cosmicway

I was about to write the same thing. Not much in the penalty area for Chelsea and certainly not tonight (despite the pressure). The referee was a Villa player though.

The disallowed goal decided it in the end.

Willian had no business to do that. Torres did not come to the match.

CFC 1.70 at the bookies - on the low side for drawn first half.

accidental-ineffectual, you don't give anything, in any position in the field

It's going to be the siege of Marsah Matruh second half, 3-0.

that was never handballing. it's not a penalty against a defender and it's not a disallowed goal for the attacker either.

What's the criterion should two teams finish level ?

2-0 against no defense.

Penalty to Hull is not given. Clear case - you don't dive in open goal chance !!!

City down to 10 men. Siege of Troy.

Tottenham was drifting in the bookies yesterday a little before kick off. From 2.30 to 2.55. Why ? They also had it greyed for a while. You could see the prices changing but the submit button was disable. Peculiar.

I put some money on Basel against the Austrians - 0-0. Those entertainers beat us twice ??? Then to even things up, I backed Spurts. Now I expect the police.

Athens - Greece

Firstrow pops thousands of ads, but if you install adbloc + malwarebytes it works smooth. It has a buffer of course (20-30 seconds). I can understand the associations wanting to block it. It's a question of revenue that needs to be resolved but as long as it's there, we take advantage ... What I don't understand is why the horse racing broadcasts are being blocked (and in the case of horse racing, the ban is quite effective too !). Horse racing stands to gain by allowing free broadcasts rather than the opposite. Greek historic radio commentator Giannakakos was a distant cousin of our family. His brother was a high court judge and the man himself was an ardent supporter of Panathinaikos. When I was very small boy we did not have any type of betting -only the so called fleet lottery every Christmans- but on the occasion of a derby match he told me "it's full house and if we had Marakana stadium here it was going to be 200,000 inside - 200,000 left out". So it's the fans that make up football's lot. In the case of horse racing though it's not. It's the betting revenue and so the industry's real interest is to make broadcasting free.

Chelsea appears to have always had a strong contingent of foreign supporters. I don't know why. In my case it was because Chelsea's system always combined the elements of speed and stamina - well nearly always that is. The typical English teams used to compete who will kick the ball higher into the air (and only the historic Liverpool imho was doing that to effect). At the same the typical Latin teams used to compete in slow motion football. Also Chelsea happened to be the stars when live broadcasting was first introduced in my country. Of course I 've been to the bridge several times. Most people support the same team as their dad did. So in GR I support my dad's team AEK of Athens, I think but I 'm not sure we played a friendly once. There was certainly a friendly between CFC and Panathinaikos and the cl clash CFC - Olympiakos Piraeus 5 years ago (0-0 in Piraeus, 3-0 in London). Ah and Chelsea - Aris Salonika in 1970.

Milan went down 4-1. Atletico I think could not afford complacency, so Milan went down despite their early efforts. Kaka missed a good chance in the 1-1 (headed high) then Atletico scored a fluke to make it 2-1. I saw just a little of Bayern v. Arsenal and Arsenal were under siege. I believe the German champions did not exert themselves and they did n't have to. I don't see anything of interest tomorrow either. Maybe Europa league on Thursday, There was Cheltenham also today. Now that needs some long hours of studying. Last year I was very good.

Ch. league 11/03, 18/03 We have four low priced favourites today. Atletico should win. PSG, Bayern, Barcelona look suspect. May fall asleep - some 2-2 draws. Next week Real and Borussia are non events. CFC has to win (or it's 1453 in England this time). In MU-Olympiakos it looks to me like the 3+ MU needs to qualify is a possibility. It's 7/4 though - daylight robbery of a price. Oly lost 3-0 to Panathinaikos, then 2-1 to PAOK in Salonika yesterday and their striker Olaitan fell down with heart problem (medicins ???). * 7/4 is 2.75 in decimal notation.If you dutch the 3-0, 4-1, 4-0, 5-0, 5-1 it works out as 3.84 effectively. So you bet for MU to qualify inside the 90 minutes. Well, you might include the 6-0, 6-1 also if you like. The possibility of 2-0 and extra time makes it 7-4 ? - too low.

