yes

but first-- bayern-hoffenheim play in... let's see...

less than 2 hours!

very curious about new manager niko kovac

see: https://www.bavarianfootballworks.co...rentin-tolisso

This. Such a great book.

One of the funniest bits is Kompany talking to the kids about Mandela.

"Mandela was sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit"
Kid holds his hand up "what was his crime?"
"His crime was being black"

Had to do a double take at that one.

haaa haaa yes mandela

and watching the game at his in-laws? hahahahahaha

priceless

fucking hoffenheim keeps hatcheting down bayern's attackers

first lewandowski, then coman, then ribéry a couple of times, now coman again looking to be subbed out

coman crying in his hands and ribéry whispering in his ear. fucksakes. what a way to start the season.

4 yellow cards so far but a couple of them were straight reds for me

--

now the ref went card-crazy and gave mueller a yellow

wtf lolol. chaos!

--

shit, i missed a goal

--

lotta VAR ha ha ha

really nice first half wolves v. man city

not a boring moment

a couple of kompany fuckups could have cost city goals (one happened and was disallowed)

rui patricio saved a glorious sterling shot

man city are great obviously but im really liking wolves

your austrian is paying...

—

...old dortmund catches up. sorry about that.

Another red card for Everton and a ridiculous in my eyes. Unbelievable. At least West Ham are holding off Arsenal.

i saw a replay of the headbutt. would not wanna fight that guy lol

Everton that -_-

my condolences to demonyo for the table position. you can keep cool though cuz it’s early in the season and you had the tough matches upfront.

for anyone keeping an eye on bundesliga (cuz it’s still great), today’s dortmund-leipzig game should be a good one.

dortmund’s new manager is lucien favre, who is a habitual musical chair player in bundesliga teams and once took a struggling monchengladbach from the bottom of the table to the champions league. also went to france and took nice to the champions, and recently almost (lol) went to work at everton.

dortmund fans HATE leipzig and usually refuse to attend matches due to the astroturf nature of the red bull club. i’m sure there will be some kind of something.

what else. watch timo werner actually score goals today?

more curious about dortmund though. so many changes lately and sokratis gone to arsenal, schurrle to fulham, batshuayi back to chelse, and no incoming forwards...?

1-1 at 20’... pretty good match so far

belgian axel witsel joined dortmund this year & looks very much into it

also timo benched

4-3-3 vs 4-2-2-2

—-

3-1 dortmund ahead and halftime about to end. witsel! awesome goal

before it was reus goalkik that was defended wrong by a lepizig defender and og.

pulisic getting fouled tons fucksakes—

so, yeah—halftime! new trainsfers in doing great, e.g. denmark’s delaney who headbutted what ended bing witsel’s bicycle kick score

Gotta say WH deserved a point yesterday. The game was absolute crap: both teams competing for worst defence in the Prem divided only by a silly goal to give Arsenal the lead then a sucker punch as we had to come out looking for an equaliser.

I only saw that game so if anyone watched more and has seen a worst team yet in the Prem (or ideally 3) please let me know as it looks increasingly like it's gonna be one of those seasons again for WH. Right now I'm banking on at least Huddersfield.

dahoud -> sancho -> reus golazo to cap the game

& reus’ 100th bundesliga goal

—

re: west ham, i saw a good contest in the first half but by the end of the game your team seemed to have lost the rudder

i dont know about “worst” teams. wolves is supposed to be a minow but i find them to be highly watchable. with bielsa in the championship, a relegation is not that disgraceful is it?

but anyway i dont know really. the game was a bit boring and i spaced a few swaths of it. but from what i saw arsenal was better, sorry, i think they earned it.

Wolves look better than I expected.

I agree about losing the rudder at the end but by then we were just going all out for the point. And WH's defence is a mess in the best of circumstances, force us to chase a game and it falls apart completely. But I was a bit more impressed with Anderson this week, after last week's car crash and you have to love Arnie.

I've no disrespect for the championship, and in some ways I even prefer it to the Prem, but the way things are at the club financially the consequences of relegation are just too horrific to even consider as an option.

wolves are awesome. their 5 man backline so well organized in defense. their passing and attacking great. that neves kid. joao moutinho. a+++ will buy again. wanted to se last week but the service didnt let me.

re: west ham, can guess the money situation —debt (including the stadium), plus a reduced revenue, would tank ya.

then again it could be a good thing— sell the stadium, pay back the debt, go back to boleyn or whatevers called (if it’s still standing) ( was it boleyn??) be able to afford the tickets again! get bielsa, even!

but no i get it ok. thats likely unrealistic.

so... anyway you’ve had tough matches— except for burned mouth which i did not see, ok, that was a wasted opportunity i guess, but have a little patience.

boleyn GROUND. o fuck, it was demolished!

but look, pellegrini is confident:

https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/foo...-a3920616.html

have some patience!

having said that—pellegrini’s 70s hairstyle does not inspire me confidence. o well, ha ha ha.

looked at the financial situation and it’s pretty good!

no doomsday scenario....

major lender is the owner himself!

