Great match this morning. Another win by Palace yesterday. 2 of 5 winnable games left, West Ham and Fulham last game of the season. Probable defeats against Everton, Liverpool, and City.

City better win out now.

C'mon Chelsea!!!

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

It's such an unusual feeling to think your team will always score and pull out the win. This must be like what being a Man Utd fan for the last twenty years was like. Because even when it went 2-2 I almost knew LFC would find a goal somewhere. Granted, the officiating went Liverpool's way most of the match.

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Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

Scratch that probable loss to Everton. Looking pretty safe, I'm thrilled.

The old cliche is 40 points means you're safe. Kudos to that cocksucker Pulis. Only 17 points behind Man Utd! I'm still worried about LFC's trip to Selhurst, more than the Chelsea match.

Big bed shitting by Man City and Everton yesterday. Fucking Arsenal will sneak in to the CL again I bet.

No Jordan Henderson for the next 3 matches for LFC. Sturridge probably out against Norwich. Suarez goes in dry against Norwich so I'm not worried.

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Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

And Palace win again. I'll go out on a limb and say they're safe. Tough luck for Cardiff, but their owner deserves it.

Rah Rah Go Black Cats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Just chillin' like Garret Quillin.

rovers are in the mid table...of the championship. sigh...

What a game. BORINI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Just chillin' like Garret Quillin.

Did Jozy make the bench again?

Ha, Jozy does what Jozy does best, falls over like a lummox.

Learned a valuable lesson while attending the Chicago Fire's latest 1-1 draw with New New England at Toyota Park yesterday.

When your team is fighting for a title and lose to the last place team. Don't wear the losing team's jersey to a soccer match.

Yes, I did hear about it.

Jozy may have won LFC the title. Take a bow, son. Or a dive.

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Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

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Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

and Man Citeh remains alive....

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

Looking good! Just gotta win these next 3 games and a 2nd title in 3 years is ours!

Really, it should come down to Saturday. Win at Everton and then all they gotta do is hold serve at home vs Villa and West Ham.

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I can't believe Sunderland is going to escape relegation.
After all, if they and WBA are smart, they play to a tie on Wednesday if Norwich loses or draws tomorrow.

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Funny how once they bench Jozy, Sunderland starts winning. Funnier how terrible his replacement Connor Wickham was before he was recalled from loan and yet he was BPL April player of the month.

Citeh are my 2nd favorite club, and as much as it pains me to say this as a Liverpool fan, GO TOFFEES.
3-2 Ma City, 20 minutes left..........

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Just chillin' like Garret Quillin.

Palace making Pool sweat. From 3-0 to 3-2 with 10 to go.

3-3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

Obviously the secret for Palace success is to dump managers during the season. Freedman fucks off to Bolton (how's that working out for you?) and Holloway takes them up. Holloway gets shitcanned and Pulis takes them midtable,

Fucking defending has been a shambles the entire season. Been saying it since the fall. It's overlooked because the media just slurps over how many goals they score. And Rodgers just wants to buy more midfielders.

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Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

hey you know i decided to live up to the thread title and watch crystal palace on NBC yesterday..... and i'll be damned if that wasn't a result!

i tell you what tho, as i unequivocally fear the scouse premiership this year (because of the #LWAR factor, aka "liverpool was always right" which had the first shot fired when carragher wrote a piece saying that andy carroll was the right player/move at the wrong time/price. that's the kind of scouse delusion that we'd be getting a veritable tsunami of if liverpool goes on to win the prem, cuz you know those scousers have infected every facet of UK footy media/punditry to the point where you can't read a rag or watch a tv show without at least one of the guys never walking alone. so yeah we'd start hearing about how the last ~22 years were 100% needed to "clean out the organization and start anew to build what is unquestionably the brightest future in UK football" and thus even when liverpool was wrong (see: the last 22 years save that whole 2005 CL thing) they were always ultimately right in the end because, i mean, duh, we premiership now!) AHEM. yeah as i unequivocally fear the scouse premiership this year, that was a glorious result yesterday.

