RUFFHAUS 8 wrote:To be fair, the Revolution, Russ’ Union, and my DC United do not get a high priority from the league when it comes to player allocations.

I agree with this. It frustrates me to no end that we have only one DP and he sits the bench more than plays

RUFFHAUS 8 wrote:I agree with you about Wenger. His ship has sailed, and Arsenal is suffering because of his continued presence. His recent comments that there were no players available in the transfer market this summer is absurd. He's a cheap bastard for a guy with fairly deep pockets. And allowing Van Persie to go to Manchester United was one of the more boneheaded moves of the past 20 years..

I can agree with this as well. I was totally pissed when RVP went to the Yankees.....I mean Man U. I was also really hoping to see Wayne Rooney. Wishful thinking?

However, firing Wenger would be like trying to fire Bill Belick.

Doctor Fate wrote:Yes, I have caved in.

I'm a soccer fan, but I haven't succumbed to the EPL mania yet. I spent a year in Bologna in grad school, back in '87-88, so I adopted Bologna FC, and by extension Serie A, as my first choice club. BFC is a club with a great history, although it's been a long time since they were seriously relevant (40+ years). Still, they're my guys.

Then, as a Washington transplant, I naturally took on DC United when MLS started up. Needless to say, this year has been painful. (We still do have a crazy shot at the US Open Cup, though I'm not holding my breath against Real Salt Lake.) If DCFC (Detroit City) gets an MLS expansion, I may have to split my loyalties further, though, since that's home after all!

As for EPL, for what it's worth, I kinda lean towards Sunderland, since I used to work with the University there and happened to visit the summer after they were first promoted to the Premier League. Now, too, I get to root for our man Jozy, and hope he can light up the EPL the way he did the Eridivise.

How about the USMNT taking it to Bosnia 4-3 in Sarejevo?

I'll admit I have no idea how the seedings are going to be calculated for Brazil, but it seems unlikely that the USA could get a top seeding. The seedings for the last WC were just the hosts plus the 7 highest ranked teams in the FIFA rankings. If that's how it works again then it would presumably mean the US would need to climb to the top 8 in the world. Bit of a stretch I'd suggest, although the FIFA rankings are notoriously weird sometimes so I guess it's not impossible. Quite how England have consistently retained such a high ranking I'll never know.

I have have Arsenal in my accumulator bet this year on the winners of the 4 divisions. Got them at 10:1. It seemed like a ludicrous thing to do when I placed the bet but the price available for Utd, City or Chelsea just wasn't good enough so I thought it was worth a punt. Looking a lot better now, especially since I also have Chesterfield (who I support) and they seem likely to run away with League 2.

The seedings are determined by a variety of factors, which include both past performance at world cups and present world rankings.

I don't think this is true Randy. When I saw your earlier post I checked it out, and the last WC was definitely seeded solely by FIFA rankings. It may have changed this time round, but I doubt it.

Personally I want a tough group. I'd rather watch England matched up against top sides, it's not like we're going to win the tournament anyway so at least that way all the games would be attractive. We had Slovenia, Algeria and USA last time round and everybody was delighted with what an easy draw we'd got. Didn't really work out that way in the end though. You really can't predict.

It's a Gunner's life for me.

I never realized they were originally a south London team until last spring when me and a group of guys that coach with me went over for 14 days of footie. Loved the tour of Emirates. There's not much left of Highbury though there are high end apartments...some that overlook the ground.

For my money Crystal Palace have the best fans and the most exciting atmosphere...but I digress...

After Arsenal, who I must admit have become a bit gentrified though not nearly as bad as Chelsea, I like any club Harry Rednose coaches. So with that, I've been cheering on QPR though they've got many a mile to go before they sleep.

To Ruffhaus' earlier point, I once was amazed at the toon army loyalty. A whole mess of them came down to London one night years ago. The Jordies had taken a real beating but you would have never known it by the sound of the singing in the streets of West London. I forget who they played.

