Red '84

happy days, hopefully the first of many in the next few years!

another sunny sunday morning, hour til kick off, laughing reds down wembley way, bottle of whiskey on standby for a midday tipple... COME ON YOU REDMEN!!!!

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suppose i better shut the fuck then:whoops:

it means when i come onto this thread 48 hours ahead of the final i want to see everybody buzzing about the game whether theyre going, watching it from L4, malmo or wherever. i can understand frustrations about missing out on tickets but that should be limited to a separate thread. come on you redmen!

good show with some very good episodes and characters but not upto the same level as arrested development in my opinion. baldwin is quality

anyway, away from all this superfan snobbery, i´m buzzing like a buzzard over a dying buffalo for this one. if all goes well i´ll be sipping on a celebratory whiskey by lunchtime over here come sunday. come on you redmen!

terribly frustrating and disappointing yet again. didnt warrant the three points as we carved out fcuk all the whole game. as has been said we are gash when we get into good spaces out wide, absolutely gash. and one thing that has been doing my head in all season is that we never have anyone on the 18 yard box when loose balls drop there which invariably happens at least 3 or 4 times every game. still the same old story, whoever from the four of us puts a decent run together will nick fourth. we need to take something from old trafford and absolutely need the 3 points when arsenal come to anfield.

jay is what i would call a proper liverpool player. nothing flashy, tidy in possession and has a great will to win. definitely has a future here. many a liverpool title winning side had players of that ilk.

anyone else think there´s anything odd in this game being exactly one month after new year´s eve?

i´d get dirk into the engine room and start carra up top in this one,he´s due one. carroll´s bound to be tired after his lion like performance against the mancs and bellamy´s knees can´t take more then 215 minutes in ten days. think it might be worth putting johnson right mid ahead of kelly to double up on hunt and get fabio in on the other side so him and jose can keep jarvis quiet. it´ll be a tight game but we´ll squeeze through in the end. carragher 89th minute. come on you redmen!

we´ll win both cups and nab fourth!

who cares about selection queries after that. knocked the mancs out with a late late winner. great finish by dirk by the way, thats not an easy take. much better commitment wise by carroll and low and behold he has a part in both games, more of that big man. happy days

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he´s certainly a top keeper the old man looking son of a gun. suarez and bellamy to shine at wembley.

great team performance, no need to be taking any potshots tonight boys. thought downing had a very good game, more of that son. dirk put in his best shift in a long time and what can i say about the mad welshman, absolutely dynamite! back down wembley way happy days

european football has left a big whole. nights like tonight can help to make up for that. getting to and winning cup finals is boss. many in that team owe a big performance after saturdays farce. lets do this redmen!!!

for a couple of glorious months every year, the mince pie arrives on the scene and makes a special time of year, just that little bit more special. french fancies are also fabulous. neither are available in my neck of the woods, even at christmas time. i shouldnt have opened this post. stuff your poll.

please no. club brugge signed carlos bacca from junior for 1.5 million dollars. he has looked a much better player from what i have seen. the times ive watched jackson martinez play he´s finished terribly and been falling over all the time, would fit in really well up top here actually...

big fcuking spliff to be had after this game, this is fcuking grim!

come on boys! well in carroll

sweet jesus fcuking christ the fcuking sugababe scores against us? what the fcuk is happening at the back?

looks good that team. Come on you Redmen!

oh my fcuking god! the human penis just stayed on his feet after a challenge in the box, not for long though. fulham are shit and so are newcastle. toma!

