Sharpys top lip
Player Valuation: £60m
Have you read this fukkin shiite!!!!:angry: :angry: :angry:
How can this be put on chelseas o/s
This shiit makes me so angry, who the fukk does this cuunt think he is. The soft cockney wankk shaft. Hope this Tw@t has a nasty car crash tonight.....:angry: :angry:
Wed, 9th Jan 2008
A cup tie with a twist after 90 minutes and a controversial red card but a cup tie not yet over. It has columnist and supporter Giles Smith thinking hard.
I've often thought that benefits might follow from rethinking the rules surrounding two-leg cup ties. Let's face it, a completely needless game of football can be pretty irksome, and two-leg ties do often throw up a needless second leg - in cases where one side has opened up a massive lead after the first leg, for example, or where a team's chances of turning the tie around seem, for any of a number of plausible reasons, remote.
The matter wouldn't arise, though, if the second leg were declared optional. Obviously, if the score was level after the first match, both teams would want to go ahead with the second match and seek an outcome. But what could be valuable is if the team trailing after the first leg were given the choice - whether to proceed with the second leg or whether to call it a day instead and bow out after 90 minutes, leaving the other side to go through.
Bingo: no more tiresome second leg formalities.
It's a scenario that, one feels, could really have favoured Everton last night. As the whistle blew on the gutsiest and most enthralling Chelsea performance of the season so far, Everton's officials would have had the statutory two-minute grace period in which to discuss whether to exercise their option on a second leg or not.
And almost certainly, they would have emerged from their meeting and said, 'You know, we were played off the park for the best part of an hour tonight - made to look utterly League One by a side supposedly well below full strength. And then, of course, fate played into our hands when the referee sent off one of your players for committing a one-footed sliding tackle which made no contact with our player at all.
'But even then we didn't have the wherewithal to capitalise, and the sight of our players pressed back into their own half for the last quarter of an hour by a team reduced to 10 men, has left us, inevitably, thoroughly demoralised and uncertain about ourselves. So, all things considered, we'll leave it there, I think.'
And then they could have climbed on their bus and gone away for ever. Especially Phil Neville.
As it is, the tiresome, hidebound regulations dictate that we'll have to do it all again at Goodison in a fortnight - a prospect which Everton, in their fresh and stinging humiliation, will greet about as enthusiastically as an outbreak of corns. 'If we couldn't beat Chelsea then,' they'll be thinking, 'when fortune smiled on us so favourably, when will we ever beat them?'
What a great performance that was, though - worthy of being regarded as a self-contained event in itself, rather than merely as episode one in a two-parter. Half our players may be in the sick room or on a plane to Africa, but the side has rarely looked more sparky, with pace and strength all over the place and Michael Ballack utterly imperious. When the second half started, it seemed only a matter of time before we established the kind of lead that really would have made the second leg redundant.
But then came the extraordinary and pivotal Mikel incident. One was aware of the practice adopted by some teams (though not Chelsea) of fielding an under-strength side for Carling Cup ties. What one hadn't fully appreciated before last night was that the organisers occasionally use the Carling to field a weakened refereeing team. At any rate, last night saw Peter Walton get a rare run-out, with Mike Riley left on the bench.
Now, obviously it's nice to see some of the squad men given a chance to impress, but you would have to say that this time the experiment badly backfired, with the referee looking well out his depth a lot of the time. A straight red for a one-footed tackle? Clearly the clampdown on going in with both feet has moved on to an altogether new level in the mind of Mr Walton. Heaven knows what Mikel would have got if his boot had actually touched Neville in any way. Probation, probably, and a leg tag.
Neville's conduct in rolling about like he'd just been harpooned, incidentally, was all of a piece with his behaviour in the first half, when he limped away from his own foul challenge on Malouda in the hope of dissuading the referee from carding him, only to stop limping the moment the card was produced. Lovely little player and one who can always guarantee a fond welcome at the Bridge.
Still, the sight of Shaun Wright-Phillips in the final seconds, rising like Tore Andre Flo at the rear post, will live far longer in the memory than those sordid and misguided moments. Was ever a footballer more misunderstood? We thought he was there to bring mayhem down the wings with the ball at his feet. In fact, it turns out he's at his most deadly when getting on the end of a high ball into the box.
I was thinking we were going to miss Didier Drogba badly over the next month. After last night, I'm not sure. Actually, after last night, I'm not sure what I'm sure about.
