Getting this nagging little Dragon's Den idea of combining the little brolly in push button mode with that automatic rain-sensing windscreen wiper technology and incorporating it into some hipster headwear. The trendy flat cap maybe, or the Boy George wonky fedora.
A dot of rain, spokes come out, foot-wide brolly in a James Bond gadget stylee.
Theo and Peter would pooh-pooh it with the quickness. Bannatyne would be 'ooot' of course.
Hilary would take it.
Well that was one hell of an ending to the season. One of the best I've seen in my years. Congrats to City.
On a side note. Is Barton the most disliked individual in the kingdom this evening?
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
In this delightful clip, there are two deathless moments (apart from the obvious one) which deserve a little more attention;
1) The brief but exquisite expression of bewilderment all over the coupon of that turncoat Judas bastard Michael Owen (he's dead to me) as he's hit by the realisation that he won't, after all, be picking up a Premiership Winners medal for sitting on Yanited's bench all season.
2) The sight of an obviously delighted (former Liverpool striker) Djibril Cisse giving Samir Nasri a big hug. It might have been a combination of joy at QPR staying up and joy for the success of a fellow Frenchman. But I like to think there was another reason he was happy that City won.
Was so glum with minutes to go, I still can't quite believe it. But the bottlers seem to have been replaced with believers. It just takes longer for the fans to realise it because they've been watching City be shit, expecting City to be shit and Knowing City will be shit, for a lot longer than any of the current squad have ever witnessed.
You have to understand that following City has meant, for so much of the past, that dreams of anything good are always renedered nightmares by cruel twists of fate or stupid implosions - snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And today seemed like the biggest, most awful choke of all-time. It's par for the course for City, surely....
Yet here we are. This is the kind of outcome that Un*ted are supposed to have. Is someone having a f*cking bubble? Did someone just f*ck with The Matrix? Because I like it!
this season couldn't end fast enough....Arsenal doing their best to try and give me a heart attack. Hate that na$ri won a medal, but glad to see some more teams in the mix. City fans kinda deserve it, and better them than a crappy Utd team.
silly season started like 10 hrs ago....thankful Euros will distract some of this.
never changed my fantasy team after August (the 8-2 probably having something to do with that) and not surprisingly I came in dead last.
another fun season lads.....lets do it again next year.
And please to god let FFP actually have some teeth.
Why have they not deserved it? They were the team who dished out the heaviest beatings (as reflected in the goal difference). UTD winning, having lost 6-1 and 1-0 to City, would've been much better candidates for 'underserving' champions. Citeh have played the best football this season.
Jimster, everyone's happy for you and yours, and lord knows it is fantastic to see SAF get some of that schadenfreude karma payback thing, in such a raw and visible way.
But take a step back, people are sick of the game (and it should remain a game at heart, not a business or an entertainment) being thrown around and skewed beyond nature by a bunch of egomaniac and testosterone overloaded overlords.
I'm afraid you must deal.
And Barton remains less despised than Owen, I believe.
The second loss to UTD was much harder to take really. Djourou at RB was a catastrophe, everyone could see it was a disaster waiting to happen, and then taking Oxo-Cube off for Arshavin was head-against-the-wall stuff.
Although his twitter rant on Shearer was pretty good.
All personal bias aside, it's a sad indication of the game that people are offering this up as the greatest premier league season of all time.
Credit to Citeh for trying to make it more exciting through self destruction but a squad that's been Champ managered over a season and a half with bottomless funds winning the title by scraping a win against a ten man team fourth from bottom is hardly Roy of the Rovers material.
On performances over the season I can't argue that Citeh deserve the title but, from a romantic football viewpoint, I think a little bit more of my interest in the game just died.
It's sort of ironic that, after years of moaning about buying the title, Utd were actually the small fry punching above their weight this year.
On the plus side, nice to see all logic being broken with the three promoted teams staying up for a season.
Fair dos. You are a proper red, I'll give you that. I would have agreed 100%, if we'd not won yesterday, that we did not deserve it - champs should be able to see of QPR with 10 men, even if they had resorted to siege tactics. We had some f*ck ups, Un*ted had some f*ck ups, but head to head you were done fair and square, IMHO. That Everton 4-4. C'MON SON-R.
