Date: October 2007

Sunderland predictions

Oct 5, 2007 by

This should be a meat and potatoes win, so long as the Gunners shake off their European jetlag (all two hours of it).

Sunderland concede at least two goals in most of their games, so despite the added spice of old foe Roy Keane, Arsenal’s continued ease on the Emirates wide open spaces does mean I’m not exactly going out on a limb to predict a 3-0 home win.

Sunderland are without Andy Cole, so I can’t see them poaching a goal unless a certain shaven-headed CB from the land of the Toblerone mucks up the high line with an ill-disguised clattering foul.

That said, it is still a character test for this emerging young team because now they are no longer the overachieving pleasant surprise of the season.
They, in short, now expected to win this easily.

With a lot of hard work, Sunderland could conceivably gain a psychological toe-hold by frustrating us. If that’s the case, it will be, as against Man City etc., a test of patience and focus.

But with a first half goal, the real test will be for the Gunners to master finishing off teams long before the hour mark.

Over to you, tacticians…

Sepp’s got yet another BRILLIANT IDEA

Oct 5, 2007 by

The Sepp “he-has-50-new-ideas-a-day-and-51-of-them-are-bad” Blatter came up with another brilliant one lately : Blatter wants clubs to be limited to playing a maximum of five non-nationals in their starting XIs to encourage the development of homegrown talent.

Mr. FIFA President, I tell you what will happen should that happen -

(1) The G-14 Clubs will break away and form their own European Super League. The game is all about money now. And the best and biggest clubs in the world all filled with the best talent in the world. Because the fans want to watch them. Because that allows them to play good football. Life is an one-way street, so is football. Nobody can turn back the clock now.

(2) The attendance of the major leagues such as EPL will drop. Having tasted steak, who would want to go back to burger? For those clubs who had built a bigger capacity stadium, that would kill them.

(3) The operation cost of clubs will not necessary drop. Take EPL as an example, the inflated price of those so-called English talent would get even more inflated. 20 million pounds for Reo-Coker will be seen as a bargain. Justin Hoyte will worth 30 millions. As the demand will be much higher than supply in terms of English players in the EPL.

(4) Not to mention the Wengerball will be gone forever. Get 6 English players to play in our starting XI, we will be lucky to play 3 touches football, let alone 1 touch.