Losing The Plot?

Probably not a good idea to ask refs to keep a close eye on Luis Suarez because they might just notice what the rest of us see on telly, I admit he did actually stay on his feet once yesterday against Norwich when he had the opportunity to go down for a penalty but on the whole he hits the floor with ease.
Listening to Kenny recently I reckon a return to the retirement home isn't too far away.

Attendances

Top 20 average attendances so far 2011/12 season

1 Manchester United 75,478
2 Arsenal 59,995
3 Manchester City 46,905
4 Newcastle United 46,111
5 Liverpool 44,932
6 Chelsea 41,611
7 Sunderland 37,890
8 Tottenham Hotspur 36,184
9 Everton 34,707
10 Aston Villa 32,447
11* West Ham United 29,408
12 Stoke City 27,371
13 Norwich City 26,276
14* Derby County 25,847
15* Southampton 25,309
16 Wolverhampton Wanderers 24,779
17 Fulham 24,768
18 West Bromwich Albion 24,244
19 Bolton Wanderers 24,089
20* Leeds United 23,098

Premier Predictions (Week 9)

Highlight of the weekend is the Manchester derby, nothing much else to worry about so should be a good points week?

Wolves v Swansea
Aston Villa v West Brom
Bolton v Sunderland
Newcastle v Wigan
Liverpool v Norwich

Arsenal v Stoke
Fulham v Everton
Man Utd v Man City
Blackburn v Tottenham
QPR v Chelsea

The Big One

1 Southampton - PL 11 PTS 23 GD +13
2 West Ham - PL 11 PTS 21 GD +12

West Ham's second chance of the season to go top (they blew the first one against Ipswich a few weeks back).
Southampton are looking the best team in the Championship so far having just come up from League One and five straight league victories at home is pretty impressive.
The Hammers seem to be improving all the time and Fat Sam's squad are gelling together nicely.
The Hammers are unbeaten in five away games this season so something has to give.
Saturday's 4-0 win over Blackpool was probably our best game so far even without Lansbury, Green, O'Brien and Cole.
Would be a good game to win although there is still over three quarters of the season to go.

Premier Predictions (Week 8)

Back to the proper football this week :)
A few big ones this week with Man U off to Anfield, Chelsea at home to bogey team Everton, City playing unbeaten Villa and Newcastle's first big test.

Liverpool v Man Utd
Man City v Aston Villa
Norwich v Swansea
QPR v Blackburn
Stoke v Fulham
Wigan v Bolton
Chelsea v Everton

West Brom v Wolves
Arsenal v Sunderland
Newcastle v Tottenham

Lucky Escape?

So the Olympic stadium move is dead in the water, although Mrs Brady old lady is still talking about us renting it for some reason?
Surely we should just back off for about 10 years when I guess we will have a big white elephant stadium making absolutely no money and we should be able to pick up the site for a fraction of the money and all this legacy crap has been forgotten.

I see Harringay council are bribing the scum to stay in Tottenham with a deal that would save them £17 million if they build a new stadium where they are? sounds like state aid to me?

Chelsea Travellers

Interesting pair of Chelsea stories this week.
One is about Chelsea asking shareholders who bought shares back in 1993 known as the "Chelsea Pitch Owners" to sell them back to the club for the same price they paid then £100. Considering Chelsea were in deep shit back then and are now one of Europe's big teams you would have thought they would be willing to pay a bit of a loyalty premium to thank their fans for keeping the club safe through the dark times, but it seems not? Chairman Bruce Buck says "the club would not be held to ransom, and there was no room for negotiation".
The other Chelsea story this week ties in with this one quite well, Roman Abramovich is currently in court accused of intimidating former partner Boris Berezovsky into selling his shares in a Russian oil company at a fraction of their value, sounds familiar.

Chelsea fans are going mad at proposals to knock down Stamford Bridge.
One fan said "You can't just bulldoze 7 years of history".

England

Friday at 8pm England play Montenegro in our most important game since last years World cup, but does anyone care?
Nobody at work has even mentioned England this week and even listening to Radio 5's football chat last night it was an after thought at the end of the programme just to remind you to listen on Friday.
I suppose England's dismal performance last year killed a lot of people's enthusiasm, but the fact that most England games are not even being shown as highlights on terrestrial television anymore means most people don't actually care anymore.
Darren Bent's best England matches have all been in games not shown and it has amazed me how many of my relatives and friends didn't know he was even an England player?

Sunday Football

No Torres = 5-1 away win for Chelsea, obviously AVB's boot up Lumpard's fat arse did the trick as he has returned from his spell on the bench with a hat-trick today after his goal in midweek.
Who would have believed after Bolton's 4-0 away win on the opening day that 6 games later they would have lost the lot and conceded 23 goals?