so the mighty mighty force known to me as "crystal pulis" had an inspirational comeback to put the PL on a platter for man city, who is the latest recipient of the hot potato that is the 13-14 premiership. i swear to god nobody wants to win this thing... arsenal pretty much had the lead in the first half after we got past the initial handful of results, but they eventually bowed out and let the scousers moonlight with the thing as a christmas present, but then liverpool was like "wait a minute what the fuck we don't want this" and promptly gave it back to arsenal, who was all miz like "...really? really? .........really?" and then they eventually bequeathed the PL to city, who was then duly coronated by the UK media ("it was inevitable that the creme would rise to the top and city always was going to win this year with the $100mil+ they spent adn so much quality and depth, and not just depth but quality depth.... yes we all knew it was only a matter of time") but then they promptly started dropping 2-3pts to horrible teams and IIRC they gave it back to arsenal one more time who was like "oh fuck no" and then chelsea got their hands on it and the UK media was atwitter with stories like "MOURINHO HAS *NEVER* LOST A LEAGUE HE LED IN MARCH***" and rah rah rah, but then since the 13-14 prem is like that really really cool chick who's down with the group and an awesome friendzone chick but you don't wanna take her to the prom, chelsea had to go and toss the hot potato heifer back to liverpool who was like "hey i can show off the scars from these 3rd degree hot potato burns off at the pub ~20yrs later when i'm busy telling manUre supporters that our 5 CLs are better than their 28 premierships" and it looked like they were destined to take it home..... i mean chelsea and city obliged by dropping points to give them a hefty lead, arsenal congenially bowed out of the whole contending for the prem thing (and just think, if arsenal got victories @home vs villa, @stoke, and @swansea they're leading the prem right now. fucking AYE)

but then chelsea roared back, interrupting their losing streak to take out the scouse (who's a "specialist in failure" now, special one?) and then the scouse were dented, and city got to the point where if they win their extra game in hand and get teh 3pts they're dead even with liverpool with a ~+5 GD for the tiebreaker and welp gotta handle biz and rah rah rah.... but then yesterday happened, and the scouse tossed the hot potato back to city, and you figure with the gerrard+suarez tears that liverpool has all but conceded the prem....

however, given what we've seen this year, i wouldn't be surprised if city drops all 3 points tomorrow and then hands it back to liverpool, who then goes and drops all 3pts on saturday/sunday/whatever and hands it back to them BECAUSE NOBODY WANTS THE FUCKING 13-14 PREMIERSHIP THIS YEAR.

i hope it goes down in footy history that city didn't go out and "win" this 13-14 premier league as much as they just kind of ended up with it at the end of the season. i mean what's their bonafide championship moment this year? the 6-3 @emptyhad over arsenal? the either 5-0 or 6-0 against teh spuds? i mean maybe you can argue that if they manage to get 3pts from each of these last 2 fixtures they've finally stepped up and accepted their birthright as 13-14 PL champs and that was the defining moment where but for the grace of god they ended up having the prem handed to them on a platter by liverpool to where they have two easily winnable games left to close out the championship..... but you damn well know that the FA is gonna order them to be refballed to hell and back tomorrow, hoping for a draw so city/scouse are level with only GD separating them going forward cuz they want to have that 11-12 season magic every year, especially with their new american audience.

but yeah... TL;DR etc etc.... but at least i have a modicum of a clue of what i'm talking about cuz this is wrapping up my 2nd proper season of consuming euro football and alls i can say is that once you watch enough to get past the abstract of a bunch of euro manlets running around having a kickabout it truly is a great dynamic and compelling game to watch. seeing as hockey is merely canadian stick soccer (aka soccer on meth) and people can get into the whole scoring dynamic of hockey, they can do it for soccer (even if soccer is less prone to 5-3 games than hockey is) but i do confess that you have to fight through your initial conditioning/programming of american sports to accept what's going on, because in lieu of herky jerky rest/100%SUPERMEGAACTION/rest/100%SUPERMEGAACTION/commercial/100%SUPERMEGAACTIOn/rest/100%SUPERMEGAACTION/commercial/ soccer gives you a bunch of lateral plays.... you know, the "pace" of the game that most americans bitch about and all that.... but once you have a clue of what's going on adn you're properly invested in it.... man the drama is really second to none. great sport, and if you've got a job with dynamic hours so you're free up to catch the sporadic 1:45pm game on a tuesday/weds (and if god hates you, thursday) yeah it's brilliant.

suffice to say that football saturdays are awesome. games start by 6:45am and go til about ~3-4pm (since there's usually late la liga games with RM or barca starting as late as 2pm) and when the season starts anew the morning football-proper blends into college football seamlessly.... and late season it blends into saturday/sunday afternoon baseball brilliantly. and i can tell you that having a rousing soccer game on with a coffee and a pastry is a great way to love waking up at 6:30 on a saturday. hell if you're really clever you can ever get the free PL streaming on your phone and watch it while you go jogging and shit. bloody brilliant.

and even better? http://www.redandwhitekop.com forums after that last loss. check @RAWK_meltdown on twitter for the latest and the greatest! and uhhh..... sorry zee-zoo.... but hey at least your boys juve and/or real madrid either won their b-league or are likely going to roll the rape train through teh CL final. cuz if a guy on a sports msgboard named zizou doesn't like juve/RM well then C'EST LA VIE MON FRERE!

