Jump to content
  • Sign up for free and receive a month's subscription

    You are viewing this page as a guest. That means you are either a member who has not logged in, or you have not yet registered with us. Signing up for an account only takes a minute and it means you will no longer see this annoying box! It will also allow you to get involved with our friendly(ish!) community and take part in the discussions on our forums. And because we're feeling generous, if you sign up for a free account we will give you a month's free trial access to our subscriber only content with no obligation to commit. Register an account and then send a private message to @dave u and he'll hook you up with a subscription.

Other Football - 2019/20


Recommended Posts

Guest Pistonbroke

Don't agree with everything he says, especially the bit about teams trying to win games by playing attractive football, most of them are shit and just park the bus......but worth a view nonetheless, especially the bit about how players look after themselves these days etc...

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Spurs fans getting a bit pissed off on twitter

 

The official spurs twitter put a poll out to vote on there best striker of the decade and it was Defoe,Crouch and Kane. Well Kane was obviously the winning with nearly 80% of the votes when i first looked, well its now 54-41 in his favour after a shitload of reds have started #VoteCrouch

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Lee909 said:

Spurs fans getting a bit pissed off on twitter

 

The official spurs twitter put a poll out to vote on there best striker of the decade and it was Defoe,Crouch and Kane. Well Kane was obviously the winning with nearly 80% of the votes when i first looked, well its now 54-41 in his favour after a shitload of reds have started #VoteCrouch


I saw it as my duty to use the work Twitter account to redress this injustice by voting for Sir Harold of Kane. However, as I pressed the choice on my phone screen, clumsy oaf that I am, I inadvertently pressed Crouch instead. I am devastated at this turn of events.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Pistonbroke
2 hours ago, Lee909 said:

Spurs fans getting a bit pissed off on twitter

 

The official spurs twitter put a poll out to vote on there best striker of the decade and it was Defoe,Crouch and Kane. Well Kane was obviously the winning with nearly 80% of the votes when i first looked, well its now 54-41 in his favour after a shitload of reds have started #VoteCrouch

 

Like having a Poll on who you want to fuck:

 

Susan Boyle
Arlene Foster
Ann Widecombe

 

Then being pissed that everyone votes for Susan Boyle because she's not a cunt. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ouch.

 

Out with the old and in with the nearly new: David Moyes is back at West Ham



Less than two years after his brand of pragmatic survival was deemed not what they wanted the club have had second thoughts

David Moyes: It all comes back to those nine traumatic months at Old Trafford, and the subsequent career coma he has spent the past six years trying to shake off.


Well, I’m sorry to say again: it’s Moysey. In many ways the West Ham to which David Moyes returns this week is largely similar to the one he left 19 months ago: riven by discord, scarred by multiple defeats, lacking not just an identity but the most basic idea of what that identity might be. If Moyes was the answer, and then Manuel Pellegrini, and then Moyes again after him, then what on earth was the question?

 

Moyes has signed an 18-month contract. It is the gloomiest of all contract lengths: a Sherwood‑at‑Tottenham contract, an Allardyce‑at‑Everton contract: a transparently unsatisfying compromise between sporting artifice and financial pragmatism. It is a contract that says we’d all like this to work out but, come on, let’s be real. And to Moyes’s credit he perfectly captured this insoluble paradox in the first interview of his second spell.


Speaking to the club’s official website, Moyes expressed his intention to get West Ham playing bold, risk-taking football. “The players will need to be brave enough to take the ball and play,” he said, before realising a caveat was necessary. “But also, we’re going to have to defend better,” he added, at which point a little bell appeared to go off in his head. “But we’re also,” he ended with a triumphant flourish, “going to have to attack better.” Have three consecutive sentences ever illuminated a man so distinctly? And at this point one was reminded of a passage in Rio Ferdinand’s book when Moyes, as Manchester United manager, simultaneously instructs him to bring the ball out of defence while looking to play early diagonal passes. Once, after he and Nemanja Vidic were summoned to a video session and offered wildly contradictory advice on how closely to mark a striker, Ferdinand turned to his defensive partner and blankly admitted: “I don’t know what the fuck he just asked us to do.”

