zequist

You're quite welcome! Vienna, Toulouse, and/or Elfsborg would all be fine with me, but I'd prefer to avoid Anderlecht only because the Jupiler League was (believe it or not) the first league in Europe that I seriously followed for a while - this was back in the mid-90's when I had a football-crazy friend at university; he introduced me to it. I don't keep up with Belgium much nowadays, not since I discovered the EPL on TV, really, but I still have a bit of a soft spot for the Purple and White (who might rival Everton for the amount of young talent they've developed and then lost to teams with deeper pockets over the years). I'd rather they end up in a different group so that I don't have to root against them.

Updating those pots, now that all games are final: pot 1 Villarreal 78.374 Bayern Munich 73.640 AZ Alkmaar 63.995 Panathinaikos 55.415 Basel 54.869 Bordeaux 49.706 Bayer Leverkusen 45.640 Anderlecht 41.594 Pot 2 Tottenham 40.618 Lokomotiv Moscow 38.920 Zenit St Petersburg 38.920 Sparta Prague 37.851 AEK Athens 36.415 Hamburg 34.640 Bolton 32.618 Austria Vienna 30.104 pot 3 Spartak Moscow 27.920 Sporting Braga 27.107 Galatasaray 26.791 Atlético Madrid 25.374 Getafe 25.374 Everton 24.618 Fiorentina 21.808 Rennes 20.706 pot 4 Hapoel Tel Aviv 19.338 Red Star 19.256 Copenhagen 19.129 Toulouse 17.706 Dinamo Zagreb 17.533 Panionios 16.415 Nürnberg 14.640 Mlada Boleslav 13.851 pot 5 Aris Thessaloniki 13.415 Aberdeen 11.064 Zürich 9.869 AE Larissa 8.415 Aalborg 7.129 Brann 6.509 Elfsborg 4.478 Helsingborg 3.478 I'd like to see us draw a group of Bordeaux, Sparta Prague, Copenhagen, and Aberdeen. That'd be my vote.

Pretty or ugly, we won. That's all I care about. Two weeks from now nobody's gonna care HOW we got into the group stages, just that we got the job done. That's more than the fans of Ajax Amsterdam, Blackburn, Real Zaragoza, Lens, Empoli, Palermo, and Sampdoria can say tonight.

That's awesome! Soon as I get it myself I'll let you know what I think.

Technology is far, far better. Incomparably better. The first artificial turfs were invented in the 60's, were harder and more dangerous surfaces than grass, and were akin to playing indoors on the carpet - or on concrete when it got really cold. Those were the type of turf that those few teams like Luton installed, and that many of the US stadiums built in that era had up until the mid-90's. The current generation of artificial turfs are much more grass-like. The materials used are less abrasive, the cushioning is a million times better, and they're generally regarded as being just as safe to play on as grass injury-wise and (opposite of the old stuff) even safer than grass in the cold, although even its most ardent defenders still admit that it takes the knees and ankles longer to recover after running around on turf for 90 minutes. They've also been developing artificial turfs now that are designed especially with soccer in mind, so that you won't get the "rubber ball" effect created by the older turf. I think that Borussia Monchengladbach (or however you spell it) in Germany has artificial turf installed at their new stadium, and some of the major clubs including Bayern Munich and Real Madrid now use it at their training facilities. FIFA, UEFA, and the FA had all banned any kind of artificial surfaces in their competitions, but they've gotten good enough now that UEFA as of 2005 decided to allow teams in their competitions to use them, provided the surface met UEFA's standards for approval (which Russia's obviously does). And the FA - though they still don't allow turf in any official games - have gone back and developed guidelines for building approved artificial surfaces in England - which anyone who is at all interested can read about at http://www.thefa.com/GrassrootsNew/Facilit...ches_Guidelines Is grass still preferable? Almost always, provided the climate and sunlight can support a quality grass surface. But the point is that today's turfs are not your father's "plastic grass," and comparing the turf that Luton played on to the turfs we're talking about now is like comparing a Formula 1 car of 1977 to an F1 car of 2007.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id...812&cc=5901 Don't know if we'll be invited to join the "expanded" group or not, but if we were, would you want us to accept? I'm of two minds on that. Where there's a group with power, it's always more advantageous to be sharing in that power and not left in the cold, begging for scraps, but the same time, I've always hated the G14 and everything it stands for; if anything I'd rather see it go away completely. So to think of us selling out to them... <_<

US release date for the new album is October 2; don't know if it'll be the same for you in Britain. I haven't had a chance to listen to the first single yet (Amaranth), but I hope it's good - they fired Tarja at the end of their last tour, and I don't know anything about her replacement.

