Rival watch

Yes, got back about midnight last night, thanks. The plane was 75% Spurs. A great trip for which I have to thank Mrs B. and my brother.

I have 2 very strong personal memories of the game. Firstly with about 10 minutes left, I turned to look at the Mrs, to find her standing on her seat, arms raised, belting out "Come On You Spurs" at the top of her voice. Second, seeing my brother fighting back tears at the final whistle. He has had a tough time of it lately and I was going out to spend the last week with him before the CL draw was made. He goes to all of our European away games, it just so happened that some extra ticket became available from friends and Mrs B decided that she very much wanted in.

A very, very special night.

 

Koeman is a dead man walking by now, surely.

 

I don’t understand why he is arguing with the ref at the end of the game. He should be thanking him for not sending Ashley Williams off

 

Williams is a fat knacker who is well past his best and knows it - he has been appalling this season so it's no surprise he boiled over like that. Disgraceful behaviour but not as disgraceful as the Everton fan who ran down to the melee, carrying his young child in one hand while throwing punches at the Lyon players with the other.

 

Southampton find good managers who do well for them for a season and they move on. Southampton has been good for Spurs for a long time but not so for various other teams.

Everton I have noticed have been very patient with their coaches over the years but in this case Southampton seem to have provided a duffer who's on borrowed time.

Koeman seemed to be the perfect successor to Poch and as far as I recall basically matched Poch's achievements at Saints but what's gone wrong for him at Everton I just do not know.

I'm sad to see Everton in this position but things are looking bleak and rubbing salt into their wounds we should be getting Barkley. Good luck Koeman and Everton.

 

He's suffering from an acute case of AVB-itis: selling your best player and chief goalscorer with no contingency plan as to how you're going to replace him. I say 'acute' because he doesn't have a Baldini-like character whispering nonsense in his ear every 2 minutes, which is why I think the proverbial will hit his proverbial much harder than AVB got hit. Koeman has single-handedly taken Everton back to the Martinez days.

 

I can't believe it's because of the selling of one player CK and perhaps he needs more time. I always thought Rooney going back was a HUGE waste of time and that's how it has turned out to be. Another coach who has a good season, moves on in the PL then fails and moves into obscurity a la Frank de Boer.

 

My friends are from Kosovo and hate all Serbs (obviously!) Doesn't matter whether it's football,tennis,basketball etc...the voodoo dolls are out!

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41679017

Jose wins the "injuries" war against Conte.

Not only good WUMmery. but also showing Conte
to be an utter hypocrite when it comes to other
clubs/managers (cannot STFU about Spurs eh) .

 

It's selling your best player, not replacing him and then buying whoever happens to be available. You lose the best thing about your team, and gain a bunch of strangers. There are fine margins, obviously, between victory and defeat in the PL. Filling the pitch with players who don't know how each other play, and, worse, how they should play, is enough to sink you--especially when it comes on top of losing your match winner. Everton have it even worse than we did, though. I don't see anyone likely to turn into their Eriksen. The second biggest source of goals is both crocked and on his way out also. And the players they brought in aren't young, and include one who's almost perfectly calculated locker room poison. Given all that, I'm not convinced anyone could do much better than Koeman has.

 

Oooops.... Good point!!
Worse still, I hadn't realised that they played RSB!!! 'Crvena Zvezda' - who they??
My bad!

 

They may be a 2nd rate Serbian outfit but by God they score well at Scrabble! It's like a nightmare Letters Round in Countdown.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41691580

Well, thats all right then!!

Shouldn't it actually read:
'Everton have identified and banned the player involved in starting a confrontation with numerous Lyon players during Thursday's Europa League defeat at Goodison Park, leading to a 22 man brawl, including the Everton keeper who ran the length of the pitch to get involved!'

How the officials determined this incident could be settled with 2 yellow cards beggars belief. Surely there will be retrospective action and Williams receive a substantial ban?

 

I hope the podgy twat appreciates the fact that his idiocy has now led to a fan being banned - possibly for life. Zero sympathy for the fan but the response is, as you say, totally laughable.

 

Long since considered that Williams was well past his sell-by date - having never been as good as he was made out to be.

His frustrations at not being able to perform at anything like PL level has led to several dangerous fouls over the past couple of years and now this.

Go - Go NOW!!

 

He always struck me as having similar drawbacks to Siggy - medium fish in a very small pond looks great but transfer them to a bigger pond and their flaws are exposed. No idea why he looks so overweight as that has nothing do to with ability and everything to do with discipline.

Well worth a flutter for the £10m they signed him for and was decent for 6 months or so but has been dreadful ever since. There are far too many 'elder statesmen' at Everton who they are far too reliant on. Coleman and Bolasie returning will be a massive boost for them, but my gut feeling is Koeman could be gone by then.

 

Everton are in turmoil as a club. For years, they've been run by Uncle Bill Kenwright, who is a fan who got very pally with his managers and players. Moshiri is a different animal entirely. He is a business mate of Usmanov and Abramovic, so, he's basically a criminal who is used to getting his own way immediately. He's put his money in and expects a return. He wants Liverpool Council to build him a stadium and Koeman to build a winning team. He's not going to show restraint and I would expect a Chelsea-like turn-over of managers.

He's going to find that it ain't that easy. The PL rules preclude enormous new investment on transfers and wages from Oligarchs and Moshiri's not that rich compared to others with only a paltry £1 - £2 billion. So he's got to build a club structure and a team from medium level transfers and young players. That takes time and patience. everyone up there's saying that Liverpool not getting the Commonwealth Games won't obstruct the stadium development. I don't believe that for a second. It will slow things up hugely.

It's taken Spurs years to get where we are now. Give West Ham or Everton or Leicester some TV money and they think they've cracked it and can buy success and top players. You can't. The bigger fish come and take it away and you have to start again. There's a long hard decade ahead for Everton. They have some very good young players but just as Lukaku and Barkley are leaving, it is probable that Calvert Lewin, Holgate, Davies, Kenny, etc will do so too before they get where they want to be. The 'New Spurs' has taken nearly 2 decades to get to this point and we've been generally well administered by people who had run other football clubs before. West Ham's statement of "Champions League in 5 years" probably reflects Moshiri's ambitions. It doesn't reflect any form of reality unless the 'Top 6' bugger off to form a European Super League.

 

Shame he didn't sign for the goons, they were linked with him once.

Talking about Cnuts, did anyone see the Oscar like performance rom Coquolin last night to get the Red Star bloke sent off, Jesus the guy had already been booked and went up for a header, Cockheadolin didn't bother to compete, he just stood there and brushed his cheek against a STRAIGHT arm, no elbow or nothing. Act one commenced when he fell to the ground rolling about holding his face like he was the victim of an acid attack, he then stopped all of a sudden to signal to his bench to send a trainer on then remembered that he should be rolling around holding his face so Act Two commenced, similar to Act 1 but using stronger acid.. If it was in he Prem he'd certainly get a ban for conning the ref, does anyone know if the same rules apply in the Waifer?

 

Top13 need to bugger off for that to happen Brian. The usual Wet Spam Yoyo is overdue.