NAMING RIGHTS THREAD: Liverpool really won't win the Premiership 2010-2011

Anyway he never hit him that hard.

I had blanked Kevin Muscat's time in Scotland from my memory. What with this and bad moustaches, I'm absolutely not going to sleep tonight.

god i could just wish horrible death on muscat and his ilk.

Jermaine Jenas to Juventus?!

it's the "shucks, Scholesy was a little late there bless him" that irks me more than anything.

― The referee was perfect (Chris), Monday, August 16, 2010 2:15 PM

So (United-Liverpool rivalries aside) the usual pundits-being-cliché-ridden-imbeciles leads you to label one of the best players England has ever produced "a fucking thug"? Do you actually believe that Scholes's admittedly bad tackling is malicious and intended to injure?

ancelotti's lost weight

xp i think he's a great player, but some of his tackles are atrocious. jeez, the "fucking thug" thing was an off the cuff remark about one area of his game that i think badly lets him down.

Ha ha, fair enough, just thought we had a RAWKite on ILE for a minute there. ;)

He's asthmatic

I don't understand why Alex Ferguson (supposedly) won't pay 15 million for 21 year-old Oezil but is said to be ok with spending the same amount of money on Meireles. It's probably all paper talk anyway.

ozil seems too good to be available for 15m. there must be more to the story

He's available for free next summer - clubs are probably caught between thinking '15m for Özil = bargain!' and thinking '15m for one year = rip-off'

i think he's a great player, but some of his tackles are atrocious. jeez, the "fucking thug" thing was an off the cuff remark about one area of his game that i think badly lets him down.

Plus, hey, I'll take the "areas of his game" that allegedly let him down if I can watch and appreciate the more significant areas of his game, like the 60-yard pinpoint passes, or the lofted perfectly weighted balls over the back line onto his teammates' toes, or the almost spooky way he continually makes space for himself in tight areas of the pitch! It's like saying, oh that Leonardo, he may well have painted the fucking Mona Lisa and The Virgin Of the Rocks but the fucking thug was never totally onboard with the powers that be, you know. I swear he had an attitude problem. Plus, he probably picked his nose...

Irrelevant in the big picture, I think. It's not like Scholes has ever significantly damaged (or just even minorly damaged) an opponent, so why dwell on that aspect of his game, unless you have some kind of agenda or just don't like quiet soft-spoken family men who are gingers?

(and are brilliant footballers)<----- meant to add.

Or dude could have just learnt how to tackle, you know

Brad Jones? Liverpool? £2.3million? Que?

Jones qualifies as a "home-grown" player under the new Premier League rules after joining the Teessiders from Australian amateur side Bayswater City.

But so do lots of other keepers. Who don't cost £2.3million. And aren't shit.

Jermaine Jenas to Juventus?!

makes a change form the inter rumours. i still think he has one season of greatness in him.

dunno where lostandfound is going with this. scholes has gone in too late, too hard, too often for it to matter whether he went in to hurt anyone 'on purpose'.

he's the best english player of his generation, of maybe two generations given his longevity, but y'know- in reference to his tackling, don't think it should be swept under the carpet on the way to his canonisation.

That reminds me of a question I was going to pose - if Gascoigne was the unchallenged king of English football in 1990/91, and if everyone accepts that Rooney's had the crown for a few years now, who was the best English player in between?

David Beckham?

Pains me to say it, but Alan Shearer?

internationally or just of that nationality?

shearer or scholes respectively

tho really it's probably shearer then owen then beckham then ..... rooney, i guess- if the question is in the england shirt

Lest we forget Michael Owen and Teddy Sheringham, RIP.

God give it a rest on scholes, he is a nasty tackler and when he does it everyone says "oh that scholesy! what a delightful chap!"

The above ejaculation about the mona lisa says little more than "nobody should say anything bad about anyone ever"

And not only would it be totally okay for someone to discuss the character of leonardo da Vinci (or any other lauded figure) it'd also be more interesting than facile cliched hyperbole (like you know, comparing a footballer to the most famous artist of all time)

football is performance art

xxp to JM- had considered teddy, but tbf he was never england's star man or anything.

indeed. and an 'orrible caaaaant to boot.

