SOUTHAMPTON ARE STILL A BIG CLUB! The Premier League, 2014/15

fazio and stambouli wd suggest the management are on it tbf. lot rests on the latter tho on the basis of today/the whole time since modders left

why do villa have 7 points already, can't they just get what's coming to them

eriksen replaces modric p well imo

Townsend eriksen not so much poch out

Eriksen is a #10, Modric is a deep-lying playmaker. If we're going to play this system we really need both (or a DM who can double up as one by releasing the ball quickly).

yep

Kagawa back to Dortmund

'this system'

only getting 6m for kags is feeble as fuck

Darragh I'm assuming you aren't completely ignorant of how Pochettino's Southampton team played and what he might be trying to achieve here, but if I'm wrong please feel free to disabuse me of that notion.

wedding nerves imo

but srsly

to deploy that back line in such a way as to play to every possible Liverpool strength while clearly, had last seasons performances been available for any basic analysis, undermining any use we might find for kaboul, idk I'm feeling pochettino's influence in attack the first few games but today a team that was always going to camp and break were given the keys and shown how to use the microwave

course its early days, course he has to work on his system- today wasn't the day to try something that everyone knew was going to kill us when playing, imo, the team we'll be fighting for fourth place.

never really thought of the game in that context for some strange reason

think ur generally right but poch probably felt there was more to gain in the long run from sticking to the script against decent opposition plus maybe reckoning sakho might gift u a tap-in or five (not unreasonable)

this game now sounds like good craic on the radio. rly cba to watch arsenal tho

just got back from Villa Park. thoroughly deserved the win, and it's not often i'm able to say that these days. wish i could say that it was based purely on merit but tbh Hull were contemptuously bad for most of the game. Utterly incapable of dealing with even the simplest runs from Agbonlahor and Weimann, both of whom worked very hard all day. Thudd looked like an aging and overworked creche attendant, creaking about looking vaguely panicked as the little lads Delph and Westwood ran rings round him.

Some first class tactical subbing from Lambert bringing on the boy Grealish with 15 mins to go, Hull in the ascendency, crowd not really feeling it - all the lad did was get kicked from pillar to post, but he won about 6 free kicks and got the crowd mad riled, Keano was up there giving the 4th ref some beans, Guzan had to come rushing out of his goal to calm it all down a few times. Just a great way to kill off the final part of the match.

Darren Bent had a 10 minute cameo, fucked up a blindingly good 1-on-1 and did nothing else whatsoever. why are we still paying this cunt?

Looked better in spells today then we have for several years, I am feeling distinctly cheered and optimistic by all this. Appreciate your frustrations RTC, must suck knowing you're gonna be back in the Championship this time next year

Hull getting three separate players booked in <10 minutes for various assaults on Grealish was...impressive?

never really thought of the game in that context for some strange reason

― r|t|c

what can I say I'm a fuckin optimist hey

lol i knew i'd get a bite from that, as i've said before i bear no ill will to the villa as an venerable institution just lambert is a dogshit manager and i wouldnt mind not seeing any of ur current playing staff ever again is all

xp walloping us lot in full-on pub team mode can only billow aspirations tbf

yeah and we're all just paying it fwd to Chelsea afaict

http://metro.co.uk/2014/09/07/manchester-united-may-have-only-signed-radamel-falcao-on-one-year-loan-deal-because-of-true-age-4859619/

could be real. there was a nigerian striker that turned out to be in his forties when someone bought him as a 28-year-old. yakubu or something like that.

fucking top reporting from The Sun there, repackaging a year old story

That's bullshit about Yakubu. Strikers in their 40s do not score nearly a hundred Premiership goals and it's a trope that's routinely trotted out about African players. Mourinho tried to do it with Eto'o in the summer.

teju cole on nigerian age cheats &c. is a good read - http://www.vanityfair.com/online/fairplay/2010/05/letter-from-lagos

fields of salmon doing the 'i'm not racist' thing a power of good right here

someone has to, or it wouldn't be football lbh

https://38.media.tumblr.com/874e81c6386042c89836316b3d6bb535/tumblr_nbox5bSPyx1qarx6zo1_500.jpg

Manchester United @ManUtd · 20m
Congratulations to Wayne Rooney, who's won #mufc's August Goal of the Month for his acrobatic strike vs Swansea.

his fuckin wha

christ what a total bummer it is watching ozil these days

just give him a big bag of haribo and tell him to go on a long walk until his contract runs out or something

pretty sure he'd choke on the Haribo

he exists in a vague conceptual space rather than any tangible reality these days

dear god he's bad now isn't he

wilshere's been...quite good?

did you see his dive in the first half?

nah but i saw that one ;)

he's still been quite good

vindication

that was indeed quite good

and so!

wilshere looking like england's best player here

the screen kept freezeframing while Iain Dowie was doing his Stoke-Leicester report just now. suspect the results will stay with me for a while

"put one in your belly, leave you smelly, then take your Graziano Pelle" is gonna be too long for a dn I think :/

is it dumb of me to be slightly surprised how many of the panel got Jeff's Smiths joke

absolutely unreal how many technical fuckups there've been on the programme today. desks getting cleared on Monday 'methinks'

ok lol i'm gonna have to watch this 2nd half

villa's line-up is almost as amazing as the scoreline

Think Big Phil's fucked it, should have made it 2-0 and now he's gonna get sent off cos of his determination to goad Mario into doing something the commentator can shout "WHY ALWAYS HIM INDEED" at