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2017/18 Football Season Thread


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18 hours ago, Soda Jerk said:

I thought that cheating lark turned out to be nonsense? Not that I really care.

The celebrations are wack though. that JL hand mask thing he does is super cringey.

His hand mask is a thing he does because it forms a J and an L right?

So eventually (assuming he hasn't already) he'll get someone to knock up a logo like Gareth Bale has done for his heart thing (which, to be fair, is actually quite good design).

Image result for gareth bale logo

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1 hour ago, Adam Easy Wishes said:

His hand mask is a thing he does because it forms a J and an L right?

So eventually (assuming he hasn't already) he'll get someone to knock up a logo like Gareth Bale has done for his heart thing (which, to be fair, is actually quite good design).

 

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Image result for gareth bale logo

 

Yeah, I assumed it was. It's a little clever, but I still don't like it. Maybe if someone more likeable did it. But I already didn't like Lingard's pratting about before he started doing it, so he can't overcome my irrational dislike of his personality, that dancing goober.

I'd be surprised if he doesn't already have JL merch.

 

Actually, a quick look suggests its on its way, and he's supposedly already filed for a trademark. 

 

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I dunno how many UTD games I watched last season but it was approx ‘hunners’ and quite honestly I rarely saw anything from Lingard that suggested Mourinho wouldn’t think twice about replacing him in an instant were the transfer market to allow.

Comparable players for other World Cup teams still in it... it’s not even a debate, he’s not in the same league as an Isco or a Mertens or an Mbappe

I totally get that he has valuable qualities but imo he’s bound for no more greatness as an England player than say a Nick Barmby or a Darren Anderton. 

No doubt he’ll bang in the winner in the final now of course

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Four more days of listening to media and pundits tell us how great England have played.  Despite beating Tunisia, Panama, losing to Belgium and squeaking past Colombia.  Two goals from open play against the teams they've played is pathetic.

They're talking about Harry Kane setting the world on fire, he's had 3 penalties and a goal come off the back of his heel he had no idea about.  Glenn Hoddle was about crying when he was talking about Kane's play.

I don't even hate the players just the culture and media that surround the team.

This is the worst.  Great world cup though.

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Four more days of Scottish people yacking on about how much they hate the English media.

no offense to you personally at all of course. I just find the Scottish ‘anyone but england’ and ‘they always have to mention 66’ stuff sooooo boring.

Even my mum was giving it the ‘we’ll never hear the end of it if they win’ schtick yesterday. She doesn’t even watch TV or follow sport in any way yet because she’s Scottish there’s a weird obligation to go through the same ritual every tournament. Who are you encountering that won’t let you hear the end of it? 

Is the English punditry really all that bad? 

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9 hours ago, ca_gere said:

Four more days of Scottish people yacking on about how much they hate the English media.

no offense to you personally at all of course. I just find the Scottish ‘anyone but england’ and ‘they always have to mention 66’ stuff sooooo boring.

Even my mum was giving it the ‘we’ll never hear the end of it if they win’ schtick yesterday. She doesn’t even watch TV or follow sport in any way yet because she’s Scottish there’s a weird obligation to go through the same ritual every tournament. Who are you encountering that won’t let you hear the end of it? 

Is the English punditry really all that bad? 

Don't you live in America?!

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15 hours ago, ca_gere said:

Four more days of Scottish people yacking on about how much they hate the English media.

no offense to you personally at all of course. I just find the Scottish ‘anyone but england’ and ‘they always have to mention 66’ stuff sooooo boring.

Even my mum was giving it the ‘we’ll never hear the end of it if they win’ schtick yesterday. She doesn’t even watch TV or follow sport in any way yet because she’s Scottish there’s a weird obligation to go through the same ritual every tournament. Who are you encountering that won’t let you hear the end of it? 

Is the English punditry really all that bad? 

Clive Tyldsley can certainly get wrapped up in it. He always seems desperate for his next "Can they score? They always score" soundbite that will be repeated forever, and some of the stuff he says is just cheeseball nonsense as a result. If England win it and you're watching ITV coverage, you might want to switch over as soon as the final whistle goes. He might be the most over-egged human being on earth.

I haven't found anything else to be particularly grating this time around though. The punditry is bad because the ex-pros tend to know very little about anything, and have been routinely put to shame by Alex Scott and Eni Aluko. (Phil Neville repeated almost word for word what Alex Scott said about Colombia's opening game, like that famous Fast Show sketch about being locked out of the car) From my perspective, it's not been bad because they're being particularly overbearing. They're just bad.

