deancoles 0 Report post Posted July 17, 2004 The Welsh teams(except Cardiff and Wrexham) are crap, they lose to teams from Malta,Lithuania and Luxemburg on a regular basis. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DCMaximo 0 Report post Posted July 17, 2004 Hey don't forget Swansea (Swansea Uni graduate representin'!), but the League of Wales is a semi-pro league, so the standard of football isn't great. The Welsh league is never going to be a success because any half decent players join Swansea, Wrexham or Cardiff because, in comparison, that's where the money is. Total Network Solutions (formally Inter Cardiff- they're named after the company who own them for fucks sake) are one of the big LoW teams, so you got to see a big name Welsh team, but the only decent Welsh teams are far too good for the LoW Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Anorak 0 Report post Posted July 18, 2004 Leicester lost 2-1 to Barnsley! Don't we all love pre-season friendlies? At least 'Tricky' Trevor Benjamin scored, he always tries hard. Other results... Barnet 1 Arsenal 10 Completely forgot about Francis Jeffers. Team Halden 0 Derby County 15!!!!!! The Barnet lads can hold their heads up high compared with that Halden lot. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
deancoles 0 Report post Posted July 19, 2004 (edited) We beat Newport County 4-1 away, here's the "star" list of friendlies which include 2 games against Forest Green in 2 nights, at least I can see us winning all but the Yeovil game. Clevedon 1 Bristol City 9 Kidderminster v Bristol City(canceled for some reason) Yeovil 0 Bristol City 3 Forest Green v Bristol City Forest Green v Bristol City Bristol City v Portsmouth Bristol City v West Brom Edit:Added Clevedon result, read and weep(much tougher than Derby's match ) Edited July 26, 2004 by deancoles411 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Anorak 0 Report post Posted July 19, 2004 About time you lot went up this year isn't it? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
deancoles 0 Report post Posted July 19, 2004 About time you lot went up this year isn't it? At least we'll be the 1st ever Coca Cola League 1 Champions/play off winners.We're a very special club, any club that can turn Ade Akinbiyi into a 5 million pound player(We sold for 3 million to Wolves and they got 5 million for him in the summer by doing sod all) deserves recognition.On the other hand we spent 2 million on Tony Thorpe,Lee Peacock and Lee Matthews and they left the club without us getting a penny due to Thorpe leaving on a bosman and because we didn't other the other 2 new contracts. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DCMaximo 0 Report post Posted July 20, 2004 Talking of going up, who do you guys tip for promotion this year? In all three divisions? I'd go for: Championship: Leicester, West Ham, Coventry (Monkey Head Reid is amassing a decent squad this year and I think they'll surprise a lot of people...and I hate Coventry) NEW Div 1: Bristol City, Walsall, Hull City NEW Div 2: Swansea (hey, if they maintain last years decent performance, it could happen), Yeovil and Notts County (my soon-to-be-local team) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
deancoles 0 Report post Posted July 21, 2004 Championship: Sunderland(best keeper and midfielder will probably make up for having Kevin Kyle up front),Leicester(Keown is still the best marker in England,Dublin and Connolly looks a good front pair) and Notts Forest(Johnson and the manager will carry them, same exact thing happened with Palace) Relegated: Brighton,Stoke and plymouth League 1: Bristol City(Heffernan and Gillespie will get 15 each),Barnsley(bought wisely) and Tranmere Rovers(brilliant at end of last season) Relegated: Bradford,Brentford,Port Vale and Peterborough(hope not because Barry Fry once said he'd be able to play golf on the City pitch which went down well down here) league 2: Northampton,Mansfield,Yeovil and Wycombe Relegated: Shrewsbury and Darlington next season Nick Barmby and Jason Mcateer(how their careers have died) will have the plaesure of getting marked by the best midfielder outside the prem(Tommy Doherty) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
caboose 0 Report post Posted July 21, 2004 Newcastle have signed Kluivert and Speed has left for Bolton. Good luck to Gary Speed, there probably isn't a better professional in the Premier League. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Vanhalen 0 Report post Posted July 22, 2004 Man, I wish the season would start already, i miss my saturday afternoons Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Dr. Wrestlingphysics Report post Posted July 24, 2004 I wish the season would start too, there's nothing to talk about at work now! Any thoughts on the Viera to Real Madrid stories anyone? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DCMaximo 0 Report post Posted July 24, 2004 If he's goes, especially without Parlour, then their central midfield is pretty weak. Indeed, they've been struggling to find a midfield for their recent friendlies. Of course, since it's Arsenal, I hope their midfield keeps getting worse and the Gooners find themselves freefalling down the table. Hey, a guy can dream Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