Issues specific to the club relating to the stadium make the financial situation far worse than they should be. I don't pretend to understand all of it but there are some business accountants who post on some of the West Han sites I go on and they look at the financial statements the club has to publish each year and they say its murky as fuck. West Ham have been one long legal battle since pretty much the start of the millennium.

But back to the football. I suppose I agree with Pellegrini. I think we'll improve and I definitely want us to play in the style he's pushing. I think the alarm bells rang with the second half against Bournemouth, and again the 2nd half against Arsenal. But this is a horrible run in. for your 1st 7 games to include Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Man U, and Spurs, and also Everton away, which we just don't win ever. That's harsh, but then hopefully when we have the easier run around oct-nov, hopefully the likes of Anderson and Fredericks and Dioppe will have found their feet. It's arguably better to hit form in a relatively easy easy run, but the fear, with the run they'll have just come out of, is that their confidence might've completely gone by then.

Either way Wolves next saturday will be huge.

i found the stadium is not a purchase, it’s a 99 year lease, and your rent is a miserable 2.5million pounds a year. i mean even a championship team could afford that.

the mayor of london wants to raise the rent but there is a dispute over number of seats going from57k to the full 60k, which the club wants allowed before talks of rent increase.

meanwhile boleyn sold for 38 million!

that club is loaded

All looks rosy, I know, but factor into that a Mayor needing to save money, a local council that has none, the olympic committee who just need to accept reality and a team owner who dresses like Stalin. But all that's it's own thing. More concerned short term with Wolves next week. I didn't see them against City. I know they got lucky with the goal but they were still meant to have looked good. I do really rate Neves.

oh shit you playing wolves in the weekend?

father son and espírito santo!

thats a well-honed squad if you ask me

They are. I don't know much about him but that Santo guy is getting lots of praise and generally touted as a name to watch. The bookies make WH very slight favourites but it could go either way.

so i saw this video clip the other day by some "men in blazer" people and one of them was saying that liking chelsea or man city was boring and that the true soccer fan would pick west ham.

he said it would always be exciting because throughout the season you'd either be ecstatic about an impending europa qualification or terrified about relegation. which was good for the true fan, lol.

which sounds about right! plus you like frightening movies, ha ha ha.

mind you, wolves haven't won one yet... tied to everton, lost to lester, tied to man city. nuno was in the news saying they would not change their style of play in reaction to this. which i can appreciate. same as pellegrini more or less.

and i like their style of play. i cant explain it, but very entertaining for my eye. more skill than power, good creative midfield, not overly arsenalic though. a 3 4 3? anyway they are not fantastically talented but they're skilled and cohesive and put on a good show. i did not see their lester defeat though. maybe you and pellegrini should, and draw some lessons.

it's "espírito santo," i.e., "holy spirit" not just "holy", but long names are unusual in english, except maybe for lloyd george, bohnam carter, and newton-john xD -- hence i'm calling him "nuno" from now on.

anyway-- if i manage to catch that game (not sure service will offer, i'll have to see) i'll be rooting for wolves just to feed your halloween thrills, ha ha ha

Are you watching Man U v Spurs tonight?

oh shit, forgot. you mean for lunch. sure! i'll have it on.

not sure i can watch 100% due to work that must happen but will keep an eye for sure

lol now they even have a ref on tv trying to psychoanalize mourinho

shit gets so boring!

--

gotta say the prem commentariat is fucking irritating

bunch of tabloid shit. more tactics less bullshit please or ill shoot my teevee

did not sign up for hello magazine

--

SO. end of first half MAN U LOOKING GOOD. i think they had the best chances, and had several. the luck was not there but i'm sure the talking heads will try to attribute the random motion of flying objects to psychoanalysis because they have to bloviate about *something* nonstop.

im muting the tv

--

well that was unexpected...

spurs fans singing sacked in the morning. could be after this.

during the 2nd half i was on a tech support call, volume down, and BLAM, WTF???

i did not see the defensive mistakes and up to halftime but i though united played great--at least first half

2nd time from behind looked like they didn't stop fighting

but spurs just landed the best punches when it mattered

i don't see what mourinho did that was so wrong here.

jettatura?

