Random footie

[braveneutral]

Pep Guardiola has quit Barcelona.

He will leave at the end of the season as he wants to take a break from football.

Interesting, wonder if we will see him back in a few years or if he wants out completely.

My money is on him being installed as Chelsea boss in the Summer.

United next Summer?

[Peter Lanky]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17950726

This seems a sneaky and somewhat cynical approach to providing for football fans:

1) Get around the 3pm Saturday ban on televised matches by slowly removing this traditional slot from the game.
2) Spread the games around a number of subscription channels so that fans who can't do without their football 'fix' will have to buy numerous packages.

Of course Sky already does the latter to ensure that people have to buy the full package rather than individual channels.
Thank goodness I've no interest in the game.

[Peter Lanky]

Just perusing the BBC website and it says 'FA Cup Final Live" I didn't even know it was on. Has this competition become so unimportant nowadays that it bypasses the non fan? Even in the years following my retirement from being a football fan I knew when the FA Cup final was on. Then I notice it's a 5:15 kick off. What sort of time is that, and what happened to 3pm? Any self respecting person should be sitting down to eat their tea at 5:15.

[Aidan11]

Just perusing the BBC website and it says 'FA Cup Final Live" I didn't even know it was on. Has this competition become so unimportant nowadays that it bypasses the non fan? Even in the years following my retirement from being a football fan I knew when the FA Cup final was on. Then I notice it's a 5:15 kick off. What sort of time is that, and what happened to 3pm? Any self respecting person should be sitting down to eat their tea at 5:15.

Part of the excitement of Cup Final Day was the build-up to it. There was a lot of fun mixed in with the interviews.

I don't think TV cares anymore.

[Alviro Patterson]

Disgusting to have FA Cup final for an evening kick off, especially for Liverpool fans who made the pilgrimage to Wembley and not get back home until the small hours, a mate of mine didn't get back home until past 1am Sunday morning.

[Aidan11]

Disgusting to have FA Cup final for an evening kick off, especially for Liverpool fans who made the pilgrimage to Wembley and not get back home until the small hours, a mate of mine didn't get back home until past 1am Sunday morning.

When I went to a play off final in Cardiff I didn't get back home until 2am. That was a 3pm KO.

Mind part of the reason for that was that I went by coach and we waited nearly two hours for two numpties who never returned to the coach. Presumably found some friends and went home by other means.

When we made the decision to leave without them the roads were still badly jammed (Bank Holiday weekend).

[Alviro Patterson]

Disgusting to have FA Cup final for an evening kick off, especially for Liverpool fans who made the pilgrimage to Wembley and not get back home until the small hours, a mate of mine didn't get back home until past 1am Sunday morning.

When I went to a play off final in Cardiff I didn't get back home until 2am. That was a 3pm KO.

Mind part of the reason for that was that I went by coach and we waited nearly two hours for two numpties who never returned to the coach. Presumably found some friends and went home by other means.

When we made the decision to leave without them the roads were still badly jammed (Bank Holiday weekend).

7hrs on a coach, that is brutal! I went by National Express for the 2009 Championship Playoff final, coach left Bradford Interchange at 4.50am and arrived back at 12.15am.

Said mate who went to Wembley took the train and only got as far as Leeds on the return journey (no trains to Bradford past midnight), (un)fortunately he shared a taxi back home with a Chelsea fan who lived nearby.

FA should be considerable for the fans who have to travel long distances, staying in hotels is not a viable option.

[Alviro Patterson]

Bradford Park Avenue have won the EvoStik Premier Playoff final, beating FC United 1-0 in added extra time and securing promotion to Blue Square North. Tom Greaves coming off the bench and scoring in the 119th minute.

A great day for Bradford and West Yorkshire football. The Avenue looking forward to big games against Guiseley, FC Halifax, Harrogate Town, Altrincham, Droylsden, Stalybridge and fellow promotion winners Chester FC.

[Peter Lanky]

Stories of travelling to away games reminds me of my travels in the 1970s. I went to Brentford on a football special train just before the 'league liner' (anyone remember that?) was introduced. It was the FA Cup 3rd round in the first week of January and was freezing. The train left Brentford around 5:30 but for some reason stopped within 15 minutes of leaving and remained stationary for around 2 hours with no heating. It transpired that there was no locomotive attached and nobody knew where it had gone to. Thankfully I had my newly knitted 6' long pure wool scarf, a bag of butties and 6 cans of Long Life. We got back to Bolton around 1:30am. Amazingly in the days when train wrecking was the norm, there was no damage and no agro despite 600 very disgruntled people being on the train. The price was £3! My main memory of the day other than that was the constant chanting of "You can stick your Brentfoed Nylons up your arse....sideways".

[Aidan11]

Former Man U player Ruud van Nistelrooy has announced his retirement.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18060653

[Gingerfinch]

Former Man U player Ruud van Nistelrooy has announced his retirement.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18060653

One of the best goal scorers we've seen here. Petty for him that he didn't win that much as he came over when Arsenal and then Chelsea were Utd's equal.

[Peter Lanky]

Former Man U player Ruud van Nistelrooy has announced his retirement.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18060653

One of the best goal scorers we've seen here. Petty for him that he didn't win that much as he came over when Arsenal and then Chelsea were Utd's equal.

I don't know how you intended that to sound, but it comes over as being good to have one team dominate, and it's fair game for a player to accumulate a hat-ful of trophies simply by luck of playing for the right glamour club.

[andy]

quality goal scorer

[braveneutral]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18081723

[Durhamfootman]

goal of the season, and quite right too



interesting that 5 of the 10 contenders for goal of the season were scored by Newcastle (3) or Sunderland (2) players.