Nice thread! My era is mainly 80's/90's though, so I wouldn't be much help suggesting new stuff. My older brother fed me a steady diet of hard rock & 70's metal while I was growing up, but I went off exploring on my own once I got into high school (early 90's), and that was when I started discovering bands like Maiden, Armored Saint, Tool, and of course Metallica. Never looked back. I don't keep up with the latest thrash bands anymore, but one of my college friends played bass for a prog-metal band in LA up until this summer (he just moved to Oregon), and he's put me on to some bands in that style, like Symphony X and Nightwish, that are staples of my collection now.

Doesn't work for me either, since it doesn't take American postcodes, but according to http://www.infoplease.com/atlas/calculate-distance.html I am roughly 3,576.6 miles away.

Just thought I'd mention this, since there were so many questions swirling about why we were willing/able to spend big transfer money late, but not early. In an article I was reading about Derby today, their chairman mentioned that they didn't get their Sky Sports money until August 14. So if that's what we were waiting on (not spending it until we had it, as someone earlier in this thread suggested), and we also got it that late, then that would make sense. Or it could've been the rumored cash infusion from Earl. Or it could've been a combination of both. Anyway, that Derby article was right here: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id...246&cc=5901

Def Leppard - Billy's Got a Gun. One of the three best songs they ever wrote. Good choice. At least it isn't "Fearless."

And Chelsea just got punted by Villa, so we're still sharing top of the table.

That makes no sense at all. If he's so freakin' unhappy here then why did he sign a five-year extension not two months ago? He has to know that if he ever wants to leave, there's not much we can do to keep him here. All he has to do is say those two words, "I'm unhappy," and the line of suitors will be stretching from the Goodison ticket window to the French Riviera. I'm with blablabla, sounds like a load of (red-colored) shite to me.

So the new soccer season kicks off this weekend for the university teams here in the USA. Locally I'm planning on going to a game this Sunday (Naval Academy vs. Air Force Academy), but I'm really excited about this season because my alma mater (California-Santa Barbara) are the defending men's national champions and ranked #1 in the country in most of the preseason polls. Santa Barbara actually has a fairly international team. Our head coach has always heavily scouted Canada and New Zealand in particular - we have alumni on both countries' national teams - and this year we also have players from Spain, Sweden, and Jamaica on the roster. But Santa Barbara's defense for the last two years has been anchored by a 6-5 central defender named Andy Iro, who's a Liverpool native. He went to school at St. Edwards and played youth football for Kingsley United. He's also one of the frontrunners to win the National Player of the Year award this season.

The guy's quite a pill according to several things I've read, but for a one-year loan deal with his talent I can't argue. If he's too much of a locker-room disruption we can always send him back to Spain at the end of the season.

Qualifying is finished and the first round field of 80 is as set as it's going to be for tomorrow's draw. You can see the list of qualified teams by going to http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/seeduc2007.html and scrolling down to "round 1." All of the teams in the right column are the teams we could potentially draw tomorrow. The country breakdown for the 40 unseeded teams is: 5 - Sweden 4 - Denmark 3 - Greece, Portugal 2 - Bulgaria, Holland, Norway, Austria, Switzerland 1 - 15 other countries Myself, I'll gladly take a nice, easy draw against one of those Swedish teams. :-) And I'd just as soon avoid anyone from Holland, Portugal, or Turkey, thank you.

Column analyzing the Yak signing (on the pitch and in the boardroom): http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story...mp;lid=tab2pos2

Yup. Good deal for us. The only real "big name" team that crashed out of UCL qualifying today was Ajax Amsterdam - they immediately slot in as the third-highest ranked team in the UEFA Cup, behind Villareal and Bayern. There are some other UCL refugees coming in that are decent - Anderlecht, Sparta Prague, Dinamo Bucharest, Spartak Moscow - but not really a major threat to win this tournament. They're very capable of making our life miserable in the group stage if we take them lightly, though.

