Domestic football - spam version

[Blade]

I'm glad Cardiff got the point. I much prefer a cohesive, complete team of average players over a team that all seem on different wavelength but have a couple of world class players to bail them out.

Yes, I understand how that sounds coming from an Arsenal fan. But we haven't had RVP in over a year, so it's okay...

 

[Dowdsy McDowds]

Yeh a point apiece is fair, although I yelled at Rooney for not trying to score when he was 1 on 1 with Marshall just after Cardiff had got their second.

They'll need to play a hell of a lot better in their next 2 games as Leverkusen in Germany and Spurs after getting a shellacking won't be "gimmes" by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Uncle Sam]

This is how three players keep you afloat when the rest of your team utterly fails to perform:

 

[Miko]

Fucking hell, £100 million spent this year and City only won 6-0. They should feel ashamed!

 

[Lee]

Guess which team I'm laughing at.

 

[Miko]

Leyton Orient

 

[Lee]

Mackems mainly. Hopefully I can laugh at villa tomorrow.

 

[Miko]

Surprised you're not laughing at Spurs, I support them and even I was rolling up

 

[Lee]

Nah I am, great birthday present.

 

[Lee]

Hopefully this is West Broms only win of the week.

 

[Lee]

Decent match actually.

 

[Captain Morgan Freeman]

Lee, what's Santon been like at Newcastle since he moved?

 

[Lee]

He's been great this season but last season he wasn't. He seems more suited to a winger than a defender.

 

[Loveless]

FIFA have properly fucked this World Cup draw up. It's entirely possible that a group of

Brazil
Netherlands
Italy
Ivory Coast

could go alongside a group featuring

Switzerland
Algeria
Iran
Greece.

The whole point of seeding is to avoid stupid groups like this. Don't even get me started on the seeds/world rankings.

 

[Blade]

Almost as ridiculous as Chamakh actually scoring tonight.

 

[Y 2 Jake]

I'd love it if those two groups emerged.

 

[Loveless]

I'd love it if those two groups emerged.

It's enjoyable in the groups stages but it rips the heart out of the knockouts when, instead of getting Portugal Vs Argentina, you end up with Argentina vs Greece. It frustrated me in 2010 when Ivory Coast (in theory the great African hope) got stuck with Portugal and Brazil. A good draw will ideally get the best teams through the groups.

 

[Y 2 Jake]

It's the World Cup. I'm just as interested in Algeria/Poland as I am Brazil/Germany. I feel the same with the domestic cups. Maybe its because I support a team that's not had much success in the 20 odd years I've followed them, so I don't care about the "big matches" as much.

 

[MCMG]

Brazil
Netherlands
Italy
Ivory Coast

could go alongside a group featuring

Switzerland
Algeria
Iran
Greece.

The whole point of seeding is to avoid stupid groups like this. Don't even get me started on the seeds/world rankings.

The rankings are a joke but with the top group at least every match is easy to get excited about. For a group with, lets say, Brazil, Netherlands, Iran and Greece there is only one match that decides the entire group.

 

[Blade]

It's the World Cup. I'm just as interested in Algeria/Poland as I am Brazil/Germany. I feel the same with the domestic cups. Maybe its because I support a team that's not had much success in the 20 odd years I've followed them, so I don't care about the "big matches" as much.

I get this. Because it's the World Cup. It's easy to forget, but each team played 10 or matches in the qualifying stages to get to that point, so I think it feels like a big deal. Maybe it's easier to understand if you're from a lesser country that doesn't get into the World Cup every time.

 

[Alastor]

The best solution is to have less European teams in the World Cup then.

 

[Барбоса]

The best solution is to have less European teams in the World Cup then.

No, the best solution is to rank the teams by how good they actually are rather than the current system that only seems to take into account more recent form, with little regard for who they have played, and is trying to shoehorn lesser teams in for the sake of appearances.

A lot of it just seems so arbitrary and much of it not based in actual reality. Almost every major tournament FIFA seems to go out on a limb with their seeding of one team or another and it would not surprise me to see the likes of Columbia or Switzerland prove that again.

How either of them is ranked above the Netherlands and Italy is beyond me.

 

[Alastor]

Columbia have been decent in recent games. The Swiss probably padded their points by having less high ranking friendlies opponents and benefited from patchy form of the other European teams in friendlies to creep up the rankings.

The issue is a sudden change in format so that the lowest ranking European team isn't automatically placed into the dreaded pot 2 spot. Guess which European team is that?

 

[Blade]

No, the best solution is to rank the teams by how good they actually are rather than the current system that only seems to take into account more recent form, with little regard for who they have played, and is trying to shoehorn lesser teams in for the sake of appearances.

A lot of it just seems so arbitrary and much of it not based in actual reality. Almost every major tournament FIFA seems to go out on a limb with their seeding of one team or another and it would not surprise me to see the likes of Columbia or Switzerland prove that again.

How either of them is ranked above the Netherlands and Italy is beyond me.

Right. You take into account their performance in the World Cup qualifiers, as well as their performance in the last couple of major tournaments. Despite Netherlands' poor showing in the Euros, they were still runners up in the last World Cup, something they could conceivably do again if they get things right this time. But it's just FIFA being FIFA again. No idea what they're doing.

In other news, I got red rep for being a "typical shit arsenal fan." I thought this was the one place where we could talk about football without someone going "U suport a diffrnt team? LOL FAGET!"

Can we keep the children and morons out of here, please?

Also, heh, top of the league.

 

[Барбоса]

Right. You take into account their performance in the World Cup qualifiers, as well as their performance in the last couple of major tournaments. Despite Netherlands' poor showing in the Euros, they were still runners up in the last World Cup, something they could conceivably do again if they get things right this time. But it's just FIFA being FIFA again. No idea what they're doing.

This was what I was getting at. Switzerland did not qualify for either of the last two tournaments and while they finished top of their qualifying group, so did the Netherlands, Italy and England, who were at both the most recent tournaments.

Looking at the other pots you can see what FIFA is trying to do in giving a regional mixture to the groups but it normally just ends up looking like they haven't a clue what they are doing.

Such attempts at regional mix should actually see the removal of rankings all together and just separate the pots by continental group.