Following up on our coverage of the Manchester United vs Europe XI match on 13th March, there is now confirmation of four Barcelona players lining up to face Manchester United as part of the Europe XI squad.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 8 comments
Guardian writer Matt Scott talks about a ‘failure’ of Manchester United’s youth policy. It’s a clever piece and an excellent example of how you can use stats out of context to justify just about any point of view.
Matt’s overenthusiastic efforts apart, I think it’s a good subject to discuss here - which of Arsenal (Wenger) and Manchester United (Ferguson) have a better youth policy, and more importantly, what criteria do we use to judge it?
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 40 comments
I’m hoping to get a good discussion going on the chances of Eto’o going to each club - please let everyone know what you think in the comments section at the end of this article.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 56 comments
Today’s news has Ferguson saying that he’s at Manchester United for at least another 2 years.
Of course, nothing is at it seems - what Ferguson really wants is a Champions League win - for a manager of his stature and longevity one sole win is not good enough, nor would it be the same with winning it with any other club (although where would Ferguson go, if he chose not to retire from football but left Manchester United?).
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 6 comments
Manchester United had a fantastic start to the game, with Heinze scoring what can be called a lucky goal and Saha and Solskjaer nipping in with smash & grab goals, both well taken and owing a lot to the initial passes (Ferdinand and Richardson, respectively).
For a second-string team (Only Rio and VDS (and Saha, if Larsson is not around) would make the first team), it wasn’t a bad start.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 3 comments
In Roy Keane’s first season as manager he now has the opportunity to get Sunderland promoted - after he took over the team in late August from Chairman Niall Quinn - following four successive league defeats.
Written by Ed Harrison. 9 comments
Newcastle lost a chance to push for a top six finish on Sunday when they went down 1-0 to Wigan in what has to be a very disappointing result for Newcastle fans.
Written by Ed Harrison. 4 comments
The callow officiousness with which the FA deals with ‘misconduct’ is now as predictable as it is depressing.
They’ve got it wrong again, this time even after reviewing match evidence. Tellingly, they’ve found a way to back the ref and put it all on the clubs, when both players and refs were at fault.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 12 comments
DaMarcus Beasley - USA international and Manchester City winger - is seen in this video doing something players have always been suspected of doing.
We’ve found proof, finally, but I’m not sure it was worth it.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 8 comments
Whenever I’ve seen pictures shown by newspapers, it always crosses my mind that as controllers of what we see, read and hear (and thus influencing what we think), the media has tremendous power in shaping public opinion and even more responsibility in providing us with a complete picture.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. Leave a response
I’m a Manchester United fan but I absolutely love Mourinho. Not because he’s a brilliant manager - he’s not - but because he gets on everyone’s nerves by spouting absurdly biased views and still manages to get the best out of his players.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 6 comments
There are some players who habitually dive and then get called on it - Cristiano Ronaldo, Arjen Robben, Robin van Persie, to name a few.
There are others who are saints but resort to diving at their most desperate hour - Thierry Henry and David Beckham.
And then there are those who spit on their status as heroes and respected sportsmen and resort to diving every now and then. These are heroes who unite opposing fans, who are self-righteous to a fault and preach about fair play and honesty.
These are people like Steven Gerrard.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 21 comments
The game against Sheffield United promised to be memorable for several reasons - the reverse fixture had been Liverpool’s first league game of this season, one that they only salvaged after a dive from Gerrard and a penalty from Robbie Fowler.
Sheffield United believed that they had the measure of this Liverpool squad, and expected, at the very least, to put up a good fight.
Imagine their surprise and disappointment when they were meted out the same treatment, this time two penalties in four minutes.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 2 comments
A couple of things to add from yesterday:
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 17 comments
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 4 comments
Read match analysis of the Tottenham v Bolton game.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the Tottenham players who would get starting berths in the top four sides. Lennon, King, Berbatov and Keane were the only four Tottenham players that I thought even stood a chance.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 8 comments
Update #1: Terry returned to the Millennium Stadium an hour after being carried off the ground on a stretcher to celebrate the cup win with his teammates. Brave man, but I hope Chelsea give him a rest for a while.
For a discussion of the match (including the fight at the end), read Chelsea 2-1 Arsenal - Fabregas and Lampard deserved red cards.
For videos of the 3 goals, read Chelsea 2-1 Arsenal - Goal videos.
Now as far as we know, Terry’s off to the hospital, he’s conscious and hopefully he’s alright. Diaby’s foot hit him flush in the face and the way he fell and the way his head bounced off the ground, it was clear that he had been immediately knocked out.