 

Perhaps this, too, is what the former Everton midfielder Leon Osman was talking about when he described Moyes as the sort of character who “could give with one hand and take away with the other”, whose every praise would be laced with criticism, and vice versa. And overall the impression one gets of Moyes is of a man who couldn’t convince you to leave a sinking ship, at least not without warning to make sure you have all your belongings first, whilst remembering that speed is of the essence, albeit always allied with due care, notwithstanding the fact that gosh, it is getting wet in here.

 

There is, naturally, an element of caricature here. Many who have worked with Moyes describe it as an agreeably bracing experience. Work rate and professionalism levels will almost certainly see an immediate bump. Marko Arnautovic and Manuel Lanzini, for instance, benefited hugely from his input first time round, and at a club where nutty mavericks have always had the run of the place – from Di Canio to the Dildo Brothers – the ability to restore some sanity to the henhouse is an underrated skill. Don’t be surprised if, say, Felipe Anderson’s goal drought – 22 games and counting – is broken very soon.


But the wider issue has little to do with Moyes’s inherent qualities as a coach. In a way it all comes back to those nine traumatic months at Old Trafford and the subsequent career coma that he has spent the past six years trying to shake off. As he wandered from San Sebastián to Sunderland, from West Ham to West Ham, it is clear now what was missing. It was not the ability to run a session or spot a player but something more elemental: self-purpose, self-worth, the haughty certitude that opens transfer war chests and persuades potential signings to take a punt.

The game has changed immeasurably in the two decades since Moyes first started; even in the six since he got the United job on a technicality from a legend who recommended him. Accumulating thousands of miles on scouting trips feels mildly quaint in an era of transfer committees and vast player databases. Fans want a clear and stunning vision, not a walking oxymoron muttering about win percentages. Elite players demand stimulating, ball-focused training, not three-hour set‑piece sessions delivered by Alan Irvine.

 

But then, perhaps this was the problem with West Ham all along. Perhaps the trouble with all storied mid-sized clubs – Everton, Newcastle, Hamburg – is that unbridgeable gulf between expectation and reality, where the interests of the fanbase – take some risks, play with romance, make us dream again – are at direct odds with the business plan, which demands mid‑table Premier League football in perpetuity.


Perhaps, in this context, Moyes’s appointment makes a little more sense. Your club is 17th in the Premier League and has just hollowed out virtually its entire backroom operation. Betting the house on the trophy‑laden Chilean lifted you from 1.2 to 1.3 points per game and left you with Roberto in goal. Your next manager, whoever it is, will inevitably suffer a similar fate. Why give this situation an unnecessary gloss?

 

And so in shuffles Moyes, the perfect emblem of these bleak and perplexing times: a man who neither improves teams nor greatly degrades them but will simply be there, right until he isn’t. He won’t take you in the wrong direction, because he doesn’t take you in any direction. His philosophy is encapsulated in those three eternal tenets: take the ball and play. But defend better. But also, attack better. It may just work. Then again, it might not. But also, it might. We’ll find out, I suppose, in 18 months’ time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From Football365’s ten new year predictions. Not the most difficult one to predict, to be honest.

 

 

5) Jose Mourinho’s mask will slip
Mourinho arrived at Tottenham talking of reinvention and having updated himselfbut, barely a month in, the football is stale and purposeless and the only attacking idea seems to be to shovel the ball long and towards the forwards. No sign of an epiphany there, then.

The Laidback, Happy Jose character is also on the retreat, evidenced most recently by the snarky broadside fired at Frank Lampardin the wake of defeat to Chelsea and those opaque remarks made about Tanguy Ndombele after the Boxing Day win over Brighton. He performed an about-turn a few days later, praising Ndombele to the hilt for an excellent performance at Norwich, but shades of Mourinho’s tweaking, mischievous self are beginning to peek through.

 

But the worst is to come. Spurs and Mourinho seem to have very low expectations for the January transfer window – they’ll presumably sit on their hands – but when summer arrives and Daniel Levy doesn’t march a £200m army into the dressing room, then the trouble will begin. And the pouting. And the sulking.

