perfectOzblue

They certainly are a sweet combination. I just hope neither of them desserts us in January.

Our midfield is not to be trifled with this season.

Speechless.

Must be up there with Paperback Writer and Things We Said Today as the best song Paul McCartney ever wrote, hey?!

Let's say it with music!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQvzvu2TZsY

There are a lot of stories down under that he is interested in buying a rugby league club - and bare in mind rugby league is a way bigger game down here than soccer. Many reports of him now been classed as a billionaire.

 

He comes across as a dodgy self promoter to me, glad we did not sell.

Yeah, me too...I think Newcastle Knights would be better off without him, especially give the chaos they've endured over the last year or so. Glad he didn't end up with Latics 2bh.

I think I went to a friendly or two beforehand, but my first proper first team game was the league cup 2nd round first leg game against Sheffield Wednesday.

 

Team according to soccerbase.com was:

 

G Kelly

 

P Jones

C Lightfoot

S McNiven

A Holt

 

M Innes

D Boshell

L Duxbury

 

C Corazzin

M Tipton

C Dudley

 

I remember nothing about the game apart from a Wednesday player smashing into the gate at the bottom of the Chaddy.

From memory we gave Wednesday a decent match but they beat us 3-1....think that big Belgian/Dutch striker Gerald Sibon(?) eventually ripped us apart. Then they smashed us 5-1 in the second leg. We've never done great at Hillsborough.

The Latics team was

 

Gerard

Makin

Pointon

Henry

Jobson

Redmond

Halle

Graham

McCarthy

Ritchie

Brennan

 

Banger came on as sub for Ritchie

 

It was the last match in a nine ( league and league cup) game run of not winning, the next week we beat Bristol City 2-0 - the first game for my three year old son :-)

Yeah, I remember that match... watching us lose and getting that sinking feeling that there was no chance we were going to be going straight back up to the Prem that season. Little did we know what the next 20 years would bring! When you look at that team it is still pretty handy (Nicky Banger apart!). A couple of them still had a few years left at a decent level.

that was my first year as a season ticket holder, dont think any team ive seen since was as good as that.

 

First game was against Scunthorpe on boxing day 1999, cant remember the lineup but i think we drew 1-1.

Yeah, I think I vaguely remember that match. For some reason I can recall that Guy Ipoua (?)- a handy French striker - scored for Scunny. Can't for the life of me remember who scored for Latics. Maybe an OG?

Pretty much every single one of Neil Redfearn's goals in the Championship season..he seemed to specialize in 25-yard shots curled brilliantly into the net. And his pen of course....which was the best a) because of the moment and because of the bottle he showed taking it.

John Aldridge. Played for Trashmere in the early 90s when they stuffed us a few times. I just found him really, really irritating.

Whatever happened to good, well-thought out trolling on here? You just don't get it anymore.

Kelly has been poor, but has shown signs. I expected him to be a lot better come October.

Can we afford to wait that long though?

Big question though...where's he going to play? He's a left back isn't he? Mills must be first choice. Still, great addition to squad (on paper).

Prem:

 

Winners: Chelsea

Ru: City

Relegated: Burnley, Villa, Southampton

 

Championship:

 

Winners: Wigan

RU: Middlesborough

Play off winners: Derby

Relegated: Blackpool, Brentford and Rotherham

 

League 1:

 

Winners: Sheff U

RU: Preston

Play off Winners: Peterborough

Relegated: Colchester, Walsall, Crewe and Crawley

 

Latics: 16th

 

League 2:

 

Winners: Shrewsbury

RU: Pompey

3rd: Luton

Play off winners: Bury

Relegated: Accrington and Mansfield

 

FA Cup: Man Yoo

League Cup: Man City

Champs League: Real Madrid

Can't argue with a lot of that but I would definitely disagree with Brentford and Rotherham to get relegated. I reckon Brentford might be a dark horse for the play-offs - they've got a decent squad and momentum. I think Rotherham will be okay too. I would also whole-heartedly disagree with your Latics assessment too - I have a feeling we're going to be pretty handy this season. God knows how - or why.....

Sheff u thought they had him in the bag!

Why the frig did we not give this guy a chance when he was with us?

Signed for Southend worrall

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/28441743

Won't be coming back to BP...unless we get them in the cup.

Hopes: Johnson learns from previous mistakes. We build a squad that will gel together, only relying on short term loanees to cover injuries and long term loanees to sign quality players we could never afford. We push for promotion, play-offs would do for me. If we don't push for promotion, a few exciting runs/games with us playing attacking football would be nice. Young players push on and improve, I have high hopes for Jonson Clarke-Harris.

 

Fears: As with most recent seasons the number of seemingly pointless loans rise whilst our own players sit and watch on. We once again finish bottom half (I'm optimistic enough to be confident we'll be L1 this time next year).

 

Expectations: Johnson will again attempt to play exciting football. It'll work some of the time, but other times it won't and we'll either lose or revert to a more disciplined system to get results. This well get us a top half finish. That is around 12th, not 4th. Our young squad's form will oscillate wildly, some will disappoint while others will impress (I'm looking at you Jonson).

Hopes: I'm getting more optimistic by the day for 2014/15. I reckon even now we've got an okay squad and it'll probably improve. Brian Wilson was a really good signing and Liam Kelly could be just as good as Korey. I think a tilt at the play-offs could be good, but realistically I want us aiming for the top 10, winning our home games to get the crowds back and scoring some goals.

