The only way Rio's night gets any worse is if John Terry turns up in full England kit.
I had to turn it off before I cringed myself inside out
You might’ve missed the bit where that stupid orange **** did that stupid shuffle dance to gay icons The Village People. ****ing ****er.
Came for the comments…….thanks guys!! 😆
Refused to watch it. Fifa are a horrendous organisation, appropriate bed fellows for that orange w***er. The whole thing is an embarrassment.
If scotland lose to Haiti it'll make the entire thing even worse..the only slight ray of optimism is as soon as we get knocked out ill not have to give the whole farce a second thought.
I hope all those people who were up in arms about players taking the knee and banging on about keeping politics out of sport were just as incensed last night.
Watching the Shrewsbury FA cup match on BBC 2 - first time I've seen us play under this manager (who took us down last season).
****ing hell we're dire.
Sutton Utd - currently 18th in the conference, and in a relegation battle by the looks of it - are absolutely running rings around us.
Good grief...
After the entirely mediocre season we've had in the PL this year, I can't believe the toon are only 3 points off 4th place. Same probably goes for many other teams. Either we're all shite or the league is very competitive this time round. 🤷♂️
I think it’s competitive. Mid and lower league teams aren’t in awe any more of the so called top six, they no longer just roll over for them. Witness the game on at the moment, Leeds Liverpool (but how soft are Liverpool!?).
Nobody really tries to park the bus any more. They think **** it! We’re going to give you a game!
It can go horribly wrong and you could get murdered, but more often than not, they don’t like it up’em. It’s the most competitive league in the world. Have a bad day at the office or let any complacency seep in and any team in the league can take points off you, no matter who you (think you) are
After the entirely mediocre season we've had in the PL this year, I can't believe the toon are only 3 points off 4th place. Same probably goes for many other teams.
Personally I'd say its shaping up as the best season for good few years, 3rd of the season done and no obvious favourite so far. Also a Toon fan
Arsenal are the obvious favourites - in terms of experience and squad quality and depth. They’re also renowned bottlers and will get very jittery if City go on one of their runs!
Yep, as was the Villa Arsenal one. Villa winner was like watching my kid’s football! Bodies flying everywhere, ball nowhere to be seen until it ends up in the back of the net!
I see Salah has chucked his toys out the pram big style. He has been poor but so have most of them bar Szoboszlai and Ekitike.
It looks like it’ll be Salahs last game for Liverpool next weekend then. It certainly seems that way after that interview. Off to the Africa Cup then the pensioners league in Saudi?
As falls from grace go, that’s pretty spectacular. But his drop in form you could apply to the entire Liverpool squad. They’ve surrendered the title without a fight and it’s not even Christmas. So many of the squad just haven’t turned up this season.
They table just looks mad! I can’t remember a season like this. There’s 3 points separating 4th from 12th and all those teams in that mix are just going to take points off each other all season. It’s brilliant!
The melodrama at Liverpool is almost as good as the football this season. I can't remember a club falling apart so quickly. At the beginning of the season all the sycophant pundits were banging on about them dominating the PL for years to come, now they're midtable, the manager's on the brink of being sacked, their star player is slagging off the club saying he's been betrayed, and their £125M striker is a massively expensive flop. You couldn't make it up.
It’s just nice that we’re no longer the soapiest club in the league though. 😃
Apparently (and oh so inevitably) Sir Jim and the Glazers are having a massive spat about whether to sack Amorim or not. There’s virtually nothing in the press though, because Salah and Slots fall out and Liverpools place as the new United are all anyone’s talking about.
I agree with Daz though, the speed with which the wheels have come off is quite spectacular and also very expensive. This collapse in form has cost not far south of half a billion quid and looking at Slot he looks like he hasn’t got a clue what to do about it
the Brighton match next weekend - Salah’s last? - is going to be an absolute circus!
It will be interesting to see how that get on when Salah leaves for AFCON has he been a disruptive influence all season?
Salah could be in Saudi come January.
I think Liverpool will be delighted if he was. Half a million quid per week in wages off the books and a fee to buy a replacement. Though who would want to go there at the moment! They’ll have to do with recalling Harvey Elliot from Villa, or giving Chiesa a go.
This is like Keanes departure/sacking from United
If Salah is still there at the end of the January transfer window, Slot won’t be. It’s one or the other and despite what he’s achieved at the club I can’t see the owners backing a 33 year old, who’s form has nosedived and is publicly slagging off the club, over the manager. They can’t!
He’s just absolutely ensured his exit with his statement after the Leeds game. It’s just a question of which Saudi club he ends up at. I can’t see him going anywhere else.
Yeah I thought that statement was such a massive tantrum it almost felt calculated. That stuff about how he should basically be a guaranteed starter -
"I don’t have to go every day fighting for my position because I earned it."
Wtf? Since when has that been how it works??
It’s the Premier League. You’re as good as your last game. It’s brutal but that’s the way it is. Everyone knows that.
He knew exactly what he was doing with that statement. Asking which Saudi club was going to put the biggest bid in. I’m sure he’ll get the squillion quid a week he’s after in the Sleepy Pastures Retirement Home League, playing in front of the 12 people in the ground, with absolutely nobody watching on the tellybox
I’ve got a horrible feeling that it would just be the most United thing ever to gift Wolves their first win of the season tonight.
It’s almost got an inevitability to it. While everyone’s busy laughing at the Scousers, Amorim is thinking ‘hold my beer…..’
Wolves are absolutely dead & buried aren't they? Shocking performance.
Wolves are absolutely dead & buried aren't they? Shocking performance.
Derby County fans are getting excited....