In previous tournaments, up until 2010 anyway, there was ridiculous expectation for England's "golden generation" (lol) to win it from all corners of the media, to the point that it was just hideous to read or watch. This time around, it's a young team, young manager, all relatively unproven, there's zero expectation, if England get done by Sweden, that'll be that. There certainly won't be burning effigies of Jordan Henderson hanging from a noose like Beckham had to face, or every tabloid's collectively boiled piss being metaphorically hurled at the team as they arrive home.

However, I think it's quite fair that if England win the World Cup, the English are going to be pretty chuffed about it, to the extent of a bit more than just a whispered "get in there" and a discreet fist pump by the water cooler on Monday morning. Name a country that would act any different.

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Genuinely worried if England even do manage to win despite playing the most boring football going that people will trash the country like when teams win the Superbowl/Stanley Cup and destroy their own cities.

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18 hours ago, ca_gere said:

Four more days of Scottish people yacking on about how much they hate the English media.

no offense to you personally at all of course. I just find the Scottish ‘anyone but england’ and ‘they always have to mention 66’ stuff sooooo boring.

Even my mum was giving it the ‘we’ll never hear the end of it if they win’ schtick yesterday. She doesn’t even watch TV or follow sport in any way yet because she’s Scottish there’s a weird obligation to go through the same ritual every tournament. Who are you encountering that won’t let you hear the end of it? 

Is the English punditry really all that bad? 

I've not been subjected to it for a few years, but yeah, I remember it being that bad. I expect the domestic punditry of every country is just as biased, but with the UK you have an unusual situation where the one state has a few different countries and teams, but the same language and broadcasters. Bazillion ethnicities in India, say, all of whom can play for or watch the India cricket team. If you're from Scotland and they didn't qualify, you don't want to hear biased commentary (probably every other country does the same, but media from England is what a Scot will hear).

Soda Jerk also mentioned there was a hubris which dissipated in the last few years, so maybe there's something to that with regards to how I remember it.

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If you're speaking simply about English pundits wanting England to win, then that hasn't particularly dissipated, but it's not anywhere near as demanding as it was, nor is there the unwarranted belief that England even deserve to win, when there was once a belief that England should be winning tournaments. There's much less of the Billy Big Bollocks air of superiority we once had, which was massively unjustified.

Bias is rife in club football punditry (you ever seen McManaman or Souness talk during a Liverpool game or Ferdinand or Scholes during a United game? It's like watching Fanzone) and there will always be allegiances. I think it's unreasonable to expect otherwise. But even during Euro 2014, English pundits were very much behind Wales (except when they played England, where it was genuinely a lot more balanced). I even remember watching Scotland at France 98 (the most recent example I can give, because Scotland are a bit shit at the whole qualifying thing) and the English pundits in the studio were right behind Scotland to beat Brazil in that opening game. I watched that game at my mates house and the pub across the road from him was showing it on a projector in the beer garden, and the place (occupied by 99.9% brazen Yorkshiremen) went mad when Scotland scored that penalty.

The presentation of international tournaments would seem more balanced if more home nations qualified, as I'm sure the pundits would rally behind them all, as they have done previously and often do during qualifiers/playoffs etc. Expecting them to tone it down just because other home nations didn't qualify is a little embittered.

 

And the whole "they always hark back to 66" is as big of a myth as "Andy Murray is British when he wins and Scottish when he loses". 

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So does it all boil down to the biased coverage? If Scottish TV had Dougie Donnely and Hazel Irving covering every game instead of taking a feed from London would Scottish folk stop going on about how they're gonna buy a Sweden shirt like it's a totally normal, and not in the least bit pitifully lame thing to do?

I suppose it just winds me up because I've ALWAYS supported England in tournaments but i've always felt i've had to do it quietly -  and I really don't see why that's the case. It's like you're seen as less patriotic or something if you want England to do well. I grew up on English and Scottish football pretty much equally, it just seems natural to support players that you have a connection with.

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For me it's just the level of optimism and sense of reality in the media is out of control.  I listen to a fair amount of talksport normally at work/on the commute and the pundits have been talking about England as if they are 2008 -2012 Spain the way they've played.

It's not just talksport it's the media in general here whenever a journalist speaks about them they seem to have watched different matches to what I've seen. 

I just rather hear them tell it more like it is, I think a lot less people would dislike them if they didn't always talk about them as the second coming.  In reality it's been a good performance so far with a lot of luck from the draw.

