I don’t recall any chants regarding Luc Nilis’ broken leg. Or the ill health of Martin O’Neill’s wife.
Don’t even consider complaining if anything happens to a Villa player this, or next season. I used to like really like Villa; great ground, an improving team. Pity about the supporters.
With Liverpool visiting Stamford Bridge on Sunday, fans of Arsenal and Manchester United will hope that Fernando Torres is declared fit. Having come off during Spain’s friendly against France with what’s thought to be a hamstring problem the task of beating the Avram Grant’s side would be made that bit more difficult without the Spaniard.
With 18 goals this season (just one less than Crouch, Voronin and Kuyt combined) ‘El Niño’ has become vital to Liverpool since his big money arrival in the summer. It’s a credit to him that he has adapted so quickly, we’ve seen players with more experience struggle in England, but without him Liverpool are relatively toothless.
There are very few goals from midfield in this Liverpool side. Gerrard gets some, Benayoun’s hat-trick against Havant & Waterlooville doesn’t really count but he knows where the goal is, and beyond that the midfielders just don’t score enough. Kuyt and Voronin up front are mid-table players at best. So there’s a big onus on Torres to get the goals.
With Liverpool still to travel to Arsenal and United after the Chelsea game they can play an important part in where the title ends up. This weekend Liverpool’s chance of getting anything at Stamford Bridge lies with Torres. His pace and ability will cause the Chelsea defence problems. He scored a marvelous goal against them early in the season, and as much as Liverpool fans hope he does it again, so too will those of Arsenal and United who will hope to put a bit more daylight between themselves and the West London Russians.
Bad news for Gooners and Red Devils - looks like he’s out.
The well-publicised “spat” between Nicklas Bendtner and Emmanuel Adebayor has had the media, in particular Sky and the Daily Mail creaming their jeans with airtime and column inches calling for justice.
Looking at the incident, I can’t see a comparison to Le Saux and Batty’s European scrap while at Blackburn or even Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer’s brawl at St James’s. At the time, the team was getting thumped, Bendtner had already scored an own goal and was losing any effectiveness he had in the earlier part of the game and Adebayor was determined to retain some respectability. Football is an emotional game, and I would want my team to show a bit of passion and get each other going - maybe Adebayor went a bit far, granted, but at least he showed he cared.
If the FA are to look at the incident and undoubtedly punish Arsenal and their players, maybe they’d like to examine the tape of the entire game with the Spurs fans throwing objects at Fabregas when he went to take corners or singing songs about Arsene Wenger being a…. well, you know. Maybe next time Spurs fans get all uppity about being called the “Y” word they may want to have a closer look at some of their own support.
Manchester City’s pleas for Manchester United to mark the 50th anniversary of the Munich air disaster with a minute’s applause instead of a minute’s silence are a sad indictment of the game right now.
It’s typical that the anniversary should throw up a fixture between the two Manchester clubs but if the City fans can’t hate United without resorting to spoiling the minute’s silence then there’s something very wrong with them. A few years back Tottenham fans were fantastic in the way they respected a minute’s silence at Highbury for the recently departed David Rocastle so there’s no reason why City fans can’t do the same.
It’s telling that both the club and supporters groups are urging United to change the silence to applause but the only reason is so any dissenting voices will be drowned out. And let’s be honest, it would only be a minority of fans but that’s plenty to cause a problem.
What does doing nothing for a minute cost them? Can’t they just keep quiet for 60 seconds then pour whatever vitriol they like at their neighbours?
I find it a little bit sickening - not to mention hypocritical - that managers and players are calling for an end to abuse from fans in the same week that Man Utd players have been accused of having gang-sex with a 19-year-old girl at their Christmas party.
Respect has got to be earned, and I’ve got no respect for some of these overpaid thugs and cowards.
The irony is that the United players wouldn’t even have had their Christmas party this week if the players at the party - including Jonny Evans, who has been indicated in an alleged rape - hadn’t been knocked out of the Carling Cup by Championship strugglers Coventry.
It’s difficult to feel anything towards Radio 5’s Dj Spoony. To be charitable, I do enjoy the fact that he removed the Dj from the beginning of his name in an ill advised and ultimately doomed attempt at gaining credibility as a serious football broadcaster (as if it was the ‘Dj’ and not the ‘Spoony’ that were the problem), but other than that, the man operates on a default setting of ‘just kind of there’ and directing anything other than mild indifference at him feels like a gigantic waste of time, he is a Sunday afternoon repeat of the ‘don’t tell him, Pike!’ episode of Dad’s Army, you might groan ‘not this one again’, but it’s not something you’re likely to waste any real anger on. He is your mate tutting and telling you he forgot to save the default settings on Championship Manager, he is the barmaid saying they’ve ran out of cheese and onion and ready salted is going to have to do, he is the very definition of the word ‘nothing’, a notoriously tricky philosophical concept that Plato could have sorted out in five minutes if he’d ever heard Spoony present 606.
I’m unsure as to what was the most revolting spectacle: Drogba kissing his shirt before throwing it into the crowd; the fans fighting to get it; or the manager claiming that Drogba was just an innocent lad who’d accidentally said a few things he didn’t mean.
While United are rightly getting headlines for their amazing win over Roma last night it seems the English media are keen to paint the Italian fans as the ones responsible for the violence.
One quote from a United fan tells a different story though. He says:
Their fans were sitting ducks. They should have been let inside way sooner.
There’s no question there were a group of Roma fans looking for trouble last night. There’s also no question that a significant group of United fans were too.
Let’s hope the UEFA investigation is fairer than the British press.
Ahh, yes. The same John Terry who is rumoured to have worn a Brazil shirt and openly celebrated Ronaldinho’s goal for Brazil against England after he’d been left out of the 2002 World Cup squad.
To me it looks like Cole and Drogba both kick the bloke while he’s on the ground. I know he was a twat for trying to do what he did but there’s no call for players to take matters into their own hands like that.