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The Premier League Thread!

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Beautiful or Effective?

We've discussed this before, but it's a perennial question and I'm curious to see what people think more fully:

Is is it bad to win but be boring? What is boring football, as you see it? Do you have to win with style, or does a trophy cabinet measure quality in itself?

Football is a spectacle for entertainment, but it's also a competition. And these days, a business first and foremost. Winning always serves business and competition, but not necessarily entertainment...

Leaving out controversial calls or off-pitch factors for the moment - if you beat every other team in a competition you're the best team, right? If not, why?
 
Lord Blackadder said:
Leaving out controversial calls or off-pitch factors for the moment - if you beat every other team in a competition you're the best team, right? If not, why?
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Totally agree, to a point. The rules of football are very simple... You score more goals than the other team... You win. Take that over 38 games and who ever comes out top is the best team.

However, in knock-out competitions, it's not always the best team that wins. For example, it's the FA Cup Final on Saturday, and no way are Portsmouth and Cardiff the best two teams to enter FA Cup.
 
Boring football with no end result is the pits, it will turn the fans away and will send a club into a downward spiral. I have sat through a few games this season where my team didn’t get anywhere near a shot on goal in open play throughout the whole game. Now if that’s the price of success, forget it. Hoofing the ball up ‘the channels’ because you have a reasonable chance of eventually winning a dead ball opportunity is kak, end of. I would hate to see any team win trophies like that even if it was my own team, it is too tedious to sit through.

What gets me though is when fans get irritated by good defensive play and slow build up because they want to see the ball launched forward at the earliest opportunity for so called entertainment.

Football can be beautiful when played fast or slow, it’s quite simple really – positive passing and good possession when you’ve got the ball and defend as a team when you don’t.
 
Of course your Lordship, there's a further option – play terrible football and win bugger all. This is the Hull City Way.™ ;)

Talking of 'hoofing' the ball... something that amused me a while back. A pundit commenting on Cup highlights – I can't remember exactly who, shamefully, but it might have been Mark Lawrenson – was deriding a lower league side and their boring long ball play. A minute or two later we saw a Premier League team who employed the same tactic, only in this instance it was described as 'wonderfully direct football'. So I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder. :rolleyes:

As for determining the best team... the best team in any particular division is whoever is at the top of it come the end of the season. Simple as. It therefore follows that the best team in any particular country is the team that wins that nation's top league. What this means is that Manchester United are the best team in England at present, while Hull City are the 23rd best team, which is alright really. We are however officially the best team in Yorkshire. :cool:
 
scotthayes said:
However, in knock-out competitions, it's not always the best team that wins. For example, it's the FA Cup Final on Saturday, and no way are Portsmouth and Cardiff the best two teams to enter FA Cup.
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I think knockout competitions handicap the better teams because a single loss hurts them more and levels the playing field a bit. I have to admit I like seeing minnows beat the big teams in cup competitions.

B&Wtoon said:
Hoofing the ball up ‘the channels’ because you have a reasonable chance of eventually winning a dead ball opportunity is kak, end of. I would hate to see any team win trophies like that even if it was my own team, it is too tedious to sit through.
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I hear English football getting criticized for this very thing rather often. The Germans are supposedly physical but technically skilled, the Italians and Spanish pass the ball into the net and dive when that doesn't work, while the English simply boot the ball upfield and hope for the best - when they aren't stomping, punching or kicking the opposing players. ;)

Jaffa Cake said:
Of course your Lordship, there's a further option – play terrible football and win bugger all. This is the Derby County Way.™ ;)
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Fixed that for you. ;)
 
Well Done to Bristol City who are going on to Wembly (to play Hull perhaps? :confused: ) and leaving poor old Colin Wanker home. I came home from work to see the last two Bristol City goals (well taken, both of them).

I hope the Hull supporters will be as enthusiastic as the Bristol ones, though I could do without having to watch a pitch invasion by shirtless men.
 
pivo6 said:
I hope the Hull supporters will be as enthusiastic as the Bristol ones, though I could do without having to watch a pitch invasion by shirtless men.
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Well, we're naturally much more pessimistic for one thing. Whatever happens tomorrow night though, I'll try and keep my shirt on for you. ;)

Rather depressingly, our Sky has just gone off – I was tuning in to Sky Sports News in the hope that I'd be able to catch Colin having a comedy moan. Alas, not.

Lord Blackadder said:
Fixed that for you. ;)
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Pah, we've been underachieving with pride since 1904. Derby County? Amateurs – they've nothing on us. :p
 
Jaffa Cake said:
Talking of 'hoofing' the ball... something that amused me a while back. A pundit commenting on Cup highlights – I can't remember exactly who, shamefully, but it might have been Mark Lawrenson – was deriding a lower league side and their boring long ball play. A minute or two later we saw a Premier League team who employed the same tactic, only in this instance it was described as 'wonderfully direct football'. So I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder. :rolleyes:
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I know there is a lot of football snobbery, but there is a difference of playing a long pass to a man who has in the clear, than continually playing the ball back to a centrehalf for him to launch it into a melee of players as your only form of attack.

good luck to the ‘tigers’, but I’ll be watching the Uefa bore tonight.
 
B&Wtoon said:
good luck to the ‘tigers’, but I’ll be watching the Uefa bore tonight.
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So will I, Rangers to keep the same tactics and go for the winning 0-0 draw.:D

Looks like most of Glasgow are in Manchester today, M8 was nice and quiet on the way home.

Any predictions guys? I am very worried, this Russian mob look very good.
 
Fuzzy14 said:
So will I, Rangers to keep the same tactics and go for the winning 0-0 draw.:D

Looks like most of Glasgow are in Manchester today, M8 was nice and quiet on the way home.

