Football Focus

[Mick Mac]

Brendan Rodgers makes the case for playing for Celtic, over earning more money in a premiership relegation battle

Rodgers said: ?Moussa is a great catalyst if you are an agent now and I have had a number of conversations where people now see the example of Moussa.

?It really has lit up their eyes to what the possibilities are. Here is a guy ? who was a talent, but was playing in the Championship in England and now he is one of the most coveted strikers ? in Europe.

?And his platform is here in Scotland. He is a great advertisement for what we are trying to do and he is enjoying his time here. There is talent out there. It is the right ones at the right time.?

Asked if there were other Moussa Dembeles out there, Rodgers answered: ?There is. That is the notion that I have in terms of looking at building a structure here that allows more of them to come to here.

?But for every Dembele, there are others who aren?t like that. Moussa was coveted by lots of teams in Europe, but chose to come here to develop further and learn the game and, hopefully, play at Champions League level.

?Some players will be happy playing relegation football, but earning more money. You can?t blame them because it?s a short career. But we always have to look to find a way and that?s what we?ll do.?

[Otta]

Still playing in a Mickey Mouse league week in and week out though.

[Mick Mac]

Indeed.

[Alan Medic]

Poppycock. The FA have dropped the FAI in it for having writing on their shirts representing 100 years since the Easter Rising. That's just because FIFA refused to sanction the wearing of the poppy when England play Scotland, as you probably all well know.

What pisses me off is that the FIFA rule is a good one and all the home FA's had to do was bloody ignore it. Not ask for permission, not have the PM ranting on about it in parliament, not front page news. Just fecking do it as Ireland obviously did. As a spokesperson at FIFA said, they would probably only do something about it, if there was a complaint. Yeah, like the one Ireland just had about them. Bloody neighbours.

[Mick Mac]

It was the Sun wot highlighted the FAI 1916/2016 one in Tuesdays paper.

Anyway. I agree with FIFA, no badges of any sort other than the national emplem, lets play football.

There is multiple poppy commemoration opportunity.

[red devil]

Don't worry, I'm not in a sulk because Quids has knocked me off top spot (Grrrr), but still waiting for Predict Addict to come up with the points for Week 11...

Ooops wrong thread...C'mon England!

[Jah Lush]

I've just emailed them about the update. Hopefully, it won't be long.

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

Barton's gorn.

[Mick Mac]

Peckhamgatecrasher Wrote:

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> Barton's gorn.

With a ?1m payoff. Hard to know who was right here, I thought he perhaps should have had a second chance

[Alan Medic]

That's a large payoff if he was on ?20k a week. Two year contract? I imagine there's something built into it, if he gets new employers in January. The Burnley manager had nothing but good to say about him. Perhaps they're a bit thin skinned in the blue half of Glasgow.

[malumbu]

God that was dire. I watched about 20 minutes of it, not rushing home from work and then deciding that Have I Got News for You was much more entertaining.

Was it the dirge that the England fans were making that made me feel this way, or the football (or the bloody pink shirts). Genuninely open question.

I'm at my lowest interest in the national team for 30 years. Probably make that the lowest ebb as I had a much more interesting social life 30 years ago so it was as much due to competing interests rather than the quality of football and atmosphere.

[Jah Lush]

Wasn't that bad. I've seen far worse and I'm sure you have too, even though you only watched 20 minutes of it. Our best result against Scotland since 1975 and it's always good to beat them. Walker and Rose were superb, Rooney almost anonymous, Stirling has to learn when to pass and when to shoot and John Stones has got to cut out the silly mistakes. Lallana has improved by adding goals to his repertoire. We're still missing that creative sparkle in the middle of the park. We need more flare.

Anyway, give Southgate the manager's job full-time. I think he's passed the audition.

[Mick Mac]

Good God - I had to go to page 3 of the Lounge to find this thread.

Did nothing happen in football recently, or even last night?

[????]

I'm still dead to football after the weekend and it will take a while - see you in a week or so (maybe)

[red devil]

Ok, in Quids' absence, I'm game...Pochettino's halo slipped last night. Resting key defensive players for the Chelsea game was a big mistake, Spurs had to win last night's game. It's earlier enough in the season to drop points at Chelsea and still challenge for the title, whereas last night it was all or nothing. Also I think he was wrong to question his player's mentality, they are still a relatively young team, the mentality has to come from the manager, and resting players sent out the wrong signal as to how important the Monaco game was.

How did I do Mick? :)....

[Jah Lush]

Pretty much agree with all of that RD, though I think there are some players who are not performing up to the standards they had set themselves last season. I'm looking at you Ericksen in particular. We've had some injuries to key players this season and that hasn't helped our progress and Spurs are still short of some real creative quality in midfield that little bit of flair that we've had in the past, though those players are not only hard to come by they extremely expensive.

The unbeaten run we've experienced in the league is papering over the cracks of our deficiencies since the Man City win. We were a little fortunate against West Ham last weekend and I think our little run will come to an end at Stamford Bridge on Saturday evening. I also think if we put in the kind of performance we put in last night we could be on the end of a good hiding.

[Mick Mac]

red devil Wrote:

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> Ok, in Quids' absence, I'm game...Pochettino's

> halo slipped last night. Resting key defensive

> players for the Chelsea game was a big mistake,

> Spurs had to win last night's game. It's earlier

> enough in the season to drop points at Chelsea and

> still challenge for the title,

Yes agree - if that was the reason he was doing it then it just shows how the premiership drives everything. Even the champions league is second place to points in the premiership if that the case.

[Mick Mac]

I'm hoping to avoid another Barca drubbing tonight. Unfortunately Messi seems to be well again :(

Need to start the game like we did against Man City and not how we started against Borussia. Looking forward to watching it anyways. It's better to be in these things, can only help long term.

[Mick Mac]

Thoroughly enjoyed our exit from Europe last night. We certainly fronted up to Barca and to put it in a positive light had 6 attempts to their 7. No shame there.

Celtic are a completely different team under Rodgers.

Bit of a shame that the Man City game is now a completely dead rubber, with the group decided but there you go. It was a very tough ask from the start, with the third seeded team in the group being from the Bundesliga.

[Parkdrive]

Messi embarrassing Brown as he mindlessly lunged at him in frustration was a sight to behold.

[Jah Lush]

Ramsey going down as if he'd been fore arm smashed by Cavani was embarrassing too, no?

[Alan Medic]

Robbie Henshaw getting knocked out by an All Black. Toughen up man.............oops sorry, wrong thread.

[Mick Mac]

Parkdrive Wrote:

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> Messi embarrassing Brown as he mindlessly lunged

> at him in frustration was a sight to behold.

Of course, there aren't many people who wouldn't be embarrassed by Messi. Other than that Brown had a fabulous game. He's our best player.

[Otta]

Stevie G officially retires. Sad that a player that good never got to win a league title, even Shearer managed one of those. But surely opne of the leagues greats in the past 20 years.

[Mick Mac]

Otta Wrote:

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> Stevie G officially retires. Sad that a player

> that good never got to win a league title,

Or a club that good. He certainly came close. The Chelsea spoiler game still rankles with me - must be much much worse for Liverpool fans.

He was in talks with Liverpool recently and with them potentially challenging this season he might have asked about his chances of getting a game.