Showing posts with label liverpool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label liverpool. Show all posts

Thursday, 23 October 2008

Champions League

Been watching the Champions League this week. On Tuesday I saw Man Utd’s whitewash of Celtic, which was almost as far removed from the competitive matches of a few seasons as you could get. Celtic have probably gone backwards in the time, while Man Utd have improved, and the result was a colossal mis-match. Celtic packed the midfield to try and stifle United, and while United got the benefit of two offside decisions in their favour for their first two goals, it was domination pretty much from start to finish. The best Celtic can hope for is a UEFA Cup spot, while United and Villareal have all but qualified from this group with three matches to spare.

Last night I watched Liverpool’s trip to Athletico Madrid, which was a fairly dull affair for the first half I watched. Liverpool took the lead against an unadenturous side who offered little. Apparently Athletico improved in the second period, which sounded much more exciting, as is often the way, and they picked up a late equaliser. By that time I’d switched over to Barcelona’s match in Basle, already 3-0 up at half-time, and picked up two goals at the start of the second half. Basle appeared to just sit back and let Barcelona do their stuff. The crowd seemed happy enough given the one sided score, perhaps content to watch a great footballing side up close, so much so that they started to whistle their displeasure in the second half when Barcelona started to play keep-ball in their own half.

Monday, 6 October 2008

Manchester City vs Liverpool

Sunday’s live match was Robinho’s Manchester City vs Liverpool. I watched this on digitalb, but somebody forgot to flick the commentary, and the English audio stream was silent for the whole match. I watched about 20 minutes like this (it’s very weird watching a match with no sound at all) before switching over to the Albanian audio so I at least had the crowd noise. Probably makes more sense than the English commentary, and is an improvement on Andy Gray at least.

It was a pretty exciting match, with Liverpool going 2-0 down to City before the break, before a Fernando Torres double and Dirk Kuyt winning the match in injury time. At half time, I couldn’t see Liverpool coming back into it at all, but they played very well in the second half, much as it hurts me to say.

The match could go down as one of those feted “this is why the Premier League is so great” matches, and in truth, it was pretty enjoyable, even if I got the result I didn’t want. Sally was pleased though, as Torres is in her fantasy team.

The match saw a red card for a pretty reckless tackle by Zabaleta on Alonso, which was well deserves. Martin Skertel was stretchered off late in the match after a challenge on Ched Evans left him writhing in agony on the pitch, although he was potentially lucky still to be on the pitch at that stage following a high tackle on Jo.

I half-wonder if the match was more enjoyable due to the absence of English commentary, allowing me to watch the match and make up my own mind about what’s going on, rather than listen to some gormless summariser who says the referee has made a mistake, then over the course of several replays gradually changes their tune to say that the referee has made a good decision.

Liverpool for once seem to have credible title credentials, although the depth of their squad could be an issue, especially if Torres gets injured. For all Manchester City’s riches, it’s worth noting that they’re only really a Robinho and a Jo better than last year’s mid-table team. It’s worth waiting until after the next transfer window to see if they’re worthy of the Big Four contender title – on recent showings, they are some way off, but are showing signs.

Sunday, 28 September 2008

Saturday review; Liverpool win on Merseyside, Man Utd beat Bolton, Hull humble Gunners

Busy Premier League day yesterday. Liverpool won at Everton thanks to two second-half Fernando Torres goals, which was what their dominance of play deserved. I think I recall a comment from the commentators on the end that Everton hadn't made a shot on target all match, and I can easily believe that, as they had little possession and mainly squandered what they had. Looks like it could be a long season for the Toffees, it's difficult to see where their goals will come from. Mike Riley took the spotlight again, making many stoppages for free kicks (although in the criticism he took from the commentators, what can he do if both teams persistently foul? The more he lets play "flow", the more chance he misses a foul, earning thr wrath of the players and commentators for not blowing - who'd be a referee?), though he most puzzling decision of the day was sending Cahill off for a poor challenge when a yellow may have sufficed, although Cahill's reluctance to come over and speak to the ref may have led to his own downfall.