Fulham 6 QPR 0 !! Hahahahaha ... sack Warnock.

Swansea 2 Stoke 0 Nice to see Danny Graham finally managed to hit the target.

Spuds v Arses to follow ..... can't be bothered

Table Toppers

West Ham blew their chance of going top this week, but my local club managed it tonight after beating Shrewsbury 3-0 :)
I post this because I have a feeling they won't be there later in the season although I hope I'm wrong ... well done Southend :)

Premier Predictions (Week 7)

A few derby games this week.

Everton v Liverpool
Aston Villa v Wigan
Blackburn v Man City
Man Utd v Norwich
Sunderland v West Brom
Wolves v Newcastle

Bolton v Chelsea
Fulham v QPR
Swansea v Stoke
Tottenham v Arsenal

Premier Predictions (Week 6)

Wow, Friday morning already and nearly forgot to post this.
Hopefully we will improve on last weeks dismal performance :)

Man City v Everton
Arsenal v Bolton
Chelsea v Swansea
Liverpool v Wolves
Newcastle v Blackburn
West Brom v Fulham
Wigan v Tottenham
Stoke v Man Utd

QPR v Aston Villa

Norwich v Sunderland

Confusing

Just came back to check the latest scores on the BBC website, before I went out it had said Man City were 3-1 up, now I see that it was a 2-2 draw? might have been a disallowed goal I suppose but then checking the report it gets really confusing?? it says that Kompany scored City's 3rd goal on 2 different pages!!

Fantasy Football

As I think I said before I'm playing TFF (Telegraph fantasy football) this year for the first time in 3 years.
During the previous years of playing I was working regular hours (or not at all) so had the time to do those last minute transfers after seeing the team sheets, and had set up a pretty comprehensive Excel document to deal with all the info so I knew exactly what players were in each of the 20 teams I'd picked etc.
A bit of luck involved obviously but that level of attention is needed to get your teams into the top 10% as there are a lot of serious players around.

This year I'm winging it just using the web site as I never seem to have the time to set up the Excel spreadsheet and having to use this crap laptop is a pain :)
This years teams are doing reasonable with the top team in around 2,500th place with no transfers made (there are around 250,000 teams in the competition).
I've gone heavy on Man U and City players so that's worked out well so far although most teams have either Rooney or Agruero I don't think I've got both in any team :(
My worst team has Fernando Torres as the striker?? proving that taking chances doesn't always work :)
I think I might drop a few places this week as I missed the transfer deadline again, there was a chance to dump a few under performers before the big teams played today :(

Best Team so far -
Top points - Rooney, Nani, Young.
Worst - Malouda, Brunt, Kompany



Worst team so far -
Top points - Bent, Collins, Hart, Arshavin.
Worst - Surman, Torres, Riise

Millwall 0 West Ham 0

Tottenham loanee misses absolute sitter .... sounds like last season :(
Surely we should have learned the lesson after Keane and all those other crap players we've borrowed from the Spuds over the years.

Premier Predictions (Week 5)

Been away and just got back finally, so here's this weeks games.

Blackburn v Arsenal
Aston Villa v Newcastle
Bolton v Norwich
Everton v Wigan
Swansea v West Brom
Wolves v QPR

Tottenham v Liverpool
Fulham v Man City
Sunderland v Stoke
Man Utd v Chelsea

Paolo di Canio

Never a dull moment with Paolo :)
If you've sat up for the football league show every Swindon game has been a joy so far just to see Paolo's touchline antics.
The end of match argument with Leon Clarke was classic di Canio and most of their other games have seen a di Canio moment to talk about.
Tuesday should be interesting as Swindon take on rich kids Crawley, Crawley's manager Steve Evans has been critical of di Canio calling Swindon the "di Canio circus", di Canio's reaction was "who is he, I've never heard of him" :)

For no particular reason? I dislike Crawley and loved Saturday's 6-0 win by Morecambe which brought them back down to earth, hopefully Swindon can do a similar job.

Rugby

The Rugby world cup has started.
Loads of posh middle class men watching some fella kick a ball over a bar

Bit like stamford bridge when Torres is playing

England v Wales

Well we won
mainly thanks to this man :)

Premier Predictions (Week 4)

Arsenal v Swansea
Everton v Aston Villa
Man City v Wigan
Stoke v Liverpool
Sunderland v Chelsea
Wolves v Tottenham
Bolton v Man Utd

Norwich v West Brom
Fulham v Blackburn

QPR v Newcastle