There are a ton of plausible all-round candidates - the ones mentioned plus Gerrard, Lampard, Platt, Seaman, Waddle for the period immediately post-Gazza, Sol even. They've all got some kind of blind spot. That said, I had cause to look at Shearer's stats for something I was doing at weekend - absolutely phenomenal.

Could make a case for Robbie Fowler? Want to say Matt le Tissier as well, tbh.

(I'm just considering domestically here, btw, not being as au fait with the England national team as most people on this thread)

It's not like Scholes has ever significantly damaged (or just even minorly damaged) an opponent, so why dwell on that aspect of his game

so scholes gets credit for miracles now - didnt realise he'd been elevated to deity status.

at the end of the day though the "cheeky chappy scholesy" thing is just part & parcel hypocrisy of football - ~life~, even. like when we talked about the martin taylor thing, everyone loves a reducer but then gets on their high horse when bad stuff happens and so on.

perhaps the issue is that scholes isn't even smart about it - same stupid lunge every game - but we know/hope/fear he's still smart enough to know better ("dark arts", classic or dud?). and that then gets wrapped up in resentment towards the man utd/english sense of entitlement.

or just scholescocknballsphoto.jpg

"best english player" and "king of english football" are more often than not two entirely different things. player you can argue the toss about all day but shearer was the king in that period, without question.

Craig Bellamy's gone to Cardiff.

fuck.

There are a ton of plausible all-round candidates - the ones mentioned plus Gerrard, Lampard, Platt, Seaman, Waddle for the period immediately post-Gazza, Sol even. They've all got some kind of blind spot. That said, I had cause to look at Shearer's stats for something I was doing at weekend - absolutely phenomenal.

― Ismael Klata, Tuesday, August 17, 2010 9:58 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Could make a case for Robbie Fowler? Want to say Matt le Tissier as well, tbh.

― ailsa, Tuesday, August 17, 2010 10:01 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Assuming we're talking about in the three lions shirt then.

Gerrard and Lampard never did it for England, despite being amongst the big stars of their time. Platt, Waddle, Seaman, Waddle eclipsed by Gazza then Shearer imo- being around for 92 did them no favours either. Sol was magnificent, but I dunno did he ever approach Shearer/Owen proportions even at his height in 98. Fowler- see lampard, gerrard but without their longevity in the league.

Le Tiss is the best footballer mentioned in this thread, rivalled only by Scholes, but not for England.

also fuck the taxman the welsh fa the courts and who the fuck ever else for continuing to let cardiff go on trading. load of bullshit.

ugh god i hate cardiff.

I wasn't considering solely internationally, mostly because I wasn't really paying much attention to England for large periods. There was a brief period where Robbie Fowler was the best English player in England (thought we were just filling in gaps between Gazza and Rooney), and I <3 Matt le Tissier, so yeah.

bellamy to cardiff is kinda classic

hope cheeky chappy shaun derry snaps him in two.

It is great in that he basically said ages ago that he didn't give a shit about the Prem any more and just wanted back home to Wales. I wish someone had given him a timetable for flights from Cardiff to Glasgow though :-(

xpost, ooh, someone doesn't like him!

haha no, i secretly quite like bellers same as everyone else. stick him in a cardiff shirt though and all bets are off.

"I am strangely drawn to Bellamy. He is awful. But he weirdly also tells the truth and seems sometimes very plausible in among all his terrible bust-ups. Now and then you wonder. Maybe it's football and not him."

^ sorry to rep barney ronay again but this, basically.

like maybe john arne riise DOES deserve a savage golf clubbing in the grand scheme of things, who knows yknow

I can get behind the oddly pro-Bellamy sentiment. Surely some bigger teams than Cardiff have missed a trick by not taking him on though? He'd have had the City Reject With Point To Prove thing going on and presumably he's taking a pay cut to go to Cardiff anyway (or are City paying his wages still?). Maybe that's why they haven't loaned him to anyone in the EPL.

Riise was also knocked unconscious by John Carew while on Norway duty. The club doctor or someone was quoted as saying "I don't want to repeat what Riise said but I have never seen Carew that angry in my life".

ooh norwegian gossip

can't see cardiff paying bellamy 90k a week so either city relented (but why?) and are paying some or he took a cut

Club doctor = "team doctor".