TheFranchise 0 Report post Posted July 25, 2004 Ah i'm back.. I'm glad someone picked up on that 15-0 win! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
deancoles 0 Report post Posted July 26, 2004 Ah i'm back.. I'm glad someone picked up on that 15-0 win! Beating Clevedon 9-1 is much tougher than beating a bunch of Norweigan amateurs Not to mention stuffing Yeovil 3-0 away.We've 2 games in 2 days at Forest green(local club who Loan and buy youngsters from us) and on Friday we can stuff Portsmouth, interestingly in 2000 we could have bought Lua Lua for £250,000 from Colchester but we decided not to and bought Tony Thorpe instead. Paul Heffernan has scored 4 goals in 3 games, not bad for £150,000. We also have Alun Armstrong(ex Stockport,Middlesbrough and Ipswich) on trial, he has a good career record when fit.He's been a sub mostly at his last 2 clubs but I remember him as a youngster in Stockports 96/97 team that reached the Coca Cola Cup quarter final with Dave Jones as manager and Paul Jones in goal and he was real good then. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Vanhalen 0 Report post Posted July 26, 2004 Just to let people know, we now have the TSM league, have a look at this thread. http://forums.thesmartmarks.com/index.php?showtopic=58458 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Vanhalen 0 Report post Posted July 29, 2004 *bump* only 11 days to go people Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Anorak 0 Report post Posted July 29, 2004 After all these years i'm finally getting hooked up to SKY tomorrow so I get to see everything. I'm the kind of person who will watch ANY football if its on so its about time. West Ham should be a cracking first game. I'm giving the weekend tournament involving City, East Bengal, Maritimo & Mallorca a miss though, i'd rather go to the other 23 that matter. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Vanhalen 0 Report post Posted July 30, 2004 After all these years i'm finally getting hooked up to SKY tomorrow so I get to see everything. I'm the kind of person who will watch ANY football if its on so its about time. West Ham should be a cracking first game. I'm giving the weekend tournament involving City, East Bengal, Maritimo & Mallorca a miss though, i'd rather go to the other 23 that matter. You've joined at the right time my friend, now Sky show every single game from the premiership either live or on a delayed coverage Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
deancoles 0 Report post Posted July 30, 2004 (edited) I wish I had Sky Digital instead of telewest, the new highlights show looks great. In case some of you guys haven't heard about it this explains the show Vanhalen was on about and is taken from SkySports.com. "Football First will make its debut on the opening day of the Barclays Premiership season, Saturday August 14. There will be two parts to the programme: · GAME OF THE DAY: On-air at 8.30pm with the full 90 minutes of a match selected from the day's 3pm kick-offs. The decision on the Game of the Day will be made after 5pm on Saturday. · MATCH CHOICE: At 10.15 pm, a choice from extended highlights of every game played that day. Sky digital viewers will be offered a menu of up to eight Premiership games; they can choose to watch their own team or any other featured. Highlights of all games will run for about 50 minutes each. Saturday night’s broadcast of Football First will be followed by a series of repeats of the Match Choice element, shown four times into the night and again at 6am and 7.30am on Sunday. During each showing Sky Sports viewers can select a different match from the full choice, via the interactive menu. " That looks brilliant, even though people would complain if Sky got things like the Olympics or the big International Tournaments(World Cup and Euro's) it would be great to see how sky would use interactive with it. How long before Sky does the same with the other divisions? would save me having to travel to places like Hartlepool and Brighton(their ground was terrible, especially in the rain.Thank god their out of our division) Edit: Anorak, you'll have bucket loads of football to see on sky, even Eurosport has the italian leagues and the U21 tournaments. This weekend their showing the Friendly Tournaments with Arsenal,Newcastle and Man United. Edited July 30, 2004 by deancoles411 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Anorak 0 Report post Posted July 30, 2004 Yeah, ill catch some of that. I love the different European football, it was the deal with the Champions League last season when I finally started to seriously consider getting it. I like my Rugby and Tennis as well so i'm well set for those too. They're crafty gits at SKY, stealing MOTD's thunder with that new Premier show. Sounds really neat though. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
