Ok, I want to join but I am maybe us sports biased and stupid. Do we pick out our teams without consulting each other and then take that team to various leagues? I couldn’t figure it out.
Yes!
Ok. That’s so different than what I am used to I figured I was doing something wrong. :smack:
The Straight Dope Cup will not be happening this year, due to lack of interest. If you PM me, I can give you a code for a league a friend of mine made that mascaroni and I are in.
Your secret’s safe with me, Algernon…
Spurs looked a bit rusty yesterday. Could have easily been 2-0 down at half time. On the bright side, Wanyama looked like he’d been there all his life and Janssen looked pretty sharp as well. Everton looked very solid despite being without Williams and Lukaku and I reckon they’ll be in the mix come the end of the season.
The first half was pretty shocking for Spurs. Again they seem to be having trouble with teams that bunker and counter attack but it looked like they forgot this wasn’t a friendly in the first half.
In the second half they looked more like the Tottenham from last year. I was less impressed with Wanyama than you, but more impressed with Janssen. I think in until Dembele gets back the best XI probably is a 433 sort of setup with both Janssen and Kane on the pitch. The doubly defensive midfield wasn’t a good look.
Any word on what happened to Hugo? Will he be out long?
Apparently a hamstring injury. I noticed he fell heavily into the post trying to stop Everton’s goal, but that didn’t really look like the cause of a hamstring injury. He’s being assessed today, but there’s been no news about it being serious, so I don’t think it’s going to be too much of a problem.
Decent result - good first half performance from Everton but fell off badly in the second. Some of the players were breathing out their arses - Miralles hasn’t had to press the opposition for 3 years.
Looking at that line-up think Ron’s got a bit of a project on his hands - squad is looking slim and Lukaku doing one would be a hammer blow.
Liverpool keeping me on the edge of my couch this morning, maddening lack of focus once they went up 4-1, it’s now 4-3 with 3 minutes left plus stoppage
Well, what happened is what we knew: without our usual starting central defenders, the Gunners’ defense can’t really withstand the Premier League’s best, which Liverpool are now again.
Gunners cruising aginst [del]T[/del]Watford. WAT 0-3 ARS at the half. Our game quality is hugely elevated with Özil and Cazorla both starting.
Transfer deadline day news/rumors are flying around like crazy. What are everyone’s thoughts on the window? How has your team done, and what do you hope they will do before it closes?
AFAICT from the angst cascading down various Everton forums, it’s not going that well. Just not enough activity, leaving the squad undermanned and vulnerable to injury.
I say AFAICT because I try to keep out of it tbh - got more than enough to concern myself with the team’s performance on the pitch and the transfer window is such a circus.
Arsenal pulling the plug on Wilshere is interesting and suggests he’s leaving the ‘plateau’ stage of his career and entering ‘nose-dive’.
I thought I saw a story that James Rodriguez is going to West Ham. That can’t be right can it? I had expected Chealsea, but West Ham? I can’t find it again so I am going to assume I imagined it. I shouldn’t be getting my news from Reddit anyway I guess.
Anyway, it looks like even with the Champions league all the big names Spurs are connected to are going to snub them. I should know better than to get my hopes up for something splashy. The people they have brought in so far are all very good, but a decent backup for Dembele or Erikson really would have been nice.
There were rumors to that effect about a month ago. West Ham has a shitload of money to spend – I mean, all Premier League teams do right now, but them especially – and James is in a really touchy position so there was reason to believe he could be scooped up. But someone who was not West Ham would almost certainly jump in front of them.
True.
On the, teams have crazy amounts of money to spend, front. Schalke have apparently turned down a 45m euro bid from Spurs for Max Mayer, which is more money than I ever expected Spurs to be linked to spending.
Arsenal picked up Lucas Perez (£17.1 m) and Shkodran Mustafi (£35m). The latter is a clearly excellent signing. We’ve been short at center back, and Mustafi brings solid pro and German national team experience.
Lucas Perez is more of a dark horse; he had an excellent last season in La Liga, after a mainly unremarkable early career. Wenger clearly sees something, but he’s not the marquee signing we were all hoping for. But he is clearly talented, and more importantly, hungry to prove himself. That means a lot.
Serge Gnabry has permanently joined Werder Bremen, which is sad because I had really hoped to keep him.
In terms of Arsenal loans, we have:
Joel Campbell on loan to Sporting Lisbon.
Wojciech Szczęsny on loan to Roma.
Calum Chambers on loan to Middlesbrough.
Jack Wilshere apparently will be loaned to Bournemouth. There were rumors linking him to a Crystal Palace loan as well.
Gedion Zalalem looks like he’s going to be loaned to Bolton.
It gets even more rumor-mongery past that.
In non-Arsenal news, the one that’s surprised me the most in the end, although we all could see it coming, is the loan of Joe Hart to Torino. I guess Pep felt he couldn’t out-and-out sell him, but he’s been such a fixture at Man City it feels weird.
Back to Arsenal commentary, so far the signing of Granit Xhaka earlier this summer has been brilliant. We’ll see how he develops, but his cooperation with Cazorla was fabulous. With a seasoned veteran next to him in the form of Koscielny, as in the past two games, Rob Holding has also been excellent.
And it looks to be Bournemouth for Jack Wilshere for sure.
Sad, really. So much potential, but so much time injured or just not accomplishing much. Maybe he’ll come back to Arsenal, if he proves himself there.
I never expected that a deal for Moussa Sisson would be the most harrowing deal of the deadline for me.