Scott Murray's Blog, page 35
March 16, 2023
Football Daily | The end of a Liverpool era, and history beckons for West Ham
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According to the BBC’s occasionally staffed sport department – solidarity, sisters and brothers – Liverpool travelled to Spain this week for the completion of their annual humiliation at the hands of Real Madrid in a Boeing 737. But when Real Madrid made the opposite journey three weeks earlier, . Short end is, Real generate twice the carbon footprint when tooling around Europe, so hats off to Liverpool for that at least. Hats also off to the sustainability reporters at the Beeb, whose task must feel positively Sisyphean given the significant amount of hot air and bullsh!t regularly released into the ether by its management classes.
Crystal Palace failed to take heed of the warning to beware the Ides of March as Brighton’s Solly March scored the only goal in the 15th minute, on 15 March – John Myles.
Re: Memory Lane [Wednesday’s Football Daily]: I’m not sure Sir Alf Ramsey would have liked managing England in Chile for the 1962 World Cup. It was Walter Winterbottom who had the privilege of overseeing another underachieving England side being put out of their misery by Garrincha. But Sir Alf did get it right eventually, unlike Football Daily – Charles Tedesco [and others].
Did Pep Guardiola not see what happened to Liverpool after they won a game 7-0? Some people never learn – Krishna Moorthy.
Poor Pep. He may be a tactical genius whose coaching has won titles across Europe, but he’s also just a boy standing in front of a girl, asking Julia Roberts to love him – Mark McFadden.
What is the quote at the end of each Football Daily referring to? Is the idea that we work it out? – Dean Cooper.
When reading Michael Van Portfliet’s letter yesterday, I was amazed at just how complicated rounders had become since I was at school – Andrew Want.
This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
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March 15, 2023
Real Madrid 1-0 Liverpool (agg: 6-2): Champions League last 16, second leg – as it happened
Real Madrid eased through to the quarters against a Liverpool team without spark and in debt to Alisson for keeping the score down
Benzema and Milner shake hands, exchange pennants and toss coins … then Liverpool get the ball rolling. “James Milner is an incredible footballer,” writes Rwik Chattopadhyay. “He made his Premier League debut for Leeds on 10 November 2002 — the day Eduardo Camavinga was born! 845 appearances for his clubs! What a guy! No wonder Klopp calls him Mr Consistent.
The teams are out! Real Madrid in white, Liverpool in red. Two classic looks as old as time. Zadok the Priest (Version) blasts out of the PA system, not to universal approval it has to be said. The previous entry just might go some way to explaining that. Anyway, a cracking atmosphere under the Bernabeu lights. We’ll be off in a minute!
Continue reading...Football Daily | Liverpool step into Bernabéu in search of another Anfield 2019
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The jig looked up for Liverpool four years ago, as they went into the second leg of their Big Cup tie with Barcelona three goals adrift. It looked for all the world like pure pipe-dream territory, but then strange things started to happen. Andy Robertson clipped Lionel Messi upside the head; Messi slipped into a funk and spent the rest of the match with a face on; Georginio Wijnaldum, brimful of righteous anger having been left out by Jürgen Klopp, came on and played the game of his life; Trent Alexander-Arnold and Divock Origi did their corner; and Anfield gently rose from its moorings, hovered for 20 minutes or so before starting to spin with increasing velocity and lifting off into hyperspace. All told, a decent night.
Continue reading...March 14, 2023
Manchester City 7-0 RB Leipzig (agg 8-1): Champions League last 16 – as it happened
Erling Haaland scored five goals to break a 94-year-old club record as Manchester City charged into the quarter-finals
3 min: On the touchline, Pep is already frantically making tweaks. Whatever he’s saying nearly pays instant dividend, as Silva slips De Bruyne into space down the right. De Bruyne whips to the far post, where Gundogan leans back and sidefoots over from 12 yards. It was a chance. Not an easy one, but a chance. It would have been one heck of a goal.
2 min: Leipzig come out pressing hard, much as Marco Rose promised. Kampl looks for Werner with a wedged pass down the middle but his team-mate knows he’s miles offside and doesn’t even bother chasing it.
Continue reading...Football Daily | Manchester City and Pep Guardiola navigate the business end of Big Cup
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Big Cup football returns to our television screens tonight, and unlike last weekend’s Match of the Days, we’re absolutely certain the normal, full-fat, bangs-and-whistles version of The Manchester City & Leipzig Show will go ahead without being compromised by the absurd grandstanding and sinister manoeuvres of piss-poor populist politicians. That’s because the match is going out on BT Sport, which unlike the BBC nobody pays the blindest bit of attention to, and presented by Jake Humphrey, who unlike Gary Lineker … and this is where the comedy of repetition is our friend.
Continue reading...March 11, 2023
Crystal Palace 0-1 Manchester City: Premier League – as it happened
It wasn’t a classic, but Erling Haaland’s late penalty was enough to move the champions to within two points of leaders Arsenal
3 min: The corner leads to some bagatelle in the box. Then Rodri pearls a shot through the crowded area towards the top left. Guaita parries brilliantly. Dias has another go, but his effort hits Guehi and Palace eventually clear. Just.
2 min: Some early pressure from City. Grealish probes down the left. Foden tears infield from the right. Grealish tries again down the left, then Ake is sent into space on the overlap. He wins the first corner of the evening after 90 seconds, and Palace haven’t touched the ball yet.