I then watched Man Utd vs Bolton on an internet stream, as digitalb unsurprisingly didn't broadcast this match live. At the same time I was listening to Morecambe earn a draw at Lincoln on Morecambe World, the commentary for which sounded like it was coming down a piece of string connected to a tin at Sincill Bank. Any time the crowd made any kind of noise, they and the commentators merged into one big blob of sound. When Morecambe equalised, it took almost 30 seconds for me to figure out what had happened! Anyway, in the other match, watched on various streams on justin.tv as various streams buffered and went down, Man Utd dominated the Trotters, without going ahead until deep in the second half when Ronaldo was brought down in the box - although it was never a penalty. The reaction on the internet chat rooms at the time was telling - blaming Ronaldo and calling him all the names under the sun, when none of it was actually his fault - it was a fair tackle, which brought him down after the ball had been won; Ronaldo didn't dive, didn't appeal for the penalty, but yet in the eyes of most of those in the chatroom at the time, it was his fault. Anyway, Rooney came off the bench to get a second to take the focus off the dodgy decision slightly.

In the tea-time match, featuring Arsenal yet again (I think the last three Setanta tea-time matches have featured the Gunners), Hull held up well against Arsenal in the first half, living on the edge slightly in defense on occasion, but making several chances of their own. As Arsenal scored at the start of the second half, and Sally had just put my tea out, I turned the telly off, and turned on again a few minutes before the end to see what cricket score Arsenal had run up, only to see Hull had taken the lead! I was glad not be be betting, as I certainly would have used Arsenal in a few accumulators yesterday. So I watched the highlights on match of the day, and saw Hull were worthy of their win - Arsenal again trying to elaborate too much in front of goal, passing when they should shoot, and Geovanni equalised with a fantastic rocket from outside the area, before Cousin got the winner from a corner.

All of which leaves Chelsea and Liverpool tied at the top of the Premier League.

Tuesday, 16 September 2008

Champions League; Barcelona vs Sporting Lisbon; Marseille vs Liverpool

The Champions League returns and the Sky hype machine gets cranked up a notch. As I'll be watching Manchester United's match tomorrow, I thought I'd take in one of the matches not involving English teams tonight, and tuned into the first half of Barcelona's match against Sporting Lisbon. A good match on paper, between two skillful sides, turned out to be fairly dull, in the half that I watched anyway.

In a Nou Camp that was far from full, Barcelona dominated possession, notching up 70% of the possession at one stage. Barcelona were completely in control, although creating very little in the final third of the pitch. Sporting's apparent unwillingness to chase the ball down meant Barcelona could pass the ball round easily without needing to extend themselves too much, killing the game as a spectacle. They became even less adventurous after Marquez gave them the lead from a poorly defended corner. I decided to switch over at half-time to watch Marseille's match against Liverpool, which at 2-1 to Liverpool, looked a mych more balanced and enticing prospect.

One advantage of watching the Champions League on Sky is their interactive facility - offering six matches tonight and eight tomorrow, all of which can be watched at once if you have ADHD, or you can focus on one and be kept abreast of developments elsewhere by a message on the bottom of the screen as the goals go in, pressing the red button to view them. Sky have improved this facility this season, by showing the replayed goal twice - last season you needed to react within milliseconds of the message going up in order to view anything more than players celebrating a goal. This season you can be slightly more relaxed about things. Unfortunately, Sky have decided against showing the match in whatever format the host broadcaster provide, choosing to chop the top and bottom off a 4:3 feed to fake a 16:9 picture, meaning that players at the top of the screen regularly have their head chopped off, or disappear behind the score graphic.

The Marseille vs Liverpool match was a much more entertaining affair, between two closely matched teams. Marseille had the majority of the play and consistently dispossessed Liverpool in midfield, although it was Liverpool who had the better of the chances as Babel blasted a ball from six yards against the keeper, who managed to get an arm in the way. Both teams had interesting kits - Liverpool's absent of the sponsor logo due to the alcohol advertising ban in France, Marseille for some reason in a change kit of gold and black. The impressive Stade Velodrome had swathes of empty seats - perhaps Champions League apathy is reaching the south coast of France.

In other matches, the Champions League new boys had impressive debuts - Anorthosis Famagusta sharing the points with Werder Bremen in a goaless draw, but by far the most impressive result being Cluj's win in Rome. Both matches frustratingly spoiling my accumulators and denying me my 2p fortune.

Monday, 15 September 2008

Liverpool vs Manchester United, via a dodgy web stream


As I was at a wedding back home in Northern Ireland, my only football this weekend was watching the first half of Liverpool vs Manchester United on streaming site Justin.tv.

