The Decemberists

When it comes to Jeff Jarrett, ignoring the facts is a must for any fan of his. I rarely use 'net speak but I have to say LMFAO to that. Can I steal it for my sig?

Well... it's true. I mean, I quite like Jeff, but to say he's a real draw is ignoring the facts. Lawler on the other hand used to get 8,000 every week at the Collosium, beat Elvis Presley's run of consecutive sell outs in Memphis etc etc so deserved to be a million time champ or whatever he was.

Yeah, but he did draw a hell of a lot of money, so it's somewhat forgivable, unlike others that could be mentioned. ***coughjeffjarrettcough***

This is from the book

The Monochrome Set - The Mating Game

The Wedding Present - Bewitched

The Beatles - Young Blood

Here is the marking sheet for the entries. If there are any others that end up being entered then you can add them yourself. Hopefully the score's will add them selves up for each CD. When you've marked them put the score you've ended up for each CD up on the board and then we can work out the overall winner.

I hadn't planned so far ahead for another competition, but yeah, that seems a good idea.

My entry

You don't *have* to but it would probably be easier. That's what I'm planning to do.

Post the links here for everyone else to get, listen to and then mark after I post a link for the marking sheet I'll upload after I've downloaded everyones.

I don't think it's that tough. I mean there's plenty of songs about cars, plenty that mention trains or planes or whatever. And if you can't find enough songs on topic, you can stick on any song at all and try to score high on the song quality to make up for the irrelevence.

It's just worked for me uploading a song, so I'm not really sure what to say.

Oh yeah, I certainly blame Platt more than the 'system' or anything like that, and a crap manager is a crap manager, regardless of how much money the club is getting from television or the league or whatever. But can't you see the benefit of a more competitive domestic league? Having four matches a season in the league which matter and are a real challenge I believe would in fact help the chances of Celtic or Rangers doing better in Europe. Just like in business, more competition means that the team would have to be better just to get into Europe, and therefore could do better there. But Scotland is a special case as it's almost always been a two team and the rest league, except for an occassionally spell for Aberdeen I think, whenever that was. I'm not saying that in a negative way, as Celtic are Rangers were always going to be bigger and better than the rest, if only because they're in Glasgow which opens them up to a huge supporter base and therefore more money. I don't think they'll ever change the money situation here, mainly because it'll have to be voted on by the Chairmen, and I can't see them doing it as it would mean, for the bigger clubs, a loss in revenue, and that's all they care about.

Tell it you want to send the file to your own e-mail address. Then when it uploads you'll get an e-mail with a link to the file. Copy and paste that link to your reply on here then it's get-able.

The reason people like me complain about money filtering down isn't all about the transfer fees (although in our defence, Reid may not have had top flight experience, but he was in the the Republic of Ireland's first team) but more to do with the television money and the way the gate money's shared out for games. For example, back in the pre-Premier days Norwich played at Old Trafford in front of 50,000, say. HALF of the money from ticket sales would go to Norwich. Since the Premier started all, or at least 80%, of the money stays with Man U. Now I understand Man U's arguement of "they've came to see us" but I believe the old system was better. Over the course of the season, of course Man U would get more money than Norwich or any other team in the league with lower attendences, but the money would be evened out more, allowing a more even, exciting league. Likewise, the television contract was for the entire Football League, all four divisions, and the percentage that the Fourth Divison got of the overall amount was much higher than the percentage League Two gets today for the deal for the three Football League divisions. And yes, you're right. Man U, Arsenal and Liverpool have always been "big" clubs who won a lot, and that's always the way it has been and probably will be. But they never had the monopoly the big clubs have these days. Take the 70s; League Champions 1971 - Arsenal 1972 - Derby 1973 - Liverpool 1974 - Leeds 1975 - Derby 1976 - Liverpool 1977 - Liverpool 1978 - Nottingham Forest 1979 - Liverpool 1980 - Liverpool Now clearly, that's Liverpool dominence in the League. But I would then point out the FA Cup winner over the same period; FA Cup Finals 1971 - Arsenal 2 - Liverpool 1 1972 - Leeds 1 - Arsenal 0 1973 - Sunderland 1 - Leeds 0 1974 - Liverpool 3 - Newcastle 0 1975 - West Ham 3 - Fulham 0 1976 - Southampton 1 - Man U 0 1977 - Man U 2 - Liverpool 1 1978 - Ipswich 1 - Arsenal 0 1979 - Arsenal 3 - Man U 2 1980 - West Ham 1 - Arsenal 0 In those ten finals, the best team in the decade, Liverpool, were in three of them. Sunderland were famously in the second divison when they beat Leeds in the 73 Final, and the year before Man U lost in 76 they'd won promotion from the second division. This to me shows a far more even playing field than what we have today. If we take the last the ten years, from 1995 to 2004 we get this; League Champions 1995 - Blackburn 1996 - Man U 1997 - Man U 1998 - Arsenal 1999 - Man U 2000 - Man U 2001 - Man U 2002 - Arsenal 2003 - Man U 2004 - Arsenal FA Cup Finals 1995 - Everton 1 - Man U 0 1996 - Man U 1 - Liverpool 0 1997 - Chelsea 2 - Boro 0 1998 - Arsenal 2 Newcastle 0 1999 - Man U 2 - Newcastle 0 2000 - Chelsea 1 - Aston Villa 0 2001 - Liverpool 1 - Arsenal 0 2002 - Arsenal 2 - Chelsea 0 2003 - Arsenal 1 - Southampton 0 2004 - Man U 3 - Millwall 0 This shows that the best team in the country, Man U, were in four Finals, one more than the Liverpool team of the 70s, but Liverpool won two European Cups in that time compared to Man U's one. But also Arsenal, the second best team in the country were in four as well. In the 70s there was no "second best" the way the Arse clearly were in the last decade. Anyway, I know you were just making a small point and I've gone on way too much about it as it really isn't important, but I've tried to show that, yes, it was an awfull lot different back then. No team could go from a stuggling Championship team to win two European Cups within five years like we did, Derby County will never again win the League, even in Franchise tells you otherwise, if any none Premier teams reach a Final then they'll get thrashed like Millwall instead of winning like Sunderland.

