haha – enjoyed the read Chris. Keep up the good work! And yes – im about to listen to the audioslave song but Chris Cornells best work done with Soundgarden IMO

Thanks Ed! I wrote an article supporting Wenger months ago but a lot has changed since then i.e. not making UCL for the first time in 19 years and the fact that perhaps he is unwilling to change club structures e.g. appoint a technical director to help him in his role as coach of the team. Agree that if you can hang onto Sanchez, Ozil then there is a chance you can return to the top 4. on the flipside, getting things done on the transfer market has been a mixed bag and not helped with Wenger being so intimately involved with the process. Abolish the wage cap, spend big and wisely in the summer transfer window would be the way to go in my opinion.

Not sure I agree with your statement on Spurs but I dont want to steal the thunder from an upcoming article I am uploading soon so I hope you can have a read of that when it comes out

good discussion. The scrum in league is a farce but perhaps the point made about injury risk is a legitimate one. pushing against the feed could be dangerous if the opposition isnt expecting it (even though it only happens perhaps a dozen times per season). That is a fault of the rule makers and referees where the rules governing scrum as a contest are poorly articulated to all involved. If there is to be no pushing then just outline that so everyone knows where they stand, otherwise make it a contest.
The scrummaging contest is complicated and having watched union for 2 decades, I have to say I still dont really understand where a lot of the penalties and short arms come from (perhaps that is my ignorance and im happy to accept that) – but perhaps thats where League and its need to simplify everything could be of benefit. Have a legitimate scrum, where it is a test of strength and skill and gives the opposition a chance to turn it over. League suffers a bit at times from just swapping sets and essentially going nowhere. Repeat sets are where a lot of the damage is done and providing another avenue for turnover ball wold add an extra element of skill, interest and complexity.
I dont have time right now to outline how to simplify the scrum (need to rummage through all the rules of union scrummaging first) but will hopefully come back with an idea or too soon

Great write up!! Having missed the clay court season with no internet or tv for a while it was great to read a summary of the years events and major threats for the FO.

Brilliant read as usual. The blockers has gone to new levels this season and probably causes me the most angst. As for scrums, I am a big union fan as well and really wish scrums could once be a test of strength and genuine battle. It would provide an additional chance for teams to turnover possession and create a repeat set. But I fear that wish may be a stretch too far. And yes, players must stay bound until the ball has exited.
I might humbly disagree slightly with the play the ball situation – yes I agree that players must use the foot to roll the ball under but I think the wrestling tactics would have come through anyway for slowing the play the ball down is so crucial to getting the defensive line set.

Thanks Rob!

haha. yes – wouldn’t mind seeing wenger stay. Yeah crucial season for us as well with a move to Wembley. If we don’t qualify for UCL again and lacking funds with the rebuild, squad could get decimated.

Nice read Ed. Difficult times for Arsenal. Speaking to some my many Arsenal supporters there isnt much faith left in Wenger but if they are going to keep him the club needs to do 2 things
1. Appoint a technical director who overseas transfers thereby taking this away from Wenger who can focus on coaching.
2. Abolish the wage cap. I have been told (rightly or wrongly) that arsenal have a wage cap. This limits their ability to keep their best players but now is the time to let it and pay the wages that Sanchez and Ozil demand. Rather than go into their shell from a spending perspective, they need to increase it otherwise they will be left behind by City, united and Chelsea who all have unlimited spending potential.

Thanks David. Yeah looking forward to the all the finals this year including FA cup. As a Spurs fan I’m a bit torn on this one, but wouldn’t hurt to see your mob do the double – you have deserved it. Not to mentioned another chance to inflict more wounds on a hurting arsenal supporter base

Happy you have enjoyed the optus coverage. Not sure how you can say Foxtel were complacent though – they showed every game live and games on the same time could be accessed via red button. Given i was never one to stay up late, taping the games and watching them the next morning on IQ was brilliant. Enjoyed using my dads account to stream foxtel go at my apartment then hook a cable into the LED to watch it on a bigscreen.
I did not use optus so cannot comment on their service.
Perhaps foxtels complacency was not bidding higher than optus but i have no idea about foxtels financial position to comment. As people have mentioned, spare money put to good use IMO with BeIN & club channels.
Comes down to a frequent dilemma, if you just followed 1 sport you would fork the money out for optus EPL but when you watch 10 sports across many leagues and you want to tape and watch on delay, you cant beat foxtel.

