Metal Reviews

to be fair, i can't remember him scandalously robbing us lol, but come on, why not avoid suspicion altogether?

one to watch is Carlos Xistra. can't remember a single game where he didn't fuck us. not sure if he's active this year.

Hah, Rangers booted out of the cup by Falkirk.

...And Aberdeen by East Fife...

Atletico are a very good team but even they could not stand humiliation against Barca last night. I can't imagine how Barca could lose a single game this year. They are too good. For real this time, there is a player in the world who is literally unstoppable. Messi simply can not be stopped within the rules of football. If he wants to score, he simply does.

Also, R. Madrid's Varane scored an inhuman goal last night. Watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdaXd3R2DGQ
Pretty amazing. Lucky too.

Raphael Varane is considered here to be a future star by many, I think he will have a poor career. Nice goal though. But is he as efficient with his defensive duties?

Unrelated: diving referee. Lol. (starts at 0:13)

Ok, it's not the actual Leigh Griffiths, but a satirical imitator. Still hilarious.

Fucking pumped! Aberdeen performing well for the first time this season! Do we have our shit together finally??
Aberdeen 3 - 0 Dunfermline HT

It seems Premier League this season is going Liga style... A struggle between both Manchesters. I'm a bit fed up with this trend to polarization.

We had a polarization before it was popular

And you're happy with it?
I'm beginning to think closed leagues (a la NBA, NHL, etc.) aren't so bad after all. They have strict rules, salary caps, the big teams aren't always the same, there are rises and falls. Actually, before the mid-90's football was also like that. But since then, rich clubs just get richer (and thus stronger), while others stay poor (and thus stand no chance of winning anything, except perhaps national cups). This is... annoying, really.

But then the larger countries would just have better players all around. German teams would always on average be better than teams from less populous countries.

That's not what I meant actually. What I meant is I'm sick that the Champions League and big national leagues (hell, and even smaller ones as you said) are winnable by only a couple of teams. This is because the richest clubs just get richer each year, whereas smaller ones don't (in the same proportions). So, what I wanted to say is perhaps it would be more interesting to create a European League with the, say, 20, 30, or 40 richest clubs. With strict financial rules, and so on (a la NBA). Because right now, National leagues are becoming boring to follow.

you have a point to some extent, but only this wild competition can succeed in truly bringing out the best in players and managers, and bringing football forward.

but some changes really would help, and without stifling talent - England, in my view, still has a fairly competitive league. Man City is the only true financial behemoth, United, Chelsea and Arsenal all have resources, but either misuse them or refuse to use them (Arsene, i'm looking at you), so this year it ended up with the Manchester clubs fighting it out. then you have Spurs, Liverpool, Aston Villa... just landing a European position in the EPL is a bitch.

one thing that i think helps is that TV revenues are shared, which at least slightly levels the playing field, and acknowledges that without smaller the clubs there would be no ass for the big ones to kick. La Liga, on the other hand, has a completely uneven TV revenue distribution, it's two absolutely colossal clubs, then the unpredictable Sevilla, Atletico, Valencia and Villarreal, and everyone else can go fuck themselves.

Playing football manager is depressing. Aberdeen are STILL shit.

@ Azrael: I agree with you, especially on TV rights/revenues. And have a look at this graph (sorry it's in french but easily understandable), it's the revenues of the 32 participants last year's CL. Look at the orange bars:



Big clubs earn A LOT more of money, regardless of how well they did! For instance, Chelsea and Shakhtar both were were out in 1/4 finals, but Chelsea earned twice Shakhtar revenues. The rich get richer, the others don't, even if they manage to perform as well. And let's not forget qualifying slots, England, Spain and Germany have 4 slots, so it's very easy for Barcas, Reals, ManUs, Bayerns to qualify. UEFA really needs to fix this ASAP. I see 2 solutions: 1) make the CL for national CHAMPIONS (duh!) only, or 2) create a European League for the rich. My favourite option is the first one obviously.

@ Fridge: Try to improve them! I once brought a small Ukrainian club to glory by making them win the CL (in 13 years). It was a couple of years ago however, perhaps the game is harder nowadays.

was it in 2001/2002? back then all you had to do was buy Maxim Tsigalko and To Madeira

as for the CL qualification, they get more slots because they perform better on average. if anything you might argue that it then becomes like a self-perpetuating thing, they get money because they qualify because they are good, they are good because they get money because they qualify.... also, as for a champions-only league, that would likely kill revenue. i'd rather watch Spain's second-best team than, say, the Albanian champion.

what's market pool in the graph?

EDIT:
UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE GOAL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UtwmUQG8Oo

I think it was in 08-09 Not sure.

The "market pool" is indexed on TV rights paid by each country. The more a country (its broadcasters mostly) pay for the product "Champions League", the more clubs from that country earn. Always the same logic, the rich gets richer and richer.

And the self-perpetuating is what I was trying to explain yes. I think it makes no sense, and people will eventually get tired of this. We need change. If the best clubs have to be the richest ones, OK, but let's create a league only for them.

And, superb goal!

I'm watching the Bolton-Chelsea match, 25 minutes and the score is already 0-3. Oops sorry, 26 minutes, and 0-4.

Bolton's GK is the worst ever.

And now Celtic is getting owned by Heart of Midlothing. Ha-ha! Sorry Fridge.

That's Midlothian, Hearts for short. And really? Shit, Celtic are doing unexpectedly terrible this season.