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[Jarnet87]

Moyes must take similar notes.

 

[Kill Your Masters]

I just can't.

Who wrote this guff? Did they do it absolutely fucking blocked?

The text is hilarious. The $$$, if true, not so much. It's the first thing when googling for net worth (

Spoiler

I am bored and pissed about todays game, so to make this day even more shit I thought lets see how much those useless people earn :/)

 

[Scum]

OMG! loooooooooooooooooooool

 

[noal]

Well, the rest of the season should be interesting...


...for the lols.

 

[The_Hitcher89]

Honda's boss

 

[Clegg]

Went out to watch the England game so missed a good bit of the second half of United. From what I saw I reckon Mata played well and RVP tried hard. That was about it. If there was ever a game for Cleverley to step up and grab things by the scruff if the neck then this was it. Suffice to say he failed spectacularly. I feel a bit sorry for Moyes as he's not solely to blame. But at the end IG the day the manager gets the blame.

I also saw Mata play out wide with Welbeck in behind the striker. That was genuinely insulting. I think he panicked and threw Rooney in midfield.

 

[GQman2121]

Who would you guys say is YPOTY so far?

The cut off is 23, right? If so, then Hazard has to be the front runner right now. But Ramsey, Oscar, Sturridge, Lukaku and even Barkley could also win it with some big games.

 

[Ashes]

Went out to watch the England game so missed a good bit of the second half of United. From what I saw I reckon Mata played well and RVP tried hard. That was about it. If there was ever a game for Cleverley to step up and grab things by the scruff if the neck then this was it. Suffice to say he failed spectacularly. I feel a bit sorry for Moyes as he's not solely to blame. But at the end IG the day the manager gets the blame.

I also saw Mata play out wide with Welbeck in behind the striker. That was genuinely insulting. I think he panicked and threw Rooney in midfield.

That's the way I see it too.

 

[The_Hitcher89]

The cut off is 23, right? If so, then Hazard has to be the front runner right now. But Ramsey, Oscar, Sturridge, Lukaku and even Barkley could also win it with some big games.

Think Sturridge would be he frontrunner if not for that spell out

Though you could say the same about Ramsey.

Think they should lower it to being 21 at the start of the season

 

[Ashes]

Hazard or barkley for me.

 

[Jarnet87]

Went out to watch the England game so missed a good bit of the second half of United. From what I saw I reckon Mata played well and RVP tried hard. That was about it. If there was ever a game for Cleverley to step up and grab things by the scruff if the neck then this was it. Suffice to say he failed spectacularly. I feel a bit sorry for Moyes as he's not solely to blame. But at the end IG the day the manager gets the blame.

I also saw Mata play out wide with Welbeck in behind the striker. That was genuinely insulting. I think he panicked and threw Rooney in midfield.

Cleverly is just a body out there. He's not particularly good at tackling, passing, getting forward, reading the game, etc. I never saw him play in the reserves when he was younger but a lot people thought he was a promising player. He looked good for the few games where he was partnered with Anderson at the start of the 2011 season. That's about it.

 

[Shanks D Zoro]

And destroy his career? No thanks. Give him time, two years and if he's actually good he'll start for us.

But I want him now

I fully expect him to be playing for Milan next season or at the very least play with Milan during preseason and then loaned to a promoted Serie A team.

 

[GQman2121]

Think Sturridge would be he frontrunner if not for that spell out

Though you could say the same about Ramsey.

Think they should lower it to being 21 at the start of the season

I agree, especially about the age being lowered. The kids like Shaw, Lukaku and Januzaj should be the players in the running. Now days by 23 you're almost expected to be a finished product!

 

[pulga]

That's a hell of a header


OMG that Messi chance


Suarez=Ronaldo>>>Ibra>Messi

Messi can't score anymore. If not for the penalty, today would've been his 9th straight Liga game without finding the back of the net lololol

 

[The_Hitcher89]

IMMOBILE

 

[bud]

torino just scored.

bonera, hahaha.

 

[Timurid]

GET FUCKEDDDDDDD MILANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Peco]

Fuck Allegri for playing Bonera, Muntari and Robinho again.

 

[Shanks D Zoro]

Ciroooo

Take him to the World Cup

 

[Peco]

Fuck off

 

[The_Hitcher89]

Fuck Allegri for playing Bonera, Muntari and Robinho again.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Padelli is awesome, handsome bastard too. Fuck Mignolet off, get him back

 

[Timurid]

PADELLI YOU GOD!!!!!!!!!

