Ajax up 1-nil…….c’mon group stages!

Well, the goal differential is already 1 for – 6 against, and the next Premiership match is against Man U.

What an ugly start to the campaign.

JIC you haven’t seen them.

16 mil

A big club and two domestic winners. Seems like a good test.
  
Real’s group – Jose yawns. Then admires and reflects upon the magnificence of his yawn.

Arsenal at Blackburn is sorta interesting but not enough to get up at 6:30am. The rest of sat morning sux. Sunday has Everton at Villa – two sputtering teams looking to find their stride. But I won’t watch it because it’s oppo the City game, which looks like a classic City stumbling block if we don’t bear down and match their physicality. Yuk – kind of an unpleasant way to launch into 2 weeks worth of int’l break finger-twirling.

friggin’ rain.

- Third round draw
Brentford v Everton
Portsmouth v Leicester
Stoke v Fulham
Chelsea v Newcastle
Aston Villa v Blackburn [!]
Tottenham v Arsenal [!!!]
Millwall v Ipswich
Wolves v Notts County
Burnley v Bolton
Birmingham v MK Dons
Liverpool v Northampton
Scunthorpe v Man Utd
West Brom v Man City
Sunderland v West Ham
Peterborough v Swansea
Wigan v Preston

mock drafts, coffee, cigarettes, and EPL.

Doesn’t get better than that.

Since scoring in his City debut, he has …

collapsed in a heap for no reason claiming a non-contact injury -

become unavailable for selection to Mancini’s apparent bafflement -

been seen walking around Manchester dressed like this -

and now he’s involved in a car crash

Never understood why Barca did that trade with Eto’o.

with schwarzer heading to arsenal.

He’s a little firecracker.

This sounds a little homeristic, but watching Walcott right now reminds me a little of the tournament in Happy Gilmore after Happy works with Chubs, when Happy says to Shooter, “Happy learned how to put – uh oh!” Last week it was Blackpool, so who knows. But he looked like someone again today whose brain wasn’t going 200 mph as he tried to decide what to do on the last ball. He’s going to be a major pain in the ass if that continues.

Also, on Arsenal, whether it’s Schwartzer or Almunia, between the keeper and central defense they just aren’t strong enough to challenge. I like Koscielny as a footballer, he’s scrappy, and they can put some decent size in Diaby, Song and Chamakh out there to help on set pieces, but he’s just not strong enough. On the goal they conceded today he didn’t have proper support, but Diouf B just sort of said ‘sorry, I’m going to keep this’ as he just shrugged him off breaking down the left. Squillaci may be a nice addition, but the Almunia-Gallas-Vermaelen troika was pretty woefully lacking last season all things considered, and all you’ve done in adding Squillaci is replace Gallas with the guy who could never beat him out for France (not that you can really trust the guy making the selections).

I don’t like that their two strikers aren’t pure goal scorers, but from the group of Fabregas, Arshavin, Van Persie, Walcott, Chamakh, Nasri, etc. they may have enough offense to challenge. Song is a solid, growing player, and with Gibbs developing they have their best set of fullbacks since Cole left. But they just aren’t going to be able to cover up that mess surrounding Vermaelen with what Wenger came up with this summer.

Seems pretty inevitable. Man Utd can maintain better health, but they seem more likely to have the little slip-ups this time around. Chelsea has so many guys in good form and just look like a steamroller. Oh and suck it Shawcross, Pulis and Stoke. Enjoy playing Scunthorpe and Watford next season.

LB Kieran Richardson shut down his side of the field defensively for Sun and Lescott’s ineptness shut down his side of the field offensively for City. Left the middle clogged up and the ball blowing around in the air on a windy day. Tevez missed a sitter. Adebayour had a goal stolen by a reflex save. Mancini lost his cool on the sideline which just feuled the home crowd frenzy and Sunderland players. And like I always say – Richards is a just PK waiting to happen. Bah – what a waste of the Spurs’ defeat.

They started slow last year as well, but one point in three games has to be a pretty big disappointment, considering that they have kept Jagielka, Rodwell, Pienaar and Arteta, added Beckford early, and they don’t seem like they should be as unsettled as last year with Lescott. Aston Villa and Blackburn are going to be coin flips for them, but they haven’t played any of Chelsea, Man Utd/City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham and they’re already fighting up from the relegation zone.

