Football: The Closed Season

[ljkeane]

Because knock out competitions are entertaining but not a particularly good measure of which is the best team. Given football's always had knockout cup competitions played alongside leagues there's never been any real need to add playoffs to league play. (There are playoffs in the lower leagues to decide the third promoted side).

[AncalagonTheBlack]

So Arsenal might just manage not to bottle this

[ljkeane]

It really isn't going well for Sheffield United post restart.

[Mexal]

2 hours ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

So Arsenal might just manage not to bottle this

That was quite the suprirse.

[Raja]

We tried our best, to be fair.

Willock, Saka, Tierney and Holding all coming along nicely

[A Horse Named Stranger]

5 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

So I get that various tournaments do, but why do leagues not have playoffs? Just a bit odd from of U.S. perspective, considering they have them here.

I'd reverse that. A league is to determine which team has shown to be the best and deliver results consistently over the course of a season. Binning an entire because of a bad game feels wrong.

 

Anyway. Meanwhile in German football.

I want to take the time to congratulate our dearest neighbours for securing another year of Bundesliga 2 football. Shout out to Sandhausen, subbing the goalkeeper, because you can, and having Diekmeier score a goal was really the cherry on top.

 

[Raja]

Accurate

 

[BigFatCoward]

Fuck it, we'll smash those peasants next year, when we have 10x the cash they have. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

I'd reverse that. A league is to determine which team has shown to be the best and deliver results consistently over the course of a season. Binning an entire because of a bad game feels wrong.

 

Anyway. Meanwhile in German football.

I want to take the time to congratulate our dearest neighbours for securing another year of Bundesliga 2 football. Shout out to Sandhausen, subbing the goalkeeper, because you can, and having Diekmeier score a goal was really the cherry on top.

 

But German football just kind of feels like kissing your distant cousin. 

I can't do it, man.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

7 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

But German football just kind of feels like kissing your distant cousin. 

I can't do it, man.

You are looking at it the wrong way.

I mean, just try to explain to your Jewish (yes, I played that card on you this time) relatives that you support a German team wearing brown shirts, whose fans fly a flag with a skull (and cross bones, yes, basically the Jolly Roger, but the skull works better for the imagery). And yes, I am mildly curious if you arrive at the point where you get to explain that the fans of that team are actually left wingers, with good parts of the support having Antifa links, before your elderly relatives suffer a heart attack.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

18 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

You are looking at it the wrong way.

I mean, just try to explain to your Jewish (yes, I played that card on you this time) relatives that you support a German team wearing brown shirts, whose fans fly a flag with a skull (and cross bones, yes, basically the Jolly Roger, but the skull works better for the imagery). And yes, I am mildly curious if you arrive at the point where you get to explain that the fans of that team are actually left wingers, with good parts of the support having Antifa links, before your elderly relatives suffer a heart attack.

As a Jew speaking to a German, even if I am a German-Jew of sorts,

How fucking dare you insult a pirates flag, you damn monster! 

Apologize for what you've done! 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

7 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

As a Jew speaking to a German, even if I am a German-Jew of sorts,

How fucking dare you insult a pirates flag, you damn monster! 

Apologize for what you've done! 

Nothing I had done was more insulting to pirates than what Jerry Bruckheimer and Johnny Depp did. Or the city of Pittsburgh. In both cases, a pirates life was never at any point that dull and boring. As a general note, if your sport teams must have a special name, it should be appropriate to the sport. Likesay, the Minnesota Sleepwalker, the Arizona Trainspotters, the Cincinatti Sundayschoolers, or the Atlanta Accountants, or the Pittsburgh Paintdry. Yes, that was a long way of saying Baseball is freaking boring, and I'd much rather watch Uranium turn into lead in real time.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

31 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Nothing I had done was more insulting to pirates than what Jerry Bruckheimer and Johnny Depp did. Or the city of Pittsburgh. In both cases, a pirates life was never at any point that dull and boring. As a general note, if your sport teams must have a special name, it should be appropriate to the sport. Likesay, the Minnesota Sleepwalker, the Arizona Trainspotters, the Cincinatti Sundayschoolers, or the Atlanta Accountants, or the Pittsburgh Paintdry. Yes, that was a long way of saying Baseball is freaking boring, and I'd much rather watch Uranium turn into lead in real time.