nice read Mike. As a long time foxtel subscriber I was gutted when they lost the rights to Optus. Thankfully, the addition of the club channels is some consolation.
You have raised all the major issues – cost, having to now pay for foxtel and optus if you want to watch HAL + any other football league, having to buy optus plan just to watch EPL in a country that lags much of the developed world when it comes to internet infrastructure. People aren’t going to pay especially if they are locked in other phone plans etc and even more so when plenty of people just stream off the internet.
Now I’m in london – it isn’t any better though. They don’t show 3pm games on saturday afternoon and with games split across 2 pay tv services you have shell out some 70 pound (~$130) per month just to watch 3-4 games of EPL per week.

Nice read David and enjoy the title win!
I don’t think Costa is going anywhere. He is a crucial piece in the chelsea team. Quality strikers that are combative, lead the line and can score with feet and head are rare. Chelsea can pay him massive wages so I don’t think he is going leave unless. Im not sure Lakaku would want to rejoin given the very reason he lift in the first place was to enjoy more gametime and opportunity. They would not function in the same team together as both probably play better as a 1 out striker that leads the line.
Personally would rather Costa over Lakaku but Lakaku has age and potential in his favour.
As for players lost that were on Chelsea’s books – De bruyne probably the other big one that hurts.

Great read Charlie. With final day action just hours away- I enjoyed reading an anti united and anti Jose article. Agree with everything and hearing much the same from united supporters. They cannot believe their are sacrificing competitions for Europa. As the biggest club in the world it is just not something they are used to. They have played well at times though and dominated matches without having that killer punch.
As a fellow neutral and united hater we are all hoping Ajax do the job and Jose.
The brutal pragmatist in me though respects Jose for making the decisions in the best interest of his team. No point risking injury/fatigue when the main prize is Europa. A case of damned if you damned if you don’t- with a big injury list if He plays a starter and they get injured then he will cop it all week for playing them. Jose may have short term tenures but his penchant for winning is unparalleled. Love him or hate him he always delivers trophies and fans cannot have it both ways. He has always had great access to resources but that does not gurantee you success as plenty of managers have found out.

Nice read David. I would have to disagree slightly with you though. The midfield looks ok with Rogic, Mooy, Irvine, Lungo, amini but Jedinak/milligan are heading towards the end of their careers.
Kruse and Leckie look ok but their end product has been poor for some time. We have real problems at striker – relying on Juric is dicey. I am hoping Jamie maclaren (who just signed with Darmstadt in German second tier) will be a good striker for australia, Adam taggart is the other one.
Central Defence looks ok but the right/left back positions are threadbare. Brad smith was the only non GK aussie player in the EPL this season and he hardly saw any game time.
Perhaps its memory bias but long time since so few aussies graced the EPL. Hoping this will change if Huddersfield gain promotion and Rogic signs in the off season (if he can get healthy).

Kane had another brilliant year and his records holds up with the best strikers in Europe. I think Spurs would have gotten closer if they had not lost Kane. Our run of draws after we beat city early in the season cost us badly and from memory Kane was out during that period. But as I was afraid of, pinning your hopes on one man is always fraught with danger and although we picked up Janssen in the offseason as back up for Kane, expecting him to settle in the EPL straight away was fanciful. I always felt we should have picked up an older proven back up striker e.g. Llorente, Remy, Defoe who could provide instant goals in the event of a Kane injury

Great article Ed. As a Spurs supporter I am bitterly disappointed as we achieved a record points haul in the EPL era and would have had enough points to win a league in many previous seasons.
Have to hand it to Chelsea, over the course of 38 games there is no question they are deserved champions. The way Conte has reinvigorated the underperforming players from last season – Hazard, Matic, Costa, Cahill – has been impressive.

Nice read. As much as I hate Manchester United, victory in the Europa would almost make them the most successful English premier team this season (unless Chelsea win the double). An EFL, Europa cup and UCL qualification would cap off a brilliant first year for united when much has gone wrong.
When you have unlimited funds you don’t get a lot of sympathy when you have injuries. Having spoken to a few fans recentlyI am not sure all is well either. Mourinho may be a winner but their game style, prioritising Europa over League is putting a lot of fans offside. Their mentality is that they are United and they compete on all fronts.
I am desperately hoping for an Ajax win but as Gavin said, even if they don’t win, they will once again break the bank and probably make it next year.

nice article. Sitting here in London I hope I havent missed the discussion. I congratulate Port for taking this on.

