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Wow! That is a very good capture, he is a decent player..
For what we're reckoned to be paying him, he'd better be more than decent. Apparently he's looking for £15,000 a week plus £5,000 per match. Not a lot by Premier League standards but when our two top earners are reckoned to be on £10,000 each a week it's a bit of a difference.
 
Hopefully there will be no dressing room unrest. However, it has almost been confirmed this morning, or its on the BBC website at least, which is good enough for me.

Any news on Caleb Folan? Shame for the lad, and the club. I looked in on the BBCs Player Rater just after half time and he looked to be having a good game.
 
Hopefully there will be no dressing room unrest. However, it has almost been confirmed this morning, or its on the BBC website at least, which is good enough for me.
We've got a press conference scheduled for 3pm this afternoon, so either Okocha will be unveiled holding his new amber shirt aloft or we've got a new pie supplier. It does seem to be a done deal though... Okocha, not the pies I mean.

The dressing room unrest thing is a funny one, because the reason we didn't sign Juninho was apparently because he wanted such high wages Brown feared it would cause divisions in the squad. :confused:

Any news on Caleb Folan? Shame for the lad, and the club. I looked in on the BBCs Player Rater just after half time and he looked to be having a good game.
He was indeed – he certainly has the pace we're lacking upfront. Hopefully he's alright, I'm sure we'll hear a bit more on his condition later today.
 
Rafa is a great manager, I can see Liverpool winning the Premiership this season

I really hope they do it this time, I said the same thing to my friends last season and the season before :)
 
Jaffa Cake, the latest rumor I heard is that Hull are also trying to sign Wigan's Fitz Hall on loan. Are you trying to acquire the whole Wigan squad, maybe you could take current England international Emile Heskey too.
 
Good stuff. :)

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Nice low squad number as well I see. ;)
I was wondering about that myself... there are a few in the twenties spare and every number above 34 is free too, so I don’t know why he’s elected to go for 44. Maybe it has some sort of special significance for him... actually, come to think of it I think it’s the average age of our squad so that might have something to do with it. :p
 
Really? It's going to be £21 each for us to see Chelsea humiliated...

£5 under 18's, £10 18 and over for the whole of the lower tier. Then £10/£20 for the whole of the upper tier. I prefer the lower tier anyway.. It's good from Arsenal. The Carling Cup home games are always very cheap. Paid £15 for half way line upper tier for Spurs second leg semi final last year.
 
Not bad prices those. I’d think they’d certainly encourage a few people to go along who might otherwise give it a miss.

Just off on a tangent a little – the mystery over Okocha’s strange choice of shirt number has been cleared up. His preference is for the number 10 shirt but as that’s already held by Stephen “Ow, me leg!” McPhee his next preference is for a ‘double number – and as 11, 22 and 33 have already been handed out, 44 is the lowest available number for our number-fussy new signing. I hope Markleshark can sleep tonight now, as I know this was bothering him. :p
 
So what is the point of the Carling Cup anyway? Just more games and money? The FA Cup is the "real" trophy, right?
 
Not bad prices those. I’d think they’d certainly encourage a few people to go along who might otherwise give it a miss.

Just off on a tangent a little – the mystery over Okocha’s strange choice of shirt number has been cleared up. His preference is for the number 10 shirt but as that’s already held by Stephen “Ow, me leg!” McPhee his next preference is for a ‘double number – and as 11, 22 and 33 have already been handed out, 44 is the lowest available number for our number-fussy new signing. I hope Markleshark can sleep tonight now, as I know this was bothering him. :p

Wow, there you go you see. Stupid footballers.

As for sleeping, no, not with these damn new iPods. ;)
 
So what is the point of the Carling Cup anyway? Just more games and money? The FA Cup is the "real" trophy, right?
The FA Cup certainly has more prestige over the League Cup – one key organisational difference is that it’s only Football League and Premier League teams that enter the League cup, whereas the FA Cup is open to non-League teams too, all the way down the league pyramid. Still, there is a European place up for grabs for the winners – in the UEFA Cup – so it’s worth winning for that reason if you’re not one of the top four clubs.
 
The FA Cup certainly has more prestige over the League Cup – one key organisational difference is that it’s only Football League and Premier League teams that enter the League cup, whereas the FA Cup is open to non-League teams too, all the way down the league pyramid. Still, there is a European place up for grabs for the winners – in the UEFA Cup – so it’s worth winning for that reason if you’re not one of the top four clubs.

Point taken, but how often do lower-division teams make it to, say, the semifinals? Seems to me that it's just an extra trophy for one of the top teams and extra money to spread around.
 
Point taken, but how often do lower-division teams make it to, say, the semifinals?
Not that often, although it does happen.

<consults record books>

If by lower-division we're talking about non-Premier League, Tranmere Rovers (then in the second tier) made it all the way to the final of the League Cup back in 2000, while Wycombe Wanderers (fourth tier) made it to the semi-finals last season.

In the FA Cup, Chesterfield (third tier) famously made it to the semi-finals back in the 1996-97 season (forcing a replay against Premier League Middlesbrough), while popular side Millwall (second tier) made it all the way to the FA Cup Final in 2004 – losing convincingly to Manchester United but rather amusingly earning a spot in the UEFA Cup for their efforts.

So it is a rarity, but a lower-league side does advance quite far every once in a while – mind, none of them ever win it. Actually aloofman, there is one non-League side that has actually won the FA Cup – your very own Tottenham Hotspur, way back in 1901. ;)
 
I think that the FA cup just provides another piece of silverware for the top four - it's exciting to see lower-division teams beat Premiership sides, but you know in the back of your mind that they can never win.
 
Actually aloofman, there is one non-League side that has actually won the FA Cup – your very own Tottenham Hotspur, way back in 1901. ;)

Touting that victory would be a sure sign that their current season has gone off the tracks!

There was an article this week on Sports Illustrated's site about how the U.S. Open Cup has had many Cinderella stories, including a second-tier team that won it all a couple years ago. But this isn't a selling point because even soccer fans in the U.S. ignore it. The games aren't on TV, there's not much money in winning it, and even the presence of MLS teams doesn't generate much interest. (The tournament itself has been around for decades. Who knew?) This year's Open Cup has gotten a fraction of the attention of the inaugural SuperLiga tournament that just finished last week, probably because there are many fans of the Mexican teams in the U.S. And that was before Becks hurt himself in the title game.

I think the whole concept of a season-long tournament that parallels the league's season is a strange one to the U.S. sports fan. No other sport here does that. Except for MLS, every other North American league has playoff games after the season concludes.
 
I think the whole concept of a season-long tournament that parallels the league's season is a strange one to the U.S. sports fan. No other sport here does that. Except for MLS, every other North American league has playoff games after the season concludes.
Isn't that a matter of geography though? Given how the various sports are divided up into regional championships or conferences (a necessity I suppose before the advent of modern transport), it makes sense for end of season playoffs between the regional winers to determine the top team in the country. In Europe though, with smaller countries and teams closer to one another such systems have never really been necessary.

Conversely, the idea of post-season matches to decide a title seem equally strange over here. I can only really think of one example off the top of my head and that's Rugby League, which started to do it with the advent of the Super League in the 1990s – essentially the season is to determine the top half-dozen teams who will compete in the playoffs towards the grand final – and it seems a really odd way to do things... a team can win the league by a country mile and yet still not be champions if they lose in the playoffs.

Still, that's eggchasing for you. :p
 
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