Well it doesn't help the Ukraine, Romanian, Lativian champs too much when they have to enter the qualifiers but the runners up in other countries get to go straight to the group stage. Sorry if I had a bit of a go at you, but I've had a *very* bad few days, for obvious reasons.

People always say that but i'm sure they'd quickly change their tune when they had to watch quarter finals with Dynamo Kiev v Steaua Bucharest and stuff. At the end of the day it was changed to this format for a reason. You're somewhat missing the point. It should be the old style European Cup because the current American style league system fucks things up for clubs who don't qualify. It's not a coincidence that it's been since the Champions League format began that there's been a "big three" in the Premiership, with occasionally a fourth team being close. With the old knock out system not only was every game more exciting because they all *mattered* but the money in the game was more evenly spread out. Case in point being my lot of useless wankers. We finished THIRD in 1995 and went in the UEFA Cup. These day's we'd have been in the Champions League and had an enormous influx of cash which would've made it almost impossible, even with Frank Clark in charge, of us being relegated from the top flight two years later. Now as much as I don't want that to have happened, that sort of thing will never happen again, just as us winning the Premiership will never happen again, because, as well as the whole Premier League elitest attitude to domestic money, the only teams that can afford the top wages and transfer fees are teams that, as of 1993 and of the late 90s certainly, were on top then, unless you get an Chelski situation, but it's not as if they were a bottom half of the table team anyway before the Russian money went in. Man Utd will never again be in the second divison as they were in the early 70s, Arsenal will never again be a mid table team winning the odd cup like they were for a lot of the 1980s. And it's because of people like you saying "Oh, I don't want to watch Dynamo Kiev v Steaua Bucharest - I don't know any of their players!". That is not the fucking point. The point is that they would be the CHAMPIONS of their country and deserve a chance to be champions of Europe.

OK, for those taking part the theme for the CDs will be... Transport. Quick go through the 'rules'; 1)15 songs on the album 2)Only one song per band/artist allowed, BUT you can have, for example, a Beatles song, a Lennon solo song, a McCartney solo song etc. 3)You must own the album the song is taken from, so you can't just search on Soulseek or whatever, of course there's no way to prove whether you've done this or not so it's a bit of a lame rule to be honest. Upload them onto YouSendIt.com or anywhere else you can by next Monday (May 9th) and then I'll do a Excel spread sheet for the marking and upload that for eveyone to get. I think that's pretty much it, any questions then ask. Good luck.

Oops There's a reason I'm not doing English at Uni... Anyway, seeing as there seems to be some interest, does anyone have any thoughts on a possible topic? Or should I just pick one, in a supreme overlord stylee?

This is fucking unbelievable, you don't fucking die after an operation on a broken leg, you just don't. Fuck. I loved his ECW 'No Gimmick Needed' work and was so pleased he'd managed to turn things round for himself and get a good spot in TNA after being brought in to start pretty much as just a jobber and now this happens. Fuck. I'll be so pissed if Vince doesn't do anything, but to be honest I'd be very surprised if they mention it concidering Trips and Shawn weren't exactly on good terms with him. Fuck.

Latest Matt Fact Matt (E) Fact #9: Matt loves it when people chant "We Want Matt".

The Stone Roses - She Bangs The Drums

The Byrds - You Ain't Going Nowhere