Joel

Spot on Steve for noting how Pizarro got smacked in the face with nary an eye batted by the referee. Granted Essien shouldn't be swinging his arms about like that but you have to say it was no worse than what Pizarro was on the end of. Dreadfully boring match, we seemed perfectly content to sit on the goal and just ping it back and forth while Derby stuck 11 men in their own half. I don't intend to touch off a huge debate, but I found myself wondering if the Man Utds, Arsenals, and Liverpools of the league would have taken their foot off the pedal at all in 90 minutes against one of the league's most historically anemic sides. Hell, even Wet Spam hit them for 5. Satisfied enough with the 3 points though. Essien saw red, but does anyone remember the bit in the first half when it almost all kicked off between Mikel and Miller? Awfully short fuse, Mikel...I was worried about him just then.

Dammit, I just ran across this and rushed here to post it....beaten to the punch! Hilarious vid though, I almost wet myself.

The only way to have seen it would have been Setanta PPV.

quoted for truth... Although to be fair, if I look up and down their squad there is no reason whatsoever with the players they have that they should be languishing in the drop zone. But they are, and it's hilarious.

I enjoy watching Le Championnat, and what I've seen of Lyon so far this season they have gotten off to a slow start. I didn't expect them to get thumped so comprehensively in their first 2 CL matches....but you might say it's been on the cards.

Very belated congrats on an outstanding result! Thought it was a bit of a goalkeeping error tbh, but who cares...

I agree some limited, narrow in scope use of technology is desperately needed. There are any number of ways to do it, and here I'm discussing simply "was the ball over the line?" Camera mounted within goal frame, one in each inner "elbow" of post and crossbar: This would require a person (two, one for each goal if you want to be fussy about it), perhaps in the touchline, maybe up in the stand doing nothing but consulting a live-linked video monitor when the ball is near the goal. Maybe he has to have access to slow-motion replay--and I'm talking the hyper-accurate 900 fps kind, not the standard blurry one. Downside? Play could be continuing while he reviews the replay, where do you stop the game, etc. I think some variant of the airplane metal detector kind of thing would be sweet. I know this will sound geeky and Star Trek-ish, but bear with me. You have sensors projecting something or continuously scanning across the face of goal. The ball is coated with some substance that will "trip" the plane and cause the sensors to light up the referee's watch or buzz him or whatever. The kicker though, is that you cannot project this "force field" or what have you across the goal line. It must be within the goal the precise distance behind the goal line that matches the width of the ball, so that you can't have false positives from the ball being halfway over the line. If the sensor goes off then we can with certainty state that the entire ball has crossed the line (the ball is the only thing coated or made of this substance that will generate a positive reading in the constantly-scanning sensors). That's my two cents.

So let's recap.... One month into the season, you didn't actually SEE yesterday's match, and you are ready to abandon ship. Fan-tastic.

Knee jerk reaction time: Group E is your Group of Death.....Real Madrid and Arsenal with laughably easy draws.

What a game, really gave me an ulcer. I think Liverpool have improved measurably on this evidence, so we should be awfully pleased to leave there with 1 point. Rob Styles, what can you say? It was never a penalty but these things go your way every once in a while. But for F's sake, if there is one team I don't want to hear squawking about something like this, it's Liverfool. Who's that guy on this forum who has Gerrard Stevens' scandalous flop at Sheffield Utd last season as his avatar? What goes around comes around, I guess...even if it takes 12 months. EDIT: completed a sentence, *sigh*

Free kick goal against DC United in Superliga semifinal last night. Apologies for useless American commentators! Ugh...

That showed class that he did not celebrate. Very few players show that respect. Agree, all the more classy given that it's been so long since he was our player! Nice to see him get past the injury bug and getting goals again...hopefully more to come from him against Arsenal, Man Utd, et al

YESSSSSSSSS....Reading hung on. Amazing.

Ugh.....Dave Kitson with a 45 second cameo as a substitute at Old Trafford before a barbaric lunge to earn a dismissal.

OK, Brum scored a couple goals...too bad about that. The first one was just a nicely flighted cross that none of defenders could deal with and it just needed any kind of touch to go past Cech. The second was more worrying due to Johnson's decidedly feeble attempt at defending, but hell of a rocket from Kapo--you can't expect a strike like that from such a position. Malouda: A revelation. Neat touches, nice running, looks to have a very high footballing IQ. If I were Robben's agent I'd have been texting/phoning someone, ANYONE, to get the Madrid deal done because on this evidence he won't get a game. Pizarro: Again, a clever, clever player. He was just effortlessly floating into all the right places and no surprise to see him grab a goal. In 60 minutes he managed to encapsulate the diametrical opposite of Shevchenko's 06/07 season. SWP: Energetic. Got into advanced positions, tortured them down the left, provided well. Will be difficult to keep out of the first XI if he keeps up like this. Great to start off on the right foot, I'm sure the defensive side of things will get back to normal soon, Mourinho won't want to see too many days like this.