Can´t say I hold too much of an interest in the tournament and even worse the bbc´s constant bigging up of it but this is a nice story and a nice article. Gadafy was such a nut... New colours, flag and team as Libya kick-off a day of celebration New beginning: Libya's football team, post-Muammar Gadafy era, pose for a picture before a friendly match against Ivory Coast in Abu Dhabi last Monday. Photograph: Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty ImagesPhotograph: Guardian Service In this section » Time for Defoe to deliver as Spurs' title credentials are scrutinised Barton launches Twitter attack on Warnock Weekend previews Bad blood with Arsenal gone, says Ferguson Hernandez finding the going tough Dalglish - 'Downing better than I thought' JONATHAN WILSON in Bata, Equatorial Guinea ASK AROUND and the consensus is that Libya’s best player is the midfielder Tariq al-Taib. He has twice finished in the top 10 of the voting for African Player of the Year, had successful stints in Tunisia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and captained the national side the last time they reached the finals of the Cup of Nations, in 2006. When Libya walk out at the Estadio de Bata this evening to face Equatorial Guinea in the opening game of the 28th Cup of Nations, though, Taib will not be there. He is 34 and last year signed for the Kuwaiti side Al Naser, but Taib is not part of the Cup of Nations squad. “Too old,” says Libya’s Brazilian coach, Marcos Paqueta. It is a convenient excuse. Last March, after Libya had gone top of their qualifying group with a 3-0 victory over the Comoros in a game played in Mali because of the conflict at home, Taib came out as a Muammar Gadafy loyalist, describing the rebels as “rats” and “dogs”. Three months later, the squad began to turn. Walid al-Kahatroushi, who had scored the opening goal in that first game against the Comoros, heard that a friend of his had lost an arm in the fighting shortly before the return fixture. He decided he could no longer pull on a shirt bearing the flag of Gadafy’s Libya, walked out on the squad – the first anybody knew of his decision being when they saw him waving from beyond the gates of their camp – and, after visiting his friend in hospital in Tripoli, joined the rebels at Jebel Nafusa near the Tunisian border. At first they would not let him fight but, as the situation became more desperate, he was forced to the front line. He was lucky; he survived to see Gadafy toppled, after which the rebels told him he could serve his country best by playing for the national team and qualifying them for the Cup of Nations for only the third time. Although his son Saadi loved football, running the federation and the Tripoli club Al-Ahly, and having a brief and deeply inglorious spell as a player at Perugia where he was voted the worst ever Serie A signing, Gadafy himself hated the game. He shut down the local league in 1979, supposedly because, seeing the names of players written on walls, he became jealous of their popularity and afraid of the potential of revolt from the terraces. In 2000, he was given a clear insight into the anarchic passions football can provoke. There had long been complaints that the league was rigged to ensure Saadi’s Al-Ahly would win. So Al-Ahly of Benghazi, Libya’s second city and for a long time the centre of dissent, dressed a donkey in a Tripoli shirt bearing Saadi’s squad number and paraded it before kick-off. When the refereeing again favoured Al-Ahly Tripoli, Al-Ahly Benghazi left the stadium at half-time. Bringing dogs with police as back-up, Saadi forced them to return to complete the game, which finished 3-0 to the Tripoli side. Worse was to follow, as Gadafy snr had the headquarters of the Benghazi club razed and banned them for six years. Where others saw football’s potential for propaganda successes, Gadafy was so hostile to the game that he missed his great opportunity. Libya hosted the Cup of Nations in 1982 and reached the final, only to lose on penalties to Ghana. Gadafy, though, had long since washed his hands of the tournament, his speech at the opening ceremony consisting of one terse sentence: “All you stupid spectators, have your stupid game.” Kahatroushi aside, two other players, the midfielder Ahmed al-Saghir and the goalkeeper Guma Mousa, went to fight; neither is in the squad for the finals. Saghir was shot in the shoulder, while Mousa survived the conflict only to suffer a serious knee injury in a warm-up game against a Tunisian club side shortly before Libya’s decisive final qualifier away to Zambia. A draw in the Comoros had been followed by an emotional 1-0 win over Mozambique in a game played behind closed doors in Cairo. That was the first game in which Libya wore their new colours – white with a black and red trim, and the flag of the new Libya. The victory meant they needed a win away to the group leaders, Zambia, in their final game to qualify for sure. With the new anthem yet to be ratified, the Zambians were forced to play the old Gadafy anthem before kick-off. Sensibly, they played it so quietly nobody could hear it. There were no favours during the match, though: twice Zambia hit the post, and Mousa’s replacement, the 39-year-old Samir Abod, made three superb saves. Libya held out, though, drawing 0-0, a result that was enough to take them through as one of the best two runners-up. “It’s an amazing time,” Paqueta says. “They don’t play only for the national team, they play for the people who have endured difficult lives. They put everything in their hearts on the field. We want to get out of the group stage, that’s the goal.” Today in Bata is not just a match, but a celebration of the new Libya.