As for buying the league, the FFP meant that the money had to be spent big and fast. Bobby has done a good job getting them to play together as they are all new faces to the club (apart from Micah Richards).
I still think City have a way to go before they are bullying Euroman but they are stronger. I can see Ste*e's point perfectly, it's no longer just a game. The Arabs aren't in it for fun, and if you want to make money off your "Project" you have to spend it.
As a QPR supporter watching that game on tv yesterday, i really think it is up there with the most incredible, unbelievable games of all time. It feels like we won something as well, and by staying up I suppose we did. But it's more than that. I think it's sweeter than last year when we won the championship, but couldn't celebrate properly until the Faurlin affair was sorted. We defended like absolute bloody supermen yesterday, better than the Scum against Barcelona. I've never seen a shift like that from QPR, and even though we lost the game and things could have been horrible...what a relief. Barton should be sacked without question. A liability and a remorseless thug. I hope we can find a way around his contract to do it.
City plainly deserved the title this year, all the more so because A****y Y***g plays for Utd
Anyways, just some thoughts on the motivations of oligarchs and the sheikhs....
Clear that Abramo is looking to inveigle himself into a blue-chip safe haven like the UK as insurance against coming a cropper in the wild west of the east. No better way than to supply the legal opiate that is football.
Bit more muddied for the oil mob.
They have to use their money for diversification purposes, for make benefit of their bloodline. However, football is not a smart investment. Man City is a much harder sell to the Asiatic hordes than Utd or Real or the like. So what is it? How much of it is about proving financial machismo? Is there a dollop of taking the west on at their own game? Is it all about securing brand promo for their burgeoning tourism industry?
I can't see an outright case for any of these ideas.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
Let's look at this "buying the title" thing, shall we? The last time I remember it being such a big talking point was on the final day of the 94/95 season. And look who missed out on the final day of that campaign, losing out to a team that didn't exactly lift the title in glorious fashion. But then money can't buy the rub of the green, can it?
As far as I'm concerned, if you buy into this then you're buying into that whole "Prem = beginning of football" nonsense. If titles can be bought, then where's Liverpool's title? Fuck knows we've spent enough money over the last decade. What happened to the title Leeds bought? Lost in the post? Surely Chelsea have spent enough money since giving themselves over to Oilbramagaz to have put the title beyond anyone else's reach forever, yet that's not been the case, has it? Could it be, perhaps, that winning the title comes down to the same things it's always done; having a decent manager who can take a bunch of good players, regardless of how much they cost, and get them to play properly as a team even if they can't stand each other, and to actually give a fuck about the club and about winning and losing? Let's not forget, City were two minutes away from "buying" fuck-all yesterday.
I can understand the essential righteousness behind this notion that "buying the title" is wrong, but I don't agree with it. Everyone tries to buy the title. The only difference between, say, the days when Spuds thought they could do it by giving Southampton ??125,000 for Martin Chivers is that, like everything else, it just costs more these days. I mean, if you had tried and failed for decades to buy the title, only to finally succeed when you stopped trying, then I can understand why you might start to believe a title won with, say, kids, had more moral value than one won with the aid of deep pockets. (Although even then, you might still prefer to hedge your bets by spending...oh, I dunno, around ??1.2m on the creative fulcrum around which those kids revolve.) But like I said, it costs more now. And really, if you're going to blame anyone for that, it should be Abramovich.
Barton should be sacked without question. A liability and a remorseless thug.
When he was at City I always wanted the lad to come good. I know he's from a f*cked-up, dysfunctional family and his brother is a lifer after that ice-pick incident (not Trotsky-R) but there seemed to be at least one other voice speaking to him, besides the devil on his shoulder. I remember reading an interview with his ex-therapist commenting about how much progress he had seen in him, only for him to throw it all away (City style) after some bout of goading.
Niggling on the pitch goes on, it's just getting away with it that sorts the seasoned pro's from the boys. "Straight-Red" hardmen are less effective if they're off the pitch and their mates are putting in a shift for them. Alas, Joey has never mastered the basics of gamesmanship. Tweeting about "Taking 1 of theirs with me" underlines his unsuitability to be effective at this level. Taxi ranks not the ideal training ground, Joey. Ironically, Shearer was a master in this respect IIRC.