Justin.tv is a streaming site where users connect their telly up to their computer, and broadcast whatever they are watching. Originally set up to allow people to broadcast video gaming, it seems to have grown into a legally dubious way of re-broadcasting various satellite channels. Go there on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, and you’ll find most matches being broadcast. I ended up watching someone broadcasting Sky Sports over the service, along with around 23,000 other viewers. Given that several other users were broadcasting the match, it soon adds up to quite a few people not being included in Sky’s overall viewing figures.

Quality varies from user to user – some are blocky and jerky, some are very reasonable quality. It’s all done using embedded flash, like youtube and other video sharing sites, meaning you don’t need to download any clients like TVUplayer or SOPcast.

The channel is broadcast in a window about a quarter the size of your computer screen, with a chat window on the other side. The chat window is annoying, there’s no two ways about it, and unfortunately there’s no way of hiding it. Whilst it’s a nice idea, to let people discuss the match in progress, in reality most people use it for fairly basic insults of the team they don’t support, to make various sexist, racist or homophobic insults, or to ask who scored the goal. Every minute.

The match itself (as much as I watched of it) was a pretty exciting, fairly open contest. United look like they could run a cricket score to begin with, before gifting Liverpool an equaliser and falling apart from there. Not having seen the second half, I can’t comment on Liverpool’s winner, but it would be interesting to see how Liverpool would have performed had they not giftwrapped the equaliser.

I did catch the last 10 minutes of Real Madrid vs Numancia last night, seemingly the only part of the game not to contain any goals, but thankfully they won, and was the final result in a small accumulator I had, returning the princely sum of 2p for my stake of 1p. I’d been on a bad run until then, loosing 6 on the bounce. I’ve done a small accumulator for the Champion’s League, based on some of the home “bankers” there look to be. Fingers crossed my luck is changing!

Sunday, 31 August 2008

Chelsea 1 - 1 Tottenham; Aston Villa 0 - 0 Liverpool

I missed the first half of the Chelsea match due to the old firm match, so tuned in for the second half of Chelsea vs Tottenham match. That meant I missed both goals, but if the first half was anything like the second, it was still a blessing, as the remainder was a fairly turgid match with both teams cancelling each other out.

The same can be said of Liverpool's trip to Villa Park. I was hoping for some spark in the light of the tedious Gareth Barry saga, but we got nothing of the sort. Aston Villa looked competent against a dour, unadventurous Liverpool side, who managed to muster zero shots on target. Their cause wasn't helped with Gerrard out injured, and Torres went off during the first half, but Robbie Keane certainly isn't living up to his £20 million price tag. So far, none of the big guns appear to be taking the lead in the title challenge, but at the same time none of the other sides look capable of breaking their monopoly on the top four places.

Meanwhile, in Serie A, none of the big guns have made a big impression in their opening matches either. Inter were well held by a Sampdoria side that will feel unlucky not to have won, Roma were held at home by Napoli, and the new look AC Milan side went down 2-1 to Serie A newcomers Bologna, possibly past-it Ronaldinho and probably past-it Shevchenko unsurprisingly not able to net a win for the side, who look like they may have another season of struggles ahead. Juventus and Fiorentina will have their chance to stake their credentials in the evening match tonight.

Saturday, 23 August 2008

Liverpool vs Middlesbrough; Fulham vs Arsenal; Betting Update

I watched the last 25 minutes or so of Liverpool's match against Middlesbrough at Anfield. Liverpool looked poor against a well-organised Boro team, and it was Boro who took the lead with a well-take long range goal from Mido. Liverpool then put Babel on, and threw the kitchen sink at Boro, first of all equalising near the end when a Carragher strike took a massive deflection, and then deep in injury time, Gerrard struck a thunderbolt from the edge of the area - one of those ones that could equally clear the top of the stand, but today went in the top corner. So, two wins in a row after playing badly. Anfield also seems to have given in to the curse of electronic score-boards, which is a pity.

Then onto Fulham vs Arsenal, which I missed the start of as I was at the gym. A shame, as according to the radio commentary on the way home, they managed to put the Plymouth - Swansea match that was on Sky on the big screens around the ground, which sounds quite amusing. Fulham were looking to get a home win on the board to get some confidence in their new-look team to try and avoid a repeat of last season's escape, and Arsenal were looking to play better than they did in their rather fortunate win over West Brom on the opening day of the weekend. Fulham took the upper hand when Hangerland knocked in a corner to give them the lead. Adebayor struck the post shortly after, but Fulham deservedly went in ahead at the break. With the missing Fabregas and Rosicky, and the departed Hleb and Flamini, Arsenal's midfield has completely changed since last season, and it shows with the lack of fluency in their game. Late Arsenal pressure set up an exicting finish, but for all of Arsenal's possession, Schwarzer was hardly tested. Should Wenger not strengthen his side before the transfer window slams shut, many more performances like this could see Arsenal's qualification for next season's Champion's League in doubt. Of course, it's far too early in the season for such speculation, but with massive debts from the new stadium, such a reduction in revenue could have severe repercussions for the team.