Yes, he does. The Super Eagles aren't coached by the man he fell out with any more; Berti Vogts is running the team now, and Yakubu has played in four of their six matches this year. He even captained the team in their May game against Kenya.

Redknapp says Derby want him, but they won't get him. http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id...488&cc=5901

There's a story I heard once about a former baseball team owner in this country who was lamenting one day about his team losing $2 million the previous season. One of the people hearing these complaints was surprised, because he was sure the team wasn't anywhere near that badly off, so he asked another team executive if it was true, that they'd really lost so much, and the other fellow sort of smiled and said, "He means that we only made a $2 million profit instead of $4 million." Amusement aside, there is a point to that story, which is that accounting figures are never absolute, and "profit" and "loss" are often in the eyes of the beholder and the creative tax preparer. In fact, I don't know how British tax laws work, but in the US it's often to a team's advantage to report a net loss, because then they can use their "losses" as a tax writeoff. If there's one thing I've learned watching sports over the years, it's to never trust a team who's crying poverty.

Think he's referring to the fact that ManU had to go through the appeal process to get a work permit for Anderson this summer because he didn't meet the 75% caps criterium either. I'm still not quite sure what he's getting at, though. It can't be a suggestion that they sped up the process for ManU, because they agreed to a deal with Anderson's old club at the beginning of June but didn't have their appeal granted until June 29. Anyway, our case should be pretty straightforward. ManU won theirs by arguing that Anderson is an exceptional talent and only prevented from meeting the caps criteria by his age; I think it's pretty clear that Yakubu is an exceptional talent (who's proven it in the PL) and only prevented from meeting the caps criteria by this fight with the Nigerian head coach.

I don't entirely fault Howard on the goal. Santa Cruz shanked his initial shot...the guys on TV said that if he'd hit it clean Howard was in position for the stop. On top of that, when the ball landed in the box it looked like our defender (not sure if it was Hibbert or Stubbs) actually got to it first and tried to clear it over the goal but hit the bar instead. The recap said it was Gamst who hit the bar but it really looked to me like it was our own guy. Anyway, I missed the second half because I had to go back to work, but we were playing well enough that I thought we could still get at least a point out of this one. Nice to see I was right.

Huh. If we were going to raid CSKA I'd rather have seen us go after Yuri Zhirkov, their young and extremely talented left winger. Don't know much about Love, but if he's the next target I hope he can match Yakubu's scoring rate. Still, I'm not going to assume this Yak deal is dead just yet; it's only one media outlet saying it so far.

Bikey and Hunt were the men of the match as far as I was concerned. Both of them came up huge for Reading time and time again. Arteta's spot kicks were mostly awful today, but during the run of play I'm not going to claim he was "horrible" as much as simply shut down by Reading's defense. We had a lot of trouble even getting him the ball, and when we did he was often under so much pressure that he had to get rid of it immediately, though he did draw several fouls too (mostly in the first half). That may have contributed to his poor spot kicks, though, since he was never able to get into a rhythm. Liked the way McFadden played in his short stint. We were unlucky not to score off his shot or the ensuing scramble. Think I knew when he and AJ hit the posts on consecutive shots that this wasn't meant to be our day. That was probably our best stretch of the game, and no surprise it came when Reading had a player off getting treatment and the remaining ten had to back off the pressure. But McFadden also looked fresher than anyone else on our team, probably because it was his first action of the season while most of the others were out there for the third time in a week. Silver Linings: Hopefully this will give some fans who seemed to think we were suddenly the second coming of ManU after only two games a much-needed reality check. To point out how meaningless being top of the table is this early in the season, the table toppers after today's results are none other than that "terrible" Wigan team that some were ragging on in this forum last week. This also opens the door for Moyes to make a couple of changes to the starting XI if he wants to. By the time Blackburn comes in next week we'll have Manny here, possibly Yakubu also, so it'll be interesting to see what the squad selection looks like.