*** = the most hardcore in-my-face (as an arsenal supporter, believe you me i've heard "specialist in failure" a lot) chelsea supporter on my #soccer IRC channel has what i assume to be the chelsea talking point in response to that whole MOURINHO HAS *NEVER* LOST A LEAGUE HE LED IN MARCH bit..... you see, at the time chelsea had their lead in march city technically had 2-3 games in hand, and if they had gotten the maximum of 6-9/whatever points from those games in hand they either would have been a point or two ahead of chelsea or at least tied with them, but having the tiebreaker as their ~+50 GD trumped chelsea's ~+35 GD. so yeah see he refutes that MOURINHO HAS *NEVER* LOST A LEAGUE HE LED IN MARCH thing because, you see, chelsea never led the league this march! *poof* it's gone like keyser soze.

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I never had any love for Madrid or Juventus. Zidane was the first guy I really noticed when I first got into soccer about ten years ago. A "holy fuck he's good" type of noticing. A midfield maestro who controls the tempo of the game. He was just a player I liked when I made the account here and now I am stuck with this moniker (excluding my many mults).

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Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

yeah so far my "holy fuck he's good" moments have been zlatan (altho i did notice that he's technically the best bumslayer in all of football. if you mark him with domestic/CL-championship-level defence the guy will disappear. and even catch a weird knock to boot) and then, well, cristiano ronaldo is the best player in the world. i get that messi is the more natural scorer and all that, i mean, the dude eerily re-created maradona's goal at the 86 world cup with an almost identical run and an intentionally identical celebration.

but yeah ronaldo is the fucking goods. that dude is football.... and it's a privilege to watch him do his thing. he's prolly the main impetus for the reason that i chose RM in the epic battle of RM vs barca (cuz i've pretty much realized that you've gotta pick a lane in the RM/barca schism.... even if the lane is "fuck both of them fuck spain fuck everyone but my team/country and most importantly fuck you" --- you have to have some sort of opinion about RM/barca.

so i went with RM... the white kits. ronaldo. the all-star team mentality..... oh yeah i get why they're prolly equally loathed by as many people as those who admire them, but still, they exist on a different plane of football than my beloved gunners do. la liga is a mickey mouse league anyways... simeone's got atl madrid playing a nicer brand of anti-football than mourinho's got chelsea doing, but as it always is with la liga (and how it is nowadays in 1.bundesliga) you know that atleti's going to lose simeone, costa, and god knows who else. they're just not a destination place.... i mean hell even manU and PSG and juve and city/chelsea/whoever are dominating their respective countries aren't football destination places.... there's only two of those, and they're real madrid and barcelona. i mean it's not like manutd is chopped liver in terms of their worldwide status (they're the 2nd biggest team in england FFS! right after liverpool! just ask a scouser! =) and even the legendary SAF had to realize by around 2006 that ronaldo wasn't a player who you're able to keep for his whole career. when you're that good it's basically written in stone that you're going to eventually end up with RM or barca, even tho buyern munich is trying to institute the same thing in germany it's just not the same.

and i'll go as far as saying that from what i've watched/researched (basically sky sports' "football's greatest" series and other likeminded shows/documentaries) that di stefano guy or whoever the RM superman was from around 55-70.... that guy's prolly the best football player to ever walk the earth. pele is a hype machine (socially/culturally speaking he was the muhammad ali of football, insomuchas it was his deification by the media that helped hammer home the inexorable fact that blacks > whites in terms of athleticism, which eventually gave us our WANGWHIPPED. BY. BIG. BLACK. STUDS. mentality that media gatekeepers like beerstain further install in us) and uhhhh maradona was way up there too, i mean there's a reason he's revered as a god in napoli and argentica cuz he could take a mediocre side and almost singlehandedly lead it to the world cup or serie A championships.... tho idk if maradona's napoli won any euro cups.... cuz call it a hunch you might be of a mindset that, say, 5 euro/CL-cups > 20 league 1 / premier league championships.

but yeah that guy who basically built RM into being what it is today? man that dude could play EVERYWHERE and literally singlehandedly take the ball up from box to box and be a one man offense. he'd play back and mark the fuck out of you and turn around and run to the opponent's box and go be a false 9 if that's what the current dynamics of the play warranted. outstanding player.

