Nice

Rob's salute to the press :)

Carlos Tevez

Ugly as f*** but what a great player.

This Week

Carlos is asking my loyal reader "what was the score?"

So Chelsea fail their first big test of the season after a pretty dull game at Man City sees them lose to a Tevez goal, Ancelotti follows in Capello's steps by then taking off their most likely scorer and replacing him with a donkey.




Arsenal lose at home to one of the lesser teams and from the highlights seem to have been outplayed by West Brom, Calamity Almunia actually saved a penalty but made up for it with errors for the 2nd and 3rd goals.
Liverpool benefit from a dodgy refs decision or two (as usual at Anfield) to scrape a draw with Sunderland, still not sure why Steven Gerrard is immune from Red cards, Darren Bent scores twice and is looking more and more like a credible England striker.
Still can't believe Everton are at the bottom but glad that the Hammers have moved above someone.

All Is Forgiven

We might have had a crap start and looked like relegation candidates, but a win over the yids means it just don't matter anymore :)
1-0 1-0 1-0 1-0 take that Redknapp and your Tottscum mates oh yeah.
As it goes we are starting to look like a decent team again, we weren't too bad against Bolton and Chelsea despite losing and last weeks draw at Stoke and the great win in the week against Sunderland proves Grant does know something about management which we all hoped.
Obinna again looking like the player Inter Milan signed and Piquionne benefiting in confidence from being preferred to the under performing Carton Cole.
The next 3 games against Fulham, Wolves and Newcastle will see if this new confidence is deserved as they are 3 games we should win if it's going to be a reasonable season.

1-0 1-0

Predictions (Week 6)

Prediction time again, last week I thought I'd done better till I checked what I'd written :( sure I had Arsenal to draw and Manu to win, oh well 3 correct scores might have been worthwile if I'd put my money down.
This weeks lot next, and yes the West ham one is silly, but that was the score when we played them on Fifa 07 last week :)

Man City v Chelsea 1-1
Arsenal v West Brom 3-0
Birmingham v Wigan 2-1
Blackpool v Blackburn 0-0
Fulham v Everton 2-1
Liverpool v Sunderland 1-1
West Ham v Tottenham 27-0
Bolton v Man Utd 1-2
Wolverhampton v Aston Villa 2-1
Newcastle v Stoke 2-1

Cobblers

Some super games and results in the latest round of the Carling cup, biggest shocks were Liverpool losing at home to Northampton on penalties after the other merseyside team Everton were dumped out by Brentford last night.
Liverpool losing always brings a smile to my face as all the scouse fans I know still live in the eighties and think Liverpool are still a top team, results like this prove the reality :) although I'm slightly sad for Roy Hodgson who I like unlike the previous manager Rafa twat Benitez.
Tipping Everton for a top 4 finish seems to have put the curse on them as they also lost on pens but you have to blame Moyes for playing fat lump Yakubu up front who as he showed in the World cup cannot hit the target from 2 yards out with an open goal.

Best game of the round was Newcastle beating Chelsea 4-3 made more impressive by the fact that Chelsea had more first teamers playing than the bar codes and the ref gave Chelsea a really dubious penalty.
There seemed to be a sniper in the ground as well as Alex, Kaloou and Benny all collapsed without anyone touching them.

West Ham won yay!!! Obinna looked impressive again and Piquionne managed to hit the target :)

Man City crashed out, Man U eased through, Villa came back from a goal down to win 3-1 with Heskey scoring!, Bolton blew out to Burnley, Stoke kicked out Fulham in more ways than one, and Arsenal who are the masters of playing kids and reserves in this competition stuffed the spuds 4-1.



Hopefully the next round will bring the same excitement, c'mon you Irons.

Predictions (Week 5)

A lot of games that could go either way this week?
Will the good West Ham turn up or the spineless one that appears all too often these days, will the Liverpool that seems to excel against Manu play or the one that has been pretty average in all other games? Will Chelsea hit double figures against Blackpool or will this be the biggest shock of the season, can the Arsenal team who looked like world beaters turn it on in the North East?
I think there could be a few shocks this week but erring on the safe side here's my predictions :)

Stoke v West Ham 1-2
Aston Villa v Bolton 1-1
Blackburn v Fulham 1-1
Everton v Newcastle 2-1
Tottenham v Wolverhampton 1-1
West Brom v Birmingham 0-1
Sunderland v Arsenal 1-2
Man Utd v Liverpool 1-1
Wigan v Man City 0-1
Chelsea v Blackpool 4-0

Arsenal

You have to admit no matter who you support that on their day Arsenal play some of the most entertaining football you are likely to see, if they had a decent keeper and a top quality striker who didn't keep getting injured I think they would probably be serious contenders for the Premier league and Champions League.
Love or hate Wenger he keeps coming up with a selection of virtual unknowns and turning them into quality players who all seem comfortable in the simple act of passing the ball which seems so difficult for a number of our so called world class England players.
I know they tend to struggle when the opposition decide to kick lumps out of them but tonight's 6-0 win over Braga was a joy to watch.

