Monday 25 June 2007

Apologies but...





Alright people,
JJ here,

I’ve started this blog on around six different occasions before realising I had little to write about… I’ve gone through subjects like Masters Football, watching boxing and drinking absinthe with little success before deleting everything I put down. So here goes the obvious:

It’s over, it’s done, he’s gone. H***y (he’s a bad word round these parts) has got on that plane to Barcelona where he will, I’m confidently predicting, spend half the season on the sidelines with injury and be blamed for Barca blowing the title. Maybe that’s just a crazy dream but I can’t see it going as well as the whining Frenchman hopes… he went a year too late for one thing.

We covered H***y in our hate section a few weeks back on the podcast (see here: http://www.okeydokefootball.com/showPodcast.asp?PodcastID=33) so our opinions on him are well known and the word ‘cunt’ (not a bad word round these parts) appears on numerous occasions.

But how do you think he will do? Include as much bad luck as you like. Although those who predict he’ll win the league for them and spur the Catalan ‘nation’ to victory over the Spanish oppressors will just be plain wrong.

At the very least, it will mean this story has been put to bed and this will, I promise, be the one post that has anything to do with the subject. Now back to that absinthe...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

They would have won the league this season if Messi and Eto'o hadn't been out for much of the season with bad injuries.

If everyone is healthy, they can field a starting XI with Ronaldinho, Eto'o, Messi, and Henry and you can make the case that those are the four premier attacking players in the world.

I actually think he will do brilliantly. He's not a great leader of men, but he doesn't have to do that at Barca. He can take games off to rest that he couldn't take off for Arsenal, and doesn't have the pressure of having to carry the load. I look for him to have a resurgence.

Unknown said...

Perhaps, but if all of those guys are at the club come the start of the season then each week will see a mini media storm over who will play. Then cue unhappy pictures from the dugout of whoever is left out.

They're all highly strung egotists (well maybe not Messi... yet) and expect to be central to everything which means being in the side week after week.

Every performance with a different combination of the four will be compared at length to see if they would have done better with whoever was left out.

I don't think they can't play them all together anyway; even accomodating Messi and Ronaldinho to do what they both do best has been difficult. To be honest, I think this stinks of the galactico era, though on a side note, every decent team in Europe should be after Gudjonsen; he'll be out of there asap.

Anonymous said...

i'd say he will do well, though there will now be another massive ego in the dressing room to contend with Eto'o and Ronaldinho

If he stays fit, he'll do very well. I'm just happy that we won't have to see his smug face much anymore, bar the odd Champions League game...

Parrotbait said...

Hasn't Henry got a quite back bad injury that is going to require surgery?I can see him being out of action for a lot of the season.
One thing that could be a problem doesn't Ronaldinho like to drift to the left wing like Henry?Wonder will we see the both of them falling over each other!Eidur Gudjonsen or Giuly would be decent signings for most teams now cos they're probably not going to get much of a look-in from now on in really are they?

Mr C said...

I agree with the galatico point. The attacking line is completely overloaded and I wonder how Rijkaard will be able to play his superstar quintet but also keep some sort of a balance between attack and defence. This reminds me a bit of when SAF bought Veron when he already had the ‘perfect’ midfield of Giggs, Keane, Scholes and Beckham, and then struggled to accommodate them all. Barca has an incredible forward line and I can’t see any of the current front three being willing to sit out on the bench like Gudjohnson. I think it all depends if the formation Barca play accommodates all four of them (easier said than done). Henry may well have some surgery coming up so that would buy time to wait for one of the other three to require a spell away from the first team.

Gudjonson and Guily will be off soon enough and I’m surprised no-one bar Middlesbrough (Middlesbrough!) have made approaches for Saviola, who’s there for nothing. I’m also told that Barca will fill those places with two of their youth team strikers; Dos Santos or Krkic. Both supposedly Messi potential and both still under 18. It’s a far cry from O'Shea and Fletcher…