No question MU had the 1st half but they fell apart in the 2nd half. Herrera in defence? Mourinho's lost it. Did you hear his rant at the end of the post-match? If he's still there by christmas I'll be amazed.

yeah i did see the interview. didnt think he was ranting. sounded calm to me ha ha ha. seriously not being contrarian. his comments made sense to me.

i dont know what to say. to me man u played well but failed to score, whereas at least the first spurs goal was a bit of a fluke. looked absurd.

i don’t know this herrera. seen the name, but know nothing of him.

i could not really pay attention to the 2nd half though so im sure ive missed details. but i did see them try hard to score, if anything.

im really not too interested in mourinho as a person though, or where will he work tomorrow, but his tactical mistakes. clearly the players showed a good attitude, so it can’t be the locker room problems of the rumors that brought this result.

what were the actual tactical errors as you saw them? not player errors but coach miscalculations. how would you do it differently? who would you play where? who do you think was missing and could have been there? how would you stop and beat spurs if this was your chessboard?

im gonna go look at this herrera and find out about him in the meantime

i’ll also read some of the live blogs to see the action i missed

found a good one!

https://www.theguardian.com/football...chester-united

these things i did not know cuz i dont know the players but now i do a little more

Yeah, the formation was untried with Herrera there and it all points to Mourinho still not knowing who his best players are and how/where to play them. As though he's now just trying different things more out of blind hope than through any kind of proper plan. But whatever way he plays them, too many individual players seem to have lost trust not just in his ideas but in him. It's the usual Jose 3 year plan: 1) build bus; 2) park bus; 3) throw squad under bus. His success was built through a cult of personality so it's inevitable people will look into that personality to try and understand why it always implodes after three seasons.

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...-a8510596.html

--

also i watched the post-match interview (blue background) not the press conference where he held 3 fingers up

now i wanna ha ha ah ha. well maybe not.

but the central defenders seem to be the problem

---

well no. this is catching me up with my morning coffee:

https://www.theguardian.com/football...log-navigation

a day too late for sure but i begin to get it...

especially the preamble: https://www.theguardian.com/football...b0b69fd6c56b95

how much better is this guardia guy than the tv heads. oh i hate the tv heads. so irritating.




>>>tv interlude, not football per se >>>

the people we get here commenting are:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_Mustoe
he knows some stuff but is just annoying the way he speaks
also has a cock contest with the younger guy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Martino
he's there for the haircut and cuz he's american
also lets the older guy poke him

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Lowe
is she there for the "british accent"? whatever. annoying.

as for the announcers i have to find them out. wish they called the game but they bloviate instead.

anyway, tv complaints lol. mute button getting used a lot. i do not like this nbc team.

fox doing great with the bundesliga, they have some grumpy sounding germans who know their shit and can analyze a game play by play. serious pros. plus the presenter kate abdo sounds good is funny is knowledgeable as well.

>>>TV RANT ENDED>>>



THURSDAY IS CHAMPIONS DRAW!

My fave post-match analyst on TV is probably Gary Neville. He openly hates Liverpool as much as he loves Man U but he's always very good talking about the games.

The best writers are at The Times but they have a rigid paywall. The Guardian's OK but nothing amazing.

There's a weekly hour-long show on Sky that they always put up on yotube, where leading journalists discuss the latest developments. Some people find it a bit dry but I absolutely love it and watch it every week. It doesn't really focus on tactics but it'll be a convenient way of keeping up with all the big stories and general thinking about players, managers, etc.

This is the latest one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9xChGsWm7A

thanks! i'll check that video as soon as i get a chance

i had spotted some news of gary neville who apologized to the sucky defenders for having said they were sucky. didn't read the details but guess he shouldn't have, ha ha, cuz they did make errors.

im also getting a newsletter from the guardian called "the fiver". nice writeups. explains more in detail re: midfielder herrera as cb, plus various absences, background, context, etc.

i'm seriously thinking about cancelling my NTY subscription and paying the guardian instead. fucking NYT articles are so long, it's like a magazine. i need to scan news quickly. if i read a magazine, let it be the economist. i like that rag. very global in scope.

plus, coverage: i can read more about the hawaii storm and floods in british papers than in american ones. yes, american journalism is in a steady nosedive, all trump all the time.

okay!

oh, the west ham fan i mentioned earlier is JAMES CARDEN or CORDEN

you probably know/have heard about it. some comedian? anyway...

Wait...you don't know James Corden? Damn, you got lucky.

first time i think i saw him was in that video. if i did before i do not recall.

his thing about being a west fan ham was a little memorable, but mostly cuz of demonyo and this thread i think.

i gotta run today but check this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PpsTrNpViY0