 

[bud]

muntari is a professional footballer who earns millions.

life is so incredibly unfair.

 

[The_Hitcher89]

Seedorf looks worryingly static on the sideline. They mentioned it on FW, and it seems to be true

 

[Shanks D Zoro]

Seedorf looks worryingly static on the sideline. They mentioned it on FW, and it seems to be true

He was giving instructions to Kaka five minutes ago. Football isn't always abour shouting and jumping up and down on the sidelines like all firat time former players in the PL seem to do.

 

[il Diavolo]

Fuck off, Bonera. Seriously.

 

[wedward]

All these rumors of Bayern stopping the Draxler to Arsenal deal. You would think Shalke would prefer to sell him to Arsenal over bayern. Guess it depends on how much they pay. He obviously wanted to go to Arsenal. He must have known that bayern was an option for him this summer, but he still wanted to come to Arsenal.

Fuck bayern

Fuck pep

 

[bud]

All these rumors of Bayern stopping the Draxler to Arsenal deal. You would think Shalke would prefer to sell him to Arsenal over bayern. Guess it depends on how much they pay. He obviously wanted to go to Arsenal. He must have known that bayern was an option for him this summer, but he still wanted to come to Arsenal.

Fuck bayern

Fuck pep

why do you say that?

i doubt they'd care, it's not like they're competing for the title or anything.

 

[dc89]

Manuel Pellegrini: Manchester City's enigma by those who know him

The genteel City manager, who has turned his side into heavy goal scorers, is largely unknown despite his long career

For an insight into Manchester City's enigmatic manager, Manuel Pellegrini, rewind four years and Madrid's Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Back in May 2010, the Chilean was in charge of Real Madrid, though his tenure was about to end abruptly. Pellegrini had just taken Real to a record 96 points in La Liga to finish second behind Pep Guardiola's great Barcelona side when Florentino Pérez, the Real president, called.

Pellegrini was in the office of Manuel Borja, the director of the Reina Sofia, the Spanish capital's national museum of 20th-century art, when he spoke to Pérez. On finishing the call Pellegrini turned to Borja and said: "I think they're going to fire me." Arturo Salah, Pellegrini's closest friend for more than 40 years, says it comes as no great shock to discover that the Real Madrid manager was to learn of his fate while studying Picasso's Guernica and works by Damien Hirst, Man Ray and Francis Bacon.

"He loves art and museums all over the world," says Salah. "He is a great reader and possesses great culture which was taught by his parents and a consequence of his uncountable trips."

Awesome article on Pellegrini by Jamie Jackson of The Guardian

 

[bud]

i just know with every inch of my being that pellegrini appreciates malick's films.

 

[Elchele]

Man, Hannover are beasting.

 

[wedward]

why do you say that?

i doubt they'd care, it's not like they're competing for the title or anything.

Fan reaction. Same reason Arsenal wanted to sell Rvp to juve over Man U.

 

[Shanks D Zoro]

All these rumors of Bayern stopping the Draxler to Arsenal deal. You would think Shalke would prefer to sell him to Arsenal over bayern. Guess it depends on how much they pay. He obviously wanted to go to Arsenal. He must have known that bayern was an option for him this summer, but he still wanted to come to Arsenal.

Fuck bayern

Fuck pep

He can still come to us in the summer, just means we have to pay his release clause.

 

[Hixx]

Does anyone in here use Hola Unblocker? Is it working on netflix atm? Been flaky for weeks and now it's just taking me to the UK site whichever country I select.

 

[bud]

Does anyone in here use Hola Unblocker? Is it working on netflix atm? Been flaky for weeks and now it's just taking me to the UK site whichever country I select.

haven't used it for netflix, but i occasionally use it for other sites. seems to work fine.

i'm on chrome, btw.

 

[wedward]

He can still come to us in the summer, just means we have to pay his release clause.

I agree. Think Bayern will offer huge wages we won't though.

Seeing Arsenal knock bayern out of cl will probably convince him.

 

[wakajawaka]

Malaga pls win today or I will drink to death thx bye.

 

[Randdalf]

muntari is a professional footballer who earns millions.

life is so incredibly unfair.

I liked him as a player when he played for Portsmouth, scored dat penalty in the FA Cup Semi-Final.

 

[Blablurn]

Milan pls

 

[Shanks D Zoro]

I agree. Think Bayern will offer huge wages we won't though.

