do or die

good.

FTN wrote:good.

Indeed. England's future number one in fine form during the shootout there.

jerseyhoya wrote:Sir Alex is angry.

That Houston-Colorado game was brutal, but KC-Chicago last night was great

Here's a fan's p.o.v. of Edu's goal against Hibs this weekend:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4EFXhtGqCo[/youtube]
Not a beautiful goal, but fun to watch from this perspective.

I'm trying to get a feel for what the level of play is in the SPL. Here's my understanding, someone correct me:

Tier 1: Celtic, Rangers - basically comparable to Everton/Villa in that they're not as good as the Big 4, but would compete for UEFA/Europa year in year out.

Tier 2: Teams 3-6 in the SPL (among them usually Hearts and Motherwell?) who would probably not get relegated in the EPL, but would not do much more.

Tier 3: Everyone else... really no better than the English Championship teams.


Also, this weekend I became convinced that the current lack of a salary cap is absurd in European Soccer. I've always been turned off by the idea that only 4 teams may finish in the Big 4 in English Soccer without it being a minor miracle. But I accepted that basically because I think Salary Caps aren't fair.

However, the fact that Man U could throw a JV team out in the semifinals of the FA cup against the 6th best team in the league and take it to penalties is shameful. I don't blame them for not taking it seriously, what I'm angry about is that their JV team could be so competitive. The Yankees subs are not going to do all that great against the Toronto Blue Jays yet Man U can win all sorts of competitions with their B team. That's too much talent and it makes it no fun.

Point 2 was Fulham fan jp_chips basically hoping NOT to make the Europa league next year while sitting in 8th place. What? You play these games, and we support the teams, so that they might get over the hump and get into Europa and the Champions League, and then when you're on the precipice of doing so, you say, no, no thanks, because our squad's too thin. And he's not the first fan to say such a thing. That's crazy to me (the situation, not Chips sentiment). But the point is, all of us non Big 4 fans (I'm not a fan of Fulham per se, just an anybody besides the Big 4 fan) are not hanging around for our health, and something should be done to rectify the issue.

It might have mostly been United's second team, but they used Vidic and Ferdinand. If the Yankees bench players took on the Blue Jays, but got to use CC and Mariano Rivera, they could probably keep it boring and low scoring as well.

This is correct while being mostly besides the point. For that matter, the Blue Jays probly aren't the 6th best team in the league. I mean I know Floppy doesn't see a problem, and I'm not expecting you to actually want to have it fixed (if I was a fan of a Big 4 team, I'd be mostly okay with the status quo, even if I was jealous of Man U), but do you not see a potential issue?

Do you have any suggestion for how it would work? Would you have a salary floor in conjunction with the cap?

I think the situation is completely fucked up but I don't know if there's a fix that would be better. It's ridiculous that only four teams have any shot to win the league on a year to year basis, and this year is the first in a while Liverpool have given it a good run. The problem is this isn't an American sport where there is only one major league, so things like team salary caps, player salary caps and the other methods our leagues use to keep competitive balance can't be implemented as easily.

If the FA or Premier League attempted to cap a team's wage bill, the better players would migrate to La Liga or Serie A. Look at the Bundesliga. It's exciting and competitive right now, and the least commercialized of the four biggest European leagues, but Bayern Munich is having trouble competing in Europe at the moment and no other German teams even made it past the group stages in the Champions League.

So the status quo might stink, but I'm not sure how changing it would work or make things better.

We're missing our captain, you're missing half your first team. Seems like a fair trade.

Much bigger game for us than it is for you since Villa's push for fourth has well and truly died. Arsene should roll over so Fergie has to keep an eye on the league going into the semis.

(I'm nervous as hell already)

No Ade, no RvP.

I think we'll get stuffed.

I'm still steaming about Saturday.

RAWK says this is our team.

Reina
Arbeloa Agger Carra Aurelio
Xabi Masch
Kuyt Benayoun Rieria
Torres

I'm a bundle of nerves at the moment.

i havent even looked at our team sheet. im sure it will be a barrel of laughs

Fabianski Gibbs Sagna Touré Silvestre Nasri Denilson Fabregas Song Arshavin Bendtner

lol, Denilson is apparently undroppable

Im at the gym, tivo'ing the game. But please post updates. I barely even care about this game at this point. On par with the Carling Cup

All us. Few decent chances. Nothing special.

Torres down hurt. Please don't be serious.

Fabianski snuffs out a decent chance by Benayoun. Comes out and barely gets to it. It was still in the box. He had to come out for it.

Arsenal almost spring Arshavin in on Reina. Benayoun just gets there. Would have been bad.