One of the best teams in the world?

[Korky]

I know about 80% of hexusians are English and about 20% of england are Man Utd fans and i ALSO have the celtic fans against me (doesnt matter if its a scottish team type) but what a show rangers put on against the devils there, i think a draw was definitly deserved if not (room for argument) a win for rangers, when they came here favourites, crazy bookies odds expecting a cricket score and rangers dominated the ball. They say the old firm cant play in england? aye right celtic have shown it before (uefa cup twice last year) and rangers again tonight, any other day that would have been either a very good draw or a famous win. Mon the gers! just cause our league is a duffer doesnt mean we are! Hoping the celtic fans will get behind me on this one, arsenal aswell plz :->

[Elmo]

GO THE TEDDY BEARS!!!!!!!!!



rangers rox. that's all there is to say tbh.

[TiG]

lets just get 1 thing straight before i start, i'm not a glory supporter, i don't support man u, (norwich is my team and has been for all my years of life).

But sadly i disagree about a rangers win, you may have had 4 or 5 clear cut chances, but you put 0 of them away. Lots of premership teams do this to man u and still lose to Man U.

Possession doesn't equate to goals or the right to win, and the most controverstial point of the night was the blatent penalty of henning berg on Paul Scholes. Rangers should have lost 2-0 as there was no doubt in my mind that was wrong...

Anyway, i don't believe Man U are the fashionable team nowadays anyway, Chelsea has got more talent and the bling bling factor than man u has, guess thats to do with beckham leaving....

TiG

[Elmo]

well i just like the fact that man u potentially could have won by a much larger margin, 1 goal may determin who wins or loses, but it's only 1 goal.

[ZeroTheHero]

I watched the Man U - Rangers game last night and was amazed at the general lack of quality!

At one point no member of either team seemed to be able to pass it to one of their own players, the crossing was dreadful and the defending by both teams was pretty chaotic. Add that to the losses by both Arsenal and Celtic (and Chelsea getting out of jail last night) and it makes me wonder if all the stuff we hear about the Premiership being the best league in the world is not a total load of cobblers! Kiev certainly bossed Arsenal - who are bottom of their group, the UEFA cup has seen most of the British teams eliminated already. Watching the matches it looks like some basic skills training would be wasted - like how to trap the ball, how to pass etc oh - and the same applies to the England team for long periods of their matches as well!

[TeePee]

Is this about football?

[Ferral]

Magpies all the way.

Up the Toon

[TiG]

Originally posted by ZeroTheHero
I watched the Man U - Rangers game last night and was amazed at the general lack of quality!

At one point no member of either team seemed to be able to pass it to one of their own players, the crossing was dreadful and the defending by both teams was pretty chaotic. Add that to the losses by both Arsenal and Celtic (and Chelsea getting out of jail last night) and it makes me wonder if all the stuff we hear about the Premiership being the best league in the world is not a total load of cobblers! Kiev certainly bossed Arsenal - who are bottom of their group, the UEFA cup has seen most of the British teams eliminated already. Watching the matches it looks like some basic skills training would be wasted - like how to trap the ball, how to pass etc oh - and the same applies to the England team for long periods of their matches as well!

Heh, maybe you should come and watch the under 6 team i coach. Believe me that its amazing the quality i've got here, but trying to train 15 of them at the same time is quite frankly amazingly difficult.

TiG

[ZeroTheHero]

maybe you should come and watch the under 6 team i coach.

Well some of them are probably more mature at 6 than some of the players in the Premiership if the newspapers are to be believed

[Korky]

TiG the penalty was blatent but 1. the game was over, 2. the ref had turned down a rangers penalty (i know there was a few dives) Vanoli's pen claim against the druggie oops Ferdinand

Second TiG i know how Man U are a hard team to break down but that statement u made only backs Rangers when they question wether they could play in england, ill tell u i havent seen much better team against Man U this team.

And Elmo, the way that game went if u were to say Man U could have won by a greater margin how do u figure that out when the statistics were 54 - 43%, shots 17 - 9, target 7 - 4, if anything rangers SHOULD have won by the margin, I say should because even after such a brave peformance they obviously lacked the goal mouth threat and didnt put it away when they had it.

