Football Focus

[El Pibe]

But can he talk in a Dutch Acshent?

[Annette Curtain]

However Roy says:

"John Terry really regrets that his time with England is over"

Is fine by me

Netts

[woodrot]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Undisputedtruth]

El Pibe Wrote:

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> But can he talk in a Dutch Acshent?

Despite speaking fluidly in five languages and able to communicate in a further three languages you want him to speak Dutch Acshent to win your approval. :-S

Pleased to see the Sun getting a backlash over their disrespectful front cover headline. :))

[Jah Lush]

If his first task is to sort out the feud between Terry and Ferdinand. No problem. Get rid of both of 'em. Their future is firmly behind them anyway.

Woohoo! Bolton 1 Spurs 4. Back of the net. And with Newcastle winning two-nil at Chelsea it's game on for fourth spot.

[Friends of Goodrich]

.

[red devil]

Undisputedtruth Wrote:

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> El Pibe Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > But can he talk in a Dutch Acshent?

>

> Despite speaking fluidly in five languages and

> able to communicate in a further three languages

> you want him to speak Dutch Acshent to win your

> approval. :-S

Dutch Acshent is a jokey reference to Steve McClaren, who having become manager of Dutch side FC Twente, bizarrely started talking with the accent of a Dutchman speaking English...

meanwhile, it's getting very tasty for 3rd and 4th, looks like Chelsea will need to win CL to qualify next year

[Alan Medic]

Fluidly........what's that?

[Parkdrive]

Cisse - WOW!!!!!!

[Otta]

Pretty damned good goal!

Spurs look favourites for 4th again, what with Necastle having to play Man City & Everton. Spurs have Villa & Fulham, so you'd have to make them favourites.

[Undisputedtruth]

Newcastle have demonstrated that there are high quality strikers out there when Spurs were unable to buy one during the last transfer window. If Spurs had bought him then they could well be contending for the premiership now.

Alan Medic Wrote:

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> Fluidly........what's that?

Fluently is a better word to use.

[El Pibe]

Gaaah, stick to your guns man!!

Fluidly is brilliant if it's poetic licence.

If you're claiming fluently is better, what you're really saying is fluently is correct and fluidly is incorrect, which may have to go on record as being the first time you've ever admitted to being wrong ;-)

[Undisputedtruth]

El Pibe,

It's more to do with a Freudian slip.

However, I'm always happy to admit when I'm wrong. The fact that I rarely do shows how often I'm right. B)

[Bluerevolution]

Interesting article:

How many times have you heard the following said over the last two days, in pubs, offices and factories all around this great city? ?Yeah, but it doesn?t count as much because City have bought the title.?

Putting aside the obvious response, which is that the title is a long way from being over, it is breathtaking nonsense. If you?ll forgive the mixed metaphor, you get the feeling that this particular pot, blackening the name of the kettle, is stuffed with sour grapes. Of course City, if they close out this season, have bought the Premier League. But then again, which Premier League winner hasn?t? The problem that United fans have got is that, under the austerity of the Glazers, they HAVEN?T bought the title, as they have been doing for the past 20 years. In the history of English football, United have broken the transfer record five times. City have done it three times ? and one of those was on super-flop Steve Daley 32 years ago. Under Sir Alex Ferguson, the Reds have set new highs in the transfer market to bring in Andy Cole (?7million), Juan Veron (?28.1million) and Rio Ferdinand (?29.1million). Since the Abu Dhabi takeover, City have done it twice, on Robinho (?32.5m) and Sergio Aguero (?38m). And if that is not enough, United?s team on Monday contained the most expensive goalkeeper in English history, as well as the most expensive defender and the most expensive teenager, not forgetting the fact they had a ?30million striker sitting unused on the bench. Monday?s game pitted a ?300million squad against a ?250million squad, hardly prosperity versus poverty.

When Fergie won his first league title in 1993, it came on the back of a ?6.75million spending spree on Gary Pallister, Danny Wallace, Neil Webb, Paul Ince and Mike Phelan. That sounds like peanuts today, but in 1989 it represented a huge outlay. It paid dividends too, as the Reds won the league two years running, and they have continued to spend more than the vast majority until the relative austerity of the Glazers. The only teams who have hitherto challenged United?s hegemony have been Blackburn, funded by Jack Walker?s fortune, Roman Abramovich?s Chelsea and Arsenal under Arsene Wenger. Perhaps only Arsenal could claim to have won the title on anything resembling a budget, but they also spent big ahead of their title successes, splashing out over ?20million on talent such as Marc Overmars, Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit in 1996. Wenger has a reputation as a manager who doesn?t spend, but he has flashed the cash when necessary ? remember Thierry Henry (?10.5m), Sylvain Wiltord (?13m), Jose Reyes (?13m) and a chap called Samir Nasri (?15.8m)?