If we needed any more insentive to tw@t these horrid bastards....there it was
COYB
How can this be put on chelseas o/s
This shiit makes me so angry, who the fukk does this cuunt think he is. The soft cockney wankk shaft. Hope this Tw@t has a nasty car crash tonight.....:angry: :angry:
Wed, 9th Jan 2008
A cup tie with a twist after 90 minutes and a controversial red card but a cup tie not yet over. It has columnist and supporter Giles Smith thinking hard.
I've often thought that benefits might follow from rethinking the rules surrounding two-leg cup ties. Let's face it, a completely needless game of football can be pretty irksome, and two-leg ties do often throw up a needless second leg - in cases where one side has opened up a massive lead after the first leg, for example, or where a team's chances of turning the tie around seem, for any of a number of plausible reasons, remote.
The matter wouldn't arise, though, if the second leg were declared optional. Obviously, if the score was level after the first match, both teams would want to go ahead with the second match and seek an outcome. But what could be valuable is if the team trailing after the first leg were given the choice - whether to proceed with the second leg or whether to call it a day instead and bow out after 90 minutes, leaving the other side to go through.
Bingo: no more tiresome second leg formalities.
It's a scenario that, one feels, could really have favoured Everton last night. As the whistle blew on the gutsiest and most enthralling Chelsea performance of the season so far, Everton's officials would have had the statutory two-minute grace period in which to discuss whether to exercise their option on a second leg or not.
And almost certainly, they would have emerged from their meeting and said, 'You know, we were played off the park for the best part of an hour tonight - made to look utterly League One by a side supposedly well below full strength. And then, of course, fate played into our hands when the referee sent off one of your players for committing a one-footed sliding tackle which made no contact with our player at all.
'But even then we didn't have the wherewithal to capitalise, and the sight of our players pressed back into their own half for the last quarter of an hour by a team reduced to 10 men, has left us, inevitably, thoroughly demoralised and uncertain about ourselves. So, all things considered, we'll leave it there, I think.'
And then they could have climbed on their bus and gone away for ever. Especially Phil Neville.
As it is, the tiresome, hidebound regulations dictate that we'll have to do it all again at Goodison in a fortnight - a prospect which Everton, in their fresh and stinging humiliation, will greet about as enthusiastically as an outbreak of corns. 'If we couldn't beat Chelsea then,' they'll be thinking, 'when fortune smiled on us so favourably, when will we ever beat them?'
What a great performance that was, though - worthy of being regarded as a self-contained event in itself, rather than merely as episode one in a two-parter. Half our players may be in the sick room or on a plane to Africa, but the side has rarely looked more sparky, with pace and strength all over the place and Michael Ballack utterly imperious. When the second half started, it seemed only a matter of time before we established the kind of lead that really would have made the second leg redundant.
But then came the extraordinary and pivotal Mikel incident. One was aware of the practice adopted by some teams (though not Chelsea) of fielding an under-strength side for Carling Cup ties. What one hadn't fully appreciated before last night was that the organisers occasionally use the Carling to field a weakened refereeing team. At any rate, last night saw Peter Walton get a rare run-out, with Mike Riley left on the bench.
Now, obviously it's nice to see some of the squad men given a chance to impress, but you would have to say that this time the experiment badly backfired, with the referee looking well out his depth a lot of the time. A straight red for a one-footed tackle? Clearly the clampdown on going in with both feet has moved on to an altogether new level in the mind of Mr Walton. Heaven knows what Mikel would have got if his boot had actually touched Neville in any way. Probation, probably, and a leg tag.
Neville's conduct in rolling about like he'd just been harpooned, incidentally, was all of a piece with his behaviour in the first half, when he limped away from his own foul challenge on Malouda in the hope of dissuading the referee from carding him, only to stop limping the moment the card was produced. Lovely little player and one who can always guarantee a fond welcome at the Bridge.
Still, the sight of Shaun Wright-Phillips in the final seconds, rising like Tore Andre Flo at the rear post, will live far longer in the memory than those sordid and misguided moments. Was ever a footballer more misunderstood? We thought he was there to bring mayhem down the wings with the ball at his feet. In fact, it turns out he's at his most deadly when getting on the end of a high ball into the box.
I was thinking we were going to miss Didier Drogba badly over the next month. After last night, I'm not sure. Actually, after last night, I'm not sure what I'm sure about.
If we needed any more insentive to tw@t these horrid bastards....there it was
COYB