Avram Grant

I see that Avram Grant has been given a day off on Saturday to celebrate "Yom Kippur" the Jewish holy day, sadly it falls on match day and our first real "six pointer" of the season away at Stoke, the bonus of this is that Tal Ben Haim is also likely to miss the game for the same reason.
While I have no problem with people celebrating their religions I can't help thinking that the Tottenham fans will be laughing their socks off at the irony of West Ham losing a player and manager due to a Jewish holy day after all the stick we've given them over the years for their Jewish connections.

Predictions Update

Just my own bit of fun for the season, I'm aiming for above 50% on correct results (Home, Away or Draw) and hopefully about 25% on correct scores which if I bet on them should show a profit.

So far: (Correct Scores, Correct Results, Totally wrong)
Week 1 - 2 3 5
Week 2 - 0 4 6
Week 3 - 3 3 4
Week 4 - 1 4 5

So 40 games covered, only 6 correct scores, but 20 correct results so that's 50% so far and it should get easier now I know how the teams are playing.
Although Blackpool's results will remain a mystery it seems :)

Wales

Just been reading about the Welsh ladies under 19 team who won 21-0 against Georgia yesterday, this follows a 15-0 win by the senior welsh ladies team against Azerbaijan in a world cup qualifier last month.
Seems obvious to me that they should dump Bellamy, Bale etc and play the girls in their next Euro 2012 game :)

Zamora

I'm totally gutted for Bobby Zamora who suffered a broken leg yesterday and will be out at least 4 months.
He'd finally got a chance to play for England and looked really good in his brief appearance and now this.
A bit of a joke player at West Ham due to the fact his shooting was on the whole abysmal, but you could never fault his effort, even when we were getting thrashed he was trying his best and that's why I was so annoyed when they sold him to Fulham.
As it turns out it was the best move of Bobby's career as Roy Hodgson gave him the chance to play every week and he showed last season just how good he really was (and his shooting improved).
Hopefully he can come back just as good, Heskey got all those caps because he could hold the ball up but Bobby does it better and can actually score as well.

Saturday

Well the predictions were rubbish (as usual) but it seemed like a good day in the Premier league.
Arsenal won helped by a dubious sending off of Gary Cahill, all the goals were supposed to be goal of the month contenders so it will be worth watching, also we can have a laugh at Alex Songs new haircut.
Fulham won despite having lumps kicked out of them by Wolves Bobby Zamora didn't survive the battle.
The Hammers obviously lost but it might have been closer the commentary said that Piquionnandon managed to miss an open goal from a yard out after Parker had finally pulled one back (the first league goal conceded this season by Chelsea).
Man Utd managed to drop 2 points after leading 3-1 in injury time, Rooney was rested .
Blackburn held Man City thanks to some great defending.
Tottenham held West Brom thanks to Carlo Cudicini, Modric became the latest Spud on crutches.
Asamoah Gyan came on to score and pay off some of that £13 million for Sunderland against Wigan but it wasn't enough as Wigan equalised.
The star performance of the day was Blackpool who won at Newcastle although it sounded like Blackpool keeper Gilkes was the man of the match, Holly should be buzzing.

You Gotta Laugh

The missus bought me this several years back and sadly it's still relevant :(

I work for a company full of glory hunters all fans of Chelsea, Man U, Arsenal and Tottenham so things aren't easy at the moment, but it was nice to talk to a new guy who started this week who was proud to be a Leyton Orient fan ... made me feel all superior haha, no it was great to talk to someone who wasn't full of s**t.

