Champions League

Champions League Quarter Finals this week.

Barcelona v Athletico Madrid (2-1)
Bayern Munich v Benfica (1-0)
Paris St Germain v Man City
Wolfsburg v Real Madrid

Barcelona beat Athletico Madrid after Fernando Torres did a 10 minute Hero to Villain routine, Barca should be favourites but Simeone's Madrid are horrible to play against. I should dislike them with the miserable moaning Simeone in charge and a team that displays all the dark arts but I like the way they upset the mega-money pair in Spain.
Bayern Munich struggled to beat Benfica 1-0 and will have to perform better at the real Stadium of Light.

Tonight sees City taking on Zlatan and his Paris supporting cast, shame City don't have a defence so they just need to score more goals than Paris? should be good :)
Real Madrid should be able to overcome Wolfsburg  assuming Ronaldo plays.

Thanks Messi

Proud Dad moment :)
My son does the voice over on this new Adidas advert :)

Champions League

Congratulations to Barcelona for their latest Trophy win.
Must admit I was cheering for Juventus and did get hopeful in the second half, but overall Barca deserved it.
Thought the ref was being biased towards Barcelona for most of the game, but was shocked when he disallowed Neymar's handball goal. Yes it was technically handball but wasn't intentional, and after he'd fell for every dive by Suarez and Neymar I expected it to be given.
Messi was a class above everyone else, Ronaldo is good but Messi controls everything for Barcelona.

Sad for a Hammers fan to see Tevez and Mascherano playing in a Champions league final after the way we treated those two, yes Tevez became a hero but even he was left out when Curbishley first took over and Mascherano was never really given a chance :(

One final thing to tie up, here's the NBTF Champions league Fantasy Table.

Congratulations to Richard :) the rest of us need to try harder next year :)

Champions League

The Champions league group draw

Group A - Man Utd, Shakhtar Donetsk, Bayer Leverkusen, Real Sociedad
Group B - Real Madrid, Juventus, Galatasaray, Copenhagen
Group C - Benfica, Paris SG, Olympiakos, Anderlecht
Group D - Bayern Munich, CSKA Moscow, Man City, Viktoria Plzen
Group E - Chelsea, Schalke, Basel, Steaua Bucharest
Group F - Arsenal, Marseille, Borussia Dortmund, Napoli
Group G - Porto, Ath Madrid, Zenit St Petersburg, Austria Vienna
Group H - Barcelona, AC Milan, Ajax, Celtic

First thoughts, Man Utd and Chelsea should stroll through, Man City should finish 2nd.
Arsenal have a really tough group and could struggle.
Celtic have little chance but will hope they can give Barcelona a tough time again.

Cheap Shirts

Don't usually advertise here but thought this was a good offer, JJB are doing the newish England away kit for only £12.50 and the home kit for £25 till Tuesday, I'm not sure if this is just an online offer or it's available in the shops I'll pop down tomorrow if they are open and see as I quite like the away one.

Had a look through some of the other new kits (sadly at full price) and I feel sorry for Man U fans with their new tea towel pattern home shirts, Chelsea's new one is better than last years, Everton's new black and gold away kit is pretty cool and I'm undecided about the new Barcelona home shirt, which as with all footy shirts these days is now spoilt by having to advertise some dodgy company on the front.

With the cost of advertising these days why can't we all claim money back from these companies when we go out wearing a shirt with their logo on the front?  I don't really expect to get anything as I had no luck trying to get Tesco's to give me a discount for advertising their company by using their crap plastic bags :)
Now I just take several superior Morrisons bags with me and when they say "do you need bags" I say "no it's ok I've brought my own" .... they never seem too pleased :)