Blu wrote:
What are your opinions on Football Manager. I've always wanted to dive into the series but haven't necessarily explored it enough just yet. I think that's maybe where I'll go if FIFA doesn't get any better, but I hear it's more or less looking at a bunch of spreadsheets.
Football Manager is a sim game and it is basically an elaborate but very addictive spreadsheet. I have many saves that run into days played not hours but as a game it can be overwhelming at first. If you do give it a try I suggest choosing a big club first before going for something more challenging.
It might seem odd but Football Manager has given some of my most exciting and rewarding memories in videogaming. I remember shouting like England had scored a world cup winning goal when Derek Riordan won the league cup for me in the dying seconds. Magic.
Razzmatazz wrote: Let's just hope we don't end up with Chelsea and City battling for the title each year, as it would not only get predictable, but with the money they have spent, it's two teams that have bought their success, largely with foreign players.
As a Spurs fan though you can agree that buying success is preferable to buying failure?
We're now ten games into the season and this is usually the point where it starts to become clear who will be the challengers and who will be the losers of this campaign.
As it stands, as it has done since the first day really, Chelsea and Man City seem like the only real contenders at this point to lift the trophy, while Burnley look odds on for the drop.
City won the Manchester derby for the fourth time in a row in what I guess is now the biggest game in the league. It wasn't a vintage 4-1 or 1-6 but it was passable and probably would have been closer to those previous scorelines had referee Micheal not been taken out for fish and chips by the United board before Sunday's game. Woeful officiating.
Southampton continue to confound peoples early expectations, although I expect them to falter with some of the tough games they have coming up, while Arsenal have Theo Walcott back finally from injury.
Elsewhere United, despite a derby day loss (lolz) are starting to be threatening (even if they still leak sloppy goals), Tottenham are only good against weak teams and Liverpool are paying double for the problems they didn't fix from last season. It's not quite panic stations yet but it's pretty obvious already they won't be replicating last seasons form.
On the whole though it's a pretty open affair so it's hard to see how things will look at the end. Spurs' win took them up to eighth but had they lost, Villa would have pushed them into 15th. There is only four points between Arsenal in 4th and Newcastle in 13th. It's great. None of this boring Bundeliga nonsense where challenging Bayern means having your best players bought off you. And the level of football is great too: I watched City lose to West Ham and it was a fantastic game of football. Fucking HULL play more attractive passing football than most of La Liga and Serie A put together. HULL!
It's not all roses though. The English teams, with the exception of the impeccable Chelsea, aren't travelling as well this season in Europe. I think the ludicrous arms race between Bayern, Real and Barcelona has priced out a lot of the competition to be honest but the PL teams are struggling with the "average" CL teams as well: see City surrender a two goal lead to CSKA (who shouldn't even be in the competition), Liverpool lose to Basel and Arsenal claim a late, undeserved win at Anderlecht. It's frustrating to watch a bunch of teams who worked so hard to get into the CL to begin with fritter it away by underestimating their opponents. Maybe the PL is overrated. (It's not.)
Anyway, it's another Champions League night tonight with Real Madrid Vs Liverpool the highlight of the matches. Don't except Liverpool to win but I should at least expect them to play with pride.
To end, anyone watch the MLS? I think it's entering its final stages or am I wrong? And Lol at Sporting Kansas City. What was wrong with the KC Wizards? Always played as them on Football Manager.
So we're almost halfway through the season, and I thought I'd give this a friendly little bump to see if there's any one that wants to chime in.
Chelsea lost their first match, which is a joyous moment. Cisse and Newcastle get the best of Chelsea, removing that potential invincible status that the bandwagon started drumming up. Here's hoping they stumble on that momentum that was carrying them once more.
I can't say much, Arsenal are on the struggle bus lately. Losing to Swansea and then Man U has me down a little bit about the state of our season, but then they're pulling out some nice performances in Champions League, so I have to remember to be realistic.
