Sunday 3 April 2011

The week in hastily cobbled together notes.

As someone who has only been truly following football for the last 6 years (for those of you struggling to comprehend that amount of time, it's approximately the same amount of time Shaun Wright-Phillips has been getting paid to do nothing at all.) I didn't feel comfortable listing the best XI players from my life time. I'd sooner listen to Mark Lawrenson than join the long list of tabloid hacks, lazily pasting together a series of superlatives to describe modern greats like Lionel Messi.


Good player, but I think that giant ball sums it up better than I can.

Instead, I thought I'd rather discuss the week itself, as if the title of this piece didn't give you a clue, I haven't exactly sat down and composed my thoughts. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a newspaper to hand to remind me of some of the lesser events our great sport has thrown up this week, let's proceed anyway...

True Moron

That little subtitle had a bit of thought put into it. For anyone working for the News of the World or any such tabloid, I just wanted to show how easy it is to not replace the word "true" with "troo" when writing yet another story on Wayne Rooney. Seriously, those puns are grating on my nerves.

You can probably guess exactly what I'm about to talk about; Rooney's foul mouthed rant at...well, no one in particular, shortly after single handedly disposing of West Ham. People often refer to Rooney as someone who truly loves the game, a man who would stop his car and join in if he saw a few kids having a game in the park. I don't get that vibe from a man who scores a match winning hat-trick, and refuses to break into a smile. The Terrace Talk team watched the game together, a game that was quite enjoyable as a spectacle until Rooney decided to turn it into a public call out to his doubters. It's hard to enjoy football when one of it's biggest draws takes his aggression out on the viewing public because he hit his peak sometime last year.  Then again, I certainly wouldn't enjoy being a striker if my supply line came in the form of Darron Gibson.

"No that's fine Darron, you had every right to shoot from 40 yards. It was silly of me to think you wouldn't take the shot on, at least this one remained in the stadium..."

Home comforts?

On another note, a great record came to an end on saturday, as managerial master Jose Mourinho finally witnessed a home defeat for the first time in 9 years. The last time it happened was February 23rd 2002 when the Portuguese genius was still in charge of Porto! It's almost a shame that the team who broke the record were not a team of the calibre of Barcelona, but rather Sporting Gijon. With no disrespect to Sporting, I think most people would've expected a truly great team to end what has been an astonishing record, a record that will probably never be beaten. Speaking of Madrid...

A trip to the Bernabeu is one thing...

...but it's nothing compared to the importance of a saturday afternoon trip to the DW Stadium. Tottenham, like so many teams before them, seem to be placing greater emphasis on their glamour tie with Los Blancos then they are with trying to get back to the promised land of Champions League football next season. While it's impossible to say Spurs haven't been a breath of fresh air this year, to say they're unlikely to win the biggest club honour is a massive understatement, needing to beat the the big two Spanish teams (providing of course, Barcelona get past a difficult Shakhtar team) before likely facing up against Chelsea or United in the final makes this years Champions League no more than an (almost) impossible dream. In the way of a non-league team going to Old Trafford in the F.A.Cup, Spurs' priorities should be to enjoy the occasion and give a good account of themselves, anything else is a bonus.

Their number one priority this season is to finish in the top 4 for a second consecutive season, doing so would mean they're once again able to invest in playing talent, and possibly even mount a serious challenge for the title providing Harry can find the right players. Everton will tell you that staying in the Champions League is much harder than getting there in the first place, and if cash-rich City beat them to the spot this year, it's likely they'll never wrestle it back.

Those are the main points I've drawn from this weekend of football. If anyone has any other great/interesting moments from this week, or if you just want to tell me I'm full of shit (I'm referring to you Darron Gibson), we have a comments section for that very reason.

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