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So, here’s yesterday’s draw:
Group A: Bayern Munich, Juventus, Bordeaux , Maccabi Haifa
Group B: Manchester United, CSKA Moscow, Besiktas, Wolfsburg
Group C: AC Milan, Real Madrid, Marseille, FC Zurich
Group D: Chelsea, Porto, Atletico Madrid, Apoel FC
Group E: Liverpool, Lyon, Fiorentina, Debreceni
Group F: Barcelona, Internazionale, Dynamo Kiev, FC Rubin Kazan
Group G: Sevilla, Rangers, VfB Stuttgart, Unirea Uriziceni
Group H: Arsenal, AZ Alkmaar, Olympiakos, Standard Liege
It was certainly good to see some new (and unusual) names make it into the Champions League draw, but beyond that, at first glance, I’m not sure there is that much to get overly excited about. A common criticism of the Champions League group stage is that it reduces the chance of an upset, as over the course of six games the bigger teams will generally prevail, unlike in a straight knockout tournament. While arguably this ensures the best teams go through, it does make things rather predictable. What’s a cup tournament without a few underdogs making progress?
This draw looks even more predictable than in previous years (although I may well be proved wrong in time!). The British teams in particular seem to have got off lightly, and over the course of six games should progress, or will need to have some very good excuses up their sleeve if they don’t.
The non-British groups probably throw up the most interesting ties, Bayern Munich/Juventus, Milan/Madrid and Inter/Barca, and so perhaps offer the best chance for a third or fourth seed to sneak through if one of the big guns lose twice to a top seed and then drop points elsewhere. However, the top two seeds in each group do look very strong favourites to go through.
However, despite this negativity, I’m still quite looking forward to the group stages. In some ways it works to have a more low-key opening to a tournament, before the heat and action of the later stages. Plus, seeing what some of the new faces can do will be fun, and European football on telly is always a good thing. Even with Sky’s ridiculous hype.
I am perhaps the worst sort of armchair supporter – one who cannot even manage to catch every game shown on television. Last night, just before heading to one pub to watch the game I ended up diverted to another, as a friend who is a father-to-be was in town. So, instead of watching what appears to have been a poor display, I just had that sinking feeling each time someones phone lit up with another Villa goal. And then home to the even more unsatisfying conclusion of reading the match report online. Just reading a report isn’t that wonderful anyway, unless you are lucky enough to encounter a really skilled journalist. Football just doesn’t lend itself to poetic writing in the way other sports do, such as cricket, baseball, boxing. There’s often no overarching narrative, just a sequence of random events. And when your team has lost you don’t even get the joy of revelling in reading their exploits.
Liverpool have now lost as many games this season as they lost in the whole of last season. It’s going to be a long one. Still, I had a lovely evening all the same.
It’s a beautiful day today. It could get a whole lot better as the Ashes edges towards its conclusion. It could also get pretty tense. Today I’ll be sat in my garden, enjoying the sun and trying to enjoy the cricket, listening to Test Match Special. For such an important day’s play you need the BBC to guide you, reassure you. Maybe if the game swings England’s way I’ll feel safe enough to indulge Sky’s images and flashy gadgets, but not just yet.
Australia have been set a world-record chase – they would essentially have to put in the best fourth innings batting performance ever to win. This should be a cause for optimism, but makes the inner English pessimist in me even more worried. It’s one thing to lose the Ashes, it’s quite another to lose to a record-breaking (read: heart-breaking) effort. And one of the first things any England supporter learns is to never count out the Aussies. Two days to win the Ashes. Two days to see them agonisingly slip away. This is what sport is all about. I can’t wait.
Being something of a glutton for punishment, I continue to plough on in search of a winner.
Goldolphin and Frankie Dettori are in a rich vein of form at the moment, so I’m concentrating on their runners today:
York:
Spring of Fame
Huntdown
Dandy Man
Salisbury:
Black Snowflake
All in the mug punter’s favourite bet, an each-way lucky 15. We’ll see how lucky I am, eh?
I’m off work, but can’t really justify, from a waistline and financial point-of-view, five whole days in a pub watching the Ashes. However, my trusty freeview box does offer the ‘red button’ option to listen to the BBC Test Match Special commentary, with an accompanying scorecard.
There’s part of me that thinks this is how cricket should be followed anyway. For such a lenghty and thoughtful game, radio seems the perfect medium, allowing the commentators time to ruminate not just about the action at hand, but paint pictures of the whole scene and articulate the ebb and flow of a five-day event. It also allows the listener to dip in and out of the game, and to carry on with ‘real life’ while the game progresses in the background.
I’ll no doubt dip into pubs now and again over the next five days and catch the odd session, but I’ll be relying on the radio, the internet, my phone and overheard conversations in order to keep up-to-date. A strange variety of media to keep up on a sporting event, but over five days anyone following the Ashes needs to be pretty inventive, resourceful and adaptable to keep up. And that is half the fun.
When I restarted this blog I eased myself in with a series of tips – or at least a daily record of what I was betting on each day. To begin with there was some profit, and I was sad that I was only betting to incredibly small stakes. Then I lost and lost and lost, and was extremely happy to be only betting to incredibly small stakes. However, I figured that such a remarkable knack for picking the wrong horse/football team/baseball team/cricket team etc wasn’t really worth noting in blog form.
Until today that is, when my betting escapades make a (welcome? unwelcome? unnoticed?) return. With some time off work I’ve had the opportunity to study the form, decide on a plan of action and go to war with the bookie. However, I’ve ended up just following other tipsters and going along with what seems like reasonably sensible bets. I’d say Poets Voice is the only conclusion I’ve come to on my own – so perhaps you’re best avoiding that one like the plague!