Hopefully it’s just a concussion and does not require anything serious. The neck brace, as far as I know, was for precaution and there isn’t any real damage incurred in that area, which is a relief.
Will be updating this page as soon as more news comes in.
For now, here’s the video:
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 5 comments
Also see the Chelsea v Arsenal match discussion (including discussion of main incidents)
The goals will be an afterthought tomorrow morning when Arsenal and Chelsea fans wake up and reflect on today’s final. Terry’s injury should take the headlines and I hope he gets well soon, but what will be talked about for far longer than is necessary is the scuffle near the end of the game.
Shameful, pointless and a sight that’s becoming too common in football now.
On to the goals.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. One comment
First off, a bit about the match - tribute to Arsenal’s young Gunners for the way they played today - fantastic stuff. Chelsea won at the end, but they were assisted by an offside goal and what Arsenal fans will politely call blood money. It could have been very different had a few shots come off the bar or if the ref (and linesman) had made calls differently, but that’s what we had.
A cracking final - the football was fitting for the grand stage.
Now to the two main incidents.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 28 comments
The Weekly Roundup is back! WR brings you the top stories from the last week - today’s report covers the Champions League midweek fixtures, the weekend’s Premiership fixtures and more.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. Leave a response
Two quality performances for Real Madrid (with a red card to spice things up) and already tongues are wagging about Beckham’s potential return to the England squad.
But there’s more than just the tie in Israel and Euro 2008 qualification at stake, even if its the most important thing in England’s calendar right now.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. One comment
Manchester United left it late to score the winning goal in a a relatively tough match today - Fulham played narrow and kept the pressure up but their defending was woeful and they were lucky that Manchester United’s offensive play was not as incisive as it could have been.
Scroll down to see the goals below after the match thoughts section.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 3 comments
Editor’s note: The following was posted by Jason Barr in the comments section of our “Should Lille be ejected from the Champions League” article. It is reprinted here with Jason’s permission.
I was in France with Man Utd Travel of whom I always do my trips abroad with and had a genuine match ticket presented to me at the airport from a Man Utd Official.
Me and my friends approached the ground with about 30 minutes to spare before kick off, on approaching the 1st gate we were made to wait 10 minutes or so in which a large crowd was building. I thought it was odd as we were then let through to walk down an alleyway alongside the train tracks that 2 people could just about walk down shoulder to shoulder and not thousands of fans, it didn’t even look like part of the infrastructure of the stadium and that we were just being led away from the ground.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 2 comments
Newcastle United made it through to the last 16 of the EUFA cup on Thursday with a hard fought 1-0 win over Zulte-Waregem to win the tie 4-1 overall.
Written by Ed Harrison. Leave a response
Reading about Reyes bitch about Capello’s defensive tactics, two things came to mind:
1) Reyes should learn to keep his mouth shut - all you have to do is wave a mic in front of him and he starts talking nonsense. Last year it was about leaving Madrid, and now he’s complaining about Real Madrid not playing to ‘his’ strengths.
2) Do football players have any concept of what tactics are, or are most of them totally clueless and just do what the manager tells them to do? Certainly strikers are more instinctive than the rest, but in general, how many of our heroes think about their football and not just themselves?
Written by Ahmed Bilal. Leave a response
As I’ve written earlier, I think Chelsea’s move to put video footage on YouTube is a welcome step. The big question after that was though, if other clubs would follow suit.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. Leave a response
This is a rant - as such it is personal and one-sided. I still like Saha for the same qualities that make him a United darling, and I’m partial to Evra too. However, that should have no bearing on our assessment of players.
Flair has won more fans than sheer effectiveness has - just ask Arsenal. You can have too much of flair, and it becomes showboating, but you can never have enough effectiveness.
And besides, flair never won a football game, goals do. And after all the runs and dribbling and movement off the ball and the pretty passing and the overzealous tackling has been done and dusted with, if you can’t block goals at one end and put them away at the other, you will still lose.
But try telling the fans that, and you’ll get the usual “Beautiful football is great to watch” routine.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 16 comments
As I wrote yesterday, I don’t want to meet the prima donnas in football - I want to meet real people, players that I could sit and chat with, and get to like as actual people and not as footballers.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 4 comments
John Terry needed more time off after his surgery, but for Chelsea’s sake he had to return. That move has spectacularly backfired, with Terry injured again and out for 6 weeks.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 4 comments
Over at BlogFC I asked a question that I’ve been asking myself for some time now:
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 2 comments
