing the ball away for a corner in the box not worthy of comment in this narrative then? The ref was diabolical. End of.
Seeing as Rojo should've got a red in the first half for the third game in a row, not so much. He might've had a **** game, but it would've been a very different one if he'd have made that initial decision. Getting away with three dismissals on the bounce is a bit much, really.
Fair enough, only saw the caption on sky sports, it said 2nd yellow 23rd min. Sky sports is **** at times
Nope. I'm sure that's not it. Red card offences happen all the time, far more than actual red cards given!
WTF! Makes you thankful that we are not owned by a bunch of clueless business men looking for a toy to play with. There are problems with Enic and Uncle Joe but at least he is hands off on the football side. Gary Rowett in at somewhere like Hull or Blackburn by the end of the season? Where Aston Villa go, Birmingham's clueless new foreign owners follow. "Let's hire a Italian ex-player who everybody know but who's manager record is not exactly glittering. I mean who is Gary Rowett? Derby Forest? Birmingham County? Who are these clubs? Playing for Chelsea and Italy will obviously make you a better manager! Just look at that well run club down the road.... ummmm.... Aston Martin! Great club! We should be like them and celebrate their success. They hired an Italian manager who played for Chelsea. He's doing great...... Ummmmm what? Who's Steve Bruce?" Now watch them go and derail Brighton on Saturday..... Grrrr!
I must admit,Bodinki,that young lady looks absolutely sparkling,but what she's got to do with Spurs.....I haven't worked that out yet.Must be my age!
So some Chinese club set to make Sanchez the highest paid player in the world (or perhaps a story started by his agent). Regardless of this specific story I was wondering if anyone had seen a proper journalistic type article (shock horror) about how the Chinese teams are paying for their ludicrously overblown wage bills? If a player's wages are too high for one of the European leagues then how the hell can a Chinese team afford them? It's not like they have massive turnstile or sponsorship income is it? Or is the Chinese league some kind of giant government money laundering scheme? Just surprised that whenever these massive wages are mentioned I've never heard anyone comment on where the Chinese money comes from (though others may have of course).
I think most teams are backed by local government who are ploughing money (where this is coming from I don't know but China does have some pretty hefty cash reserves because it's a dictatorship and they can basically do whatever the hell they want) into them as a means of promoting the city. These clubs have become a status symbol for the location. I suppose they are trying to create a brand along the likes of Real Madrid, Bayern Munich or Barcelona (say 'Barcelona' and what immediately springs to mind? Football, Que? and singing "Barcelona!" in a operatic voice while wearing a dodgy moustache). This seems to be what the Chinese are trying to do for their cities like Shanghai (though both George Harrison and Ed Harcourt have already written songs about Shanghai but haven't stuck in peoples minds quite like "Barcelona!")
So they give it to footballers whilst the rest of the population have been wearing the same shirt and hat for decades. Hope that league implodes.
But largely because every Western country has spent the past 30-40 years outsourcing industries of every description to the Chinese who, being a 'gently communist' country, can pay its vast workforce peanuts and pocket the profit. It is one of the few things Trump has ever said that I largely agree with. As of last count, the US is $1.2 trillion in debt to the Chinese government. The American consumer gets cheap cars, radios, computers and phones while places like Detroit wallow in abject poverty. There's a very interesting documentary on YouTube about the 'ghost cities of China' - huge model cities constructed at the cost of billions with no-one living in them. China is the political equivalent of Manchester United: too much money to know what to do with it.
Quite. It is how they are able to commit what is pretty much what is economic warfare against the rest of the world (though this is pretty self defeating in the long run as the world won't have any money to buy their cheap resources and products eventually). They have flooded the market with cheap steel because they can undercut everybody else by slashing costs (paying peanuts, little to no Health or Safety for workforce or environment, etc) and then even sell it on at a loss sometimes just because they can. And the public don't really care as long as they get their cheap TV's, Phones (well, as long as it isn't an iPhone which is made for 20p a unit in a Chinese Factory Camp and flogged on for £400+) and flashing, automated reindeer displays. But Trump doesn't have a leg to stand on as most of his merchandising crap is made in China anyway and he has used Chinese steel in many of his developments.
China will come unstuck when robotic automation takes hold shortly. The people may work for peanuts but robots work for less They're like the middle East oil kings, who also know their cash cow won't last forever. Diversify or die Health and safety is not as bad as we think in China. When I worked for the engineering side of npower, we made the Chinese replace an asbestos roof and fix sloppy practices before they were given multimillion pound contracts. They welcomed the improvements
