so yeah typically when i make these threads i do a big prolonged monologue about talking points heading into a season.... but tonight i've gotta start with a scene from the International Champions Cup of Champions going on at Met-Life stadium...



yikes! Of course, this Liverpool vs Manchester City game features the two most likely sides in the PL.... and of course I mean Man City and their second team because even with splashing some cash for Naby Keita and Alisson and i think Fabinho too.... still, it feels like another season of LOLCITYWINS in the English Premier League.

and oh yeah over @ ManUtd mourinho is mad at Anthony Martial for bailing on this USA preseason tour to go be with his wife for the birth of their child. Martial's been deadful ever since they brought in Alexis Sanchez during a run of form at LW.... and they still need a RW... and they always want another CB... and their fullbacks are both 30+ and uhhhh yeah, GGMU!

Arsenal had the old pelican leave and they brought in Unai Emery, who wanted to literally and figuratively bring a spine to Arsenal. The scariest part is that Alex fucking Iwobi has supposedly been offered a contract extension and for the life of me I can't see what anyone sees in the guy. He's been a deer in headlights ever since the first leg @ buyern in early 2017 and he's had more spectacular bottlings than he has had anything else.... and he's featured regularly on the most underwhelming Arsenal teams of the last ~20 years. But hey maybe Emery will get the players active and hold them accountable and make them earn their positions and then you can have some blue collar quality in the back and you've got quality up front and uhhh close your eyes squint and maybe see the top-4?

oh yeah and you're racist if you think Mesut Ozil sucks. Ask Uli Hoeness. He had quite the hot take recently.

I think pochettino said that extending kane/son/lamela/etc "is like new signings" so maybe spurs have really come a long way to assuming Arsenal's status?

And hey don't look now but Fulham are supposedly in for Andre Schurrle.

Oh yeah and CR7 has sodded off to Juventus, leaving real madrid in a state of flux, especially when you consider Zidane left right after their CL 3-peat. Barcelona had a 65mil bid for Chelsea's (29yr old?) willian turned down so they've turned around and gotten Malcolm for 36mil (right when his club and roma had agreed to a transfer... he didn't get on the plane to rome when he found out Barca was interested =D

anyways, even tho england's LOLCITYWINS and france is LOLPSGWINS and germany is LOLBUYERNWINS and spain's got a pretty good chance of being LOLBARCAWINS odds are we're going to watch cuz there just isn't much better to do on weekend mornings unless you're a murph & fred guy.

another interesting note: in england i think the transfer window closes right before the PL season starts, so that's right around mid-august as opposed to the traditional september 1st? JOSE MOURINHO NEEDS PLAYERS SO GET TO WORK WOODWARD!!!!!!!!!!!

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Manchester United v Liverpool today at 4pm on ESPN.
Michigan Stadium (The Big House) - they're expecting 100K people...
That would be fun.
YNWA

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Just chillin' like Garret Quillin.

Looking forward to Kroenke moving Arsenal to LA now.

Also that Barcelona offer of Gomes, Mina, and 40 million for Pogba has to be the most hilariously bad offer of this window.

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so upon a careful and thoughtful analysis of today's arsenal vs man city game...



i need to look into translating GRANIT XHAKA.... GRANIT XHAKA.... DOUR ME VOUS? DOUR ME VOUS!? to "granit xhaka.... granit xhaka... you are shit! you are shit!" cuz as a wise man in #arsenal asked me once: "what exactly is granit xhaka supposed to do well?"

anyways, across the prem man united did "the lidlifter" on friday and got an early early goal (in something like 1.5 minutes IIRC?) so that means everyone's boy jose mourinho got to park the bus early and often and put england/europe to sleep early on a friday night. spurs held on against newcastle in the early game, chelsea rolled huddersfield... fulham got got... everton looked pretty darn solid, especially when you consider they lost jagielka to a red circa 40' and still managed to get up 2-1 on wolves before conceding the equalizer with like ~20-25mins left to go. city barely had to shift out of neutral to jump on a couple'a moments of class and handle arsenal 2-0, and then of course.... our heroes and protagonists... THE FIGHTING SCOUSE OF LIVERPOOL DROPPED A BIG EMPHATIC 4-SPOT ON THE REINVIGORATED WEST HAM UNITED TO VAULT THEMSELVES INTO FIRST PLACE (via GD) WHERE YOU FIGURE THEY'RE GOING TO SPEND THE REST OF THE SEASON BECAUSE IT'S THEIR YEAR, LADS!!!! #YNWA #JFT96!!!!!! 21/5 IN THE HOUSE!!!!!