k thx 0 Report post Posted July 30, 2004 Bristol City/Pompey friendly tonight. Should be interesting. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
deancoles 0 Report post Posted July 31, 2004 (edited) Bristol City/Pompey friendly tonight. Should be interesting. Finished 0-0 and Yakubu was throwing his rattle about for some reason because our defence was a bit to eager to kick him up the arse, he was subbed at half time. Some of us City fans are already trying to think of a chant for the Torquay Home game which involves Helen Chamberlain(who apparently has bedded a few of the Torquay players in recent years) they'll probably get a generous reception though because their manager Leroy Rosenior is a city legend(his son Liam on the other hand left for Fulham when his contract ran out despite saying he'd sign an extension and our compensation was 50 grand) Here's an interesting question for you guys, in the last 5 years name the best and worst things your team has done.I'm looking forward to the Derby reply for worst, I'm guessing it's either sacking Jim Smith or signing Ravanelli. Best: in 2000 when we were skint we refused to save money by taking some funding out of our Youth Academy which cost about Half a million a year.Now we have about 5 local lads in the 1st team picture. Worst: in the 99/00 season it was September and we had high hopes of getting promotion, but our board wouldn't have none of that and sold Ade Akinbiyi for 3 million to Wolves and Jim Brennan to Notts forest for 1.75 million and John Burns(so crap he played 11 games in 2 1/2 years until we finally released the bugger) for reasons mentioned above and yet our board were puzzled when we finished mid table with our goals having dried up. Letting Tony Thorpe's contract expire in 2002 wasn't exactly clever either. Edit: During the Arsenal/river plate match, the commentators were talking about how Van Basten,Stoichkov and Klinsmann are all national managers(makes me feel old as I remember USA 94 when Stoichkov made his reputation in Rurope) despite having never coached before.Could you see that happening here in future? I don't think it would as over here no one is as popular as Klinsmann is in germany or Stoichkov in Bulgaria to get the job without experience.If his management career is succesful I could see maybe Tony Adams getting it due to the lack of contenders in 10-15 years although the press would have a field day with Adams past. Edited July 31, 2004 by deancoles411 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DCMaximo 0 Report post Posted July 31, 2004 Best: Slowly, but surely, adding more and more young players to the squad and giving time the chance to develop. Now we're in a position where the average age of our team in in the mid-twenties, instead of the old guys we had 5 years ago, and guys like King, Simon Davies, Defoe, Keane (still only 25), Gardner, Jackson etc can provide a strong backbone for our future years. Worst: The Glenn Hoddle era, by far. The fact that he was allowed to spend £9.8 million on Dean freaking Richards is sickening, but the fact that he didn't get on with half of the team, bought very average players (the aforementioned Richards, Toda, Blondel and no I'm not mentioning Postiga here). The only good things he did was bring in Keane and somehow make Steffan Freund into a fans favourite) And thank God we've FINALLY bought a new left-back in Erik Edman. If we'd started another season with Mauricio Tarrico as left back, there would have been no hope for us. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Anorak 0 Report post Posted August 1, 2004 Bristol City/Pompey friendly tonight. Should be interesting. Some of us City fans are already trying to think of a chant for the Torquay Home game which involves Helen Chamberlain(who apparently has bedded a few of the Torquay players in recent years). Really? Where did you hear that? I'm sure you'll come up with a good one. We just signed Nathan Blake, not sure about that one. Bad news for 'Tricky' Trevor Benjamin and young Tommy Wright anyway. Dublin Connolly Blake Wright Benjamin Morris That should be enough strikers. Worst thing Leicester did in the last 5 years was to appoint Peter Taylor as successor to Martin O'Neil. Despite his record for the U-21's and good coaching reputation the board didn't consider the factor of him having zero experience managing a Premiership side. We were top of the league around October time during his first season but that was with the side O'Neil had left, as time went on and Taylor assembled his own players and tactics we went downhill badly. Losing about 9 of the last 10 league games (and the horrible FA