Manchester City looks great, but the wonder that is Aguero just got injured again.
So far Southampton has been my surprise of the season, and I hope they continue to do well, even though the tests from the last few weeks of fixtures haven't benefited them.
Yo, Blu did you catch on Champions League tonight or last night? Ramsay scored a wonder goal and City got through by the skin of their teeth. Liverpool got dumped out though which I can't say I care too much about but still. I have Liverpool supporting friends and this season is a downer for them.
Still looks like Bayern, Real and Barca are the teams to avoid though. Scarily good football teams.
I did! Absolutely beautiful. I know we still have a lot of the season to go; but I think I'm realistic in my expectations of our team that we might not win the championship -- we're not firing on all cylinders, our backline is dreadful, and there's nagging injuries plaguing our midfielders. On paper we're stellar, but I'm still not quite sure what is hampering us.
I just hope we can beat Newcastle this week, that way it rubs salt and vinegar into Chelsea's wounds.
I honestly think our Champions League success is great despite our horrible early start, but again I'm realistic that there's some real contenders to win it all. We'll see how the draw lineups look like and then I might be able to give you some better projections.
I think Arsenal have the same problem they've had for a while now: a lack of a big physical centre midfielder, someone to do the boring but essential stuff.
If you look at Chelsea, it's not a coincidence that they cruised their group and Matic has put in the most tackles so far in the Champions League. We have Fernando and Fernandinho, while Yaya Toure and Miler can also slot into that role.
Arsenal have...Flamini? Arteta? Decent players but no way near the physically intimidating presences you need for that position. Also those big guys are good for set-pieces both attacking and defending. (Not that being tall is prerequisite, as Claude Makelele proved).
Basically, you used to have the best in the world at that role with Viera and Wenger hasn't ever properly replaced him for whatever reason. Never really replaced David Seaman either to be fair. Wenger Out!
Anyway, I don't expect any of the English teams to win the CL, and I kind of suspect both City and Arsenal will go out in the next round. I can see Chelsea in the semis again just because of their mentality. I'm just glad City didn't go out with a whimper after beating Bayern, like Liverpool did against Basle.
As a Spurs fan, it's been our worst season in a good ten years. The only thing that can redeem it is a strong FA Cup run, which given our history should be feasible. We're just so flimsy, a lot like Arsenal at the moment. In fact, Arsenal seem to be playing like Tottenham usually do - they'll get goals and play some exciting football but always let a goal in (and usually come unstuck against tough, defensive teams like Stoke). I'm going up to the Lane next week to watch Burnley at home, and fearing the worst because it's precisely the type of team we end up losing 1-0 to. We usually have one star in our team, whether it was Ginola, Berbatov, Modric or Bale - this season we just have a group of players that aren't playing as a team. It's like watching England. When Aaron Lennon is your biggest threat, something is wrong.
I can't see us getting Top 6, which should be a good thing. None of our players are playing particularly well (other than Harry Kane, Eriksen here and there) so we're not going to have Real Madrid breathing down our necks for players again. The manager doesn't know what his strongest side is, and seems too stubborn to change his system. Good managers build a system to suit the players at their disposal, but Pocchetino is taking time to develop this system because he has inherited a bunch of purchases that have given us our reputation of being an underperforming, unsuccessful glamour club. We're stuck with Pocchetino at the moment though, because Levy can't keep sacking managers. Unless he gets an experienced manager, that system doesn't work. AVB, Sherwood and Poch are all young managers with new ideas, but we're actually worse off than we was with AVB. I actually agreed with the Redknapp sacking, because if you watched Spurs every week, you'd understand how bad 'Arry is tactically and how many points we dropped. His short-term, motivational work was incredible though, and being able to see Real Madrid at the Lane is a moment I'll take to the grave.