Seeing Arsenal knock bayern out of cl will probably convince him.

And hearing the German lads talking the club up during the World Cup.

 

[Timurid]

fuck sake! Should of been 2-0 TORO!

 

[The_Hitcher89]

And hearing the German lads talking the club up during the World Cup.

And them being a more attractive club in the capital of his home country, being the best team in the world, under the best manager in the world who also has a reputation for coaching young players to fulfil their potential

 

[Shanks D Zoro]

Wenger please buy De Sciglio.

 

[pulga]

All these rumors of Bayern stopping the Draxler to Arsenal deal. You would think Shalke would prefer to sell him to Arsenal over bayern. Guess it depends on how much they pay. He obviously wanted to go to Arsenal. He must have known that bayern was an option for him this summer, but he still wanted to come to Arsenal.

Fuck bayern

Fuck pep

why are you surprised

the raison d'etre of bundeslolga is to serve as bayern's feeder clubs

 

[Broder Salsa]

Farnerud is a little piece of shit.

 

[Wilbur]

Here's me doing the worst shitty dirty pint of all time. Takes me about five goes https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10203290103203824

I don't think it's private

 

[dc89]

The football landscape in Manchester is changing. Just head through the eastern part of town, along Alan Turing Way, and a new stadium is starting to thrust skywards directly opposite Manchester City's ground, in the same way that Mini Estadi nestles beside the Camp Nou. The Etihad Campus, City's new training complex, will be operating within six months, with a 7,000-seat stadium as its focal point. The difference with Barcelona is the 80 acres of spare land that City have for development around it, now a frenzy of hard hats and scaffolding operating to the designs of Rafael Viñoly, the Uruguayan architect whose portfolio includes Jongno Tower in Seoul, Carrasco international airport in Montevideo and various additions to the skylines of New York, Tokyo and Los Angeles, among others.

For those of us who remember the old City, these are moments when it can feel like an entirely different club and it brings to mind a line in Pies and Prejudice, Stuart Maconie's book about his travels through the north. Manchester, he wrote, was still a "mucky kid at heart, but having been mithered by Mam and had their faces wiped with spittle on some civic hankie, they've scrubbed up dead smart." It encapsulates everything that has happened to City, on the journey from chip-fat to champagne.

Viñoly's latest project will feature a long sweeping footbridge, named the Commonwealth Way, to link the two grounds over a dual-carriageway. There will be 16 other pitches, accommodation for players, apartments for relatives, a medical centre, a boardroom, a media theatre and the kind of five-star luxury that it is fair to say was not always evident in the years the team trained on council pitches in Moss Side.

Then again, a lot has changed since the days Platt Lane doubled up as a meeting point for the local down-and-outs. Paul Lake tells the story in his autobiography about how a noisy troupe would congregate by the meshed perimeter fence to abuse the players on their laps of the pitch, including one guy whose party trick was to smile menacingly and rub his crotch up and down the netting.

"Wonder whether Bryan Robson has to cope with this at the Cliff?" was an often-heard lament among the players. Which feels like a piece of classic City, long before the days when they shelled out £639,000 a day on wages, ferried executives around in chauffeur-driven cars and once surprised Barcelona after a conference call from Abu Dhabi to Manchester was misunderstood, specifically the words "it's getting messy" and – true story – Garry Cook, bless him, put in a £30m bid for Lionel Messi.

"Typical City" – the phrase that they came to hate – tends to mean another five- or six-goal thrashing these days and the free-scoring exploits of Manuel Pellegrini's side tell only part of the story. City's Under-18s are unbeaten since 28 September and won 2-0 on Saturday against Manchester United. The Under-21s have not lost in three months. At senior level, City fans will have a better understanding now why the people of Málaga have named a street after Pellegrini and Roberto Mancini was let go.

At junior level, City's Under-13s and Under-14s are national champions. Nobody should get too far ahead of themselves but if Abu Dhabi's royal family continue to apply the same mix of hard ambition and incalculable wealth, it is not outlandish to wonder whether what we are seeing now is leading to a period of extended domination.

If it is a deception, apologies in advance for being reeled in. For now, though, it feels like common sense after City's anachronistic run of freewheeling wins. A 5-1 joyride at Tottenham, to go with a 6-0 against the same opposition in Manchester, the various ordeals for Arsenal (6-3), United (4-1), Norwich (7-0), West Ham (9-0 over two legs of the Capital One Cup semi-final), and not forgetting another eight occasions when City have scored at least four; these are results that belong to a black-and-white era.

