The (Un) Official Football thread

[NeglectedField]

Boring Champeens League final turned exciting all of a sudden.

[Matty_the_Emo_Slayer]

Calendar made for all the games I want to watch in June. A lot of 2am Copa America matches but at least some of them are 11pm or midnight starts instead.

[kanet666]

Looks like relegation for us next season. SEVEN WEEKS since Lambert told the owners he was leaving and no news on even a potential replacement. We have 14 players left, multiple of whom are from the academy, we've no Chairman, CEO or Directors apart from one accountant who apparently did interviews weeks ago and then fucked off on holiday.

Venky's got a takeover offer but then released a statement saying they were committed to the club. Really not convinced myself. Charlatans, the lot of them. I am dreading next season, with the links being the likes of Owen Coyle, Warren Joyce and Paul Jewell.

[Danroush]

We also still have no manager, and haven't arranged any friendlies thus far either...

[kanet666]

Owen Coyle, Owen bloody Coyle, are you kidding me? Perennial failure whose only success was fluking promotion with Burnley nearly ten years ago. He's under the same agents who screwed us under Steve Kean (as are our current sponsors apparently) and it looks like those ghosts are coming back again. A wise person would put money on a Rovers relegation this season. This is going to get ugly.

[Matty_the_Emo_Slayer]

Someone finally picked the Irish & Northern Ireland Sport category on Pointless. Playing along at home I didn't pick Martin O'Neill for one of my 3 choices because I assumed he'd be the highest scorer from NI's 1982 World Cup squad, and the fucker was pointless! He captained the bloody squad, had the most successful club career of any NI player ever and has been in the public eye more than anyone else in recent years

[houston4044]

Looks like relegation for us next season. SEVEN WEEKS since Lambert told the owners he was leaving and no news on even a potential replacement. We have 14 players left, multiple of whom are from the academy, we've no Chairman, CEO or Directors apart from one accountant who apparently did interviews weeks ago and then fucked off on holiday.

Venky's got a takeover offer but then released a statement saying they were committed to the club. Really not convinced myself. Charlatans, the lot of them. I am dreading next season, with the links being the likes of Owen Coyle, Warren Joyce and Paul Jewell.

I have to remind myself your a Blackburn supporter, I always read your posts and I get confused with Blackpool

[Matty_the_Emo_Slayer]

Amazing game between Chile and Argentina, I think the second half is the best 45 minutes of football that will be played this Summer. Just flat-out aggressive counter attacking from both sides all the way through. Nail-biting for me too as it took until the very last minute of extra time to get the result I needed for my accumulator. In the next 24 hours I just need Colombia to beat Paraguay, both USA and Costa Rica to score and Spain to beat Georgia in their friendly.

I fully expect Argentina to take the final against Colombia, and to win the next World Cup too if they can keep up being this well rounded. It's not just the stars up front like Di Maria and Higuain, tonight everyone at the back like Romero and Otamendi especially were on fire too. The best team in the world right now, no doubt about it.

[Gandalf the Red]

Someone finally picked the Irish & Northern Ireland Sport category on Pointless. Playing along at home I didn't pick Martin O'Neill for one of my 3 choices because I assumed he'd be the highest scorer from NI's 1982 World Cup squad, and the fucker was pointless! He captained the bloody squad, had the most successful club career of any NI player ever and has been in the public eye more than anyone else in recent years

*cough* Gerry Armstrong.

Martin O'Neill really became a well known name as a manager. He was pretty anonymous as a player over here, but maybe he was a bit more well known in NI.

Don't forget that very few matches were televised live (FA Cup final and some England internationals). Even MOTD and The Big Match only had three games each per week, and one of those were usually a second division game. Both shown in the "graveyard slot". So if you weren't a match going fan or TV watcher then most footballers passed the general public by. It wasn't like today where footballers are everywhere in the media. A few years ago a High Court judge didn't even know who Paul Gascoigne was , that was the general apathy that greeted football before it became popular again in the 1990s. If you weren't a "star player" at a "top" club then nobody knew who you were.

[Matty_the_Emo_Slayer]

O'Neill was with Nottingham Forest when they won the league and their 2 European Cups so surely that counts as being a star player at a top club though? Even if it was only reading about it in the sports section of the papers and not seeing him on TV. And wasn't Gerry Armstrong away playing in Spain at the time?

If you look at the the big names from that Northern Ireland squad Jimmy Nicholl wouldn't have his really successful Rangers run til a few years after, Norman Whiteside was with Man Utd but was still only 17 or 18, Mal Donaghy wouldn't join United til much later, Pat Jennings and Sammy Nelson were with Arsenal... Even with all the reasons you mentioned I don't know how O'Neill wouldn't be the closest thing to a household name out of them all. In the grand scheme of things he's definitely the most successful Northern Irish player ever, even more so than George Best or Danny Blanchflower.


Anyway I gave up after the first half of USA vs Costa Rica tonight. The States deserved those first 3 goals they scored but I couldn't stick any more of the biased referee-ing and commentary. They started defending a lot more cleanly towards the end but for the first 35 minutes there was loads of flailing arm challenges and blatant shoves going unpunished, really made it aggravating to watch.

[kanet666]

Looks like relegation for us next season. SEVEN WEEKS since Lambert told the owners he was leaving and no news on even a potential replacement. We have 14 players left, multiple of whom are from the academy, we've no Chairman, CEO or Directors apart from one accountant who apparently did interviews weeks ago and then fucked off on holiday.

Venky's got a takeover offer but then released a statement saying they were committed to the club. Really not convinced myself. Charlatans, the lot of them. I am dreading next season, with the links being the likes of Owen Coyle, Warren Joyce and Paul Jewell.

I have to remind myself your a Blackburn supporter, I always read your posts and I get confused with Blackpool

It's pretty much one and the same at this point. It's getting grimmer and grimmer on a day to day basis. I'd love to know how the FA found these lot "fit and proper", because we have gone further and further back year on year thanks to a mixture of mismanagement and dodgy agencies. It's painful to watch but I can't pull myself completely away from the wreckage.

[Matty_the_Emo_Slayer]

A bit short notice but anyone fancy doing a forum Fantasy Football for the Euros?

[Jobdone]

A bit short notice but anyone fancy doing a forum Fantasy Football for the Euros?

Yeah I'd be in. Just the normal UEFA.com one? Cos I already got a team on there.

[Matty_the_Emo_Slayer]

Is there a way of competing against each other on there? I haven't played fantasy football since doing the Daily Mail one in the 90's so I dunno how the technology has changed it.

If people would rather do an old school points-based one instead I'd happily do the number crunching?

[Jobdone]

http://eurofantasy.uefa.com/

Yeah just create a team on there, go to leagues, and join on a code

Just set up BOA one: 80614TXN

Though if you wanna do something different I'm down for that as well. Just like being invested in games beyond the british isles.