that made me laugh. yeh they get the results but they hardly 'plough.' i mean saying that suggests that Leeds are half decent, and thy are certainly not that. how many 1-0's have they had this season? how many winning goals have they scored 70+ mins into the game? from what i've heard/ seen Leeds have just ground out results and done nothing specail. and taking all in account, they look distinctly average in League One to be quite honest. cant wait for boxing day - Hartlepool United are going to beat Leeds hands down. and if they dont its a travisty. talking about Pools, what happened on saturday? we have some rotten luck, thats all i can say. we out played Brighton first half, and created some chances, but went behind after an awful own goal by out rock and captain Mikey Nelson who plays in the center of defence. bad luck example number 1. all the first half Brighton where all over us, putting in bad challenges, giving away free kicks and knocking lumps out of our mid field. leading with the elbow on headers (that type of thing) to be fair they pushed the referee and see how far they could get. once one of their players got a sturn talking too it seemed to die down a little. no further action taken, a few yellow cards should have been shown if you ask me. bad luck example 2. second half began just as the first did. Brighton where very physical and frustrated us. Willie Boland our CM just lashed out, after he was on the recieving end off yet another bad challenge he sttod up and kicked one off their players. straight red. i agree with the ref but it should have never got to that stage. bad luck example number 3. so we had to play near enough 40 mins with only 10 men with us being a man down we still dominated for long spells in the game. and right at the death we got a penalty for a hand ball in the box. and i thought great, 1-1, a fair result. 86th min Barker slotted it away then in the 93rd min Brighton went on and scored to make it 1-2. it was one of of only 4/5 chances they had in the entire second period. bad luck example number 4. im not bias, im just telling you how it is. but if Pools want to get the results they want, they should tighten up their defence and score more, i mean we have the chances but no one who can take it upon themselves and put a boot to it. hard lines Pools oh and another thing - before the match on saturday we had a minutes silence for the tragic death of your up and coming star to be, Michael Maidens. i'd say 8 out of the 11 players had tears in their eyes, and two in particular James Brown and Garry Liddle broke down. non of the players wanted to play this weekend.. .. to make matters worse the bastard Brighton player who scored their winner ran up to the Mill House stand (the one which has the most home fans in) and started dancing, doing the dance from the movie 'grease' for around 30 seconds. that doesnt souns like a long time but see how normal celebrations last, and you'll see that he is bang outta order. now even if i wasnt an avid Pools fan i'd say that was well outta line. he should of known better esp in the circumstances.. shame on him. all in all, a bad weekend for Hartlepool
well all i can say is that we need that bit of luck now and then, and believe me after continually collasping for the past three/four years you gotta be satisfied with this unbeaten run considering how shit we've had it... anyway, the Arsenal match against Liverpool was gut wrenchng in the last few minutes! pity Bendtner couldnt put away that very last chance...
Surely we can't screw up against Derby. I mean, I have more respect for them than most but... they are basically this year's Watford. Please Martin, drop Knight and bring in Davies at right back.
Derby are much worse than Watford. I can only remember Watford getting beat 4-0 tops. Anyway, my predictions this weekend. Arsenal v Man Utd | 1-1 Aston Villa v Derby County | 3-0 Everton v Birmingham | 3-1 Wigan Athletic v Chelsea | 0-2 Fulham v Reading | 1-2 Middlesbrough v Tottenham | 0-2 Newcastle v Portsmouth | 2-1 Blackburn v Liverpool | 2-0 West Ham vs Bolton | 3-1 Blackburn have looked good of late, Liverpool quite the opposite so I'm going with a Blackburn win. Ewood is always a tough place to go. 1-1 against Arsenal is just me being too scared to predict a result. Can't wait for the game mind.
By comparing Derby to Watford I meant that neither team is/was very good except for maybe four players, but both are honest, both have decent managers and both will benefit from going straight back down and being able to build teams that will actually be considered favourites for promotion this time, and therefore having better squads for if they're promoted. Even then it could be said that Derby are even worse defensively while having much better attacking options. I mean Earnshaw, Miller and Barnes isn't that bad for a team that's bottom of the table or even for most of the Premiership up until about the top 8.
2-2 as I predicted. Fair result. No one was particularly oustanding today but what I will say is that Wenger made a mistake by subbing off Eboue. Evra was a constant attacking threat and Eboue has the defensive mind to help deal with him and was doing a great job however when we was taken off no one tracked Evra and United scored on the break. I think for large parts of the game United played rather negative football but a draw is fine with me to be honest because we still have a game in hand.
Nancy 1 - 0 Bordeaux Auxerre 0 - 1 Lille Lyon 2 - 0 Valenciennes Marseille 0 - 0 Lorient Nice 0 - 0 Sochaux Rennes 0 - 1 Monaco Strasbourg 1 - 2 Paris SG Finally Lille won again although Kluivert isn't really beeing brilliant...
I think Martin O'Neill needs to take a hint and realise we're no good playing his idea of 4-3-3 against teams we should really beating. Petrov has had two good games in a row now though which, by his own standards, is an amazing run of form.
Yeah but he has had a year to get over that. In fact his problem is probably the opposite as he doesn't seem very confident with the ball usually.
Wow. That Liverpool victory was incredible... All my mates were going mental Is 8-0 a Champions League record?
If I were Besiktas's manager I would have fired the defence and keeper. Liverpool scored a champions league record tonight at their expence.