Rival watch

Subs were introduced in 1965 I believe, and yes it was only 1 for a long time maybe the 80s before the 2nd was allowed? I think you are right about teams not changing much too, I think most teams had fewer professional and a very definite 'first XI'

 

I can remember Spurs playing 3 games in 4 days. Were they fitter then or is todays game like a pinball machine?
I still like the idea of a winger (Cliff Jones) receiving a pass and going hell bent for leather to the opposite goal.....instead of todays wingers(?) receiving the ball and automatically passing it sideways or back to the goalie.
The idea that one takes a short corner which goes straight to his own goalie via 2 passes....well!

 

Curiously not for World Cup. Jimmy Greaves would have got on in 1966 had he been on the bench.

 

Not changing the team was considered the path too success then. It was a very different game and no we didn't have the histrionics we see every game now. Playing in a mud bath with a ball that felt like a medicine ball. Wearing boots with hard toe caps and nailed on studs, I can remember my first pair of Addidas it was like playing in slippers. No doubt the players are fitter and more athletic now but certainly not tougher. I remember playing practice games on tarmac with a plastic Frido ball, great fun and everyone felt so skillful compared to using the real leather football on mud. What would Greaves have done on the bowling green pitches of today?

 

I think players today are fitter than they have ever been, footballers today are genuine athletes, we know so much more about conditioning, and fuelling our bodies to get them to peak condition that this has to be the case. But the players of the past had some apsects of the greater physical strength but they had to be because the actual game was different.

You talk about playing 3 games in 4 days, its almost certain that was the same for everyone as all matches were played simultaneously in those days, and as I said in my previous reply teams had smaller squads so if you were fit (by which I mean not injured to the extent that you physically couldn't run) then you played and I would imagine that the 3rd game in the sequence was generally pretty awful but you may wish to correct me on that as that is just a assumption on my part.

 

I've said this before about Guardiola.

Everyone thinks he's a classy gentleman - and when things are going his way, he is.

But when he loses, he's just as petulant and sulky as Mourinho.

Of course the media will never ever portray him in a negative light after elevating him to a God-like status.

 

What was John Terry even doing in the crowd?

 

A pretty successful weekend for Manchester United, picking up 3 points on their nearest neighbours...just another 15 to go.

Along the same lines, Citeh are a big club that plays incredible football.

They're FFP cheats, having lied and fiddled their expenditure on transfer fees, wages, image rights, etc. Having obviously cheated, they then threatened UEFA and I'm pretty sure that inducements will have been paid to have officials look the other way. Nobody invests that amount of money to come second and Citeh will use any tactic to ensure they realise their owner's ambitions.

Despite playing fantastic football and winning lots of silverware, they struggle to sell out their stadium at very affordable ticket prices.

Like Chelsea, it's all fake. Having seen Bobby Robson raise Ipswich to superb heights and Cloughie do the same with Derby and then Forest, it leaves me unimpressed.

 

I foresee a nice little trip to the Caribbean to 'educate' the knuckle dragger(s) involved. Should be very pleasant about now.

 

So Anguissa wins the ball and makes no contact with Rashford, who pulls off some bizarre wrestling move in response.
Red card for the Fulham man. That's awful refereeing and he seemed to just do what he was told by the Utd player.

 

As documented in this month's WSC, their dodginess that Football Leaks has uncovered is a lot more sordid than that, for example...
* In 2013 the club claimed that Etihad paid £35m in sponsorship for the stadium naming rights, but in fact Etihad paid just £8m - the other £27m was paid via a holding company owned by a certain M. bin Zayed bin Sultan bin Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan
* An offshore company going by the name of Fordham paid €30m a year in non-specific marketing rights, but it has emerged that €9.8m of those marketing rights are paid by an individual going by the name of M. bin Zayed bin Sultan bin Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan
* The club failed FFP when sacking Roberto Mancini, as the £9m payoff sent their balance into the red, so their solution was twofold: increase the value of their sponsorship deals, and backdate them to the start of the season - and this happened to be the same year where they were paying 75% of their own stadium naming rights
* As a result of the above, Etihad were said to be paying £67.5m a year for the naming rights of the stadium - yet were still only paying £8m, with the remainder once again coming from the canyon-sized pockets of M. bin Zayed bin Sultan bin Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan
* In relation to their backdating sponsorship deals to game the FFP system, when a club finance officer queried what was going on he was told by non-executive director Simon Pearce "We can do what we want"
* Club president Khaldoon Al Mubarak outright threatened then-UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino in an e-mail where he stated that, rather than meet FFP regulations, they would "rather spend 30 million on the 50 best lawyers in the world and sue them for the next ten years"

 

Rashford clearly simulates a foul there. I await retrospective action to be taken against him.

 

This weekend's results for everyone else in our CL group
Barca 4 Espanyol 0
Inter 0 Juventus 1
PSV 6 Excelsior Rotterdam 0

Don't suppose PSV and Inter want to repeat their scoring exploits on Tuesday to make things less stressful for us?

 

Probably wouldnt have changed the outcome of the game, despite it suspiciously coming just after Fulham had pulled a goal back...... but we’ll never know.
Ironically, United had played some decent football in the first half.

 

I loved Cliff Jones bombing it down the wing, he was brilliant. Gareth Bale reminded me of him with his speed & skill. Remember Greavesy taking corners and scoring from them? Last time I remember him doing that was against Liverpool who were fairly new in the 1st division. This was before segregation & we had some Pool fans next to us who were dumbstruck ha ha. In fairness to them, when they got their breath back, they applauded him!

 

I think Jimmy Greaves would have a job standing up after all the water they put on the pitch before the game and at halftime.Maybe the water is partially the cause of so many hamstrings going...…..I don't remember players complaining about hamstrings in years gone by......then players didn't use to cuddle each other at corners!!!

 

That is serious and needs discussion. I expect TalkShite will be doing so imminently! Oh hang on a minute....

(Probably they'll do something on how we're bound to lose against Barca because we didn't spend anything on transfers, despite needed to spend about a billion to equal Barca's squad.)

 

Been listening to the radio a lot over the last few days (going on long walks - don't ask!) Anyway, it has never been clearer to me that whenever they are discussing (or to be more exact creaming themselves over) Liverpool, they are in fact talking about the team they expect Liverpool are, rather than the team that has been playing this season. There is absolutely no discussion on how they have been a "little fortunate" with the balance of decisions (basically if even 50% of controversial decisions went against them they'd have far fewer points), and as I suspected no mention that the first goal yesterday might just have affected the scoreline, only the final score matters (and clearly they were going to win anyway so it doesn't matter if the first goal is wrongly awarded).

The main point is that it appears Liverpool were awarded runners-up this season, before it even started, and has since become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't think it's any coincidence that their performances in the CL do not appear to match their PL performances, because they can't rely on the refs so much in the CL. Let's see what happens in their next match - for all their entitlement to PL runners-up, there's quite a danger of them failing in the CL group stages (for which the excuses will probably already have been written).

 

Pundits going overboard because United managed 4 goals against poor old Fulham. Even Moron looked happy....kind of!

 

Watford on the receiving end of a shockingly bad failure to spot offside for Everton to go 1-0 up. VAR has its faults but that's the sort of thing that it's there to put right. Dreadful.