The bottom line is that the top flight of English football ceased to be a pure football competition many years ago. If you want to win the title, you need a top manager and top players, all of which cost. City didn?t ruin football, as some sniffy fools have suggested. They have just joined the game, and started to play by rules not of their own making. Once the notion that City are doing something wholly new and horrendous is nailed, there is an even more scurrilous nonsense dragged up. ?Well, yeah, everyone spends money, but United?s money is their own ? they earned it, and weren?t just given it by some Arab sheikh.? Of course, this is specious nonsense, the kind of tripe spouted by the fans of rich clubs who don?t want upstart oiks elbowing their way to a place at the trough. Newcastle clash will be tougher than the derby, warns Manchester City boss Roberto Mancini City boss Roberto Mancini happy for striker Carlos Tevez to remain at Etihad This is where UEFA?s financial fair play rules come in.

You would like to think they are a genuine attempt to rein in the financial madness which has enveloped football, and stop clubs spending beyond their means in a vain grasp for glory. But when a club like City, financially secure through owners who are pouring millions into football and their community, is under scrutiny, you have to doubt UEFA?s true intent. Blame That makes it look like a charter for the establishment, trying to ensure that global brands like United, Real Madrid and Barcelona will NEVER be challenged. United fans, and UEFA, should be looking at the priorities of the Old Trafford owners, rather than the benevolence of Sheikh Mansour, if they want to see where the blame will lie if the balance of power shifts over the course of the next 10 days. There are plenty of grounded Reds fans who know this. One of their number said, three years ago, that City?s owners were supplying the Blues with ?rocket fuel?, while United?s rulers were forcing Sir Alex Ferguson to drag a tractor behind him. United rake in more money than anyone else, but sizeable amounts of their income comes from the pockets of their own fans ? who have suffered huge price increases over the past five years ? from concentrating their efforts to become a global brand, and from trading on the club?s name.

City have tried to maintain their local identity and support as well as expanding their horizons, and are active and purposeful in engaging with their community. The Glazers, meanwhile, seem most preoccupied with trying to re-balance their balance sheet. That should be a far more important argument than petty nitpicking about how the money was made ? it should be a case of ?Where is the cash going?? rather than ?Where did you get it from?? City didn?t beat United on Monday because their owners have bigger bank balance. They won because they deserved to win it. Roberto Mancini out-thought Sir Alex Ferguson, and his players showed a desire and determination, as well as a level of football, which proved beyond the Reds on the night. No-one should forget it was the greed of United, who were instrumental, along with Arsenal, Liverpool, Everton and Tottenham in forming the Premier League, which led directly to where we are today. To win the Premier League, you need to be both financially stacked and football savvy, and the two are inter-dependent. So for any fans ? Red or otherwise ? to start bleating about it now is pathetic.

Read more at: http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/sport/football/manchester_city/s/1492849_comment-manchester-city-buying-glory-now-thats-rich

[maxxi]

Too much - can't you just give me the t-shirt slogan version BR?

[Bluerevolution]

City have no more bought the title than any club in the last 20 years.

[El Pibe]

Thanks for the precis BR, that was too hefty a block of text devoid of whitespace to plough through.

UDT, freudian...you wrote that sat by the banks of a babbling brook perchance, or were you just looking out the window at our "summer"?

[Undisputedtruth]

The link supplied by BR contains the white space version.

Time to move on over the slip, El Pibe. But please be free to let me know if there are any further slip ups in my next one thousand posts. My grammar isn't 100 per cent perfect yet but sometimes these errors appear due to lack of attention. For example in one thread I said the 'life of horses' instead of 'lives of horses'. But I was too lazy to correct it.

[Bluerevolution]

I've just edited it to make it reader friendly

[maxxi]

Bluerevolution Wrote:

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> City have no more bought the title than any club

> in the last 20 years.

Cart... Horse... surely?

[Alan Medic]

El Pibe Wrote:

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> Gaaah, stick to your guns man!!

> Fluidly is brilliant if it's poetic licence.

>

> If you're claiming fluently is better, what you're

> really saying is fluently is correct and fluidly

> is incorrect, which may have to go on record as

> being the first time you've ever admitted to being

> wrong ;-)

(tu)

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

Maxxi, pls be my editor when I finally get round to writing my bestseller.

[Chippy Minton]

Chelsea to move to Battersea Power Station!

As if tickets prices at that club weren't high already, what the hell are they going to go up to if they have to pay for the redevelopment of that site?

[red devil]

maxxi Wrote:

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> Too much - can't you just give me the t-shirt

> slogan version BR?

[Alan Medic]

I guess Parky will have headed to his bunker for a while now. Mind The Gap!