0-0 draw with Real dominating 64% of possession

Canales is really young to be playing such an important role on the team. Guess he’s filling in until Kaka gets back. It’ll be great for his devo, but it ain’t gonna win Jose many games this season.

Ozil replaced Canales, sort of – hit a decent pass or two but didn’t do much better.

Their attack was very left-handed, with Ronaldo and Marcelo doing the grunt work along the line. Without Ramos hogging the ball over on the right they’re sorta lopsided – not much happens up the right touchline. Overall, the best chances they had usually were a result of Ronaldo – mostly just speed down the side and zipping the ball into the center.

DiMaria, IMO, is best on the LW, but Ronaldo spends the lion’s share of his time over there, so DiMaria is sorta weakened by this displacement.

Higuain doesn’t really look for his teammates much – he might be a little too occupied with the net sometimes. Needs to give a target or play a 1-2 pass more often.

Sami seems better than Lass, don’t know why Jose didn’t start him at CDM instead.

Xabi just seems lonely out there – like a tika without a taka. Maybe he can go to Arsenal when Cesc leaves and plunge himself into Arsene’s version of small ball.

Jose seemed more like an observer than a director during the game. I’m not sure he’s got a grip on the team yet. Between Sneijder’s comments and some of Jose’s own comments here recently, it doesn’t take a genius to see that he wants to replace Fergie at ManU when the old fart quits. This seems pretty awkward to me. He just started a years-long project that cost Real 100M euros [IIRC] in coaching acquisition fees to launch. Fergie can’t last much longer. Seems a little weird to me. Overall, between the Spanish entitlement to demand pretty soccer coupled with the limits Ronaldo’s temperament puts on his coaching expression, it seems to me that Jose is not the master of his own domain. Not sure he’s gonna be able to use all the tools in his shed on this job. Which again makes me feel like he’s got one foot out the door already headed to ManU.

guess the inter success last season lit a fire under them…

He, Raul and van der Vaart would be interesting together. Huntelaar and Raul themselves are a curious tandem. Lots of skill, though.

Robinho cost City £32 million when signing for the club in a shock move from Real Madrid in 2008 but it is reported that they have recouped an initial payment in the region of £12.5 million.

I guess the total sum could be for a fair amount more.

Window’s closed. Good to know Hicks kept his word from this article back in January:

“In an e-mail of his own to a fan, he intimated that Liverpool’s debt — in excess of £200 million — is more manageable than that of their great rivals.

He also insisted that while Liverpool will not be splashing out in the present transfer window, they are already planning to invest heavily in the summer to bolster Rafael Benítez’s squad, and claimed the long-awaited new stadium will be delivered.

"Our debt is very manageable (see Man U) and we never use player sales for debt service," Hicks Sr wrote in the e-mail, responding to concerns from a supporter that Liverpool will not be big spenders in January.

"Our interest on £200 million is about £16 million. The new stadium will be the game changer. January is a poor quality market. The summer window will be big."

Fourth straight transfer window where we’ve turned a profit, and no new stadium anywhere in sight! Hell of a job, Tom!

Woops.

He’s tweeting! Swoon

eom

Yes, France still sucks.

Sounds like he snagged a shoulder ouchie. New boyz P and M will see lotsa MF PT now, I suppose.

The good: they have added GOLTV to the HD tier and in English, so that’s pretty awesome. Also, not soccer related, but as a part of their new Disney agreement, they added a college football/basketball HD channel that sounds similar to NFL Red Zone (which, of course, they don’t carry). It’s 798 here.

The bad: they got ESPN3.com added to their new agreement, but between them and ESPN they haven’t managed to give TWC customers access yet. I am guessing that it has to do with setting up the login interface and related data, but TWC supposedly doesn’t know why it’s not up and running yet. They have all of the qualifiers on there today, so it’s too bad that they don’t have it.

Lescott starts beside Jagielka – rest of the lineup is the same as the Bulgaria game. AJ on the bench. Lescott has played very little CD recently. But he has defended well so far this season out on City’s left back.