Cup Q-Final loss to Wycombe) to finish 13th should have sent the alarm bells ringing but the board and many fans had becoming so used to being a top half side that it didn't really sink in that we were rapidly turning into a really poor side. The first game of the following season saw us 5-0 down at home to newly promoted Bolton (that was the half-time score!) and it never got much better. Money troubles soon followed as we went down and stumbled into administration. O'Neil's success had made what was traditionally one of the tightest/stingiest (size-wise) clubs in the country loosen the purse strings a bit and they weren't cautious enough to guard against that success evaporating when O'Neil finally left. Best thing would be getting ourselves out of administration and changing some faces in the boardroom while installing future plans to avoid anything like that happening again. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
deancoles 0 Report post Posted August 1, 2004 Bristol City/Pompey friendly tonight. Should be interesting. Some of us City fans are already trying to think of a chant for the Torquay Home game which involves Helen Chamberlain(who apparently has bedded a few of the Torquay players in recent years). Really? Where did you hear that? I'm sure you'll come up with a good one. About a year ago it was in one of the Sunday papers, I remember it because they had a pic of her in a torquay shirt and she looked great(shame we don't have anything like that at our matches to look at when your in one of those awful 0-0 games where you could play all night without having a shot on target) Any thoughts on the Eriksson mess, I think the FA really don't care about it but they'll gladly sack him and pay hardly any compensation. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
k thx 0 Report post Posted August 2, 2004 I think it may be time for a new England manager. Sven is good, but he'll never win us a tournament the way he plays. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Vanhalen 0 Report post Posted August 4, 2004 The Best:Worst thing in the past five years will be hard, as there hasnt been a lot of bad things to happen Bad: Letting Wayne Bridge go so cheaply, it hurt our left side a lot, particularly getting rid of Chrissy Marsden football genius at the same time. Best: Probably, building up St.Marys and Rupert Lowe turning us into a financially viable club, unlike a lot of football clubs, we are not in debt, and make a profit each year, after looking at teams like Everton and Leeds, all I can say is thank fuck for that. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest webmasterofwrestlegame Report post Posted August 4, 2004 The Best:Worst thing in the past five years will be hard, as there hasnt been a lot of bad things to happen Bad: Letting Wayne Bridge go so cheaply, it hurt our left side a lot, particularly getting rid of Chrissy Marsden football genius at the same time. Best: Probably, building up St.Marys and Rupert Lowe turning us into a financially viable club, unlike a lot of football clubs, we are not in debt, and make a profit each year, after looking at teams like Everton and Leeds, all I can say is thank fuck for that. Have to disagree with you there. After Wayne Bridge was sold Marsden was terrible - he really relied on Bridge overlapping and Le Saux just couldn't do it. In short, Bridge's departure amplified Marsden's weaknesses - every game it was apparant. Strachan saw it straight away - not many captains in the Premiership are constantly subbed in the second half. Chris Marsden Football Genuis deserved to RIP - though I consider myself grateful I was on hand to witness THAT goal vs. Ipswich. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest webmasterofwrestlegame Report post Posted August 4, 2004 Oh and things to look out for with Saints this season: - Le Saux to play on the left of midfield (and for it to fail) - Jelle Van Damme to play on the left of midfield (and surprise most people Gareth Barry style). - Fab Fen to not appear in many away games. - Saints to really mix up their playing style - be it long ball or passing, Sturrock really likes to change according to the opponent. - When Crouch and Phillips play in the same team, for Phillips to drift out wide on the left. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
k thx 0 Report post Posted August 4, 2004 Oh and things to look out for with Saints this season: - Le Saux to play on the left of midfield (and for it to fail) - Jelle Van Damme to play on the left of midfield (and surprise most people Gareth Barry style). - Fab Fen to not appear in many away games. - Saints to really mix up their playing style - be it long ball or passing, Sturrock really likes to change according to the opponent. - When Crouch and Phillips play in the same team, for Phillips to drift out wide on the left. - To finish below Pompey Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
