youlots

unims He would hardly have come on board for anything less than 3 years: pretty standard term for an incoming manager.

Oh I don't know about that - and your informant may still prove to be right ....

Best of luck Carlo. Hard act to follow.

Sheer genius on your part jordan.

Don't think just was stating a preference either way - calling it as he saw it. That's all. And imo a pretty fair call historically speaking.

Because all and sundry have been roped in to fill the coffers of UEFA

Oh I don't know, in the voyeur's parallel universe anything might be possible....

Precisely why he should be sold. And he's on record as saying he wants to play for Le Arse and play death by a thousand passes. Snap him up voyeur.

Has the book been published in Britain yet? If not, I expect there will be some rather hasty revisions being made as we speak due to rather obvious reasons.

C3 Loz - you may want to put me into the shame table as well. 3 for zilch so far I think. Onwards in ignomy!

Eat that Craig Foster - you barca asslicker - Frank's best goal all year.

Cole shading Malouda (Hibbert wasn't much resistance)

Elation, relief ...FA same as UEFA - tyring to deny us again the c**ts.

A big thankyou to Manure on showing all & sundry on how not to play this Barca team: and the evidence for that will surely be in next years CL. It'll be interesting to see who in the press in the coming days ventilate on that truth. Not many I suppose - most of the hacks will endlessly enthuse over the victory for beauty et al & will explain Manure's performance as stagefright on the night (apart from the first 10 minutes of course!).

Glad for Nic & our 1st trophy for the year. IMO he's taken a lot of stick this year at times - some justified - some over the top. Good to see his real quality shining thru for all to see in the last 3 months or so.

D1 Loz: Entered

Accurate summation - they've being limping along for the past 2 seasons really - I'm actually surprised that they've done as well as they have this year. The Beckham stint was just another telegraph of the financial mess there in but was good business for them for the marketing aspect alone. The board must have been a bit perturbed that Kaka didn't want to move to city in January for the sum being bandied about - still I suppose that they'll try and shift him again now for a huge sum to pay for the huge overhaul they need.

35 points to survive. EPL seems to be getting tougher each year as far as getting points goes. The bottom five have pretty similar stats/ratios -all of them probably deserved the drop with only the baggies and Boro on occasion less deserving than the others on account of the way they play. Long overdue for the graveyard though. If Hull are to survive next season (odds would be pretty long atm I'd suspect) they could do worse than getting rid of Brown. You sense that there may be no way back for him with a few of their players in the respect stakes. It'll be interesting to see whether Shearer hangs around - can't see the corpses arising anytime soon. Suspect Boro may be in with a chance to come back the year after.

That's right. Not exactly a samrt play for our owner to risk the wrath of Putin (and his relationship with same) and any empathy/good will he's built up with the russian people generally (attained through heavily contributing to the national team cause) by being seen to be working on Hiddink to stay put: ie. foreign club/business interests before country et al. The politics have always been lurking in the background. Similarly, Hiddink, and as much as he has developed a bond with Chels, ain't the sort of bloke who's going to do an about face on his honour code at this time in his career. He'll being leaving on a high with the bonus of a possible return some day.

Great pics Lofty. Roy Bentley - keep on humming mate.

Benitez: The table never lies.

Must be able to win EPL in first season If so, the fact that s/he is from Mars or only speaks swahili doesn't concern me in the least.

J4 Loz: Entered

Ancelotti then. Obvious trepidation in the wake of Hiddink but outright indignation? At this point? Surely Jose was never a serious option for the owner & it would seem that but for Milan still needing points to secure the 4th CL spot this may have been announced earlier. Realistically, we could do a lot worse & let's face it: there ain't a lot of top drawer managers available at the moment. I just hope the rumour going around that Ancelotti wants Adebayor is without foundation.

Disagree that Filth fans' gobbiness factor has only been over the last 5 years or so - it's existed for years. Agree that said gobbiness has become decidely more marked since Istanbul.