Continue reading...Bournemouth 1-0 Liverpool: Premier League – as it happened
Bournemouth were brilliant, Liverpool lackadaisical, and Philip Billing’s goal was enough to catapult the Cherries off the bottom of the table and out of the relegation zone
2 min: Elliott, who was magnificent against Manchester United last weekend, prepares to skitter away from Lerma and attack the box, but Fabinho is adjudged to have clipped the Bournemouth midfielder seconds before.
Liverpool kick off. It’s very cold everywhere, and the south coast is no exception.
Continue reading...March 8, 2023
Bayern Munich 2-0 PSG (agg 3-0): Champions League last 16 – as it happened
Another year, another limp Champions League exit for Paris Saint-Germain
2 min: Some respectful early probing. The finding of feet. Then suddenly Mbappe flicks to Ruiz down the left. Mbappe keeps going on the outside and gets the ball back. He enters the box and takes the first shot in anger, but it’s straight at Sommer by the near post. An easy claim.
Thomas Müller and Marquinhos exchange pennants, toss coins and clasp hands, then PSG get the ball rolling. A fine atmosphere in the Fußball Arena München.
Continue reading...March 7, 2023
Chelsea 2-0 Borussia Dortmund (2-1 agg): Champions League last 16, second leg – as it happened
Goals from Raheem Sterling and Kai Havertz saw Chelsea overhaul a first-leg deficit to reach the last eight
Borussia Dortmund get the ball rolling. Meanwhile Charles Antaki has just got back to his seat from the snack kiosk, just in time. “Why not try a hot dog? Why not indeed - who could resist that unctuous, not-quite-BBC voice? As it happens, I don’t think any of the cinemas I used to go to in my youth actually had hotdogs (and if they did, they would be very suspicious). But you could get certainly get Kia-Ora in some remarkably uncool plastic cartons. Ou sont les neiges d’antan? Not in the local Enormo-Plex, I suspect.”
The teams are out! A hot atmosphere on a cold night at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea wear their royal blue shirts, while Dortmund sport their first-choice gelbe und schwarze Hemden. The Liquidator, followed by the Uefa-sanctioned bastardisation of Zadok the Priest, blasts out of the PA system. Meanwhile Brendan Large would like to counter the teeming pre-match postbag o’pessimism with some countdown-to-kickoff correspondence o’confidence. “James and Chilwell starting at wing-back together is big (fairly certain the injuries happened after Tuchel got the boot). If the back three can hold firm those two can make chances all day. Joao Felix has been brilliant and just needs to adjust his shooting boots a touch to hit the target and not the bar. Sterling and Havertz are great finishers on their day also.” Godspeed, everyone, then, may the best team win. We’ll be off, at long last, in a couple of minutes.
Continue reading...Football Daily | Won’t somebody please think of the Arsenal?
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Poor old Arsenal. There they were on Saturday afternoon, with their dramatic, last-minute, momentum-maintaining, potential-league-winning, stadium-into-hyperspace-dispatching goal that registered 9.3 on the Michaelthomasometer, expecting to be the talk of the town for the whole week and maybe the entire month … only for Bruno Fernandes to stage his spectacular dirty protest 24 hours later, refusing point blank to tackle, chase back, tidy his room, all that. Oh Bruno, Luke, Lisandro et al! Did Reiss Nelson calmly slot a spectacular, 96th-minute, possible-season-defining, rising, screaming, net-ripping, opposition-gut-punching, stop-the-world, top-class half-volley for nothing?
While Mike Smith can rightly compare the last-minute drama at Chippenham Town in the National League South to the similar scenes at the Emirates (yesterday’s Football Daily letters), can I offer a further step on the way down the proof-ladder that the drama doesn’t reduce just because there are fewer there to witness it? Last week Glan Conwy Under-9s visited the fortress home of the mighty Clwb Peldroed Bethel in a friendly arranged to practise for next season’s change from five-a-side up to seven. In front of maybe 20 ‘fans’ (mums, dads and grandparents) and with the sloping pitch finally in their favour, the GC stormed back from 2-0 down with just a couple of minutes left to triumph 3-2 in a real smash-and-grab raid. No cameras to record, no pundits to discuss, but a fine victory nonetheless. Plus further evidence of my pet theory that the third goal always wins” – Simon Lewis.
Can you please spearhead a STOP BAD GAME APOLOGIES movement? There’s myriad reasons for genuine apologies from players, managers and clubs in modern football, but the risk-free ‘we’re sorry we played so bad’ version seems to be the only one that’s given freely” – Kristian.
ChatGPT is in the news at the moment. But has anybody else noticed the similarities between ChatGPT and the outpourings of all those former Liverpool and Manchester United player bots … sorry, pundits on Sky Sports? OpenAI, ChatGPT’s creator, say that its responses ‘may be inaccurate, untruthful, and otherwise misleading at times’. OpenAI’s CEO also admitted recently that the AI chatbot is ‘incredibly limited’ and that ‘it’s a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now’. Sounds familiar. Meanwhile, here’s a ChatGPT-generated poem about the Football Daily column:
I’m glad that I’m not a newspaper
Reports are always so depressing
Every day it’s something new
And it’s never good news
I couldn’t handle all the sadness
All the heartache and pain
I’m glad that I’m not a newspaper
I’d go insane
This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
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