Fears: Any of the seasons under Dickov or Penney. Or we start bad, Johnson gets sacked/walks and we end up rebuilding and facing yet another slog. Basically, just no more :censored:. Please Latics, please.

Expectations: I think, given the way we finished last season, plus the fact that clubs I class as smaller than us (Orient, Walsall, Port Vale) did okay last year, it's reasonable to expect a top half finish as bare minimum this year. I really think we'll do well this year though.

Congrats to Germany on the win.

 

Been a cracker of a World Cup; 171 goals scored means it a record equal to France '98.

 

The group stages in particular were fantastic; and the emergance of the likes of Costa Rice, Chile, Columbia....and to lesser extents USA, Algeria have made it all the more a spectacle.

 

I think we also witnessed the passing of the baton with Spain's awful early exit and the win for Germany. Their average age for the entire squad was 26, and the stand outs from the starting X1 are 22, 23, 24 & 25 years of age. I can see that squad dominating like Spain have just done for a good number of years now.

 

It also has finally shown, i think above all doubt, that we; as in our National Side, are a million miles away from ever winning the thing. Compare our squad of players to some of the other nations and we are lagging painfully behind.

Can't argue with you Sly - and ain't it friggin' depressing?

I used to engage with the typical 'we hate Germany' stuff when I was younger but now all I can do is admire them. They've built generations of good teams that play football the right way. Players like Lahm, Klose and Schweinsteiger are immense.

Germany is also being rewarded for realising that having a successful national team IS the most important thing, not how much you can hype your own domestic league. Okay, I'd give a lot to Latics to one day make the Premier League again but it's completely killed any chance of England winning a major trophy (unless we get a good bunch of players together at the same time like in 2006, when we really had a chance).

I hope it was you who put that rumour on the rumours website!!!!!

Heskey still looked decent in the 2012/13 season for Newcastle Jets - he scored a few goals and looked a class above the league (which is about lower Championship/League One standard I would say). Last season though I think he was crocked a bit and when he did play he just looked like typical Heskey.....held the ball up and took punishment from defenders, but basically never looked like scoring. Admittedly he was playing for a team that missed out on the finals. I would really hope we would avoid signing him.

On a separate note, he was pretty polite to me when I served him and his family during my ill-fated short stint working at the Leicester Odeon cinema as a student about 10 years ago. I think he and his kids were seeing 'A Shark Tale'. Maybe not the best footballer but a damn fine customer......

My main memory of him is being terrorised by Akinfenwa in a horror show loss to Torquay which looked like it had relegated us. But realistically was he really much worse than most of our other central defenders over the last 20 years? He was on a par with Shaun Garnett I'd say.

I was under-whelmed by the Fergie book, from the reaction of the media, i was expecting lots of controversy - failed to deliver in my opinion.

Agreed. It was partly fascinating, but had no structure. Just came out as the semi-coherent ramblings of an angry old man to be honest.

 

 

Very little on his World cup break proberly not play till there league season starts

 

 

Very little on his World cup break proberly not play till there league season starts

http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/article/2014/07/02/melbourne-city-locks-manchester-trip

Reading from this though Damien Duff would be a possible to play. Also, Melbourne City will need practice before playing their first match of the season (a new cup competition - the league itself doesn't start until October) so they'll probably be taking the matches seriously.

David Villa won't be playing but Damien Duff may. He has signed a one-year deal with Melbourne City. They are making some good signings- should be worth going along.

The Heart have struggled in the A-League since they formed a couple of years ago. They are in the shadow of Melbourne Victory, who are arguably the country's biggest team here. They had Orlando Engelaar, who played for Holland, in their squad last season. They were also managed by the former Pompey player John Aloisi for a few months but he was pretty disastrous. They are being linked with everyone since the link with City was established. The A-League (I think) is on a par with League One so it will be interesting to see how they match up, albeit in a friendly.

Former Latics goalie Dean Bouzanis has signed for Western Sydney Wanderers in Australia's A-League. Good move for him as the Wanderers have been one of the top teams since forming two years ago. He is unlikely to be number one as they have a handy keeper, but their best players seem to be leaving during this off-season so you never know.

I was at in the George Hill upper when we played Saints in the cup replay,and I'm 99% certain they were sat across from me towards the RRE end, I was 10 at the time. Remember the oh when the Saints song, think they were consigned to defeat and didn't bring that many. There were more seats in there as there weren't any food stands in the corner. Notts County had the Lookers paddock in our promotion season, the players run over in a couple of ding dong affairs we had with them when the Ginger Tommy Johnson was playing for them, sure David Currie scored a cracking goal in one of them possibly a hat trick?!

Yep, the Notts County fans would have been in the Paddock. The match you are thinking of is the Rumbelows Cup 2nd round match that year (90/91). County beat us 1-0 in the first leg (scabby Tommy Johnson rebound from a penalty - I grew to intensely dislike him as he scored against us a couple of times and generally came across as a little ginger git) but we stuffed them 5-2 after extra time in the second leg. Currie scored a brilliant goal to get us back into it on a rain-soaked night at BP - dribbled round a couple and blasted in from 20 yards. Immortalised by John Gilder's brilliant "Currie - chance to make a name for himself...." commentary on the season video. For some reason (I'm sad, perhaps?!) plenty of details about that match have stuck in my memory, more than 20 years on. We also beat them at home just after that in the league (2-1, including a cheeky backheel from Ritchie) as well. County unfortunately beat us easily on two other occasions that season at their ground - one in the league and once in the FA Cup - but they made up for it by beating West Ham on the last day and helping us win the title!