I'm up early watching Premiere League on CNBC.

Sweating a $50 parlay on Liverpool and Florentina.

Can't believe today was a good day. Brendan...oh Brendan.

i tried explaining the other day but ultimately i really dont know. too many factors.

i know what's going to happen next year though-- reus and hummels will be gone (if they survive their many injuries) and who knows who else... sahin? kagawa again? subotic? who the fuck knows.

reus out till next year. fuck this shit. it's a slow-motion bloodbath, it's what it is. as my assassins in rome total war say: "doom... approaches..."

one small bit of good news is that sahin is supposedly fit again. but gundogan is supposedly fit too and look at him disappear.

of course im going to watch their game vs. arsenal but i expect only horror (anything above that will be a bonus).

Don't count on Arsenal dicking Dortmund. They've hardly been flying high themselves.

Btw I forgot to thank you for your opinions on why Dortmund were doing so badly. So yeah, thanks. :)

Arsenal's only chance of getting one over on Dortmund is if they get Klopp in as Wenger's replacement at the end of the season.

i haven't been following arsenal so i don't know (i tried a couple of years ago but got bored with them) but i can only imagine morale must be at an all-time low right now [edit: at dortmund]. well not so low as when they went bankrupt in 200..5? but after such great heights 2 years ago this must feel like being repeatedly kicked in the balls. well, they have a history like a rollercoaster.

i just read some news that kloppo is lined up to replace rodgers? probably pure rumor, but that would be the final blow. and gundogan just came out saying that dortmund stopped him from joining real madrid a couple of years ago, and he wants to go to spain or england. i can't see reus languishing at dortmund for another year. hummels must also have some ambition. this is all fucked.

rats may be the first to abandon a sinking ship but you can't deny their success at survival.

Not sure Arsenal came close to bankruptcy in recent years.

It's hard to know what to think of them at the moment though. They can't compete financially with Chelsea or Man City and they're still probably slightly behind Man U and Liverpool, making their consistent qualification for the CL a real feat, and something Wenger should rightly be praised for. But at the same time there's a perception that they could be doing even better, if only Wenger would sort their defence out and show some willingness to evolve tactically.

You can see why the owners love him. He keeps them within budget while traditionally guaranteeing CL football each year. The disconnect now is with him and the fans, who seem to think he's been in the job too long, and whose ideas are now out of date. I think they'd welcome Klopp's style of play and personal dynamism, so long as they also saw signs of improvement.

Liverpool sacking Rodgers would be far too knee-jerk, IMO. He's not as good as the previous season suggests but still a very good young manager in charge of a team in a similar position as MU, ie a 'giant' that can no longer compete financially with the 'new money' clubs. Suarez made them look better than they were and it's now fair to say the Balotelli gamble didn't come off, and his signings generally haven't been great. Fact is though, whoever's in charge there, they're no longer in a position to attract the best players, or hold onto those that (like Suarez) had for a while passed under the mega-clubs' radar.

But that just puts them in the same position as about 99% of clubs right now (including Dortmund, Arsenal, and even MU).

oh shit sorry i fucked up my sentence and didn't inject dortmund as the new subject when i started talking about low morale and bankruptcy (i've added an edit now). what i meant to say was, i don't know how arsenal's regular mediocrity compares to dortmund's current dire straits-- they're evidently in crisis, even if that hasn't shown up at the CL yet.

but thanks for that very enlightening reply regardless.

just one thing to mention/ask about: a couple of years ago when i was looking into arsenal (they still had gervinho and they had brought on cazorla and then i think didn't have podolski yet) there was this talk that wenger was sitting on a pile of money unwilling to spend it. wonder if that has changed or is he totally priced out by the petrodollars at this point.

balotelli-- poor fucker! i feel sorry for him now, but then again he has his megamillions and a house with a name. so i really don't feel so sorry. but it has to wound his ego. he used to be so good! seriously.

as for briging on klopp to either arsenal or liverpool it would be a huge switch from their wannabe tikitaka approach and more in line with your english traditions so the fans might love him, but i wonder how long it would take to take it all apart and implement his system. total reverse course.

but at this point, i'll be totally honest, i don't know what to think of him-- how much of the current debacle is his own doing? today/yesterday the club president (or chairman of the board or whatever) gave some speech to shareholders saying the players had to get their shit together-- basically laying the blame on them. but is it the players? or is it that people have figured out klopp's schemes and neutralized them?

