Championship and EFL Football

[Greg]

Villa in the brick, hope they go down to League 1.

 

[K.D.D.D.D.Soc]

Villa in the brick, hope they go down to League 1.

Disagree. Villa were a great club and certainly the biggest club in the midlands. It's a shame what has happen to them and goes to show what bad management in the boardroom and on the field can do to any club.

 

[Bullet]

Villa in the brick, hope they go down to League 1.

Yep, hope they get pulverised, bankrupt, broken down into pieces, sell the ground, sell the players, sell the training ground, sell Deadly Doug's eyes for medical research, demoted, cancelled and removed from the record books. They beat us once and deserve everything they're getting.

 

[Greg]

Well I appear to have fallen back in love with giving up my Saturday to watch United. I've been to every match this season apart from Bristol City away which I couldn't make as I was best man at my brother's wedding on the same day.

Rotherham away yesterday and it was a great day out, interesting new stadium and had a good look around the old Millmoor ground. Rotherham a proper old northern town but we were welcomed into all the pubs and no bother at all (police often insist on segregation when we travel away and often there really is no need). Good day out. Awful game of football but a win is a win.

 

[johnola]

Well I appear to have fallen back in love with giving up my Saturday to watch United. I've been to every match this season apart from Bristol City away which I couldn't make as I was best man at my brother's wedding on the same day.

Rotherham away yesterday and it was a great day out, interesting new stadium and had a good look around the old Millmoor ground. Rotherham a proper old northern town but we were welcomed into all the pubs and no bother at all (police often insist on segregation when we travel away and often there really is no need). Good day out. Awful game of football but a win is a win.

I suppose the silver lining in getting relegated is visiting these sorts of football towns. Where did you end up having a beer though mate?

 

[parklane1]

I suppose the silver lining in getting relegated is visiting these sorts of football towns. Where did you end up having a beer though mate?

Lot of truth in that, i remember the season we played in the lower div 77/78 and i only missed one game ( Hull away). I must admit we all had a great time traveling round to stadiums i had never been before, lot of bricky stadiums ( Bristol Rovers was the worse) but we always took over the places.

 

[Jordinho]

AFC Wimbledon above MK for the first time.

 

[markysimmo]

Derby reappoint the total failure that is McLaren !!

Unreal how this knob keeps getting jobs

 

[Gazza Dazzla]

Pritchard finally starts for Norwich, assist straight away!

 

[Greg]

Dwight Gayle is a lot better than I thought.

 

[Spur of the moment]

Pritchard finally starts for Norwich, assist straight away!

Alex Pritchard gets Alex Neil’s vote after a sparkling Norwich City full league debut

Alex Pritchard has nothing to prove to Alex Neil after an eye-catching full Championship league debut for table-topping Norwich City. Neil admits the big-money summer signing from Tottenham has had to be patient due to the form of Hoolahan.

“Nobody questions Alex’s quality. We know how good a player he is,” said Neil. “The difficulty Alex has got is the team have been playing so well and him and Wes (Hoolihan) in the same team at the same time, depending on who you are playing against, may not be the best combination. He has just had to bide his time but I thought this game was perfect for him to come in and show his qualities. I was really pleased for him.

“His contribution in terms of work ethic was good because the quality is not in question and I thought the link up play with Wes was good.”​

Good to see Alex is starting to make an impact once again - even if it is in the Championship.

http://www.edp24.co.uk/sport/norwic...ling_norwich_city_full_league_debut_1_4737627

 

[Greg]

Dwight Gayle up to 11 league goals already as we are now top of the league.

 

[Gazza Dazzla]

Dwight Gayle up to 11 league goals already as we are now top of the league.

Fantastic achievement

 

[Greg]

I've been to 12 of our 13 games so far, oops. Only one I've missed was on the day of my brother's wedding where I was best man.

Good little article about us here:

Football is a chaotic game that, in spite of efforts from the richest clubs and certain cowed governing bodies to ensure otherwise, remains dazzlingly unpredictable. Except at Saudi Sportswashing Machine. It’s all very predictable at Saudi Sportswashing Machine, which is a disturbing thing to say on a number of levels, but that won’t be the last sentence here that troubles you.

Had you asked almost anyone in the summer, anyone with any experience of watching football in the last ten years or so, what was going to happen at Saudi Sportswashing Machine, they would have told you this: Rafa Benitez will set about that football club like a very patient father untangling a set of long-forgotten Christmas lights. He won’t untangle them immediately because they haven’t been looked after very well, they were thoughtlessly stuffed in the attic many years ago and there are knots in there that defy physics, but if you leave him alone, keep quiet and maybe get him a cup of tea, he’ll work steadily and methodically and he’ll get the job done.

Last weekend, Saudi Sportswashing Machine beat Brentford 3-1 at St James Park. That is what they did. They didn’t ‘obliterate’ them, they didn’t ‘wipe the floor with them.’ They just beat them. And they beat them because they did everything neatly and properly, which is a most unNewcastley way of doing things.

