On this, the eve of the 2014-15 Barclays Premier League season, we welcome once again our roving footie correspondent, Fat Guy in a Speedo, who offers a preview as comprehensive as any of our usual crap.
Chelsea - Owned by free-spending, Putin-light oligarch, they will have gelled under second year wundercoach Jose Mourinho who has won many titles with many teams from many countries. Despite his enormous success, he quits/moves/gets fired every other year because he is an insufferable twat who plays boring, "ugly" football, i.e., meaning defensive, low-scoring matches. He should win the league this year with Chelsea as they will have had a full season to be accustomed to this lack of style. Chelsea fans everywhere celebrate this as they too, are a brio-less lot of lumpenproletariat.
Arsenal - Like Chelsea, they are a London-based team, this is all they have in common. Arsenal play free-flowing, open football under long-standing French coach Arsene Wenger. Wenger has enjoyed tremendous success at Arsenal, unfortunately, all of this success is a 90s, early 2000s memory. Wenger has eschewed the vast sums spent on the modern footballer over the past decade and is proof that you get what you pay for. His only silver over the past 9 seasons is an FA Cup trophy last May. Buoyed by this windfall of glory, Wenger has uncharacteristically spent $50M on Chilean Alexis Sanchez amongst others. It will be interesting to see if this group of bridesmaids can finally take it to the next level. Unfortunately for fans of the Gunners, the answer will be 'no.'
Liverpool - Like Arsenal, they are still chasing past glory, unlike Arsenal they have spent 100s of millions of pounds to achieve this over the past decade to no avail. Liverpool had an amazing run last season and failed to heed the ABCs of life, they couldn't close it. You can pinpoint the second it all ended, top of the table and 3 games left, Liverpool legend Steven Gerrard lost possession in midfield and conceded the goal that changed their fate. (Editor's Note: Last year was my daughter's first as a Liverpool fan. Gerrard is her favorite, natch. And this really bummed her out.)
Additionally, chompy Luis Suarez has been sold to Barcelona, for all his innumerable faults, he was the greatest player in the world last season. Despite his 10-game ban for biting Chelsea defender Ivanovic in 2013, he scored 30 goals last season. At that pace he would've been on the amazing tally of 40 if he wasn't an absolute sociopath on the pitch. Without him, Liverpool and his fans can be prepared for another disappointing season.
Manchester City - What's left to be said about the 'noisy neighbors' of Manchester United? Still owned by Arab billionaires who knew nothing about soccer prior to purchase, still spending 100s of millions of pounds a year on the world's greatest players, still clamoring for approval despite winning the league last year, their lot will be the same this year. They might win it, they should win it, but no one except the Gallagher brothers will care if they do.
Louis Van Gaal's nickname is the Iron Tulip and after leading the Netherlands national team to third place this World Cup, United fans are hoping to see similar results this coming season. United have won all 7 pre-season friendlies under Van Gaal, fans are so enthused that this will continue that it will be great fun for all non-United fans to watch them stumble to mediocrity when the season commences. Van Gaal has never coached in the EPL and it is a different entity from what he's used to. The fact that United will have no European football (Champions or Europa League) during the season as they didn't qualify should help them get back on track. They will win the League. (Editor's note: No, no they will not.)
Fulham - Second to last place last season saw them drop down to the Champions League for the upcoming season. Rob will have a hard time finding them on the telly this year. Predictions, Fulham take second and are back in the Premier League next season and Rob gets 3 viruses watching them on dodgy Russian feeds. (Editor's note: Fulham lost their first Championship Match, so things are already going swimmingly.)
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39 comments:
big friday huh?
Some bad/juicy rumors swirling about an academic fraud investigation at Notre Dame, Dan.
interestingly, clarence is also known as the iron tulip.
interesting...will seek them out.
probably rampant among the girl's lacrosse squad.
okay...found it. i have a bad feeling about it considering the players mentioned weren't in practice today AND one of them just returned after an academic issue of some kind. worse yet is they each either start or play a lot at the very least. that would hurt. but the nd haters will LOOOOVE it, won't they? guys?
honestly, at this point, can we trust anything catholics do?
we doing a bpl fantasy league this year?
Fox Sports is reporting the players in question have been dismissed from the team.
Are we supposed to be surprised that a school with only 11,000 students (who average 1460 on the SATs) but consistently competes at the highest level athletically across multiple sports has some academic fraud among its athletes? In fact I would EXPECT to find fraud at such a school!
No, I don't think we're supposed to be surprised. Doesn't make it being uncovered less significant or impactful to the football program.