Look, I'm not going to speak to the works of Jerome, and Depp was great in his first outing as a pirate even if his better work was him with a half shaved head hitting a car with a hammer, yelling about lizards having an orgy, but not all art appeals to all people. 

I have always wondered how pirates made it to Pittsburgh though. That just doesn't make any sense, at every level. 

But then again, I root for a football club in part because I dated a few women with the same name, and had a crush on a girl with the same name when I was a kid. Still friends with all of them though so I can't be entirely evil and awful. 

[Rorshach]

Well, said club is Chelsea...

[Corvinus85]

When I attempted to start following the NFL and decided on which team to root for, I went with the Baltimore Ravens simply because of the animal name they chose for themselves. While for them it had to do with Edgar Allan Poe, for me it was simply the ASoIaF connection. So I don't bemoan @Tywin et al. for his logic. (better than mine I think)

I have liked Chelsea since before the Abramovich days. I wish the owner was someone else, but such is life. At least the current team is offering more excitement than some of their neighbors. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

55 minutes ago, Rorshach said:

Well, said club is Chelsea...

Dude, I clearly have fallen in love with a few women named Bournemouth.

22 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

When I attempted to start following the NFL and decided on which team to root for, I went with the Baltimore Ravens simply because of the animal name they chose for themselves. While for them it had to do with Edgar Allan Poe, for me it was simply the ASoIaF connection. So I don't bemoan @Tywin et al. for his logic. (better than mine I think)

Oh man. I hope you haven't been following them closely, as of late. 

Quote

I have liked Chelsea since before the Abramovich days. I wish the owner was someone else, but such is life. At least the current team is offering more excitement than some of their neighbors. 

Because of this. I'm not sure which owner is worse. 

But then again, my two favorite sports teams are one, owned by two truly evil brothers who are slumlords, thieves of the highest level, and there is a lot of other shady shit in there, with nothing redeemable to find about them, and two, owned by a person who seems to be by all accounts a truly kind and decent man who burned a lot of his own money during the last recession to keep a lot afloat in the city, but it's undeniable that he's also one of the worst sports owners ever. Sadly the former two evil brothers have run their franchise a lot better.

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Because of this. I'm not sure which owner is worse. 

I've barely followed the NFL last couple of seasons. And these days it's more which teams I dislike, not so much about which teams I like.

[Rorshach]

What is a good owner in the PL? Back in the day it happened to be a local fan of some sort, who also managed to engineer success. If they didn't mangage that, or spent too little, they soon got unpopular (don't have to look further than Kenwright for that, even though his takeover form Johnson was more or less universally cheered). 

What's worse now is, it seems to me, the lack of local connections coupled with some rather big question marks over how the owner's wealth was aquired and what said owner plans for the club. 

Newcastle, sadly, have perhaps suffered most.

[Wilbur]

3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I have always wondered how pirates made it to Pittsburgh though. That just doesn't make any sense, at every level. 

When they started out in the 1880s, they were the Pittsburgh Alleghanys, named after the river.  However, some sneaky transfer business during the formative years of the National League caused other teams, specifically the Philadelphia Athletics, to refer to them as piratical, and the new name was born.

This has been your Yinzer Moment.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

55 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I've barely followed the NFL last couple of seasons. And these days it's more which teams I dislike, not so much about which teams I like.

Then don't have a team, and just root against the Cowboys each week.

You're welcome.

16 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

When they started out in the 1880s, they were the Pittsburgh Alleghanys, named after the river.  However, some sneaky transfer business during the formative years of the National League caused other teams, specifically the Philadelphia Athletics, to refer to them as piratical, and the new name was born.

This has been your Yinzer Moment.

Now that's a tale of two cities.