I got home last night from a long weekend up north at a friend's cabin and sat down to watch this match on Tivo (in HD, yesssss). It isn't a big deal to me, but with a little more precision just imagine how many goals we could have scored. We must have had 80% possession over the 90 minutes. What you witnessed is exactly why I stated in another thread that I won't watch MLS. The Galaxy are a frightfully bad team, almost makes you wonder if Beckham even watched any video of their performances before signing this deal. Clearly it's 95% about marketing himself and his leather bag wife as a brand, but surely he would have been curious about how bad the play is over here?!? We were comfortable in possession and with a bit more sharpness could be really something going forward. Liked the look of Malouda out left, Robben is going to have to elevate his game to remain in consideration. Drogba and Shevchenko still look really awkward as a pairing, but we got enough goals from it last season and I can't see it being worse....*shrug*. Great goal by Terry, we had Ricky C bombing forward once or twice, Ben Haim looked OK being played out of position. LA...what can I say? They had two chances of note: 146 year old Cobi Jones curled in a fine left footed cross from the right wing which someone headed narrowly wide with Cech beaten, then late on in the 2nd half Great American Hope "Dandy Landy" Donovan contrived to head over from about 3 yards out with no defender within reach of him. Simply absymal! Apart from that, they have no midfield player capable of controlling a game from the looks of it, and Portuguese misfit Abel Xavier contorting himself in hilarious fashion to hack the ball out of the back in whatever manner possible. No evidence whatsoever that 10+ years of MLS existence has done anything to cure the "USA settle", whereby an American player receiving a pass to feet miscontrols it so badly it bounds 5 or 6 yards away from him, or pops up to shoulder height before being gathered and hoofed on to someone else.

Agree, but that's how it's done in America now for stadiums of all kinds. Put the naming rights up for sale and laugh all the way to the bank after taking the highest bid.

Not sure but I think I heard 40,000 or something like that. If I'm not mistaking they expect about 40,000 to show up for Beckhams game against us. The listed capacity of the Home Depot Center is 27,000.

That depends on your definition of "success" in my opinion. A sport that can rival the traditional four major North American sports? Not in my lifetime. But a sport that can remain a healthy niche and financially viable (albeit not wildly profitable), yes, I believe so. The true fans of the game will always be there, even if the number of casual fans waxes and wanes. Sports television output is controlled by large corporations (Disney owns ABC and the ESPN family of networks, General Electric owns NBC, Viacom owns CBS, etc). But in a broad sense you are right that the owners of major sports franchises (generally families or groups of investors) can band together and dictate what shows up on American TV screens. That's why FOX and CBS shell out billions for the rights to the NFL--the product is by far the favorite of Joe Sixpack and ratings and ad money are on the line. Now having said that I think MLS can continue to plod along in its modest stability, I can't stand to watch it. I'd take a Ligue 1 match on pixellated, bandwidth-starved Setanta over the weekly MLS match in high definition on DirecTV....10 times out of 10. The general lack of technique is appalling, the defending amateurish, the crowds/atmosphere lifeless, and television commentary of the sport in this country makes me want to hang myself. And I agree about your analysis of what will happen to our homegrown talent pool--even in the rosiest of scenarios I can't see a talented young American player picking MLS over the allure of European clubs anytime within the next generation.

"upper 90"....

Man City have just teleported to an as-yet-undiscovered astral plane of boringness. Happy trails. On a related note, who the hell is left in their squad? I have been updating my PES6 squads and theirs is possibly the smallest in my game.

Speaking of presents, I've just looked at the fixtures in detail for the first time, and saw to my (very mild) dismay that the trip to Old Trafford is on my wedding day. 9 AM local time kickoff though, I might just be able to sneak it in!!

That makes me hearken back and wonder if anyone took more abuse on this site (in its previous incarnation) than Sutton. Maybe Jokanovic?

Tottenham could nearly sign a player like that!

OK, CONCACAF is a mickey mouse region and the Gold Cup is a mickey mouse tournament, but we've won it nonetheless. 2-1 victory over Mexico at Soldier Field in Chicago yesterday. Got us into the 2009 Confederations Cup in South Africa, el yay! I love beating Mexico, and we're doing it regularly the last few years. I missed the match but apparently in terms of crowd support the USA were outnumbered 10-1 by Mexicans.