I also remember seeing a vid of him being followed by the press on his way to court in his Porsche 4x4 and using the bus lanes all the way to barge through morning traffic.
I can't say I understand anything about the motivations of the monied movers in the football world. I thought maybe it was a rich mans play thing type affair, playing Football Manager for real. Lords knows the world they live in doesn't seem real to me.
But then you have people like Stan Kroenke who owns the controlling stake at Arsenal. He doesn't seem interested in football at all, and doesn't have any interest in financing the team from his own pocket. The only way I can see he can make any real money out of Arsenal is when he sells us on. I really don't get it. I guess he just really likes buying sports teams.
Pleased for City fans that they won and relieved that Arsenal managed to scrape third.
You could probably make a convincing case against any of the top four actually deserving the position each ended in, but I can live with the way it finished. My only real disappointment was that Villa weren't relegated; consistently the worst team to watch, they'll be glad to see the back of McLeish.
Also, we really should do like the Spanish and work out league placement by head-to-head record before resorting to goal difference.
Here's some figures on how much it costs to buy success in English football.
With what, 2 league titles and 4 FA Cups, Chelsea have done pretty well for the money. I'm sure City will do as well, maybe even better considering their spending power. Teams like Liverpool and the Spuds show it's not enough to throw money at a team, you still have to be wise about it.
Just to add, if it were not for the extraordinary circumstance of the sale of CR7 for ??80m United's position in this table would look a little different.
Seems McLeish is about to get the boot from Villa. Don't know why they didn't do it sooner.
&
After taking on Sheeeeera and been told off by the nation's favourite toby jug Gary Lineker, Barton has hit back.
Lineker said to Barton: "Still raging then? Still kicking out? And still, presumably, misunderstood? But only by yourself I suspect."
Barton responded: "Do u wanna go there publicly "Mr Squeaky Clean" ? Think u should have a look in that vast closet of skeltons before u respond. (sic)
"I know a lot about THAT side to u the people don't and won't bat an eye lid at exposing u.
"So mind ur manners Squeaky... now back under your stone you odious little toad..."
Surely Chelsea have spent enough money since giving themselves over to Oilbramagaz to have put the title beyond anyone else's reach forever, yet that's not been the case, has it?
Well, since taking over the club 9 years ago, Chelsea have won the PL three times and been runners up 4 seasons. They've also won the FA Cup four times, the League Cup twice, and got to the CL final twice (and, were it not for the wonder of JT, would have won it). Were it not for Utd I think it's safe to say that the number of titles would be more than that as well. Not to mention if Roman had held off on the firing trigger a bit longer and allowed some stability to settle in.
I'm not against what Boberto has done at Citeh since it's obviously more complicated than just picking the players with the best stats and having them run round for 90 minutes. However, it surprises me how Citeh winning the title is seen as a celebration of a new dawn for the PL when to me it really only reconfirms the status quo. I don't know, once the excitement about Fergie being knocked off his perch settles down then perhaps there'll be more analysis but I just think it says a lot that I haven't seen any of the soul searching that followed after Chelsea did something similar in 04/05.
I think Arsenal hanging in for third with their meagre resources (and I'm aware that this is at least in part due to Wenger's own issues) is a more hopeful stat even if they did need a few months of Arry cocking things up to get there.
God knows about Liverpool though - perhaps the lesson is to first invest in a good scout before you invest in the team?
Edit: Just seen Okem's stats post - sums it all up a lot better.
Comments
A dot of rain, spokes come out, foot-wide brolly in a James Bond gadget stylee.
Theo and Peter would pooh-pooh it with the quickness. Bannatyne would be 'ooot' of course.
Hilary would take it.
I'd like Hilary to take it. Oh yes indeed.
I fancy that. In fact I double fancy that.
:
Well that was one hell of an ending to the season. One of the best I've seen in my years. Congrats to City.
On a side note. Is Barton the most disliked individual in the kingdom this evening?
1) The brief but exquisite expression of bewilderment all over the coupon of that turncoat Judas bastard Michael Owen (he's dead to me) as he's hit by the realisation that he won't, after all, be picking up a Premiership Winners medal for sitting on Yanited's bench all season.