Podolski's been in and out with injury and generally struggled to find a first team place. Cazorla's fit, though, and generally plays ok, without really living up to his early promise. Gervinho was sold to Roma, probably the season after you were watching Arsenal.

Wenger now seems more willing to spend but only on more midfielders. He got Sanchez from Barca, who's been brilliant, but, given their appalling defence, not a priority.

Klopp's style wouldn't be such a shock for the Liverpool squad (Rodgers isn't that set on tiki taka. They certainly weren't playing it last season with Suarez) and even Arsenal's could adapt. I don't think it'd take a major rebuild for either team.

We're constantly told how great Balotelli would be if only he got his head straight but, while I don't know his record at previous clubs, I'd be interested to know when this apparent moment of brilliance was that we're all meant to be holding our breath for. Not saying he's a bad player but the game's full of players who can do amazing things every now and then. Has he ever had a consistent run of really outstanding form?

God knows what's going on with Klopp. He might just be being judged on a freak good season that doesn't actually reflect his true quality. Perhaps it is the players that are to blame for Dortmund's apparent decline, but then, using that logic, maybe itwas really just the players who brought them glory, too. You look at the squad he was managing a couple of seasons ago and you wonder how good any manager would need to be to get success with them. Avram Grant (one of the worst managers I've ever known) came to within a penalty shootout of winning a CL title with Chelsea. Unfair on Klopp in terms of comparing him with uncle Avram, but you get my point.

Fuck I hate how in futbol all the biggest games tend to be low scoring. Its why in tournament I usually make more effort to watch the group stages. LA Galaxy yesterday was no different. They dominated in a way not reflected in the box score and im looking forward to them doing the same next week in Seattle but shit I rarely enjoy 90 otherwise scoreless minutes. In NFL I like defense first low scoring games but that is a sport that automatically gives scoring opportunities and possession.. in futbol it devolves to a lot of running around

"Halt die Fresse"

The new fifa 15 upgrade on my phone wont load
sucks

Urgh just shush. It's because the rarity of goals that makes it exciting. You know that just one goal can win the whole game, and seeing another team struggle to make it even level is a thrill. I dunno, take basketball for example. You got goals happening every other bloody minute and y'know what? After a while you think "well there's another one". The perfect example is last weekend with Arsenal/Man Utd game. The tension in that game was just sky at points. The result? 1-2. That game gave me such a thrill and at the end of it

Put it this way, I'd rather see an exciting 0-0 game where two teams are battling to get something than an exciting 95-80 basketball game.


And football is hardly "a lot of running around" It's a lot more than that and you know it.

Maybe you need to consider whether football isn't your bag.

speaking of german keepers

BEHOLD THE VOLCANO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlczweXGOx8
(1st minute is great, 2 minutes of fluff follow, great footage resumes till the end)

lots more videos if you follow the thread


this isn't the nfl thread

!@#$%! stop being a bitch yo

physician, heal thyself

Awesome stuff, although, pre-Neuer, I'd still put Buffon over Kahn, but that might just be because I love Buffon. They're almost impossible to choose between so it probably does just come down to personal preference. Buffon's probably my all-time fave keeper even if others come along who are better than him. He's one of the classiest individuals in the history of the game, imo.

Neuer's obviously taken things to a whole other level but it'll be interesting over the next few seasons to see if even he isn't eventually eclipsed by Courtois. Incredible keeper, and only 22. Scary!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duDSqLl5G4M

And while all the talk has been about Ronaldo in La Liga this season (deservedly so) Messi broke yet another record at the weekend for goals scored in the league. 253, and he's still only 27. And if he scores tonight he'll break the all time CL goals record (27). He might not be quite as good as he has been but there's still lots more goals in him. Only question now is if he'll be scoring them in Spain.

http://www1.skysports.com/football/n...uillem-balague

Anyone watching Man C-Bayern? Great first half. City should be clear but they're too busy committing suicide

Mangala is so fucking shit.