 

Because this is about him. Tottenham are being used as a tool to revitalise Mourinho’s image and any obstruction to that aim will be met with the normal volatility. This is such an obviously uneasy alliance that the clock was ticking on it from the moment the contract was signed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Moyes going back to West Ham just reminded me of a post I made the last time he took the job there.

 

Other football - 2017/18 edition

 

Quote

 

A suite overlooking the halfway line at the London Stadium, where West Ham's joint owners David Sullivan, David Gold and the CEO Karren Brady are conducting an interview with one of the applicants for the vacant manager's position following the sacking of Croatian coach Slaven Bilic. The applicant, David 'Gollum' Moyes, is sat in the chair giving every impression that he is more than a little bit wired. He is fidgeting non-stop and barely able to utter a coherent and credible response to the questions.

 

Moyes: No, I was at Sunderland. I just put down United to get the job. There's too much discrimination in this toon, man. They're both clubs, right? We're all in this together! And I wanted to put across the general idea, rather than the details. Like, people get all hung up on details. Like, which clubs did I manage? How many trophies did I win? Could be like six. Could be none. It is none. It's not important. What is important is that I am, yes?

 

Gold: Mr. Moyes, do you mean that you lied on your application?

 

Moyes: No! Well...yes. Only to get my foot in the door. Showing initiative and that, like!

 

Gold: But you were referred here by the League Managers Association and various tabloid hacks. There was no need for you to get your "foot in the door", as you put it.

 

Moyes: Yeah, cool. Whatever you say. Sorry. You're the man, the dude in the chair. I am merely here. Like, well, obviously I'm here like, but-

 

Gold: Mr. Moyes, what exactly attracts you to West Ham?

 

Moyes glances sharply at the mural of Bobby Moore, Trevor Brooking and Michael Jackson's pet chimp on the wall beside him.

 

Moyes: In a word, pleasure. My pleasure in other people granting me an easy payday for a job done appallingly badly, squandering millions on shite in the process.

 

Gold: Do you see yourself as having any weaknesses?

 

Moyes ponders the question for a moment before shaking his head insistently.

 

Moyes: Oh, yes, 'cause, like, I'm a bit of a perfectionist, actually! Yes, I am. See, for me, it's got to be the best, or it's nothing at all. Like things get a bit dodgy, I just cannot be bothered. I'll just blame everybody else.

 

Gold and Sullivan exchange concerned glances with one another and Brady sitting beside them, looking at the applicant like shit off her shoe - a chancer who gets the boot by Sir Alan Sugar in the first episode of a series of 'The Apprentice'.

 

Moyes: But, hey, I'm getting good vibes about this interview thing today, though, man. Seems to me like it's going pretty well, eh?

 

Gold: Thank you, Mr. Moyes. We'll let you know.

 

Moyes excitedly leaps out of his chair and dashes over to them, believing himself to be a shoe-in for the job, exchanging clumsy handshakes together with a kiss on the cheek for Brady.

 

Moyes: The pleasure was mine, man. (to Brady) If the questions were shite, you'd have got a slap love, make nae mistake!

 

Moyes leaves the suite and the three discuss what to do.

 

Gold: The LMA and the boys at The S*n told me he's a winner.

 

Brady: He's won fuck all and is a miserable sexist cunt.

 

Sullivan: It's either him, or we have to give Big Sam a bell. Or fackin' hell, Tim Sherwood for fack's sake!

 

Brady: What was wrong with keeping Slav?

 

Sullivan: I couldn't understand a word he was saying. His voice sounded like he'd been busy deepthroating those Black Mambas we were flogging around Walthamstow twenty-odd years ago.

 

Gold: I mentioned Sean Dyche last week.

 

Sullivan: Fackin' Northern cant Grant Mitchell-wannabe who sounds like he was deepthroating Black Mambas last night.

 

Brady: So it really is between Moyes and Sherwood then? Shit! Better get Moyes back in here and tell him the job's his until the summer. One of those jumped-up wankers on my show will be on the blower soon to tell me they can do a better job.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Pistonbroke
15 minutes ago, magicrat said:

fixed

 

No way is Susan Boyle a Virgin, with all that money she probably has a male Escort service on speed dial. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share


×
×
  • Create New...