As for the rest of the Premier League, it looks like Chelsea's. Manchester City still suffer from some players just not turning up every other week, and Aguero has bailed them out a lot this season. I can see Manchester United sneaking in to the Champions League spots and everybody will rejoice, declaring Van Gaal as the saviour of the club. Notice how Fergie's shadow isn't as present as it was when Moyes was there doing a similar job. Arsenal always squeeze back in to the Champions League, which I still find kind of funny. They always get in, but always get knocked out straight after the group stages - making the whole exercise pointless (ignoring the money side of things). Liverpool are also "doing a Tottenham", not just by being disappointment, but because they spent the Suarez money too thinly. Balotelli doesn't deserve the clubs he has played for, given the trouble he brings. If he was as good as an Ibrahimovic, sure, but he's not. It looks like the challenge for the Top 4 will be more exciting than the winners this year, because you've got Man United trying to climb back to the top, Southampton and West Ham hoping to maintain their run to get European football, and Everton, Spurs, Liverpool and Arsenal all hoping their talent will start turning it on. As I said, Arsenal usually have a strong end to the season and will likely snatch 4th.
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I was going to razz Razzmatazz for Spurs' limp defeat to Chelsea in the League cup final but then I remembered how poorly my own team has/is faring this year in cup competitions.
Only ten games left now in the league. Crunch time for a lot of clubs. I think Chelsea would have to do something pretty catastrophic to lose from here but City have come back and won from larger deficits. Leicester look dead on for relegation and honestly I can't see Burnley doing enough either. Tim Sherwood is not, IMO, a good manager but he seems to have lit a fire under some of Villa's underperforming players so they may well escape the icy touch of championship football and live on to bore fans around the world into submission for another season.
The race for a Champions League spot is more open that it's been in a while as well. You've got The Arse and United in 3rd and 4th respectively at the moment, but on form Liverpool, Harry Kane infused Spurs and Southampton all eyeing a place. Now in truth, if Liverpool and Spurs had tried a bit harder in the Europa league they wouldn't need to expend so much energy to claim that coveted spot but whatever. It's not like any of the teams who won the Europa League ever went on to do well in the CL anyway, except for Atletico, Porto and Liverpool themselves. I will also laugh a hearty laugh if Everton (currently 6 points off a relegation spot) continue their form in the EL and win the whole thing, thus nabbing a CL spot ahead of the 'Pool.
Other recent football news: a ridiculous £5.2 billion TV rights deal makes the league the richest in the world (soccerwise). Which would be great if these price hikes weren't then passed on to fans in the form of raising ticket prices and Sky Sports package deals.
Elsewhere Greece banned football for a bit due to increasing crowd trouble and then backtracked quite quickly after, Italian club Parma have gone so bankrupt they squad had to take cold showers and FIFA once again confirmed they give less than half a fuck by both pretty much enforcing their bullshit Qatar world cup be in winter and then telling club teams to sort the compensation and fixtures out themselves. Cos when you're being a fucking prick to everyone why not go the whole hog?
Yeah, this past week's matches were lovely. Double game week for the Spurs. Kane is on fire and I think it might lead to the Spurs getting a CL spot. Because we all know Arsenal is totally on form (3-1 home defeat to AS Monaco in CL?). I think it's ours to lose and we're not nearly as effective as we were last year, pre-everyone on the squad gets injured.
At this point, anyone vying for 3 and 4 could shit the bed and that's where the drama will really unfold. I'm more excited there, as like you said Chelsea would have to royally screw up to not win the league. Given that Mourinho has also never had to chase for the title, the previous two times he's won it outright leading from the beginning.
We'll see though, I like when it comes down to the last few games. I love the drama in the relegation spots, where the late season upsets will happen (Crystal Palace vs. Liverpool for example, classic!), and if Arsenal can win the FA Cup again -- currently it's 1-1 vs. Man U, so we'll see if we can pull it off!
Edit, As I posted this, Danny Welbeck notches one for Arsenal and deals some poetic justice to his former club!
