capriccioso

It's because he took a stupid run up.

Let them press. We'll play Ramires up front and hoof it up to him. His speed will exploit the gaps they leave behind.

I blame BluesMaster. He has a twitter account, he probably started the rumour. Look at him coming in here now acting all innocent..

That's what I thought. Better show some respect around here

I DOUBT YOU ALRIGHT! HE WAS SUBBED OFF AT HALF TIME ALONG WITH 3-4 OTHER PLAYERS.

Impossibru. Japan's last international was 3 days ago and their next is in 2 days time. If it happened in the last match it would have filtered through in the media in the space of a few minutes. Edit: My apologies, the Japanese FA Website lied to me. They only show official fixtures, not friendlies.

20 years? 8 million as a total sum of income earned in a lifetime is beyond what 99% of humans will ever earn. He's earning more in a year than pretty much everybody can in their entire lives. Sports stars are massively overpaid.

307,000+ paid members indicates that they have a massive fanbase. The fact that they compete in so many more sports would mean they have far more fans than the average British club which focuses only on football. They have the highest average attendance in Turkey despite having only the 2nd largest stadium. The population of Turkey is 74 million. Assuming there are about 40 million football fans in Turkey, they should comfortably have around 15 million fans domestically and perhaps another 5 million across the world.

(Re-)Sign Salomon Kalou on a 10 year contract in January. The Great One proceeds to score 3 goals a game for 10 seasons, winning 7 trophies per season every season, and is confirmed as the best player of all time.

How many came on? A couple of hundred at the most? There are tens of millions of Fener fans in Turkey and around the world, you can't make such a sweeping generalisation.

The Swiss Ramble is a top notch website. I don't think you'll find anyone not liking it. FFP is a smokescreen. It will be selectively enforced. UEFA want the big clubs to stay at the top of the game, it brings in far more TV money for them. No one wants to watch a CL final between Anzhi Makachkala and Paris St Germain. Most will be interested in a Manchester United vs Real Madrid CL final. And that's what this regulation is essentially about, shutting the lid on anyone that won't be commercially viable for UEFA. Even if I am being overly cynical and UEFA aren't obsessed with making as much money as possible off CL TV rights and they are genuinely concerned about the state of football's finances; it won't matter one iota. How hard would it be for an owner to pay transfer fees/player wages under the table? Everyone wins. The chairman from the other club can pocket that under-the-table transfer fee for himself and no one will be any the wiser. The player will have additional income that won't get taxed. The chairman of the buying club gets to fund his project without the nosey parkers at UEFA finding out. It will lead to an Omertà within the sport, no one will ever snitch as long as everyone's getting rich. And if something does go awry, and the accountants do find out something's going on, it'll be no skin off the nose of anyone involved to slip the official responsible a couple of hundred thousand to buy his silence. Other sports are littered with corruption at every level, we know for a fact that FIFA is corrupt, it is no stretch of the imagination to assume the same about UEFA.

I do doubt his work ethic on the pitch a little bit. He doesn't strike me as the type to chase down a player. Off the pitch, his work ethic is perfect. Never drinks, rarely gets involved in scandals (apart from that crashed car I can't remember anything else), works hard in training.. he would set a great example for some youngsters.

I don't think you'll get away with playing 3 at the back if we're going to be playing with 2 wingers. If they stay wide then that could cause a lot of problems. I think you'll need a back 4 rather than 3 just to provide defensive solidity on the flanks.

This really is excellent news. He is comfortably the best player the reserve/youth set-up has produced in ages. Come off it, neither Sinclair nor Borini are good enough to be starting regularly for a CL knockout stage level club.

He's got a point. Fener are massive in Turkey. They probably have more domestic fans than Chelsea and Liverpool combined.

We can never get true 'revenge'. For one thing, it's not like they paid off the ref, Abidal was sent off in acrimonious scenes, a decision as bad as any of the 4-5 penalties not awarded. I guess they'll never feel the pain we felt until they're denied in stoppage time after having a host of strong penalty shouts. Even then its not something I would like to wish on anybody... well maybe Liverpool or Spurs. Ovrebo hurt me more than Moscow. At least in Moscow there was no third party that denied us victory, we were responsible for our own fate through our own bad luck. I don't want other football fans to go through that, its one of the most painful experiences I've had as a result of sport.

Corinthians aren't a rabble like Santos, they're a disciplined, organised team with plenty of flair going forward as well. If we play like we have done at times this season (diabolically shit), they'll stuff us easily.

Link or GTFO. Actually it was intended for sports like rugby. There's only one other cycling fan on here, it would be pointless to discuss it even in a general sport thread. If I wanted to discuss it at length I could go on the CyclingNews forum (which, for the record, is far more active than any football forum I've seen, so there goes your "no one likes it" idea), but I don't, so I won't.

Should we have a general sport thread in the Other Sports section? Reserved for sports that aren't followed well enough to deserve their own thread.

What are they up to here? Manchester United want to limit Manchester City's spending That will leave English clubs less competitive in the transfer market than they are currently, what with the 20% tax rate offered in Spain.

As Jose once said: "Sometimes you see beautiful people with no brains. Sometimes you have ugly people who are intelligent, like scientists. Our pitch is a bit like that. From the top it's a disgrace but the ball rolls at normal speed." As long as its not sand the playing surface shouldn't really matter.

They are nothing to worry about in the CL and never will be. Why? Russian teams are utter dogshit away from home, and they can sign as many mercenaries as they like, but that's not going to change. Beyond that, the place will never be a popular destination for the Crème de la Crème of football, and will instead attract at best second tier players like Hulk. I follow Russian football, albeit vaguely. My favourite club is Luch-Energiya Vladivostok, who I dearly hope will one day qualify for the Champions League group stages, and draw a team from Portugal. 13,000 km away trip Lol they have the largest Neo-Nazi population on the planet. Something around half a million. The collapse of the Soviet Union was the worst thing to happen to the country in that regard. The 'communist' government, for all their massive faults, at least worked tirelessly to stamp out any fascist movement amongst the people, and Neo-Nazism would never have gained currency in Russia had we still had a Soviet government.

Brad Friedel is a top notch keeper, and he has bags of experience. He's better than quite a few first choice keepers at 'big' clubs, such as Valdes, Reina, Abiatti, Handanovic, to name a few. It's not like he's playing Ross Turnbull in goal while Lloris sits on the bench... Friedel is talented, and while Lloris is better than him, its not a crime to the magnitude that many are suggesting.

Ivanovic

This is idiocy. Only a madman would try to play out 4 months with just 4 centre midfielders. This means we're not going to play 4-3-3 until January at least.