I also recall a young man so blind drunk he could barely stand up singing in the tube at the top of his lungs, "We love you Cheltenham, we do, We love you Cheltenham, we do. We love you Cheltenham, it's true, Oh Cheltenham we love you." Of course Cheltenham had their asses handed to them that day losing 8-0 or so. Yet, his defiance was charming. Everyone waiting for the train had heard the result earlier. It was all over the news but no one could help smiling at his drunken bravado.

My point? Don't have one...just rambling.

In Scotland - Dunfermline
In France - St. Etienne
In Spain - Deportivo La Coruna
In Germany - FC Cologne
In Italy - Fiorentina
In Brazil - Flamengo
In Holland - PSV
In Russia - Dynamo Minsk
In Turkey - Fenerbahce

Doesn't that cover the countries of diplomacy and a little more?

Minsk is in Belarus. I guess it was in Russia in the Dip time period though, so you can probably get away with it.

RUFFHAUS 8 wrote:Danivon, as the resident Fulham fan, what's the story behind the story here? I cannot say that I'd enjoy seeing a statue of TeeHee outside my chosen team's stadium either, so it seems like the right move by Khan now.

http://espnfc.com/news/story/_/id/15632 ... am?cc=5901

Sure is. The previous owner Mohammed Al Fayed commissioned the statue a few years ago after MJ died, as he thought he was a good friend. MJ did once come to the ground for a game (I think I missed that particular match). It was an appalling statue, even if you didn't dislike the subject - gaudy, gilded and misshapen.

The sale of the club went through in July, and so it's not that long before removing it. Most fans hated it (and were embarrassed by the ribbing from others).

In better news, we knocked Everton out of the League Cup last night.

The original plan was that the statue would be put up in Harrods, but Al Fayed had sold Harrods by the time it was finished so he just put it outside Craven Cottage instead. Completely bonkers of course, but it was funny and I'm sorta sorry to see it go. Terrible statue though.

I don't really agree with all of that. I haven't noticed any great groundswell of public hostility to Hodgson. Far from it in fact, most England fans seem to think he's doing a decent job in difficult circumstances. If we do manage to qualify (which we should) then we'll be going into the tournament with the most realistic set of public expectations I can remember.You're possibly confusing the opinions of the ordinary fans with the hyperbolic coverage in the press, but it's important to make the distinction.

It's not really true that the FA has a major influence on team selection. The John Terry thing was a particular situation where they felt they had to intervene, and I think it was justified. When people take the field in an England shirt they're representing the nation to some extent. It would have been rank hypocrisy for us to on the one hand make a great song and dance about tackling racism in the game and on the other hand keep selecting a captain of the England team who was facing criminal charges for racial abuse. I personally think that it would be sensible to drop any player facing criminal charges, which didn't happen in Terry's case (or indeed any other). The FA can certainly be faulted for having a stance that was too weak and conlicted, but I don't think they should have no input into team selection when we're talking about a man who potentially stands to taint the image of the team, and by extension of the nation itself.

As it happens I think the Kick It Out campaign has gone a bit overboard and has come to portray an image of the game as being rife with bigotry that isn't really justified, but that's a different issue. As regards the influence of the FA on team selection, it's a minimal one and I don't think it makes much difference to our performances.

Viewed objectively, England haven't done too badly in the last 20 years or so. Sure, we haven't won anything, but we've reached two semi finals and mostly when we go out of tournaments it's on penalties. I'm sure that if we make it to Brazil we'll do ok. Hodgson knows how to set his teams up to be difficult to beat and, as you say, we do have plenty of talent so there's no reason to suppose we can't be competitive. We are clearly lacking in certain areas though. Hart is not as bad you make him out to be but he's probably not in the top bracket of goalkeepers, but this isn't a major issue. Fabien Barthez was no better, neither was Claudio Taffarel. That didn't stop France and Brazil from winning World Cups. It obviously helps to have a top class keeper but it's not essential. Where we really do come up short is up front. Rooney is our only international class striker, and for some reason he hasn't really fired when it counts for England. Welbeck, Defoe, Lambert, Sturridge etc are all decent pros, but they're not top class and it blunts our attack significantly. I'd also say that we seem to lack composure in midfield a lot of the time, possibly because we have too many box-to-box men but nobody who likes to get the ball down and keep possession through clever passing. Carrick could be that man, but for some reason Hodgson is reluctant to pick him.