Overall I think this strategy to push the game overseas is ludicrous. As much as I love our sport, it is unlikely to ever take a foothold overseas and even more unlikely to have an overseas team entered into the competition. Plenty of AFL cash (although I dont have exact figures) has been spent on pushing the game overseas and my personal feeling is this money could be better spent on the game in Australia.

From a Port Adelaide perspective, they have done a good job getting this done. They have sought to seek international markets and promote their brand. This may well lead to future sponsorship opportunities. There is also potential revenue generated from this game, TV etc that may help but again I have no idea about the figures/costings. The fact that they put their energy into this rather than getting an AFLW does not mean it was not the right thing for the club. They were still only 50-50 shot to win an AFLW licence where as this had a much more assured chance of success.

As for Mike’s A-league comment – I am a fan of his work but didnt quite see the need for the inclusion of the AFL reference in his article. But overall fair credit to him, it is hard to produce good opinion based material on a bi-weekly basis. He writes opinion pieces and gets lots of reads and the usual posse deliver 100+comments per article.

I think its harsh to call Lakaku the scapegoat for the loss. He was certainly not to blame for the loss. Everton struggled to assert themselves in midfield, gave the ball away in dangerous areas when playing out of the back and really struggled to connect the midfield with the strikers.

THanks for the comment Mals. Yes you are abolsutely right. My spurs brain had magically erased the fact that arsenal pipped us to second last season. Yep-agree, heard to see chelsea slipping up now. They have a soft run home with WBA away the only ‘tricky’ assigment but the baggies arent much chop right now either. coupled with the fact spurs still have to see off united, WHU it seems unlikely that spurs will win the league

Great article.
It is a tricky science trying to determine which players have the right head space to make it at the highest level. From a recruiters perspective, The only Predictor of future behaviour is the past and taking into account playing potential and all other variables, Players with a past history of misdemeanours will have that go againat them. as alluded to above, the nature of the misdemeanour is crucial and whether there were repeated offences. Repeated offences shows an inability to learn from a mistake and that would put a line through them. drugs and assault charges are trickier – everyone deserves a second chance I believe and if they have shown remorse and the intel suggests they have turned their ways around then they should be given a chance. In the US though, drafted players are a bit older compared to say Aussie rules players who are usually under 18 and indiscretion made later in a college career would count more againat a player

Nice read Oscar. It was a good day for your mob. Bumping into arsenal fans at highbury station was the lowlight of my day, especially after spurs lost on Saturday. I didnt manage to see the game, but good to see some tactical flexibility from arsenal but why wait so late in the season. Seems Arsene is making a final pitch to stay a bit longer – which I am a bit more equivacol about after supporting him in my article 3 months ago. And speaking to a small number of ‘educated’ and ‘not so educated fans’ the last few weeks – seems as if the tide has turned in terms of fan backing.
As for Holding, again why wait so long. He should have played him in the back 4 with Kolshieny rather than play Gabriel.
As a Spurs fan, I am not going to gloat too early barring some unforseen collapse that sees us drop below you or out of top 4, but I would rather make UCL than win FA cup 😉

nice article Xavier. Hard to argue with any of that. with some solid investment in the offseason on the defence at central back and left back, another top 4 place in the offing next year. With that run home, you should still qualify for the UCL which is an excellent achievement

great article Oscar. Manu one of the all time greats. As for lefties – Chris Mullins comes to mind. i couldnt think of any except for Zac randolf, Chris Bosh and Isaiah Thomas so I googled it. NBA.com did a nice list last year – Bill Russell tops the list and Dave Robinson comes in 3rd. Out of the current batch – James Harden looks like a future hall of famer.
Out of interest who was the other player to have European, NBA championship and olympic gold medal?

Great article Ken! ‘Spider’ thing was hilarious. As sad as it was to see Eddie leave the Blues, Great to see him playing well somewhere else- in hindsight clearly worth the money he was asking for at Carlton. And yes… praying for perpetual rain for all Blues games this season