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I don't think it is (or was) just parochial commentary, although I imagine that would get on any neutral's tits (I don't watch Premier League games, or non-English language World Cup football, so Scotland and England are about the only examples I have; and I'm not neutral there). The expectation (that we're been talking about here) that England were perennial favourites and the total bewilderment whenever they didn't win the World Cup was just asking for the schadenfreude, IMO. There's a quote on Wikipedia from a player talking about England's "God-given right to win the World Cup". I can't figure out whether he said that with a straight face or whether he was complaining about the fans' expectations: a casual reading of Wiki throws up quotes throughout World Cup history of players/managers being amazed they didn't win, angry at their fans for being amazed they didn't win, and the taunts that followed players around for the rest of their careers for having "lost the World Cup".

There's also the fact that alongside all this, England fans were still smashing up foreign cities into the late '90s. The coverage may (may) have been over-sensationalised, but all else being equal, England were always the worst for this, in the 20th Century at least. Speaking of sensationalism: before the Internet really became a daily (hourly, minute..uh..ly) fixture of everyone's news and entertainment diet (so including the latter 90's and earlier noughties that I'm thinking about), aside from the few terrestrial TV channels if you didn't have sky, you at least had to walk past blaring tabloid headlines. So all the crap about each England team being the second coming and the manager/goalkeeper/Beckham being the antichrist after they went out, was probably amplified by them. Forget '66, those guys were bringing up World War II. (most of this comes from some legit academic bit I read: http://www.sirc.org/publik/fvexec.html

(I don't think the '66 thing is a myth either, but turns out watching some highlights on Youtube won't give you much of a representative picture of media coverage, only heard one mention. I did see that 4-4-2 magazine thinks an England quarter final shootout exit is the best game in the history of the World Cup and that someone gave Frank Lampard an interview on why "England's Golden Generation failed").

And. Someone's gotta say it: there is a large slice of the Scottish population who have a genuine antipathy towards England. Some of it is rational(ised) by the (arguably legitimate) feeling that another the populace country decides in large part how their country is run, and in opposition to their own choices. Other cases it's just inherited "fuck the English basterts FREEDOM bs"; but if those idiots could read, they'd probably formulate the same arguments. Anyone like that is probably latently hoping England does badly at sports; and if there's bombastic media coverage about how great England is, how (not if) they're going to win, and some amazing butthurt when they don't - they're going to be bombastic in their opposition to the England team and gleeful in their shadenfreude.

 

 

Edited by scottyboy
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14 hours ago, Soda Jerk said:

And the whole "they always hark back to 66" is as big of a myth as "Andy Murray is British when he wins and Scottish when he loses". 

They showed the highlights of the '66 final at half time of Japan vs Belgium...

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12 hours ago, E.C said:

They showed the highlights of the '66 final at half time of Japan vs Belgium...

BBC have also shown highlights of finals from Italy '90, France '98, South Africa '10, Brazil '14 during coverage.

Have you seen some of the other shite they've filled the BBC half time analysis with because they don't have advert breaks? They showed a segment where Alex Scott and Matty Upson made soup, and then Philip Neville decided which one he liked best (he spat Alex Scott's soup out FWIW). In comparison, actual football highlights are somewhat relevant, and they've been fairly consistent with showing final highlights.

 

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He was better in the 2nd half, to be fair. Those two one on ones he fluffed (though he ended up being offside for one anyway, though it was a late flag) were both horrendous though, despite that excellent first touch on one of them.

He made the Swedes chase him a bit, but he never seemed to really threaten even when he got them in good positions. The BBC guys touched on it pre-game, how he gets the ball in good positions and has space to run at, but he continually turns back and goes sideways, and how he plays on the shoulder but when a team mate has the ball between the lines, Sterling doesn't make that run. He did it again today, numerous times. What's the point in being on the shoulder if you're than just gonna drop back? I'm not Rashford's biggest fan but I think he'd have stretched that defence too and been more direct at the same time. Southgate just doesn't seem to want to use him, and has even brought a 50% fit Vardy on before Rashford in that Colombia game.

Edited by Soda Jerk
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On 7/5/2018 at 4:27 PM, E.C said:

Genuinely worried if England even do manage to win despite playing the most boring football going that people will trash the country like when teams win the Superbowl/Stanley Cup and destroy their own cities.

Looks like this has started happening on a fairly small scale after the Sweden result. People jumping on cars. I think some even jumped on the roof of an ambulance, and climbing up buses and jumping off. Because football.

There's definitely going to be some deaths if England win the whole thing.

Edited by Soda Jerk
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