Predictions (Week 4)

Back from the International break and several teams missing a few players, a couple of games catch the eye - Everton v Man U with Rooney back to Goodison probably expecting a hard time even before last weeks stories and Moyes v Ferguson is always a good battle.
The big one West Ham v Chelsea
Chelsea 3 wins, top of the table and a goal tally of 14-0
West Ham zero points, bottom of the table 1 goal and 9 against
Foregone conclusion ..... a West Ham win :)

Everton v Man Utd 1-2
Arsenal v Bolton 2-0
Fulham v Wolverhampton 1-0
Man City v Blackburn 1-0
Newcastle v Blackpool 3-0
West Brom v Tottenham 1-0
West Ham v Chelsea 2-1
Wigan v Sunderland 0-0
Birmingham v Liverpool 1-1
Stoke v Aston Villa 2-1

England 3 Swiss 1

I would comment on the England performance but I can only go on the interrupted commentary I heard on Radio 5 while I was at work :(
I got home and said to the wife "what time are the highlights on?" and she said "are you sure it was on tonight?", "yeah I've been listening to it, we won 3-1" I said, "well it's not on tonight" she says.
It turns out it was only on Sky and the BBC and ITV don't even have highlights, bastards!!
It's the fucking national team why do we have to pay a fortune to that cunt Murdoch to watch it, these games should always be on the terrestrial TV.

Anyway it sounds like we played well so that will have to be my review.
Did have fun taking the piss out of my Scots workmates when they were losing to the mighty Liechtenstein but sadly they came back to scrape a win in the dying minutes.
Other highlight of the night was World champions Spain getting tonked by Argentina 4-1.

England And The Press

After the first decent England performance in a long while and definitely the best performance by Wayne Rooney since his injury the scum press have decided it's time to do a character assassination on the Shrek lookalike.
Obviously a succesful England team doesn't sell papers so they've trawled up some old news on the eve of our first big game since the World cup to try and scupper any praise that might be flying around after Friday's decent win against Bulgaria.
I'm guessing this was going to be used just before the World cup but they realised everyone would turn on them as we were all expecting them to do it at a time when Rooney was being hailed as the man who would win us the World cup.
So Wayne visits prostitutes, I seem to remember he's been doing this for years and would Colleen be sleeping with him if he was a penniless scouse chav? I doubt it so why the shock.
At the time of the alleged incidents last year he was playing like one of the best players on earth so I think Fabio and the team should chip in and buy him another prossie before Tuesday :)

As for Friday's game I realise Bulgaria aren't Germany but it was a good performance, Joe Hart looked super confident on his full debut, Ashley Cole just gets better, Rooney was excellent and Defoe did what he does best.
Gerrard benefited from not having Lampard in his way and even Gareth Barry looked like he'd remembered how to play, Dawson got injured which is a stroke of luck as he makes Upson look like Usain Bolt, Jagielka is a good player who I feel is still a bit nervous but should get better with more games under his belt.
Walcott had a few good moments but disappointed on the whole while sub Adam Johnson took his chance to shine very well.
Glen Johnson was probably the failure of the night and was lucky that Bulgaria didn't test him as some better teams will in the future, although I'm struggling to think of another decent English Right back to challenge for his position.
So on to Tuesday with an away game to Switzerland who should be our hardest opposition in this tame group, a draw will be an acceptable result (probably not for the scum press) and we should win all the other games.
My prediction would be an England win though as the Swiss despite beating Spain at the World cup really arent't that good.

The pick of the other results was France's 1-0 home defeat by Belarus proving that the Irish curse put on them after they cheated their way into the World cup is still going strong :)

Missed It

Just catching up with everything after my four days in the wilds of Cornwall, no TV or internet so missed everything that's been happening, and then the computer wouldn't work when I got home yesterday (just managed to fix it again).
Looking at the scores I see a few unexpected results, Chelsea only managing 2, Wigan winning at Tottenham which took West Ham to the bottom but it was worth it to have a go at the Spuds fans, Man city losing to Sunderland I have MOTD2 recorded so I haven't seen the miss by my favourite Argentinean yet, and Blackpool claiming another point (only another 36 needed possibly).
The transfer window closed with a few names moving, Sunderland signed Asamoah Gyan the Ghana player which could be a great move or expensive flop? Spurs signed Van der Valk from Real Madrid, West Ham signed someone called Rude Boffin?, Stoke sign 4 players who used to be good once upon a time, and Blackpool signed a DJ to get Holloway dancing. Will have a closer look at everything when I get some time.

England play Friday and I've just read that Berbatov has retired? so won't be playing for Uncle Bulgaria, as for England the curse of the keeper has struck again with Ben Foster getting his usual pre-England injury and Scott Carson doing the decent thing and picking up a bad back meaning Hart's back up's are likely to be Loach, Fielding or James Shea? I think I'm in front of Rob Green so he might as well hang up his England gloves.
Plenty of injuries for the outfield players as well with Lumpard, Terry, Zamora and Crouch all missing and several others carrying injuries like Defoe and Jagielka so the starting line up is a bit of a mystery, hopefully Theo Walcott will get a chance.

Just checked my predictions and it was a bit better this week 6/10 with 3 correct scores so probably would have made some money if I'd been at home to back them?
Back soon gotta go to bed now :)