In today's betting, I had a success in my Rotherham vs Chester, Birmingham vs Barnsley and Celtic vs Falkirk treble, to turn my 3p stake into 8p. After finding 56p in my Blue Square account yesterday, I've managed to gamble it up to a massive 68p so far, a 20% return so far. I've taken a massive 10p and stake it on tonight's Lyon vs Grenoble match which I plan to watch later. It matters more when there's money on it apparently!

Saturday, 16 August 2008

The first day of the Premier League Season



EPL back today. Be still whilst I contain my joy!

Anyhoo, started the day with the return of Soccer AM. New look to go along with the new presenter (feel a bit for Andy Goldstein, I quite liked him, an improvement over Tim Lovejoy in my opinion, who had become a self-centred tool). Although it's pretty much the same old show as ever, signs are that the new presenter looks OK, and hopefully wil improve as he builds up a rapport with Helen.

Staying on Sky for the opening match of the EPL, Arsenal vs West Brom, looked like it might be a rampage for Arsenal as Nasri opened the scoring after 4 minutes. However, luckily for West Brom, Arsenal struggled to create many more chances and looked in control without creating much after that. My interest waned and I browsed the internet looking for a new phone whilst watching it.

I was shocked at how thin Arsenal's squad has become. I know they are suffering from injuries, but they seem to be down to almost the bones, and even had a 16-year old (according to the SKy interactive stats) on the bench. Lots of young players indicate just how much of a selling club Arsenal have become - get a player young, train him in the Arsenal way and flog him high after a few years. It would be interesting if Arsenal ever were taken over by an investor - Wenger could make somebody a lot of money, but as I heard somewhere else, the amount of players they need to sell to help pay off the stadium debt must be worrying, especially if Arsenal don't qualify for the Champions League. Will be an interesting season to see if the young players can rise to the challenge when they face sterner tests.

Off to Christie Park for the first home match of the season against Rotherham. We were comprehensively outplayed for the majority of the match, going 1-0 down to a superbly taken long range goal after 8 minutes, and after that Rotherham dominated us for the match. They broke strong and quick, and we couldn't get anything through their midfield, leaving us to punt the ball up long for their central denfenders to comfortably deal with. Another one just before half time, from the edge of the box (closing players down is not our strong point). Mid-way through the second half, we scored and put them under a sustained period of pressure, only for them to curl another goal in from the corner of the area right at the death. Pandemonium on the messageboard this evening, as people criticise all and sundry and blame the manager for everything. Yes, we played poorly, but it was exactly the same team who held a strong Wycombe team at Adams Park last Saturday. I don't think we'll go down (and with three teams still on minus points, we shouldn't!) but I don't think we'll challenge for the play-offs either, but then that was always unlikely. After a few seasons of success, fans expectations get raised, often unrealistically, and many seem unable to deal with us losing more regularly, after becoming accustomed to us winning often in the Conference.

Home, and watched Setanta to see Sunderland against Liverpool. Or at least, I would have, had we not discovered that our cat may have contracted worms from somewhere and we had to mount a major clean up operation in the room where the cat sleeps and has her tray and food. I watched the first part, and was interested to see how uncreative Liverpool were, and then stuck the rest of the match on a stream on the laptop whilst I was cleaning. I came back downstairs just as Torres got a goal from nothing, which shows what £24 million buys. The first match of the season is always interesting, as it leaves you to speculate if Liverpool were poor, or if it was down to improvements in the Sunderland squad that lead to Liverpool struggling.

Interestingly, it seems that both of the foreign cards I use may have been barred from broadcasting 3pm English matches for a certain period, as it seems the cards are becoming too prolific in the UK, and the Premier League are leaning heavily on the broadcasters. If this continues, it should help me in my quest to explore other leagues, as I will be forced into watching other countries leagues on Saturday afternoons when I haven't gone to Morecambe away matches.

Will most likely watch some of match of the day to catch up on the other Premier League goals, and become incensed with Gary Linker's smug face.

Matches so far this season:
Sky: 2
Setanta: 3
Foreign Satellite: 2