Be Excellent To Each Other

New season underway soon(ish)

AVB now spurs manager.

And the big news, blackburn sign danny murphy, leon best and nuno gomes. Might actually get promoted at the first time of asking if we get a decent squad together.

Danny Murphy has passed around more than your mum.

England are up to 4th in the FIFA World Rankings

Those are good news. Gomes is a great player and it was very missed during the Euro 2012. Really how could anyone except portugal to win anything with those awful strikers?

It all depends on whether they want to show up in the Championship, though. The season Boro went down we made some "big" signings and none of them performed.

Leon Best should score a fair bit in the championship if you can stop him being injured every second.

How am I only just hearing about this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18703183

Rangers are one of the biggest clubs in the UK. This will have a massive impact on scottish football.

Hilarious.

Scottish football is a joke anyway.

It's only a joke because two clubs arewere richer than everyone else so it was a two-horse race every year. All we need is for Celtic to go the same way and the league would be competitive (although objectively worse).

All you need perhaps! I can think of five other European leagues I'd watch before Scottish football even if Celtic fucked off! Absolute dross with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Hell, I know Scottish people who don't fucking watch it!

Apparently the chants at the last Old firm derby were:

"We're rangers till we die" and
"You're Rangers 'til July"

Goal line technology gets the go-ahead! So we'll actually be seeing it in around 5years then.

It's amazing to think the Scottish league can get worse.

How many years until a team finishes within 10 points of Celtic in the SPL, and who will it be? Take your time thinking about it, because I sense entries to this sweepstake won't have to conclude any time soon.

Agreed.... but... it wasnae that long ago that Celtic humped themselves & the league had never been closer [until Rangers bought it]. The worst thing that will happen is that more money will be spent on developing Scottish players because naebody can afford foreigners

It seems that Forest are as good as bought up by Fawaz Al-Hasawi, a very rich chap from Kuwait. By all accounts he's a bit of a football benefactor, well into his academies and long termism. Could be hit air but loathe as I am to see ownership of the club be with someone unlike Doughty (whatever his failings) I'm cautiously optimistic about this new era.

Cotterill's looks set to stay in post, Clark may take another role instead of Chairman. We appear to have lost Chambers to Ipswich (who are about his level whatever you've heard) but more disappointingly Joel Lynch, a great young defender, is also out of contract and may wander off before the takeover is complete and we can offer him a decent contract.

Will we buy a load of biggish names and walk the league or languish like Leicester? Will we be constrained by FFP regs and scrape together a squad to consolidate this coming season? There's a lot of signings to be made just to get a decent sized, balanced squad together right now... Many feel concern that whatever squad we end up with, however expensive, won't have a preseason of any value behind them. Same as last season, where it fucked us.

Forest will definitely be an intriguing side to follow this year.

So, at the end of today, will we see Rangers in the third division, or will clubs cave into the pressure and not do teh right thing at all, and let them in the first?

I'm not even sure letting them in the third is the right way of doing it, but at least in England you can get promoted from non-league, so it's the best of a bad situation.

The way I see it is that rangers doesn't exist anymore. There is a new club. It must start at the bottom. Like any other. I don't think tehre should be any preferential treatment whatsoever.

Someone at the grauniad put it better:

Well quite, but in England you'd have to start right at the bottom of the pyramid - that's over 20 leagues below the Premier League. In Scotland it's only three - they should think themselves lucky!

True, but the sense of entitlement from The Worlds Most Successful Club is astonishing. Well, unless you've actually experienced the way the Old Firm have a hold over the SFA, SPL, media and well, everything. Their fans even refused to pay their debts to other clubs because they had said nasty things about them. Oh, and their new owner said he had decided against going to England (by purchasing another club, but fuck their fans) because they would have to start in the Conference. Not because of the trivial matter of the English FA, UEFA and FIFA not allowing it, but simply because they weren't able to dictate which division they could start in.

I once died on my arse just mentioning football at a gig in Glasgow. 10 minutes of going pretty well and then a quick throwaway comment about one of the Old Firm and bang, that was it. Silence for ten minutes.

Reports suggest Div 3 and the end of Scottish Football as we know it. I'm sticking a fiver on Celtic to win the league this year.

John Terry cleared. Good use of public money, that.

This is not a bad thing. The bullies in charge of the SFA & SPL have been scaremongering for weeks. Fuck them & fuck their house of cards.

Fiorentina had to start again from Serie C2 (fourth tier), so that makes sense (re Rangers).

"Is Football Racist?" starting on BBC3 now, if anyone is interested.

I'm gonna say a pre-emptive "yes".

I like the challenging concept of the series, but I'm going to wait for "Do Bears shit in the woods?" next week.

I can't understand why Blackburn are chasing more strikers, I swear we have about 6 now.

The FIGC did let them skip C1 by quite some magic though (en larging serie b and reserving a spot from them)

Think rangers in c3 is a good result.. Good use of the rules, some attendance records for the very small clubs... And more respect when they fought themselves up again.. If the fans were smrt they would thale it with dignity and show some good support... But thatt might be as,ing too much...

AFSki Bournemouth are 9th favourites for promotion to the Championship this season, below Crawley Town.

I think Crawley's odds just grew... o'Driscoll to Forest.

I am incredibly happy about this. Thank fuck we didn't get Redknapp or Ericsson or Strachan or any of those expensive old cunts.

You've got a top manager there - he worked wonders at Bournemouth with no money and did very well at Doncaster with a fair chunk of cash.

Yup

The only worry is that the Kuwaitis won't give him enough time. He's the sort of manager who needs buy-in from the players for his methods. Those who don't he'll ship out, but it could take 2-3 years for him to get you where you need to be.

Jnr Hoilett to QPR. Big aspirations there. He clearly only wants a pay check. Urgh.

And City, Utd and Juve have bid for Van Persie. I imagine that he'll go but it'll probably drag on throughout the whole transfer window.

They've said they're fine with that. It may even be true!

On O'Driscoll, word is that when we (Burnley) were looking post Laws, he blew the interview very badly indeed. Given he was pretty much the outright favourite up to that point, I wonder what the hell he said.

Reminds me of a story about Peter Reid interviewing for the job at t'Turf. When asked about potential transfer targets, he said "well, there is a couple of Chinese lads... can't remember their names, and I'd want to bring in a few players... I've got contacts."

I wonder why he hasn't been in a high profile job for a while.

Truro City players threaten to quit after wages go unpaid.

He would have given dumb questions short shrift and refused to make any promises, which would be enough to cost him a good few jobs. In any interviews, they look for certain things to be said, and he's not the sort to get drawn on promotion deadlines and such.

I can't necessarily see the more reactionary Forest fans liking a lot of what he has to say over time, if I'm honest. He's a patient, quietish bloke. All for the good, though.

I'm pure gutted that there will be no Scottish games on the telly without the fitba team formerly known as Rangers in the SPL ...

Oh no! How can we continue without Truro??

What's their new name?

FC Rangers of Glasgow
AFC Rangers
Glasgow Blues

Popes Newc O'Rangers.




(The Rangers FC, I believe.)

This pretty much proves that the FIFA coefficients for working out the rankings are iffy at best.

ajax started a women's squad