There are many problems in the modern game, both perceptual and blatantly obvious to all and sundry. There’s a myriad of opinions about the negative aspects of football and as many suggested solutions. Most would argue that football is too focused on money so we talk about salary caps and limits on buying players, generally all based on percentages of turnover.
Another commonly voiced complaint is the amount of foreign players in domestic leagues, so again we talk about
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I find an inherent beauty in simplicity and truly believe that the best solutions to most of the world’s problems are naturally simplistic. However, I must confess a sinfully lustful attraction to the occasional bit of complication on the side. And if it’s complication that you’re after, you need look no further than a European football tournament administered by UEFA.
Have you ever stopped to ponder why England, Spain and Italy all get to send 4 teams each to
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The fourth round and final round of qualification for the Group Stage of the Champions League was completed tonight, with the 10 losers being dumped down into the Europa League.
Sheriff, København, Celtic, Timişoara, Sporting, Panathinaikos, Levski Sofia, Anderlecht, Salzburg and Ventspils with be entered into the draw for the Europa League Group Stage along with the 38 winners from Play Off Round, which will hopefully include Villa.
It’s looking likely that Levski Sofia will also be a Pot 3 team with
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Actually, this isn’t the third part of a monster blog post – it’s a rather tabloid-like attempt at a headline based on an old Ian Dury song. Sorry, won’t happen again. And if hearing that song again doesn’t cheer you up, maybe news that Aston Villa are top of the table might…
Ooops, I’ve done it again – not the Premiership table, natch – I’m talking about the “Stewardship Table” compiled by business think tank Tomorrow’s Company. Here’s
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I just saw a comment on a forum somewhere that made me chuckle. A poster was countering this ‘lost the dressing room’ nonsense by pointing out that Brad Friedel has recently compared Martin O’Neill to Sir Alex Ferguson in terms of his authority, command and respect at Aston Villa. He quite rightly points to this aspect being a key element in Man Utd’s growth to the club they are today.
Another poster totally missed the point and argued:-
Fergie has
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I’m starting to think that losing the opening game against Wigan will turn out to be a good thing, if given time. Whether the Peace Cup could be dismissed as just pre-season or not, we were on a high from picking up a trophy and arguably “discovering” some hidden gems among our reserves.
Wigan was definitely a wake up call. The players lost their day off and were dragged in for training yesterday. No one at the club
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It was only April that I took the opportunity to jump on some of John Carew’s words about how he’s finding his time at Aston Villa. Why? To recap briefly; October 23rd ’08, Villa beat Ajax 2-1 in the UEFA Cup at Villa Park and Carew was surprisingly left out of the squad. Martin O’Neill was questioned about this during a press conference the following day and he said that Carew had been complaining of tiredness, was
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Thanks to EPL Talk I stumbled on the fact that Sky Sports News have just released an iPhone app. I was already using ESPN’s Score Center app, which I’ll continue to use as it is more customizable, but from what I’ve seen so far, the more streamlined, football focused app from Sky runs more quickly.
Not sure why we need Jeff Stelling staring at us on every screen, but it’s a pretty cool app. It’s available from the App
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I’m deliberately using the word ‘expectation’ in place of ‘prediction’. Predicting the result of a single game with all of the possible variables is folly, but we all do it on an “all things being equal” basis. All things most certainly are not equal though. Bookmakers know this, it’s why they offer us the opportunity to wager on our predictions and they make a healthy living. Even a “dead cert” can fail to deliver. Over
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