*Official* English Football Season 2012-13

[superkingdave]

Swindon! Victory for the light

[GIMH]

**** off you ****

[Pothas]

Come on Bees, top at Christmas please.

On the Guardian thing, is worth remembering that the voting is done how the greateast cricketers thing was done on CW, so obviously someone loves David Luiz, as they do Mario Balotelli who is 67th for reasons I do not really understand.

[sledger]

Hope Theo starts up front again tomorrow. Quite fancy him against Wigan's defence.

[sledger]

BBC Sport - Sol Campbell says it is too easy to win England caps

Not that I disagree with him outright, I do wonder if he's stopped to consider the reason that so many younger players are being capped is because there's hardly anyone else available who isn't crap/past it/a proven failure at international level/retired from internationals.

[Ikki]

Originally Posted by Uppercut

Well he's already 23 and players of his type tend to peak pretty young.

Reminds me of Theo Walcott, slightly better technique but a worse finisher. Terrible decision making, absolutely awful and lacks composure. Not useless but just lol at paying 12 million for him.

On another forum a Chelsea fan was giving the rundown of his goals per minutes in his entire career and it was pretty impressive. I agree with his awful decision making and we already have Suarez who - though brilliant - makes a lot of bad decisions (should pass a lot more) and Sturridge is even worse in that respect from what I've seen. But, the general argument was that, someway somehow, if he gets time he scores. And we need a scorer badly.

Originally Posted by Marcuss

Surely you need to consider the odds of the pot 1 teams being drawn as they were?

Anyway, anybody fancy posting up the Guardian Top 100 players in the world #71-100. My browser is too **** and forbidden from downloading a new one onto mum's laptop. From the comments section I've worked out Wesley ****ing Sneijder is 6 places below Wanyama. So should be good for some lulz.

Eto'o is #54. Although he was OK against us in the Europa League there is noway he is in the top 100 players anymore, if we're going by the standard that Toni Kroos is #53 and Edin Hazard is #58. The list strikes me as somewhat pretentious and trying to hide their EPL bias at the same time by overcompensating.

[Uppercut]

Originally Posted by Ikki

On another forum a Chelsea fan was giving the rundown of his goals per minutes in his entire career and it was pretty impressive. I agree with his awful decision making and we already have Suarez who - though brilliant - makes a lot of bad decisions (should pass a lot more) and Sturridge is even worse in that respect from what I've seen. But, the general argument was that, someway somehow, if he gets time he scores. And we need a scorer badly.

Can't say I'm a fan of using 'goals-per-minutes' for a player so notorious for putting his head down when the right thing to do is pass.

He's not a bad player, fits into Liverpool's system quite well and given how short they are up top he will definitely make a difference. But he's far too expensive. And if I was a Liverpool fan I'd be concerned that yet again they're paying way over the odds for a Brit in his early twenties.

If you look at the club's transfer dealings since Rafa took over, the "success" column consists almost entirely of foreigners- Reina, Alonso, Torres, Kuyt, Suarez, Arbeloa, Skrtel, Agger, Enrique. And the "failure" column is mostly Brits- Downing, Henderson, Adam, Carroll, Cole. There's the odd exception- Johnson's doing well now and Aquilani was a huge flop- but they're quite consistently failing in the same direction. Paying £18m for Ince and Sturridge suggests that's only going to continue.

[Tom Halsey]

Sneijder hasn't been below par for three years. He has been an irregular starter, but when he's actually played he's been just as good as his supposed golden season of 09/10. IMO his actual ability is somewhere between the two extremes; he was never as good as widely thought at one point, but he is still a (very) good player. Not that I'd be at all interested in us signing him, but that's for reasons other than his actual output when he plays.

Originally Posted by Uppercut

I'd love it if we signed him but I can't think of one good reason why he'd come. Might as well say Rangers should sign Messi.

Completely agree with this though.

[sledger]

Decent result/performance for Arsenal that. Not exactly a game that will live long in the memory, mind you.

Better not sell Sagna in Jan, he's so great.

[grecian]

Originally Posted by sledger

BBC Sport - Sol Campbell says it is too easy to win England caps

Not that I disagree with him outright, I do wonder if he's stopped to consider the reason that so many younger players are being capped is because there's hardly anyone else available who isn't crap/past it/a proven failure at international level/retired from internationals.

Nah, he's got no point IMHO, touch of the ol' it was better in my day. England caps have been thrown around as loosely as Dernbach's bowling for a while now.

Remember an infamous tour of the far east, where some very obscure people picked up caps in the 80s, and another more recently.

[sledger]

Originally Posted by grecian

Nah, he's got no point IMHO, touch of the ol' it was better in my day. England caps have been thrown around as loosely as Dernbach's bowling for a while now.

Remember an infamous tour of the far east, where some very obscure people picked up caps in the 80s, and another more recently.

Yeah, I don't disagree with the sentiment, what I'm getting at is that the options at this stage are basically: 1) prematurely hand out caps to young players to see how they go; or 2) Call up the likes of Peter Crouch for another buttock-clenchingly grim comeback, when everyone knows that they're never going to cut it.

I'd agree that some of these young players would benefit from having to do more to force your way into the National side - indeed, at the moment it seems the main criteria for being called up is that you're English and have played about 50% of your club's games this season - but the fact that they're being called up is just an indictment on the quality of the seasoned professionals out there already imo.

[GIMH]

Come on Crawley attack attack attack

[Uppercut]

**** off Nicky Shorey. "Yeah could head it clear, actually no **** it I'll just give Barry a piggy-back"

[Uppercut]

And now he has the cheek to claim a foul against him. What. A. ****.

Reading's best performance of the season ruined by one ****.

[GIMH]

Downing scores