That defence doesn’t look like it could make a decent fist of the Championship, never mind the Premier League. Which will become apparent to them next season.
In other news I see there’s going to be advert drinks drinks breaks half way through each half at every game of the World Cup.
The Americans really are totally opposed to the very concept of having a game that flows, aren’t they.? And FIFA just want the extra revenue a few minutes of advertising and couldn’t give a toss about anything else.
If this next World Cup wasn’t a farcical travesty already - which it it/was - it is now.
I ****ing hate international football! It’s a pointless anachronism from a bygone era that should now be taken outside and shot
But it’s not about the footy is it binners, it’s about the moolah 💰 💴 💵
But it’s not about the footy is it binners, it’s about the moolah 💰 💴 💵
Too true. International football should, and still can be, great, but ****ing around with games and how it's played to generate income for the federations has ruined it
There was something on the BBC a month or so back about how to improve football and the consensus was basically to stop ****g around with it and bringing americanisms into it - drinks breaks, referees announcing what their decisions are and teams like Wolves can take their bloody fire/light shows and shove them right up their arses.
Obviously FIFA didn't get the memo and Infantino has just bent over and dreamt of his brown envelope as Trump has his wicked way with him. International football needs a rethink and it either needs to be without FIFA or FIFA needs a complete rebuild.
Kinda half watched the Wolves game last night - they're gone. Seriously don't see them picking up anymore points. The manager is obviously half decent - got Luton to the premiership (and then league 1!) and was flying with Boro. But the players are awful - not a single one looks premiership quality. They have a bit of a feel of Watford 10/15 years ago where they trawled random leagues for random players with little/no English league experience and ended up with the odd decent player but a load of rubbish.
Nice little windfall for fifa. How much per minute of advertising across 104 games. All it costs them is a few bottles of water
They don't even really need to defend the decision either, it's for the players health after all
Of course it's not going to be introduced in the air cooled stadiums when it's clearly not required....oh wait..
International football should, and still can be, great
When? When was the last game of International football that was a patch on an average Premier League or Champions League match?
Most of it is absolutely dire! Engerland qualifiers are like cruel and unusual torture. And that’s a supposedly top team. Imagine how bad some of them are?
And now they’ve expanded the World Cup to include so many teams - purely for the money - a lot of the group games will be like watching paint dry. A lot of the teams in it are little better, quality-wise - than pub sides.
And this World Cup is going to go on for 5 weeks! 5 weeks! So a lot of players are going to have no summer break at all and be straight back into a new season, if they’re lucky enough not to pick up any injuries.
Lets be honest, the whole thing is now so corrupted and disruptive to the ‘proper’ football, it’s time it was put out of its misery, if only to see the look on Infantino’s smug face
Lets be honest, the whole thing is now so corrupted and disruptive to the ‘proper’ football, it’s time it was put out of its misery, if only to see the look on Infantino’s smug face
He and his cronies are the problem.
I still enjoy the pointy end of tournaments, we can agree to disagree. You are right about ever expanding tournaments, pointless qualifiers and useless friendlies. They are a recipe for injury disaster.
It's stupid things as well, like the expansion of European football, what was wrong with the European Cup, UEFA Cup & Cup Winners Cup?
He and his cronies are the problem
They are indeed. I just don’t get how such a shamelessly self-serving and corrupt organisation has been able to effectively hijack an entire sport like football? And been allowed to get away with doing so for so long.
Actually.. I do know how. We all do. Good, old-fashioned bribery.
It reminded me of watching Mayor if Eastown the other night (well worth a watch if you’ve not seen it). At one point somebody naively turns round and asks innocently “is there anyone in this entire system who isn’t corrupt?”. The answer is obviously no, just like modern football
Izak is woeful, no wonder Mo has a strop.
Isak wasn't even great at Newcastle, now he's moved to a bigger pond - he'll go down as one of the great transfers to the Saudi league in summer
That’s a but underplaying how good he was at Newcastle for a season and a bit. And that’s the thing - he’s not been consistently a top player over many seasons. I thought he was really poor last night. Touch poor, struggled physically and gave the ball away in bad areas. Ekitike was far better - still don’t know why they signed both!
Isak wasn't even great at Newcastle
He was great in spurts that usually lasted about 15-20 games. He was always extremely fragile both physically and mentally. If his dodgy groin wasn't hindering him, his questionable attitude and tendency to sulk was doing it instead. Also during games we only ever got 60mins out of him even when fully fit. Many might put that down to Howe's intense pressing tactics, I think he was probably just unwilling to put in the effort. Liverpool simply didn't do their research before buying him. Any Newcastle fan could have told them what they're now thinking themselves, and it's very amusing to see the car crash play out.
So now we have the World Cup fiasco part 2 - the ticket prices. The cheapest for the final being £3,119... even in Qatar the cheapest was an insane £450
Everything about this world cup makes it deserve to be a massive failure. I'm waiting for the stories of supporters being detained and deported, or put off going by the threat of it, plus the cost. Trump wants his 1936 Olympics so he can strut about, lets make it as well-attended as his inauguration.
Then again, I was half-hoping that the Russian and Qatari WC would fail, and they went off OK.
Everything about this world cup makes it deserve to be a massive failure. I'm waiting for the stories of supporters being detained and deported, or put off going by the threat of it, plus the cost. Trump wants his 1936 Olympics so he can strut about, lets make it as well-attended as his inauguration.
Then again, I was half-hoping that the Russian and Qatari WC would fail, and they went off OK.
I am gutted for the Scotland fans who've waited a long time for this opportunity and who are now being priced out of the tournament.
Though I'd happily see Trump and FIFA face empty stadiums
