OTF

First silly thing I've seen from the ice man.

The way it's going this will be a possession record in the Premier League for us.

Happy for him to take a shot on his left, don't want to be too predictable with the crosses.

Knowing Bruno his foot was there accidentally, but it was no accident that it stayed there for a while longer than it should.

Glad to see we're still keeping an increased tempo with Leicester doing everything they can to slow the game down.

Silly boy, but there was no force in that.

And how fucking boring would it be if every team just tried to play the most fluent attacking football they could without consideration for who they were playing. Sure, we'd probably see more goals at first but we'd also see more predicatble results, and most critically a lack of innovation.

Aye, they'll stay up and be in for another miserable season. They're financially in a worse than terrible position and don't really have any more players they can sell.

Essembee turned his back on us. After all these years it turned out he was projecting.

Rafa's Valencia won it 19 years ago 😉 Do Real Madrid honestly have the highest wages in the world? (That's what I take you to mean when you say: "Real Madrid is the team that spends the most money to pay its players." First I would not believe anything any of the biggest clubs say in the accounts, but above most other I would believe FC Barcelona the least, then Man City and Chelsea (I'm probably saying this because I don't have as much of an understanding of Italian football, where teams like Juventus wrote the book on corruption). Real Madrid are spending a massive amount on their stadium, which to be fair looks like it will be incredible. Of late they've mostly stayed out of the huge transfer fees in the market. Mostly this is because they've made some poor decisions in recent times and have the likes of Eden Hazard sitting on massive wages doing nothing. Their biggest purchases have been facilitated by sales - Casemiro out, Tchouameni in. They're sweating out players who are near ending their careers; Kroos, Benzema and Modric and seem somewhat resigned to not over extending for the very best players. I feel like they are waiting for Barcelona's irresponsibility to catch up with them and will be happy to win La Liga and go deep in tbe champions league. Financially that makes the most sense as the likely cost to be in the box seat to win the champions league versus being able to make the quarters or semi finals is a false economy. Sure there's the prestige of winning the champion's league, but when you're RM and have won it 14 times including 5 in the last 10 years that's no longer important enough to dig a financial hole. By contrast, Catalonia is the richest part of the country, they want to sucede from Spain so they're not burdened by the lesser (much like the European super league from their domestic competitions). Barcelona have acted like bullies who are above the law in their football dealings both domestically and internationally. The Spanish Football Federation conveniently can't punish them for paying to influence referees due to a 3 year (!?) statute of limitations. The refereeing system in Spain sees referees get relegated and promoted based of their perceived refereeing performances, those adjudging their performances (the refereeing committee) were on the payroll of Barcelona to the tune of millions of Euros. I believe it was actually Catalonian journalists that uncovered this cheating from Barcelona when they were desperately trying to find the same or similar from Real Madrid. Now @Diego21 I fully expect you to correct me on everything that is wrong in my post above @Alex the below is hilarious for several reasons but mostly because it lumps every club except Man City and PSG into the "have not" category. Every other club in the world, with the exception of Paris Saint-Germain, has to operate within the constraints of finance or fortune. Every other club in the world has flaws or problem areas that they can’t address right now, but hope to at some point in the future. The likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manu, Chelsea, Bayern etc etc have been operating in the comparative realm of no constraints compared the the vast majority of other clubs who are competing in the same domestic competitions with these (often historic) titans for years and years. Now that a couple have raised the ceiling a little further they're only too eager to cry out that they can't compete on the same level. Klopp was so eager to do this for Liverpool that he accused them of not being able to compete with us, less than 12 months after we were staring down the barrel of a relegation. There is at least some karmic forces in operation that have stopped Man City or PSG from winning the Champions league until now, but that is almost certain to be ended in a few weeks. Comparing the two I'm glad it's Man City and not PSG.

@ NUFC Gallowgate

Those figures are pointless. And separate to this they have some very good lawyers. I don't begrudge them at all but Man City have the best squad in the world because they spent a shitload of money assembling it and even more paying for it (wages). They have the best manager in the world, head and shoulders above all others, who is there because he's (rightfully) been given free reign. Like I said they're favourites in every game they play. That doesn't mean that you only need to spend loads of money to be a top team, you can spend loads without proper leadership and be Manu or Chelsea.

Mind you it's probably very easy to prioritise when you'll be resounding favourites for each and are most likely to win them all.

Yeah mate, Hills District is a mile above the old Granville District. Just getting a referee in Granville was like winning the lottery and the fields were shocking. There's not much that I do that's graceful these days. If I spy any scouts I'll be making sure they know my opinion on Szoboszlai and that I will be happy to forego my spot in the 25 for him.

Mate I'm playing in the local over 35s and am the size of Bruno after a plentiful summer off. The other bit you got right.

That many extra games at this end of a long season (after WC) is a significant handicap. Even this extra game for us is not ideal, apart from the result. It's easy to look at the table and think that the extra games are an advantage but they're really not. Thankfully for us it's two home games in a row which really softens the blow. To Brighton's credit (apart from being floppy nancy boys) the players who came in fit straight into their system and played their regular tactics. Just so happens that they came up against a team that excels at the press that they think they can beat with their play. Steele has good feet and made some great saves, but even he nearly served one up on a platter for us with a highly risky pass in the box. Miggy was outstanding throughout, his decisive run and well weighted through ball for Wilson to score to seal the win was a nice reward for all of his hard work.

Strange too that they'd schedule a friendly with a National team at this point of the season. Definitely something suspicious about this whole shady affair.

Let them fight it out for our scraps.

👍 I know your banana skin comment was tongue in cheek, so was mine about you worrying. The last post I mentioned you was supposed to be referencing all the flying you've been doing lately, nothing to do with the tone of the post

At least give us a few days before the worry starts again!

We knew what they were going to do, they knew what we were going to do. We were quite clearly just better.

Shay Given celebrating in studio when Wilson scored

Straight into the group stage.

All you soft bastards were worried about nothing.