Zero the hour, u obviously didnt watch the whole game when the passing was actually the best complement to both teams, the possision at one point being 64-36 so how can u say the passing was bad?

[ZeroTheHero]

u obviously didnt watch the whole game

Oh yes I did!

I didn't mean that none of them could pass at all - but I did say 'at one point' in my post. For example, there was one 5 minute period when Giggs didn't seem to be able to control or pass the ball at all, and everytime he got it, he just gave it away (not the only culprit!). I wasn't the only one who noticed it - Roy Keene gave him a right mouthful about it at the time!!!

Rangers weren't especially bad at this - both teams were equally guilty. It always amazes me that top footballers can on occasion be so lacking in basic skills. It was also noticeable that when one or other team did keep the ball for a long time, much of it was spent going sideways or backwards!

If I have one observation about Rangers (who gave a good account of themselves overall) is that they seemed to lack much threat up front - have you got injured strikers at the moment?

[Korky]

Not really, Ronald De Boer, who can at times be a goal threat but hes not a striker. This lacking of goal threat has only been the last 3 games Celtic - Motherwell - Man U, which we came away with 1 draw from Motherwell at best, hopefully its just a bump in the road because up untill the celtic game everyone had been banging them in.

[Anders]

I don’t understand why Rangers and Celtic would give up the guaranteed Champions League qualifying places to come and fight for the four places in the Premiership. Rangers and Celtic would have a lot of long trips for the majority of their away games. I can’t see Rangers and Celtic joining the Premiership. There are all ready to many teams in the Premiership. The first division teams would hardly say, ok, just let them join and we’ll give away two promotion spots for a season.

Performance wise, Premiership teams consistently do better in the Champions League, except for Arsenal who suck. That’s why the Premiership has four places.

In every game you can say oh if only this had happened or that, but no one can know the effect of a certain fictional event on a game. Also don’t be selective, what about Silvestre’s header that hit Arveladze on the line. I’m certainly looking forward to Rangers return to O.T. because it should be a corker if Rangers play as well.

On a different note, what do you think about Alpay’s Villa contract being cancelled? Does this suggest he’s done something wrong? I don’t believe the comments he made about Beckham, the TV pictures just don’t support his version of events. However, I’m hardly neutral.

[Korky]

1st - Rangers and Celtic want to play in england for the challenge and the money, they are big clubs and are now struggling to pay anything for a player (rangers with 40m) debt.

2nd - Old firm wont be going to england

3nd - they do consistently better BECAUSE there are only two teams in scotland who can play in the champions league and they dont get a good enough test in their league to be ready for games against the big guns.

4th - Id be interested to see what would have happened if alpay wasnt turkish and it was a different team england were playing. Both nations have a serious attitude problem fan wise.

[3Dfx]

Man Utd will walk over Rangers at Old Trafford.

no offence.

oh and Paul Scholes had a penalty in the 92nd min.

[Anders]

“Korky”, I suppose I understand about the challenge, as Celtic and Rangers do seem to be the only two consistently good teams in the S.P.L.. I’m not sure that Rangers and Celtic would necessarily get more money in the Premiership. Trying to be realistic here, I doubt Rangers or Celtic would get a top four Premiership finish, so no Champions League footie for them. I suppose the difference in prize and TV money is quite large, but is it really that big?

Indeed it is academic because I can never see it happening. Geez, if they did do it would be one hell of a mess. What about the Scottish teams left, would that league still get Champions League places? Also without the two best teams the old S.P.L. would loose so much money from TV and sponsorship that it would implode. It’s ironic that when politically a lot of Scottish people want devolution they also want to join our football league.

Premiership teams do better because they play a consistently higher quality of football. It’s a shame we can’t have Rangers and Celtic in the Premiership for a season or two, just for the ‘fun’ of it, I’d love to see how they would actually do.

I won’t deny your forth point, there are some real idiots out there. I hate getting tarnished with the same brush, but with the media as reaction-ist and sensationalist as it is I believe it’s the best I can expect. I’m not defending England hooligans and there clearly are some serious problems, but when anything happens involving England fans it’s automatically the England fans fault, even when it’s been England fans getting the beating. If you are a hooligan from any other country, which fans are you going to pick on because of their reputation, England? So the situation is self-perpetuating. When other countries fans go on the rampage it barely even makes the news.