That Boy Brandinho

Rooney's a fantastic player. One of the things I really like about him is that you don't need to set your side up around him for him to be effective. He can lead the line and score 30 goals or he can play a support role and mesh perfectly with another striker. He's not fat, he's not stupid (in terms of football IQ, at least) and he's definitely not lacking in quality. That said, if we're going to throw a ton of cash around, we might as well just buy Falcao. I doubt red nose would even consider selling us Rooney, anyway. He can get the money elsewhere without needing to face Rooney 2+ times every year.

The only difference between Feruz's stupid joke and the stupid jokes that we've all undoubtedly made in our lives is that his was open to public scrutiny because he posted it on twitter. The only issue here is that he needs to be more cognizant of what he writes on social media.

So you're saying that Jose Mourinho, a master at mind games, doesn't know what he's doing? Everything the man says is calculated. His team played poorly and did not deserve to win yesterday. If he thinks that highlighting this is the best way to send a message to the players, then he's probably right. Lord knows they need a good kick in the arse.

I genuinely cannot believe that anybody's who's actually familiar with Mario Gomez would want him here. No, no, no, no, no. Not for any amount of money.

Actually, Laudrup did very well at Getafe and Mallorca. Spartak is the only place where he failed and frankly, the Russian league is such a mess that I don't think it's fair to hold that against him. Even Guus hasn't exactly set the league alight and there's no question that he's a brilliant manager.

What is wrong with praising Ferguson? Yeah, we have good reason to dislike the man, but there's no denying he's an incredible manager.

Tottenham.

Why would it be bad? Barring an unlikely situation where a non-traditional club finishes in the top 4, I always want the other English sides to lose. I've no love lost for the likes of Arsenal, Man U, Citeh, etc...

Kuba finishes off Shakhtar once and for all. I'm probably the only person who cares about this match, but it's been incredibly entertaining. Don't underestimate Dortmund because their domestic form has been shaky. They're a great team.

And now Götze finishes a low cross from Lewandowski that wasn't properly cleared. Auf wiedersehen, c**ts.

Fantastic header by Santana to put Dortmund up 1-0 over Shakhtar.

For those interested in SimCity, I suggest you guys wait a bit before buying it. A look of people are running into this:

Probably because Spurs can't afford to pay Bale a competitive wage without Champions League football. He's getting interest from some of the biggest clubs in the world, which Spurs certainly aren't. Without the guaranteed income from the CL, I don't see how they can afford him after his contract runs out in 2015. If they secure Champions League, they have the means to offer him an extension that might tempt him to stay. I'd also point out that I never "asked for evidence". I gave my opinion, you disagreed, that's that. I also didn't say that your opinion is wrong unless you've spoken to players, I merely said that you can't really say for sure how important being in the Champions League is. It's only logical that some players would value it highly enough to turn down a move to a club not in the CL and others wouldn't care, hence why I said the notion that we need CL to attract top players, a blanket statement, is largely a myth. And no, I haven't spoken personally to any players about this issue, but I do have a fair bit of experience with professional athletes and I know how much bullsh*t they talk. Half of the time their interview responses are canned, given directly to them by the club. There are far more insincere responses than not.

Yeah, I played it until shortly after the halfway point and haven't touched it since. It wasn't a bad game, but it was loaded with flaws. The combat continues to be dumbed down with every entry in the series - pretty soon all one will need to do is hold down the A button and you'll auto-kill every guard. I also thought Connor was a really poor choice of protagonist, especially after Ezio who was extremely likeable. We essentially went from a Renaissance-era James Bond to a whiny kid with no real identity, nuanced motives or adequate characterization. I also hated just how linear the missions were. There were literally two ways to kill each target - either the "right" way, which would involve traveling a preset path and making a stealth kill, or the "wrong" way, which involved running in and killing everyone in sight. That's very poor level design in a supposedly "open world" game. Visually, it's quite solid, the homestead missions were a lot of fun and I loved the missions at sea, but the game is so marred by the above flaws that I couldn't objectively give it more than a 6 or 7/10. I really hope they do better with Black Flag, but I'm not terribly optimistic because of its short development cycle. I'll still keep an eye out for it, though, because it's about time we get a (hopefully) good pirate game.

You wouldn't consider Ribery among the top attackers in the world? He was named young player of the year his first year at Marseille, the same award won by Hazard a couple of years later. He was brilliant in the '06 World Cup, which attracted attention from a score of top clubs. I remember there was a lot of controversy over Aulas tapping him up. After his second year at Marseille, he won the overall player of the year award. Then Bayern paid a club record fee for him. We can agree to disagree, but in my mind he was definitely a top level player. The comment about not having spoken to players personally is because you can't take what's said in interviews at face value. Athletes are overly fond of cliches, you know this as well as I do, and most interviews are far from candid.

Yeah, they really dumbed it down so it would run on consoles. The first Crysis was fantastic, a real landmark in visual fidelity, but Crytek really messed up trying to capture the console market. Crysis was never going to get as big as COD, but now they've pissed away much of their cred amongst PC gamers.

A scouser with some very poor photoshop skills.

Yeah, I'm just gonna put this here:

No way, Koscielny and Sagna have been just as bad. Only Gibbs has really stood out this year in a positive way.

Racism isn't bad because it "hurts players' feelings", it's bad because it's an incredibly destructive force in society that creates conflict along completely arbitrary lines. Being mean to someone and being racist are both wrong, but they're an order of magnitude apart. Frankly, I think it's absurd to even bring up racism. Bale is not black. He didn't get a banana thrown at him because of the color of his skin. The fact that an object was thrown at him is the issue, not that the object was a banana.

@ Wigan 4-0 Swansea 5-0 West Brom 0-2 @ Citeh 2-2 Arsenal 2-2 Norwich 5-0 I count 6 goals conceded.

Perhaps soundly hammered was a bit of an exaggeration, but Liverpool certainly didn't dominate West Brom. Liverpool could barely string 3 passes together in the first half. They picked things up in the second, but we all know they're capable of putting together stretches of great play. They simply can't sustain it for a full match, let alone for 10 matches, against quality opposition. Even in the second half when they looked lively, they were outscored 2-0. As for luck not being on their side, I don't find that to be a convincing argument in the slightest. This deep into the season, every single club (with the exception of Man U) could use that excuse. Sure, if luck were only on Liverpool's side, they could challenge for the top 4, but if the luck were spread throughout the league, they'd be right where they are now. With their win over dire Wigan, they're now 3-2-3 in their last 8. Very good form is determined as much by how a squad plays defensively and how they avoid errors, not just spraying the ball around and making bottom tier teams look silly. They've scored 53 goals in the league. 29 of them have come against Wigan (x2), Norwich (x2), QPR, Fulham and Swansea (who simply didn't care). You could double the number of matches remaining and I still wouldn't expect them to finish in the top 4. They're certainly not a club to be afraid of, as dire as we've been. Tottenham, who are 9 points above them with one fewer match, are.

I don't. Dumped out of the Europa League by a Russian team in crisis, soundly hammered by the same West Brom team who were hopeless against us, knocked out of the FA Cup by Oldham and are only 2-2-3 in their last 7... I'm not seeing anything to fear just because they beat up on a weakened Swansea who were clearly looking forward to their COC match and a Wigan side that have one win in 2013.

Onebelo, you don't need to register multiple accounts just to bash Mikel. You're fooling nobody with "stamford_blue".