Neuer who? Incredible. God knows how that happened.

Amazing. Good job city are rich enough to keep the little fucker. What team wouldn't wan't him? Brilliant.

i'll say this, City would be mad to not try and keep Lampard for the rest of the season.

Totally agree. Until Aguero's two goals I was gtting ready to say Lampard has probably been their best player. But isn't part of the deal that he's only at City in the interim, before going to the NY Red Bulls. Not sure how the deal works though.

"Nice work MC, but just to remind everyone, we just completely annihilated Schalke"

Yeah. Although I'm sure the owners could just turn around and say that Lampard is going to stay at City. I guess it comes down to where he's going to make the Iron Sheikhs the most money.

And Messi. God bless him. A friend of mine who's 63 was saying a coupla weeks back that in all the years of him watching football he can't remember a time where there were as many incredible players at any one time. Sure there's meant to be a comma there somewhere.

Yeah, we're in a golden age, for sure. In what other era would a player as good as Aguero not even make a 23 player Ballon D'or shortlist? Or a player who, about an hour ago, finally broke the all-time record for CL goals scored not be the red hot fave to win it? And even if you take Messi and Ronaldo out of the equation, this is still an absurdly good time to be a football fan.

EDIT: Hope el symbols saw the game, and that he didn't do too much damage to his tv when he threw it out the window after Aguero scored the winner.

That yesterday's Man City vs. Bayern match was absolutely brilliant.
Oh, the joy of football.

And Dortmund v Arsenal tonight looks like it could be great too. Two under-pressure managers using the CL to try and salvage their season/reputations. Although I can see it being a really long night for Wenger.

i didn't get a chance to catch bayern/man city till this morning and i was trying to avoid looking at this thread and other news sources--- but some rumors squeaked by.

anyway, great game, surprised bayern managed to take the lead and then throw it away in stages.

benatia getting himself thrown out was massively idiotic (look at what the poor bastard was saying pre-game here and what beckenbauer said afterwards here) .

then there were the weird substitutions-- schweinsteiger for ribéry? shaqiri should have been the one. and why take lewandowski out? should have been shaquiri for ribéry and keep their shape. what the fuck.

agüero spectacular-- why couldn't he play like that when i had him in my fantasy league world cup team? (i know, injury or something). anyway both xabi alonso and boateng made stupid mistakes (probably fatigue, damn, they played w/ 10 since the beginning) but agüero knew how to profit and did not puss out. bravo, sir.

anyway, pretty great match, full of surprises, sorry to see bayern lose but they needed a wake-up call after coasting for so long (they beat hoffenheim 4-0 this past weekend). muller & gotze sitting it out, i have to find out why-- injuries i think, heard something about gotze's knee.

nervous about dortmund, not 100% sure i'll be able to catch it on time today but i'm trying-- otherwise might have to wait till late tonight or tomorrow.

Have you guys seen this? Is it for real? http://youtu.be/GUQUta53Q1g

Insane shootout. I would kill the doc that dragged my ass back there if I was that goalkeeper! Insane.

Fuck shoot outs, nothing pisses me off more in a tournament than when you've watched 94 minutes then like 32 minutes of scoreless or low scoring tie action to see it settled with lame kicks. Id honestly rather just see a fucking coin flip

You're joking, right?

about what? That I would destroy the team medic that dragged me back out to get concussed again?

I sure wish that (a) real shoot outs went this way and (b) that real English announcing crews were that lively and entertaining!

Arsenal Dortmund feels a bit scrappy. Arsenal deserve the lead though. Cazorla's been excellent.


Aguero was the difference maker. Neither team were that good so it took one player to have a great game. Robben was very quiet, I thought.

It's as fake as Pandora Peaks's tits

It was STILL ages better than any real shootout I've ever been forced to sit through.. and also as I mentioned, I wish REAL English announcing crews were also that alive and entertaining so I wouldn't have to watch in Spanish yo ;)