That's a dagger of some proportion for nd/nd fanbase/the Vatican/danimal
I thought it was odd that they've been talking up WR Chris Brown and hardly mentioning Daniels who is/was a stud. dammitall!
Reading the ND article now, saw that a player last year was dismissed for "poor academic judgment." Hmm.
In my undergrad days I concentrated in poor academic judgment. Minored in poor social judgment.
Seeing ND fans (and Gregg Easterbrook) spinning this by saying ND should be praised for investigating this on their own and not waiting for it to be uncovered. Riiiiiight.
shlara - there are a few pics of kingsbury floating around the internet, shirtless.
The Redskins sued the USPTO in the Eastern District of Virginia (Alexandria). The case was assigned to Judge Lee. This should be interesting.
thanks fat guy. i am really going to try to remember to watch some premiere league games this season.
I was wrong ... they sued the people who brought the cancellation proceeding against the Redskins mark.
Coach Kliff!!!
He's like a real-life mash-up of Tim Riggins and Coach Taylor
'skins at jags - 9/14
anyone? bueller?
False alarm...it is not a home game for jax.
5 year old son came home from camp today asking to watch the movie Scream. I said no it's not appropriate for you. He then pulled the usual kid line, but Max (same age) saw it last night.
Am I already the old man yelling at people to get off my lawn?
Little bit of trivia. Scream lost the number spot at the box office that week to ... Beavis and Butt-head Do America. Now that is a movie I would give him the green light to watch.
Shark Week hasn't disappointed. Did anyone see "Submarine"? I give it two nubs up.
look at shlara, all growns up:
http://www.csnwashington.com/basketball-washington-wizards/talk/memory-ex-bullets-coach-inspires-son-nolan-smith
My stepdaughter somewhat recently tried the "but (insert name here)'s parents let them". We calmly informed her this strategy will never work and in fact will guarantee that we won't let you do whatever it is you want to do. In so many words we explained to her that we don't give a fuck what other parents let their kids do.
It didn't make me feel old because its just me being difficult and I've been difficult for a very, very long time.
That same kid starting middle school on Monday though? That makes me feel quite old.
I am three hours into a 36-hr solo stretch in the casa, w/ the wife taking the beasts to NY state. I leave for a 4-day boondoggle/work conference Sunday.
Part of me is tempted to do this "exercise" thing tomorrow morning, while the rest is saying to bang it to Manhattan and morning-drink and watch EPL at a pub.
It's like I have Rob on one shoulder and Clarence on another, whispering conflicting things in my ear.
Mark, my first-born daughter turned 13 today. Efffffff.
And I hear your pain, Squeaks. My 6 y/o is DYING to see Jaws b/c his slightly older buddy (whose folks are bad parents) told him he saw it. I almost want to let him see it. The kid is infatuated w/ shark week and has his own top 10 list of favorite sharks. My favorite, the underrated wobbegong, sadly did not make the cut.
TR, where are you headed for the boondoggle? I'm off to New Orleans Monday, Gheorgies.
Denver. Charity golf on Sunday at Arrowhead, a bitchin' public course, where the Broncos cheerleaders are sometimes trotted out to make me feel like a dirty, old man. Then a conference where managing work and adult drinking at night is a challenge. A Euflora trip may be in the cards as well.
And I now know that any "look at me getting loco out of town" will be trumped by the NOLA stories. Damn you, Whitney.
whitney's a pain in the ass, for sure, but she's no clarence. and get up early to exercise before heading into the city to soccer drink. easy solution.
This is a douchey, Rovell-esque comment but here goes.
The recent events and subsequent coverage of Ferguson, MO are the ultimate validation of Twitter as a valuable medium.
i don't know about ultimate, but i get your point. nobody in the broader media would've said word one about that story without twitter's amplification of it. twitter has more than made its bones at this point.
Sorry, Rob. I'll let you pick the adjective.
king of adjectives
I'd say you're the little prince of adjectives.
So jealous of tr, more so his next 24 hours than the boondoggle. I haven't seen one of those home solo days/weekends forever and I don't see one on the horizon. Tr....get your ass up and go run x miles thereby empowering you, in guilt free mode no less, to go have a nice hunker down. That's what I would do. Let my 3rd 3.5 hour Sat in a row help you feel like you've got it good.
And do they sell blunts at the turn at Arrowhead?
Just watching the 2nd half of jags game from Thursday....Bortles!
Final decision was to enjoy a couple pops last night, sleep in, watch Man U on DVR, regret watching Man U on DVR, and then run inside on treadmill.
Sorry if this makes you feel bad, Danimal, but this is the very first time I've gotten a 24-hr break at the house w/o the two kids. Ever.
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