2) The sight of an obviously delighted (former Liverpool striker) Djibril Cisse giving Samir Nasri a big hug. It might have been a combination of joy at QPR staying up and joy for the success of a fellow Frenchman. But I like to think there was another reason he was happy that City won.
Best final day of the season in the Prem era? Great drama.
You have to understand that following City has meant, for so much of the past, that dreams of anything good are always renedered nightmares by cruel twists of fate or stupid implosions - snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And today seemed like the biggest, most awful choke of all-time. It's par for the course for City, surely....
Yet here we are. This is the kind of outcome that Un*ted are supposed to have. Is someone having a f*cking bubble? Did someone just f*ck with The Matrix? Because I like it!
:beerbang: More beer! :beerbang:
silly season started like 10 hrs ago....thankful Euros will distract some of this.
never changed my fantasy team after August (the 8-2 probably having something to do with that) and not surprisingly I came in dead last.
another fun season lads.....lets do it again next year.
And please to god let FFP actually have some teeth.
Why?
Man win a lottery, who are toff and toff fi tell man how much man can spend, where man can live?
Don't want noisy neighbours?
Still warming to Barton Paul?
But take a step back, people are sick of the game (and it should remain a game at heart, not a business or an entertainment) being thrown around and skewed beyond nature by a bunch of egomaniac and testosterone overloaded overlords.
I'm afraid you must deal.
And Barton remains less despised than Owen, I believe.
And no, fuck Barton. Although his twitter rant on Shearer was pretty good.
The second loss to UTD was much harder to take really. Djourou at RB was a catastrophe, everyone could see it was a disaster waiting to happen, and then taking Oxo-Cube off for Arshavin was head-against-the-wall stuff.
Please to poast?
Credit to Citeh for trying to make it more exciting through self destruction but a squad that's been Champ managered over a season and a half with bottomless funds winning the title by scraping a win against a ten man team fourth from bottom is hardly Roy of the Rovers material.
On performances over the season I can't argue that Citeh deserve the title but, from a romantic football viewpoint, I think a little bit more of my interest in the game just died.
It's sort of ironic that, after years of moaning about buying the title, Utd were actually the small fry punching above their weight this year.
On the plus side, nice to see all logic being broken with the three promoted teams staying up for a season.
Fair dos. You are a proper red, I'll give you that. I would have agreed 100%, if we'd not won yesterday, that we did not deserve it - champs should be able to see of QPR with 10 men, even if they had resorted to siege tactics. We had some f*ck ups, Un*ted had some f*ck ups, but head to head you were done fair and square, IMHO. That Everton 4-4. C'MON SON-R.
As for buying the league, the FFP meant that the money had to be spent big and fast. Bobby has done a good job getting them to play together as they are all new faces to the club (apart from Micah Richards).
I still think City have a way to go before they are bullying Euroman but they are stronger. I can see Ste*e's point perfectly, it's no longer just a game. The Arabs aren't in it for fun, and if you want to make money off your "Project" you have to spend it.
Damn.
City plainly deserved the title this year, all the more so because A****y Y***g plays for Utd
Clear that Abramo is looking to inveigle himself into a blue-chip safe haven like the UK as insurance against coming a cropper in the wild west of the east. No better way than to supply the legal opiate that is football.
Bit more muddied for the oil mob.
They have to use their money for diversification purposes, for make benefit of their bloodline. However, football is not a smart investment. Man City is a much harder sell to the Asiatic hordes than Utd or Real or the like. So what is it? How much of it is about proving financial machismo? Is there a dollop of taking the west on at their own game? Is it all about securing brand promo for their burgeoning tourism industry?
I can't see an outright case for any of these ideas.
As far as I'm concerned, if you buy into this then you're buying into that whole "Prem = beginning of football" nonsense. If titles can be bought, then where's Liverpool's title? Fuck knows we've spent enough money over the last decade. What happened to the title Leeds bought? Lost in the post? Surely Chelsea have spent enough money since giving themselves over to Oilbramagaz to have put the title beyond anyone else's reach forever, yet that's not been the case, has it? Could it be, perhaps, that winning the title comes down to the same things it's always done; having a decent manager who can take a bunch of good players, regardless of how much they cost, and get them to play properly as a team even if they can't stand each other, and to actually give a fuck about the club and about winning and losing? Let's not forget, City were two minutes away from "buying" fuck-all yesterday.
