As much of the biased Manu-luvvie media sings the praises of the retiring Sir Alex Ferguson, it is worth remembering just how unpleasant and nasty a human being Sir Alex is. No one should forget the bullying and intimidation of officials, the control of the 'free'press and his nasty side in bullying his own players.
It looked like being another Blackburn, although we did not deserve to go behind, the domination in the first half had not been converted into clear cut chances and goals, albeit we did have two decent half chances which were narrowly missed by Giroud and Gervinho. Norwich were pretty well organised on the whole and then took the lead completely against the run of play mid way through the
I was casually reading through the newspapers last weekend when I stumbled upon this interview involving the PL's refereeing chief Mike Riley and fellow referee Martin Atkinson. I was absolutely flabbergasted at some of the ignorance, delusion and complete denial shown by these men. This was especially true as regards the 'respect' or lack of it for officials on the football field.
Sadly this was just what many of us feared. We were not outplayed, far from it, we controlled long periods of the game and dominated possession for the most part, the problem was that we didn't quite have enough cutting edge going forward to turn this into goals, and Tottenham, like many sides in the last few seasons, realised they could kill us on the break, our defensive vulnerability to
Firstly as I know some rather small minded individuals will be reading this and looking for another needless fight, I shall explain myself clearly and simply. Yesterday saw us win a game of football against an Aston Villa side that were on a fairly reasonable run of form. I know it was far from perfect, and yes, several of our recurrent problems, most notably our defensively susceptibility
I had a feeling that we were going to lose, Bayern are simply a fantastic football side, packed full of classy athletes, so cohesive as an attacking and defensive unit, they were simply a class above us on the night. Sometimes one simply has to hold up one's hands and give immense credit to the opposition, and I think last night was one of those nights.
"The stand-side linesman [Beck] didn't give us a thing all day. For me it was a poor performance by him. Why he never saw the penalty kick from Wayne Rooney, some other decisions, we remember him well from his time at the Chelsea game when Drogba was three yards offside and he gave onside." "He had a shocking game.
Ultimately we couldn't recover from a terrible, an utterly terrible, start to the game. Chelsea hammered us for the first twenty minutes and we were lucky that we came in only 2 nil down at half time. Defensively we were shambolic, Bacary Sagna was caught badly out of position for both Chelsea goals, admittedly Diaby's loss of possession for the second was also woeful.
'The one difference between Rafael's handball and Spence's was that Jordan plays for West Ham away against Manchester United and Rafael plays at home at Old Trafford........'It's got to be that simple. Phil Dowd was in the perfect position. Rafael pushes the ball away with his left arm. No penalty. Go to the other end and the ball hits Jordan's hand.
That was more like it, although the game remained on a knife edge for most of the second half, it was as relaxing a 1-0 win as you will see. There was a brief moment in the first half when we could have gone behind, Bartley drifted in behind Per, and hit the bar with a free header, a real let off. However after that scare Swansea created very little, Szczesny was was forced into one decent
Firstly I don't deny we have our problems, of course we do, our squad is not strong enough, we have some gaping holes that need filling in this regard and City's squad is miles ahead of us at the moment. Secondly I don't deny our defending was sloppy for the two first half goals we conceded today. The problem was that Mike Dean killed the game today by a ridiculous decision to send off
I have done some very simple graphs and statistical tests in order to test the theory that the Premier League is becoming increasingly dominated by the rich elite. The first graph above shows the adjusted relative points difference between the top two in the Premier League and the bottom two; by 'adjusting' I have simply zeroed the points to make the graph easier to look at.
The Ferguson influence story is going to run and run, and I thought it was a good time to delve back into the archives to examine some words of theTottenham manager Andre Villas-Boasfrom earlier this year: "'It would be brilliant to be able to talk about this, but I paid a very high fine last season and I don't want to do it again.
The fallout from the Manchester United - Newcastle game continues. Alan Pardew said some very reasonable things in very reasonable fashion including: "I think Mike Dean might feel slightly disappointed he didn't do something about it, I think the pressure that was on him was tough for a referee to take.
How much longer can the pathetic footballing authorities allow this to go on? The disgraceful abuse and intimidation dished out to the match officials yesterday at Old Trafford was typical of the bully who has built his success on fear. Even Gary Lineker commented on Ferguson's disgusting behaviour yesterday, although MOTD stopped short of really dealing with the issue properly.