When the Iran revolution took place everybody sent congratulations. Greek f.o. minister the historical Evangelos Averoff, pro-American, conservative, was among the first to congratulate. Callaghan also I should think, but I don't remember exactly. Only a handful of British f.o. experts talking to the BBC at the time said "pay attention - this is no innocent affair and danger is in the air". Two years later we had the embassy kidnappings - in which Ahmadinejad is said to have taken a part. If they have nuclear fuel enrichment installation then in that installation the plutonium is separated from the used rods and then employed as bomb material but if their nuclear fuel is processed elsewhere then they cannot have it. But when they use their nuclear plants to make the fuel rods plutonium-rich, the satelittes can spot it with infrared photography as the temperature is different in the vicinity of a plant operating normally to that in a plant operating plutonium cycle. The nuclear club has a few unwelcome members. Let's call "members par excellence" the original four, but then China, Pakistan, Israel and South Africa in the days of apartheid were not so welcome. I don't really fancy Iranians if get the bomb to start bombing other places though. Under the circumstances, peace looks utopian but war is also utopian because nobody wins. The only solution is if the peoples to become friends. Then the governments can be convinced to abandon hostile attitudes.

This one is from the time Hyde Park was a flower pot, but you probably don't know it: Seamus and Paddy go to the Vatican for pilgrimage. They go to the churches make their prayers and as they are looking around in admiration a cardinal approaches them and says "I undestood you two are Irish, I 'm Irish too and I love the old country so I 'm going to tell you a secret so we can make some money", "the pope is dead but there is disagreement among the cardinals over who is going to be the next one, so we are not announcing it", "we expect to settle that and make the announcement next week", "as we are not allowed to bet, you two are chosen to do the betting on pope's date of death and then you cut me a small piece of the action - for the church of course". Seamus and Paddy look one another in disbelief and say "ok, cardinal, it's a deal". The next day they depart for Ireland and early the following week Vatican makes the announcement of pope's death. Two days pass, but our cardinal has no news from the two Irishmen. Two more days, nothing ! So the cardinal in dismay phones Seamus in Dublin to find out what's going on. A woman's voice in apparent distress answers the call. She says "hello, this is misses Seamus, sob, sob". The cardinal replies "listen here my good lady, I am the cardinal, I made a deal with your husband and I want to find out what in heaven's name is going on". At this misses Seamus bursts into tears "oooh, my poor Seamus he is in hospital with sedatives three days now, it's about the bet is n't it ?". "Yes" says the cardinal, "what happened ?" "Sob, sob, sob" replies misses Seamus "he placed it but made it into a double with Real Madrid and Real Madrid drew" !

Nacho Scoco in Sunderland. Great player. After Hull missed the penalty, I feel Sunderland will win this.

I saw Villa in their match against Everton at Goodison. Although went 1-0 up they looked losers all the way - final result 2-1 to Everton. Chelsea's form peaked in the match against City (1-0, could have been 3-0). I don't believe in the "cushion theory" because City are well equipped to handle their three matches in hand. In case we finish level who wins the title ? What is the criterion ?

you think champions league is a write off ?

Without the Calamity Jane goal it was going to end 1-1.

Some of you like maths here ? What is the best football rating system in the world ? I know of elo ratings. Those are compiled for national teams and also for clubs. Top of the nations list is currently Brazil with 2113 while England stands in an unflattering 1909. Greece at 1790. In the clubs, Bayern Munich top the lists with 2116 while Chelsea are at 1922. I have a suspicion the club ratings are less reliable than the national teams ratings. I used the match data and elo ratings in the mathmatical analysis site zunzun.com and worked out formulas for the 90 minute result probabilities when the difference in elo ratings is given (as the elos site does not give you the formula). The win-lose probabilities based on elo ratings had been worked out for chess and you can find them in various sites but not football. Also FIFA have a new scale of their own but it's uncalibrated. The old FIFA scale was unbalanced. USA was near top, but their opponents were Canada-Virgin Islands and other weakies.