Any predictions guys? I am very worried, this Russian mob look very good.
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To be honest I hope Zenit win, I watched the last couple of Rangers games and they were appallingly boring, 11 men behind the ball the entire match. Where as Zenit have proved a lot of people (including me) wrong and have beaten teams outright with fantastic results and brilliant goals.

I think it will be 2-0 to Zenit.
 
I just hope it's an open game with good goals.

It's also interesting to see that the two teams are much less "international" in makeup than the usual top European teams. It's like a European football match from 30 years ago.
 
Lord Blackadder said:
I just hope it's an open game with good goals.
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Doubt it! First half Rangers looked happy to defend. A Rangers goal would make it a more interesting game for me, but I guess the neutrals must be looking for a Zenit goal so that the game is then all-out attack but I don't want that!

Most interestingly named player must be Arshavin :D

Jaffa Cake must be at the Watford game tonight, 1-1 so far (3-1 aggregate).

Lord Blackadder said:
It's also interesting to see that the two teams are much less "international" in makeup than the usual top European teams. It's like a European football match from 30 years ago.
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Are you aware of the feat by my arch rivals, Celtic. They were the first British team to win the European Cup (in 1967) and every player in their team was born within a 30 mile radius of Glasgow! (Even the opposition, Inter, consisted of 11 Italians.) That would never happen today.
 
xUKHCx said:
I think it will be 2-0 to Zenit.
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:(

Gutted, but proud a team described by ITV as full of bargain basement pick-ups made a European final. Can still do the treble this year!

Even more gutted that one of those lovely Russians the cameraman was watching didn't give a flash of the baps when the goals went in.
 
wembley-stadium.jpg

Blimey :eek:
 
Surprised about the Rangers fans, I didn't expect that. I heard that the big screen they set up for people outside the stadium broke down, leaving a drunken crowd of over 40,000 with nothing to do...a recipe for trouble. As a result they've scrapped plans to use the same big screen for the CL final (although maybe that's just 'cause it doesn't work! ;)).

Ronaldo hints at a desire to leave for Spain...do you think he might? If it's money he wants Fergie can offer him plenty. How much do you think his leaving would affect the club? I think he's been key for United this season.

Congrats to Zenit St. Petersburgh belatedly, Rangers looked like they were just trying to get to penalties and with Zenit's attacking intent they were always going to win that game unless Rangers got an early goal. I don't understand why Tommy Smith didn't sub anyone until after Zenit scored; by the 70th minute it should have been obvious that they needed to attack more. Nacho Novo should have been in by the 60th minute, or even just after the restart.
 
I'm not going to sit here and make excuses for the scenes at Manchester, they were a disgrace to Scotland.

Can I point out a few discussion points, these are in no way mitigating factors but something to be considered if a European Final is to be held in the UK with a British club participating;

1) There were 175,000 ‘Scots’ in Manchester on Wednesday. 42 arrests (I’d like to see the home towns of all the arrests, they might not all be Scottish!). Would this not be quite comparable with a typical Saturday night in any large city?
2) Educated guesses, but I would presume that most were not Rangers season ticket holders (and so Rangers cannot ban them), I dare say most have never been to Ibrox in their life and they only think they are Rangers fans because they are not Catholic.
3) Manchester City Council wanted as many people to come to the fan zones as possible (following the example of Glasgow with the 2002 European Cup and 2006 UEFA cups) and quite happily promoted the use of alcohol all day by licensing bars in the fan zone and failing to place restrictions on the sale of alcohol nearby. I think Britain has a big problem with alcohol where the accepted norm is to go out and get plastered, act disgracefully and then blame the alcohol for it.
4) Failure of the big screen is one of those things that tend to happen at these big events, it is not an excuse to start throwing bottles at the police, regardless of where you are you have responsibility to other humans.
5) For a long time Scotland has sat and thought of hooliganism as an English problem. It has long been a growing problem for Rangers away in European games and even elements have started within the Tartan Army. These are not football fans but neds (I think the English term for ‘ned’ is ‘chav’). However, Rangers are able to control which fans go to the European games, they were unable to this time due to the location.
6) I have spoke with many Rangers fans since they returned from Manchester and not one of them knew of any problems until the next day. Please have a go at them but don't tar us all with this brush.

You also may have missed this, but the team homecoming was cancelled due to the death of Tommy Burns from skin cancer. Tommy was a Celtic legend, was manager in the early 90s and coach of Scotland and Celtic.
 
Good points - with over 175,000 fans in town it was really only a small group that caused the trouble.

The CL final has the potential to be much worse - the Russian police don't mess around. I'd be very afraid to try the same antics in Moscow.
 
Fuzzy14 said:
6) I have spoke with many Rangers fans since they returned from Manchester and not one of them knew of any problems until the next day. Please have a go at them but don't tar us all with this brush.
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Indeed – it's all too easy for the media to point the finger at football fans in general when incidents like this occur (and they often do so with a great deal of relish), ignoring the huge majority who attend games and events like the beam backs with not even the slightest thought of causing any trouble.

What you mention about the Scots regarding hooliganism as an English problem is an interesting one, it could be argued that due to our history in this area we're one of the best countries there is when it comes to dealing with it – indeed, foreign FAs often turn to the English FA and police forces for guidance when it comes to dealing with their own problem elements. What's important is that even though incidents on the scale of what happened in Manchester are rare, we don't become complacent about it. Otherwise, it becomes all too easy for problems to occur. If this complacency is becoming common in Scotland then it's vital it's nipped in the bud now – Scottish supporters generally have a great reputation and it would be awful if this was ruined due to the antics of idiots getting violent.

On to other matters, I had read about Tommy Burns. Sad news, especially given his relatively young age.
 
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