capriccioso

There are many brands of eco-friendly economics. Capitalism will crush anything eco-friendly if it's not profitable short term. Capitalists aren't interested in waiting 50, 100 years for their investment to pay off. They want it now.

GET IN BERTO

We need a bully, a thug in midfield. So what if he has no technique? He has more positional discipline than Lampard or Ramires. Everton bought him for 16m and they won't sell him below 25.

Precisely. The idea is to make sure that big clubs dominate the CL and thus, maximise profit for UEFA.

Bump. http://www1.skysport...ason-at-Everton Sign him up. That's virtually a transfer request. 25 million, and that'll be a great deal.

Well, quite a bump, but I'm shocked at what's happened to Adriano. Take a good long look at who Scolari wanted to replace Drogba with.

Hardly, if anything Serie A is getting closer. The last 2 league titles in England have been decided by who was the least shit. Italy meanwhile is improving in leaps and bounds and should the PL continue at current rate, will probably surpass England in 5 or so seasons. Let's have a cursory glance at the major teams in the Premier League: Man United- worst team in 20 years. Man City- should be much better than they are but Mancini is clueless. Chelsea- worst team since Roman took over. Liverpool- worst team since, what, the 60s? Arsenal- worst team since Wenger took over. Spurs- only there because everyone else is shit. Newcastle- ditto. Everton- ditto. Compared with Serie A: Juventus- best team since pre-Calciopoli. AC Milan- declining massively, probably around Newcastle's level now. Inter- slowly improving, but still a pretty average team. Napoli- best team in 2 decades. Udinese- fantastic youth talent coming through, they are at the best they have been for a long time. Lazio- best team since they were the original sugar daddy club in the late 90s. Roma- in Liverpool's boat. Down and staying down. Most of the major teams are improving at various rates, while most of the PL's major teams are declining. Fact: No team in England would have won Serie A 2011/12. Fact: Juventus and AC Milan from last season would have lol'd their way to the PL title.

You know, I've always thought that was a journalist. Not many footballers can articulate their thoughts that well.

He should still easily make it to 35. Doing a van der Sar and going onto 40 isn't possible though Can we bring Bryan English back? He's brilliant with blood spinning, might help with Petr's pain killing for the rest of the season.

I'm giving up on the league and focusing on head-to-head.

I think our current 4-2-3-1 can work if we have the confidence to attack/counter-attack with it. We could do with buying a new centre back in January, we're only running with 3 proper centre backs at the moment and one pseudo-centre back in Ivanovic. Cahill is probably our best, David Luiz I think is only reliable when we explicitly tell him to keep it very simple and Terry is hit and miss these days as well. JT could also do with ditching Umbro boots, they don't seem to make very good studs or he wouldn't be slipping all the time

No, I think I'm being realistic because we are far, far from Mourinho's or Hiddink's day when we actually could show up to anyone who wasn't Barcelona and attack them. We can't do that now because our defence is so unreliable. Some days they'll never concede even if we play for 900 minutes instead of 90, other days they look like holding out for 90 seconds is beyond them.

Yes, I took German for 4 years and I'm considering taking it up again at university next semester. Ah, its coming back to me now. Links- left, recht- right. I misread it as Reich or something

That was my point entirely. We play just like we did last year because we're not good enough to do much more than that against the big teams. Neither 'EUROPEAN CHAMPIONS, BOW DOWN AND RESPECT US NOW' nor the signings of Eden Hazard and Oscar will transform us into some sort of Barcelona, capable of forcing other teams to bus it. At the heart of it all we're still nothing more than a decent (nowhere near the levels of the 'TOP' teams) team propped up by the individual brilliance of a few players.

The key words there were at this point. He's clearly not got the form right now, or he'd be in the team. We're not leaving him out to hide him from Barcelona.

I wouldn't have Ramires anywhere near centre midfield in anything remotely resembling a big game. He can do a job there against the mid table shite, not in the CL. Well, maybe against that Danish team. Its right midfield or right wing for him.

I agree with Joker. Instead of looking for whacked out conspiracy theories, perhaps we should start closer to home and realise he's not good enough at this point? Just because you're a midfielder who came out of La Masia doesn't mean you're Xavi.

That dog The little kid with the Drogba shirt should be advised that what he's doing is illegal in most countries.

Spike probably took it from his beloved Cowboy Bebop

No it isn't! This is it: Alternatively, the Kalou clan consist of 9 sisters, and 2 brothers Bonaventure and Salomon. We could sent out a mixed 11 like this: :D

Torres? A leader? . He's far too meek for the role. Cech should be the leader. At 30 he has a good 6-7 years to go in his career. Assuming Terry is off at 35 and Lampard at the end of this season, Cech will wear the armband for a couple of years before passing it onto someone else, perhaps Cahill or at a stretch, Ivanovic.

From what you and SJ have said it seems like he is actually not all hype (as, say, Kakuta was) and has some substance to him. Why did he leave Man United? Going to Juventus from Man United is a sidewards step, he's neither gone forward or backwards in terms of the status of the club. If he wanted game time he could have gone to a club just below Juve/United's level, to someone like Spurs or Inter. If he wanted to play for a better club his only real choices are Barcelona or Real Madrid. Off topic but I tried to mention you in that post and it didn't work.

The capitalism apologists in this thread should consider that capitalism is unsustainable in the future. It's only survived this long because of the huge expansion of Western monetary investment has given pretty much every capitalist country (aside from the unfortunate few nations in Africa with no resources to offer, thus no incentive for Western entrepreneurs to invest) a huge, one-off spike in living standards, thus eliminating social discontent and making the majority of people believe that capitalism is infallible. As the rest of the developing world catches up, Western living standards will fall as the life we lead now is simply unsustainable once you get 3 or 4 billion other humans having the money to be able to live like us. They will push the earth as far as it can go, by 2100 or so we will be left with next to no new sources of the resources we currently use to exploit. Then the economic debate will turn to how to make the most of an ever-shrinking resources pie, which is why if we permit capitalism to grow unchecked this century as we did the previous two, we'll effectively be writing our own death warrant as a species. The only way we can permit capitalism to maintain its vice-like grip over the planet to proceed is if we start using renewable resources on a broad basis, as soon as possible, while conserving what's left of traditional resources (e.g. oil, coal) until we can find an alternative to them.

@SempreJuve, @, @CHOULO19. Since you three seem to be the biggest followers of Juventus, how do you rate Pogba? Man United fans always thought very highly of him as a great future prospect and were gutted to lose out on him.

Injury/suspension permitting, probably something like this: Ramires ahead of Oscar/Marin/Moses/Sturridge as he provides a great counter attacking threat, can run hard and is decent at marking and tackling. I imagine this is what we'll look like when attacking: And while defending: