The Soccer Thread

[calgaryballer]

Liverpool relegated West Brom this morning. Torquay is up 1-0 on Cambridge with 20 minutes left. They had a pretty epic collapse out of the League a while ago (poor management/ownership. When have we heard that before with the lower leagues?)

[Bigpapa42]

Having more teams in the competition (because teams can qualify without winning the domestic title) will make the competition more difficult to win. Having a competition where last year's winners only have to play 1 game to win the current tournament make's it easier for them to win, since they only have to be the best team on the day, not one of the best team's in the competition.

So all cup competitions should be discounted then, based on that logic.

The reason the current format is shit is because you can end up with a claim to being the best team in Europe, yet not having won their domestic league or cup either during that season or the previous. At least with the old formation, the winner had to have been the champion domestically the previous season.

[wr50l]

[media]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_C5EN_dzasfw/SC8OInIrsGI/AAAAAAAAA3I/ys07B93irMo/s200/SPL-Trophy.jpg[/media]

It all comes down to the final two fixtures of the season with Rangers 2 points ahead of Celtic and trailing by one on goal difference. Celtic at home to Hearts will have to win and hope that at the very same time Rangers are losing away to Dundee United.

The Americans will be pleased to know also that Maurice Edu after a very slow start to the season has carved out a role for the club. Since the Ferguson drinking saga he has been a steady part of the starting eleven and has shown some fleeting glimpses of excellence.

[calgaryballer]

Weren't Rangers in a similar position last year only to choke it away? :P

[wr50l]

Weren't Rangers in a similar position last year only to choke it away? :P

:talktohand:
Aye last season we were dead even on points with Celtic ahead on goal difference. They won their game and we lost.

[Bigpapa42]

Best of luck to Rangers. Would love to see them take the title this season.

[Archer]

Lets be honest here, Newcastle getting relegated might not be the worst thing in the world. We'd be able to get rid of all the old, fat and overpaid players killing our finances (Viduka, Butt, Smith, Barton, Owen, Coloccini) and bring in some youth. Oh, and the owner might sell the club, leaving someone running it who knows what they're doing. That might be a bit optimistic though.

I'm not sold on Shearer as a manager either. He's there on name alone, does he even have his coaching badges?

And hey, the football league is on the BBC next year, so I'll be able to watch plenty of their games. :D

Coloccini? I know he sucks but we just bought him for 8-10 million a year ago , all we are gonna do is take a big hit on him . We are losing money by getting rid of him not helping it at all , which is horrible because hes probably not even good enough to start in the championship for us either . Viduka is gone and so is Owen but do you really want to see Carrol and Ameobi upfront? We dont have the youth team to just blood in players so wed have to replace the guys with championship style players . Ashley made it pretty obvious that we dont have any money at all to spend , and i dont see us making any back of the players wed get rid of either .

Ashley also said there was no serious offers to buy the club when it was for sale , what would make the offers become more serious unless it was on the cheap which isint going to happen cause Ashley wont budge on his price.

Im glad somebody is thinking positivly though , cause the thought of Newcastle in the Championship is depressing as shit for somebody who went and saw some of the better days live at the ground.

And as for Shearer .... im not sold on him either , he seems to get "effort" out of the players but so far we havent saw anything tactical from him that makes you think he knows what hes doing.

Watching Newcastle in the championship on BBC would be depressing , it was only 6 or 7 years ago when we were on ITV in the Champions League

[davie]

So all cup competitions should be discounted then, based on that logic.

The reason the current format is shit is because you can end up with a claim to being the best team in Europe, yet not having won their domestic league or cup either during that season or the previous. At least with the old formation, the winner had to have been the champion domestically the previous season.

I believe in some cases, the better team on the day have won the cup competition for example Liverpool in 2005. They made the most of their luck getting to the final and won on penalties. But in most cases it's safe to assume the best team in the tournament has at least made the final, whereas Real Madrid didn't even have to play in those following four tournaments.

Let's just continuously reward the teams who did well last season. Let's just let the best get better more easily and create a bigger gap between the best team and everyone else. Yea, the old way was fucking genius.

[davie]

Best of luck to Rangers. Would love to see them take the title this season.

Scottish League - anyone give a shit? honestly?

It's a shit version of the PremierLeague. Motherwell are 7th and have a point more than the team in 6th. That makes shit loads of sense.

[davie]

Coloccini? I know he sucks but we just bought him for 8-10 million a year ago , all we are gonna do is take a big hit on him . We are losing money by getting rid of him not helping it at all , which is horrible because hes probably not even good enough to start in the championship for us either . Viduka is gone and so is Owen but do you really want to see Carrol and Ameobi upfront? We dont have the youth team to just blood in players so wed have to replace the guys with championship style players . Ashley made it pretty obvious that we dont have any money at all to spend , and i dont see us making any back of the players wed get rid of either .

Ashley also said there was no serious offers to buy the club when it was for sale , what would make the offers become more serious unless it was on the cheap which isint going to happen cause Ashley wont budge on his price.

Im glad somebody is thinking positivly though , cause the thought of Newcastle in the Championship is depressing as shit for somebody who went and saw some of the better days live at the ground.

And as for Shearer .... im not sold on him either , he seems to get "effort" out of the players but so far we havent saw anything tactical from him that makes you think he knows what hes doing.

Watching Newcastle in the championship on BBC would be depressing , it was only 6 or 7 years ago when we were on ITV in the Champions League

Just replying to bold. It could be argued we look more threatening from corners?

[Archer]

Just replying to bold. It could be argued we look more threatening from corners?

Dont say "we" like you support us . We could i guess , you could also argue that all the best crosses are coming from Guthrie , the guy that bearly started before Shearer came in

[Senser81]

Lets be honest here, Newcastle getting relegated might not be the worst thing in the world. We'd be able to get rid of all the old, fat and overpaid players killing our finances (Viduka, Butt, Smith, Barton, Owen, Coloccini) and bring in some youth. Oh, and the owner might sell the club, leaving someone running it who knows what they're doing. That might be a bit optimistic though.

I'm not sold on Shearer as a manager either. He's there on name alone, does he even have his coaching badges?

And hey, the football league is on the BBC next year, so I'll be able to watch plenty of their games. :D

This might be a gross generalization, but it appears to me that Newcastle likes having old, slow guys up front and young, clueless guys on defense. If I were running a team, I would want the old guys on defense and the young guys on offense.

As for guys without badges, I am amazed that Gareth Southgate is still manager of Middlesborough. They should be much better than relegation material. Tuncay alone should keep them up.

[Senser81]

Yea, not like Milan have won the most Champions League titles.

Yea, I don't think Inter Milan has won the most Champions League titles.

[calgaryballer]

Scottish League - anyone give a shit? honestly?

It's a shit version of the PremierLeague. Motherwell are 7th and have a point more than the team in 6th. That makes shit loads of sense.

Well, the guy from Scotland does. Otherwise I think most people that post in here try to get as much footy as possible. I'll watch anything. Bundesliga, Ligue 1, Eredivise, whatever. Shit, if they played Slovak second division games on the internet, I'd probably watch those too.

Speaking of Bundesliga, it is going to be an interesting weekend. Three teams can still win it, with Wolfsburg favorities. All they need is a point against Werder to wrap it up. The teams in Munich will be monitoring scores closely, because if VfB slips up, the winner of Bayern/Stuttgart will be crowned champion. You can't hope for more drama than that. I know I'll be up watching those games

[Senser81]

I'll be watching Fulham to see if they can qualify for the UEFA Cup. They've had a nice turnaround this year. They almost completely overhauled their roster, and they now play a very cerebral, defensive game.