Today’s selections:
York Racing:
2.15 Poets Voice
2.50 Jukebox Jury
Football
Sunderland to draw or win
Celtic/Arsenal to draw
mlb.com has done a grand job when it comes to its online baseball coverage and I’m a great advocate of signing up for it’s audio and video service. Access to each and every game for a reasonable price is good enough as it is, but for those of us who let real life get in the way of watching sport, they kindly offer the condensed game option. In fifteen-odd minutes you get the feel of how a game panned out, with each ‘out’ edited into one package.
However, just watching the highlights of yesterday’s Giants/Mets game, I have become more aware than ever of its limitations. If only there were more hours in the day, and I’d had the time to watch the whole game, either as it happened or ‘as live’. As baseball is all about the ebb and flow, the pauses as well as the bursts of action, highlights will always be second-best. But this particular game, even from just a fifteen minute summary, seems to have been something pretty special.
The first few innings seemed like a bit of a pitchers duel, with Santana and Cain going at it. Then Wright gets a nasty concussion, the pitch actually knocking his helmet off. Santana then pitches wildly in return. The Mets fight back from 4-1 down to level the game. The Giants win in extra innings, a dramatic home run from Molina.
While the condensed game got some of this drama across, it would have undoubtedly been much more satisfying (bar the result) to watch events unfold in real time.
However, until we get a 27 hour day, with three hours for watching baseball, I guess the condensed games are a good compromise between keeping up with baseball, and actually keeping up with the real world. And enjoying the real world is no bad thing.
The hype and the expectation will soon be over – the Premier League kicks off tomorrow. Here we go again, then. As a Liverpool supporter I have already braced myself for another season of dissapointment, essentially playing a trick on myself to save heartache further into the season, and to make any sort of success a nice surprise.
So, beyond wall-to-wall football, what am I actually looking forward to?
Well, I think we could be looking at an even closer title battle. Last season showed just how narrow the margins of error are. Liverpool lost only two games, but didn’t win the title. It wasn’t the ‘big four’ games that decided the title, it was winning week-in, week-out against the smaller teams. So, essentially, every game matters from day one. This could be the most competitive title race yet.
How Manchester City progress should be fascinating. I’m not convinced they will gel right away, but Mark Hughes has done a good job of bringing in some proven Premier League would should settle soon enough, so they do seem the great unknown quantity.
The relegation fight could be fiercer than ever too. Hull and Stoke showed last year that you just can’t write off any team coming up. And Newcastle showed anyone can do down. And this year there are so many clubs who conceivably could get relegated. Taking a quick look at the Paddy Power site, seven teams are 4-1 or worse (down to odds-on) for the drop. There are probably ten or eleven clubs who will be looking at getting the mythical forty-points-for-safety before worrying about getting into Europe or anything fancy like that.
Finally, World Cup year. Everyone is going to be out to impress.
So, I’m strangely optimistic about this season. Hopefully no one team will run away with it, and no team will stay rooted to the bottom, and things will stay interesting. How do you think this season will pan out?
Well, for various reasons I and my Significant Other didn’t make it out for dinner last night. And I was almost a man of my word when it came to not watching the England/Holland game. Admittedly I listened to the first half on the radio while I cooked dinner. Dinner was eaten without TV. After that, I even did the washing-up, a rare moment of awesome-boyfriend-ness. With the radio commentary on, but still.
In fact, I only watched the game when I returned to the living room to find that my S.O. had turned the television on to watch it herself. What a girl she is.
So, I caught the last 25 minutes, plus I saw the goals in the dreadful punditry roundup that followed. Surely ITV could find some more eloquent people than Andy Townsend and Teddy Sheringham?
My thoughts:
- Friendly or not, there can be no excuse for the lapses in concentration that let in Holland for their two goals.
- England would never have got back in the game if it wasn’t a friendly, with the substitutions (that Holland wouldn’t have made in a competitive game) unsettling the Dutch.
- Defoe took his first goal really well, and did a good job poaching the second, yet for some reason I’m still not convinced he is international quality.
- James Milner looked really good – very assured. A fine debut.
- I enjoyed the Babel/Johnson duel. I thought Babel looked good, but his final ball still leaves a lot to be desired.
OK, so I agreed to an evening out with my Significant Other tonight, forgeting a game was on, but that’s not the reason. Genuinely. Honest.
Even if I wasn’t spending this evening with my S.O. I’m not so sure I’d go out of my way so see tonight’s game, even though ITV are showing it – so I could potentially watch in the comfort of my very own Land of Leather recliner. Mmm. Cheap leather sofa.
But why?
1. Friendlies aren’t much fun
Has there ever been a more meaningless pre-season friendly? I can see that in the year prior to a major tournament it makes sense to have your squad to play together as much as possible. It’s certainly worked in the past for smaller footballing nations such as USA in ‘94 and South Korea in 2002. But this doesn’t necessarily make for great viewing. Non-competitive England games tend to fizzle out in a sea of substitutions soon after half-time. It’s hard to get excited over a game that doesn’t matter, essentially an extended training exercise.
2. Terrible, terrible timing
Who schedules an international friendly now? Clubs are reluctant to release players at the best of times, so having an international as Europe’s seasons begin is idiotic. Why not start the season a week earlier and have an international break further into the season?
3. The players don’t want to play
The players themselves aren’t going to want to over-exert themselves for fear of injuring themselves (or even tiring themselves) before the season has even properly begun. Or, in the case of Steven Gerrard and others, they’ll remove themselves entirely, to be fit for the weekend. Sensible, I say.
4. Clive Tyldesley
Clive Tyldesley will probably be commentating. And probably trying to shoehorn in Champions League 99 and 05 references at inappropriate moments.
5. Pizza Express is nicer than pre-season internationals
And we have a voucher! Cheap pizza!
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