and liverpool is taking it easy on you this season, as they're gonna be without one of the brightest starlets in english football... ENGLAND'S BRAVE OX: ALEX OXLADE-CHAMBERLAIN! getting him back for next season = liverpool essentially has already made a ~60-75mil signing before your team has even made one... so i hope you lot can get used to Liverpudlian Hegemony in the PL because once this man city fad is trumped by kult kloppo and the boys.... welp, given that they're only going to make more and more money with more and more success.... and given that kult kloppo is obviously at his coaching destination club.... i just can't see anyone else having a chance at the prem for years and years to come! especially if they specialize in playing negative/anti-football in the wake of a righteous scoring attack like the trio of salah mane and firmino! and that doesn't even factor in shaqiri or the fact that liverpool somehow got ~20mil for danny FK'N ings! YNWA!



so uhhh yeah next weekend everyone else copies england and starts playing professional football so you'll be able to see barcelona, buyern, PSG, and of course some old lady who just picked up a pricey male prostitute who seems to have more interest in her son than her (for some odd reason, i know =) --- good luck and godspeed!

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Palace obliterating their pace from last year.

So today's the first day of TNT doing champions league and they've got a solo announcer doing the barca/PSV game and he's what I can only describe as "the anti-gus-johnson" as he's really quiet and minimal and a good company man who complemented Dembele as "running well" on a long Suarez ball in that led Dembele OOB for a goal kick.

Then at HT they do a Bleacher Report SIMPLIFYING THE GAME segment and there's Steve fucking Nash doing football analysis/punditry.... And he's an unabashed Spurs fan discussing whether or not a 0-0 draw on the road is "good enough" for him! What in the actual fuck? I never thought I'd pine for Alexi Lalas but holy shit after "Simplifying the Game"™®© with Steve Nash I suddenly remembered that Alexi had been an indelible part of my Tuesdays/Wednesdays over the last few years (and even moreso on Thursdays over the last year as he actually got to call Arsenal Europa League games)

Personally I can't wait for TNT to work in Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley when we get to the knockout rounds. EJ ARE YOU BUSY?!

ALSO, FUCK....

More germane to 2018/19 Arsenal, the TNT and B/R Live coverage of the Europa League can be summed up in one easy-to-understand, infuriating sentence: Every game is behind a paywall until the final.

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Firmino.

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Just chillin' like Garret Quillin.

Yeah that was a class goal... He juked three PSG defenders out of their shoes to get that shot off snd vindicate kloppo for subbing Salah off for Shaqiri.

Prior to that right after I had finished typing "Liverpool hasn't put these guys away" Mbappe scored the then-equalizer to knot it up at 2-2. Of course Mbappe turned the ball over to set up the winning Liverpool goal so I guess karma was hanging out in the kop end tonight, eh?

Also I found it amusing early on that in his first CL game since the world cup Neymar was trying to recreate the legendary Maradona/Messi goal by dribbling past 2/3 of Liverpool all by himself... All while you woulda forgot that Mbappe was playing (aside from one Neymar ball that went way too long for him) --- hmmmmmm indeed.

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It appears that City's manager may be a bald fraud in Europe.

It's a BS red card, but fuck Ronaldo

https://deadspin.com/cristiano-ronaldo- ... 1829178352

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ALSO, never forget...

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ManYoo lost to Derby County 8-7 in shootouts in the League Cup today

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Arsenal was up 2-0 on Brentford @ HT and now it's 2-1 with Brentford generally having arsenal under siege .

In the brouge bowl studge (Sturridge) has Liverpool B/+ up 1-0 on Chelsea B/+ #TheGloryOfTheLeagueCup

And hey if you don't get your fill of Liverpool vs Chelsea today evidently they're playing again in the PL on Saturday @ 11:30am (on NBC proper)

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welp arsenal managed to hold on and nick a third goal 3 mins deep into stoppage time, meanwhile chelsea came back with two goals circa 79 and 85 (the second being an eden hazard special) to knock liverpool out of the league cup. we'll have to wait and see if this has any ramifications on badrogue's potential fandom =P

oh yeah spurs had a comeback / watford meltdown after a red card circa 80' leading directly to a penalty and then another goal like 4-5mins later, so good ol spurs advance.

arsenal's got watford on saturday, which should be a "big" match as watford sits in 4th with 13pts whilst arsenal is in 6th with 12 (spurs also has 12 but is 2 ahead in goal differential) so especially @home let's see if arsenal can keep it together after a proper month of bumslaying coming after losing to city and @chelsea to kick off the PL season.