I can understand the essential righteousness behind this notion that "buying the title" is wrong, but I don't agree with it. Everyone tries to buy the title. The only difference between, say, the days when Spuds thought they could do it by giving Southampton ??125,000 for Martin Chivers is that, like everything else, it just costs more these days. I mean, if you had tried and failed for decades to buy the title, only to finally succeed when you stopped trying, then I can understand why you might start to believe a title won with, say, kids, had more moral value than one won with the aid of deep pockets. (Although even then, you might still prefer to hedge your bets by spending...oh, I dunno, around ??1.2m on the creative fulcrum around which those kids revolve.) But like I said, it costs more now. And really, if you're going to blame anyone for that, it should be Abramovich.
For me, FSG can't buy a title soon enough.
When he was at City I always wanted the lad to come good. I know he's from a f*cked-up, dysfunctional family and his brother is a lifer after that ice-pick incident (not Trotsky-R) but there seemed to be at least one other voice speaking to him, besides the devil on his shoulder. I remember reading an interview with his ex-therapist commenting about how much progress he had seen in him, only for him to throw it all away (City style) after some bout of goading.
Niggling on the pitch goes on, it's just getting away with it that sorts the seasoned pro's from the boys. "Straight-Red" hardmen are less effective if they're off the pitch and their mates are putting in a shift for them. Alas, Joey has never mastered the basics of gamesmanship. Tweeting about "Taking 1 of theirs with me" underlines his unsuitability to be effective at this level. Taxi ranks not the ideal training ground, Joey. Ironically, Shearer was a master in this respect IIRC.
I also remember seeing a vid of him being followed by the press on his way to court in his Porsche 4x4 and using the bus lanes all the way to barge through morning traffic.
Lad needs a good brainwashing.
But then you have people like Stan Kroenke who owns the controlling stake at Arsenal. He doesn't seem interested in football at all, and doesn't have any interest in financing the team from his own pocket. The only way I can see he can make any real money out of Arsenal is when he sells us on. I really don't get it. I guess he just really likes buying sports teams.
You could probably make a convincing case against any of the top four actually deserving the position each ended in, but I can live with the way it finished. My only real disappointment was that Villa weren't relegated; consistently the worst team to watch, they'll be glad to see the back of McLeish.
Also, we really should do like the Spanish and work out league placement by head-to-head record before resorting to goal difference.
With what, 2 league titles and 4 FA Cups, Chelsea have done pretty well for the money. I'm sure City will do as well, maybe even better considering their spending power. Teams like Liverpool and the Spuds show it's not enough to throw money at a team, you still have to be wise about it.
Just to add, if it were not for the extraordinary circumstance of the sale of CR7 for ??80m United's position in this table would look a little different.
&
After taking on Sheeeeera and been told off by the nation's favourite toby jug Gary Lineker, Barton has hit back.
Best end to a season ever.
Well, since taking over the club 9 years ago, Chelsea have won the PL three times and been runners up 4 seasons. They've also won the FA Cup four times, the League Cup twice, and got to the CL final twice (and, were it not for the wonder of JT, would have won it). Were it not for Utd I think it's safe to say that the number of titles would be more than that as well. Not to mention if Roman had held off on the firing trigger a bit longer and allowed some stability to settle in.
I'm not against what Boberto has done at Citeh since it's obviously more complicated than just picking the players with the best stats and having them run round for 90 minutes. However, it surprises me how Citeh winning the title is seen as a celebration of a new dawn for the PL when to me it really only reconfirms the status quo. I don't know, once the excitement about Fergie being knocked off his perch settles down then perhaps there'll be more analysis but I just think it says a lot that I haven't seen any of the soul searching that followed after Chelsea did something similar in 04/05.
I think Arsenal hanging in for third with their meagre resources (and I'm aware that this is at least in part due to Wenger's own issues) is a more hopeful stat even if they did need a few months of Arry cocking things up to get there.
God knows about Liverpool though - perhaps the lesson is to first invest in a good scout before you invest in the team?
Edit: Just seen Okem's stats post - sums it all up a lot better.