They achieved this end largely because of the sustained excellence of Jonjo Shelvey. You see? I told you there would be more troubling stuff in here. Shelvey, whose career thus far has been so mixed that you wondered sometimes if he was only ever good by accident, is a renewed force in this midfield. He demands the ball. Literally. He actually points at his feet and tells people to pass to him. And they do so because of the things that he can do with it.

His early cross from the right flank is perfectly weighted and deftly nodded home by Ciaran Clark for the opening goal. Shortly afterwards, Shelvey takes the ball inside his own half, looks up and lofts it all the way to the edge of Brentford’s penalty area. Striker Dwight Gayle is beaten to the ball, but Brentford fail to get rid of it and Gayle is afforded the time to turn and blast the ball past Daniel Bentley for number two. Early in the second half, Yoann Gouffran feeds Shelvey on the left, because Shelvey v2.0 is conscientious enough to cover far more ground than before, and his cross is tapped in for the third by Gayle.

Benitez being the way he is (an amiable obsessive who in another life might live in a weird old house on a hill and conduct experiments with lightning) you know that he lay awake all night fretting about the way Brentford were able to score from a corner within 60 seconds of that third Saudi Sportswashing Machine goal, but as stressed earlier, this is a pretty tangled set of Christmas lights.

But it’s not just Shelvey who’s impressing. There’s the competence of the much underrated Karl Darlow, who claimed one evil-looking, swirling corner with the sort of assuredness that outfield players never notice, but that makes all former goalkeepers of any calibre rub their thighs in appreciation. It’s the level-headedness of Jamaal Lascelles. It’s the ball-playing of Ciaran Clark, not always perfect, but endearingly bold and actually quite helpful.

On the left flank, there is convention. Gouffran supported by the workmanlike efforts of Paul Dummett. On the right flank, there is invention, where utility midfielder Vurnon Anita dovetails with the hitherto inconsistent left-winger Christian Atsu. You can probably guess which flank is the most secure and which one creates the most chances. There were two occasions in the first half alone where Anita’s ambition left his side a little open. And yet that ambition would continue to pay compensatory dividends as the game progressed. Saudi Sportswashing Machine never looked like losing.

But don’t consider promotion a formality. The Championship is a draining division where the slightest hint of complacency is punished by sides eager to reassert the maxim that anyone can beat anyone. Saudi Sportswashing Machine supporters, hardened by disappointment, will know how quickly things can change at their club and how every previous fleeting period of contentedness under owner Mike Ashley has been followed by something ludicrously self-destructive like an unwarranted sacking, a stadium name-change or Joe Kinnear.

But just for now, in this moment, there they are, quietly getting on with their job. Saudi Sportswashing Machine are an organised, well-prepared football club with a careful, clever manager who will sit there quietly undoing those knots until there’s something worth celebrating. For anyone who has watched this club for a while, it’s actually quite disconcerting.

https://blog.wyscout.com/how-benitez-is-fixing-Saudi Sportswashing Machine/

 

[Kandi1977]

Amusing article that. So it's all rosy and cozy now?

 

[markysimmo]

Amusing article that. So it's all rosy and cozy now?

Until they get promoted then come back down next season because the players they brought to get them out of the championship are not good enough to keep them in the premiership the next year

 

[Kandi1977]

^^^ I don't know how to use the like button

Sent with Miele C1 Vacuum cleaner

 

[Bullet]

Until they get promoted then come back down next season because the players they brought to get them out of the championship are not good enough to keep them in the premiership the next year

Indeed, the players listed in that article are proven to be not good enough in the Prem. So they will get all excited and have a parade, then this time next year the fans will be screaming at those same players for being rubbish.

 

[Greg]

We have a reasonable amount of players good enough for the Premier League, and those that have come in this season (Ritchie, Gayle et al) will be excellent squad players in the Premier League. We'll need 4 or 5 good signings when we come up and with Benitez in charge will be able to attract better players than we would otherwise I am certain.

What you all fail to understand is that the club has started to operate as a football club again and reconnected with the city for the first time in about 10 years. We haven't had this connection for a long time and it is refreshing to have the club operating as a football club again. It helps that Rafa has full control of all footballing matters and sees this as a long term project to re-build the whole club.

We have one of the best managers in the world and the whole club pulling in the right direction under his leadership. We'll need to invest well for next season but you'll see a totally different Saudi Sportswashing Machine back in the Premier League next season.

 

[Kandi1977]

We have a reasonable amount of players good enough for the Premier League, and those that have come in this season (Ritchie, Gayle et al) will be excellent squad players in the Premier League. We'll need 4 or 5 good signings when we come up and with Benitez in charge will be able to attract better players than we would otherwise I am certain.

What you all fail to understand is that the club has started to operate as a football club again and reconnected with the city for the first time in about 10 years. We haven't had this connection for a long time and it is refreshing to have the club operating as a football club again. It helps that Rafa has full control of all footballing matters and sees this as a long term project to re-build the whole club.

We have one of the best managers in the world and the whole club pulling in the right direction under his leadership. We'll need to invest well for next season but you'll see a totally different Saudi Sportswashing Machine back in the Premier League next season.

We'll see about that connection once you're back in the PL, and not winning every week.