Your point about over-reliance on older players was true a few years ago but not anymore. if anything we've gone too far the other way, which is a concern. Seems like any young player who can string two decent games together gets a call-up these days. Andros Townsend, Raheem Sterling, Wilf Zaha, Tom Cleverley... they're all good prospects but there's no way any of them should have been picked for England at this stage in their careers. I think that clearly illustrates the lack of depth we have to pick from.

ruffhaus

By all accounts England should be a top tier soccer nation

Just curious, what do you mean by top tier?
Top 5
Top 10

I said it a year ago, and I'll reiterate it here. John Terry's a first class punk, and there were dozens of reasons to appoint another captain of the England team. The main one in my book is that he's simply too damn old and slow and broken down to be representing England in the first place. So is Rio Ferdinand, and so are a few other likely lads that England will be sending to Brazil a year from now.

Terry and Ferdinand are both out of the picture now. Fitness permitting, the most likely England team will be:

Hart
Cole
Cahill
Jagielka
Johnson
Gerrard
Lampard/Carrick
Wilshere
Welbeck
Rooney
Walcott

Out of those players the only ones you'd put in the tired old stagers category would be Gerrard and Lampard, and it's by no means certain that Lampard will play. I agree that they shouldn't both be in the team and hopefully Hodgson will come round to that idea himself, but it's hard to argue with Gerrard since he's been our best player for the past year or so. You could make a very good case for picking Leighton Baines over Ashley Cole but it wouldn't be a conclusive one since Cole is still a great player, otherwise I don't see anybody else who demands inclusion over any of the names in that team. Put in Carrick over Lampard, and assuming nobody makes a compelling case over the season ahead, I'd say that's about the best we can do with what we have available and it's more or less the team Hodgson is already using. The only slight variation I'd consider would be to use Sturridge instead of Lampard and going with a 4-2-3-1 with Rooney in the deep forward position. Hodgson prefers 4-3-3 though.

I never said we shouldn't be picking younger players, just that some of the names we've picked are clearly not ready for international football yet and didn't deserve their place. It does seem to me that we've been experimenting with raw potential a bit too much lately. I understand why that is, but there's really no justification for handing England caps out like confetti

No place for Sturridge? With 5 PL goals in 6 games this season? Given current form he should be well ahead of Rooney and Walcott.

England's best team would look something like this:

----------Hart (or AN Other)--------
Johnson---Jagielka---Cahill---Cole
Gerrard----Carrick----Wilshere
Walcott-------------------Welbeck
-------------Rooney--------------

I'm a huge fan of Leighton Baines and I'd be quite happy for him to replace Cole, but Cole has never let us down (except from the penalty spot) and his experience and the fact that he plays every week with Cahill probably gets him the nod for Brazil.

The alternative would be like this:

-------------Hart-------------
Johnson---Jagielka---Cahill---Cole
--------Gerrard---Wilshere-------
Walcott----Rooney---Welbeck
----------Sturridge-------------

This gives us more threat going forward and I'd probably favour it against the weaker teams, but it runs the risk of us getting overrun in midfield if we come up against one of the better teams.

Well that was weird. I actually enjoyed an England match.

Think it was the Polish fans who made the difference. There were about 20000 of them in there and they were all bang up for it. Made for a cracking atmosphere from beginning to end and the best part was they drowned out the drone from the godawful band. Shame we can't keep them for every match.