Their latest financial results show that annual revenue, £87m only four years earlier, has risen to £271m, overtaking Chelsea and Arsenal and putting City sixth in the Deloitte money list. Yet there are other ways to calculate the club's growth. In the space of a year, City's ticket office have dealt with fans from 76 different countries. City's worldwide television audience is up by 133% since 2009 (in the UK it is by 103%) and 15.2m of the annual 33m visitors to their website are from abroad. No trophies are awarded for this sort of thing but it is still monumental progress that the club's YouTube channel attracted 60m hits over the year. Barcelona's, to put it into context, had 50.5m, Santos are next with 30.7m, then Real Madrid (24.5m) and Juventus (19.6m).

United fan like to taunt City with an adaptation of the old Inspiral Carpets song: "This is how it feels to be City/This is how it feels to be small/This is how it feels when your world means nothing at all." It no longer feels so cutting when pre-season fixtures in the United States are selling out within 20 minutes and analysis by the Mailman Group shows that City are suddenly more than twice as popular as any other European club on China's main two social media sites, Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo.

In other ways, City are still in a game of catch-up. At Old Trafford, there is a stadium tour every seven minutes and a plausible explanation why the television companies have selected every one of United's FA Cup ties for live coverage since late-January 2005. Repetitive? Yes. Unimaginative? Absolutely. But you can understand the logic when United pulled in higher viewing figures for their game against Crawley Town in 2011 than watched Arsenal play Barcelona three days earlier.

The modern-day City do not have the same kind of pull. Newspaper data also shows that they have plenty of ground to make up, comparing the number of website hits a City match would ordinarily attract compared to one featuring United, Liverpool or Arsenal. The drop to that next group down, comprising Chelsea, Real Madrid and Barcelona, is considerable.

These are relatively small matters, however. The bottom line is that success on the pitch has to happen first and providing that it is sustained, the rest falls into place over time. Every league match at the Etihad is a sell-out these days and cup-tie attendances – so poor a few years ago the crowds used televised fixtures to chant their displeasure to the stay-aways – now average above 42,000, an increase of 7%. Plans have already been drawn up to increase the stadium's capacity from 48,000 to 60,000. It is ambitious but the work will not be undertaken unless extensive research confirms it will be worthwhile. For the current campaign, season tickets were sold out within 90 minutes.

A £1bn outlay from Sheikh Mansour will always polarise opinion and it is certainly an unorthodox place of sport when middle-ranking staff are asked to choose between a BMW or Range Rover for a company car (in a different time, it was something small and inexpensive with one strict condition: nothing red).

It is tempting as well to wonder how seriously Uefa have looked at the bloated sponsorship agreement with Etihad Airways, from the Abu Dhabi empire, that has helped City tick the financial fair play boxes. But it was always futile expecting a forensic investigation and before anyone complains too loudly it is also worth remembering the hypocrisies and self-serving interests of the clubs campaigning to Uefa for those regulations. They wanted a closed shop. What they got was a club living up to Lonely Planet's description of Manchester as having a "champagne-for-breakfast insouciance and almost giddy attitude."

That club, in fairness, have clearly had enough of being taken for a ride as potential sellers put on a premium for prospective signings, as Porto can now testify after bumping up the price for Fernando and Eliaquim Mangala. A few years ago, City would have signed the cheque. Nowadays, they bend to nobody. It is the big club's mentality and Manchester's changing skyline just adds to the sense of a club coming into their time. If they can hold off Chelsea, Arsenal and everyone else this season it is going to be difficult, in the extreme, to shift them from the top.

Daniel Taylor from The Guardian - damn they really love us at the moment don't they!?

We've come so far, but this is only the beginning. I can't wait until that campus is complete, quite amazing considering 5 years ago it was just barren wasteland.

 

[wedward]

And them being a more attractive club in the capital of his home country, being the best team in the world, under the best manager in the world who also has a reputation for coaching young players to fulfil their potential

Where does he get in that team? He is 20. He needs to play.

He wanted to come to Arsenal now. I don't see why that would change in the summer. Unless they offer more money. It's not like he was unaware that Bayern want him in the summer.

 

[GQman2121]

St. Etienne are beasting on the ball preventing me chance to watch Zouma defend.

 

[madmackem]

All aboard the Gus bus wooooot wooooot.