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So is West Hampton have a good day or is Man U that bad now?

#NewToPL

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gonna try to stream/watch blackburn/forest this morning. haven't watched the rovers in years but now that they're inching closer, i wanna see their progress.

More the latter. The clock is on Jose. He needs another world catastrophe to talk about at the presser to distract the reporters.

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I didn’t think you could find a more insufferable prick after their David Moyes debacle...then Jose doubled down.

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That was a nice goal by Aguero.

City lead 2-0.

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welp as arsenal is ~20mins from a soulcrushing draw/loss against the mighty mighty watford (and troy "cojones" deeney) the search for levity has led me to this celebration of Electronic Arts' legendary attention to detail in FIFA 19...



(idk if it's the look on his face or if it's the fact that he's got his helmet in contract negotiations that does it for me.... but it's colt 45 tier "works every time!" for me =)

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welp despite watford generally having arsenal under siege around 60-70'/+ (and troy "cojones" deeney missing an absolute sitter that likely woulda given watford 3pts if he's on target) arsenal managed to get a clutch own goal from watford then use that swing in momentum to tally another quick goal to go up 2-0 and get a grip on 4th place for the time being.

...still, unai emery is a deep man who feels the pain of life/existence at every given moment of the day.



maybe it's cuz aaron ramsey is leaving? maybe he's seen our back 4 recently? or maybe it's because he's buddies with jose mourinho and holy shit someone gifted man united some magazine subscriptions recently cuz they've got issues! 1-3 vs the mighty mighty west ham united, and not even just that but at 0-2 down they manage to nick a goal back and then promptly turn around and concede a third goal within minutes of climbing back into the game!

mourinho's shelf life = implodes in the third year and, holy shit, is this year no exception to that pattern/trait/etc.... maybe they can get rid of the cancerous pogba and sign another overrated arsenal player to a stupid contract in aaron ramsey? IIRC he was originally going to sign with united/SAF until arsene wenger came a-knockin' some ~10-12yrs ago or whatever.... =P

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2-2 draw for Rovers. Lots of penalty shit and a nice penalty save in the first half. Good save to draw but they need to win some.

holy shit napoli managed a goal circa 89' and managed to send liverpool reeling to their third consecutive not-win (0W 2L 1D).... and of course the traveling scousers hung out way more than the napoli crowd with their usual brand of amazing signs/banners/etc...



and of course the postgame features some spice boy scouse!

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welp thus far in.... qarabag? it's 1-Nil to the Arsenal @ HT. arsenal nicked a cheeky tap-in off of a meek corner from a corner kick in the 4th minute, and so far the, uh, well.... wtf-inducing 3-4-3 formation with an Arsenal B- side has held off the mighty mighty qarabag so it's another one of those "my kingdom for another goal" type outings as you'd feel much much better if Arsenal technically wasn't one proper screwup away from dropping a couple'a points in their group.

welp i forgot to post this message b4 HT ended and now the game's over and it's 8 on the aka #ThankYouSchedulingGods. After starting off the season with two losses vs City and @Chelsea (a game they should have at least gotten a draw in) they've now managed 5 wins in the PL, two in the EL, and one in the league cup...

...and still our back 4 scares the shit out of me! at least emery tried his 3-4-3 formation, saw that it wasn't working (the entriety of HT analysis/punditry was devoted to how shit the arsenal defense was with 5-in-the-back... hell the postgame analysis was just about the same! they're not entirely wrong but still it felt like arsenal lost today the way they're showing off how shit the defense is and saying bigger teams will "take em to the sword" and whatnot =)

but hey, the future's so bright you gotta wear shades, eh?

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Apparently this guy called LvG's sacking and is supposed to be pretty credible? Also, sky sports seems to be running with it too...

ManUtd currently sits in 10th place, 2pts behind wolves, with a -2 GD. And they're paying Alexis Sanchez ~£500k this week, as they do every week, and I'm pretty sure he's pushing/at ~900mins since his last premier league goal!

* star wars imperial theme *

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Not so special anymore, Joe.

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Just chillin' like Garret Quillin.

Jose's doing what third year Jose always does, but if I'm a United fan I'm fuming far more at that hack Ed Woodward continuing to make coaching and personnel decisions.

McTominay starting then shifting to CB when bailly came off for mata circa 18' = lolwat!? here's a video clip of McTominay not exactly covering himself in glory on newcastle's second goal

fellaini on for mctominay to start the 2H... maybe manutd's talisman can bring forth the glory glory?

and, of course, to your original point...

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