but yeah TL;DR...... zlatan was the first "holy fuck he's good" but that was tempered by hearing the whispers that he'll go away if you defend him, so that relegates him to #1-ranked bumslayer in the world.... and then since when i got into football messi was introduced to me pre-deified it wasn't like "holy fuck he's good" it was just "oh, he is who they said he is. dennis green would be proud" but it was ronaldo who really made me stop and go "....holy fuck he's good!"

you know what moment really showed me that beyond a shadow of a doubt this guy is a bonafide STAR? it was that preseason guinness super mega uber ultra winners only cup thing..... these are meaningless preseason games 1/2 a world away with a -6 timeshift and all that, and when ronaldo got a crack at playing against mourinho (which you know RM wanted badly for the CL final.... aside from teh fact that atleti would prolly give 'em a better match than chelsea and >MOUYES, you know they wanted to go to lisbon and hang a 5-1 or something on the special one) he fucking went OFF and either had 2 or 3 goals, including one of those perfect free kicks that the goalie might as well have busted out a lawnchair for watching.

the way CR7 was just owning the moment in such a way that it was totally expected of him, but hey it's soccer so keep in mind that even the best players might have a year where they only have a ~50-66% goal rate so yeah.... still despite all of that, in a meaningless pre-season showcase exhibition game, ronaldo showed the world why he's a bonafide superstar by absolutely owning the moment in los angeles because that's what the ~40-50k there paid to see, and by cracky that's what they got: their money's worth and thensome.

so yeah i reckon i'm late to the "ronaldo fanboy" party, but that's the best player in the world until somebody else (coughcoughNICKLASBENDTNERcoughcough) proves otherwise.

but yeah man, idk what the fuck happened this weekend to cause the real madrid rape train to derail and require an overhyped "mule kick" goal by CR7 to eek out a 2-2 draw (especially with atleti dropping 3 and now putting barca's historic run at "el cero" in serious jeopardy... man if they win la liga in the last wknd and then work the appeal process to still have a summer x-fer window b4 the punishment is reduced/bought-off to "winter x-fer ban only" or "severe sanctions/limits on the volume of transfer activity this-winter/next-summer then they made out like fucking bandits, IMHO) ---- but yeah, man, you know RM wanted to roll the rape train over their old buddy mourinho in lisbon..... instead they gotta play the impeccably dressed man simeone and his gritty little team that could that plays anti-football so well i think it's technically..... football? gasp. that's like being so punk rock that you're not punk rock, you know? atleti is so anti-football that they're football! =D

and hey, i guess i got my jose "mouyes" mourinho beatdown a round earlier from atl madrid as opposed to RM..... where btw dont look now but holy shit that front line of CR7/bale/*.* (seriously you could attach a scarecrow to a radio controlled car and it'd end up with ~15 goals playing up front with that line) is a thing. and just wait til they go get suarez or aguero** or somebody else's #1 scorer to like, you know, give them a real world class striker alongside CR7/bayol. perez has gotta have a boner that bale ended up being the best thing to happen to karim benzema this year cuz now all of a sudden he's getting #s again like it's 09 or 10 and they can try to get 30-40mil for him in a cash out, cuz man i think arsenal was turning down benzema at 40 or 35 cuz they weren't gonna go over 25 for him, and that woulda been too much cuz i guarantee if he was on this arsenal squad he wouldn't have but like maybe 50-66% of what he's got now, and that's if he ended up getting rejuvenated and could still do things when the service dries up after the ramsey/wilshere/ozil injuries.

so yeah CR7/suarez/bale = good morning, good afternoon, good night. like many conservatives have said in the past, if you're gonna get raped you might as well kick back and enjoy it cuz like, shit, ask any cubs fan: "it's gonna happen"

** = btw, if i was building my ideal world/class XI, i've always said that kun aguero could strike for my team. he's got nagging injury concerns and all of that nowadays, but that dude is a str8up player. if i was building a team i'd easily take him over zlatan, cavani, higuain, costa, hell i'd even take him over 100%-healthy-cyborg-RVP. that dude is a player. i think he might be able to balance out a bit better than most traditional 9s on a line with CR7/bale who are both veritable-strikers when the situation calls for it, although as we've seen this year (albeit against bottom 12-14 teams =) if you mark suarez his scoring will go away, but he's able to be a facilitator as well, which is why i think he'd be the perfect fit for this RM team alongside CR7 and bale.... if you get those 3.... holy shit short of like fielding an 8 man side, i don't know how that team could lose if that front line is healthy, fit, and in good form.

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So...Chelsea beats Cardiff...Liverpool loses to Newcastle and City loses to Villa and West Ham. Chelsea wins the title. Yeah, I don't think it will happen, either

Hey, you never know.

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.