villa89

I was talking to a friend yesterday and the opinion he had was would you want your child to become a full time sportsman with the choices they have to make. And the reality is no.

i.e. Sacrifice long term health for a potential short term gain? Just get your child down to a sports scientist who can test his genetics/muscle density/hemoctric levels/etc. and he'll be able to tell you if your son/daughter has body it takes to succeed in sport.

Like all apple products its an hugely overpriced fashion accessory masquerading as a piece of hardware. The usual moron's will buy it in their droves of course.

I would be shocked if any given Premier League game didn't have at least two players on the pitch at any given time who weren't on some sort of performance-enhancing drug.

I would be shocked if its as little as two. Doping is in every sport. Many sports like football, tennis (where I think players are tested once per year on a known date) just turn a blind eye to it. Just look at the swimming world records set at the last olympics, suddenly these swimmers can swim faster than they could when they were wearing full body shark skin suits? Do they even test for HGH in the NFL? Look at the reported recommended use of HGH by Jamcian sprinting trainers. Usain bolt is 6ft 5in. I wonder what height he'd be if he never took any supplements? 5ft 8in?

Sport = Doping. You want to win, hire a top doctor/sport scientist. Hopefully someday other sports will be found out like cycling has been but I doubt it as its bad for business...

Then when a franchise moves to london its going to be hard for people to switch allegiances.

One question, Do people think it will be the London Bulldogs^TM or the England Knights^TM? My money is on them to use the city name as its significantly less shite than using the country. But if they do use the London name will people in other parts of England support them, (e.g. the notherners)...

They'll get another team; probably the Chargers ... again ... but it is possible to boil more than one egg at a time.

My money is on the Raiders to move back, but I agree LA will get a franchise eventually.

takes their blood every day and publishes their analysis of it with their opinion every evening. That would be a truly impressive tour winner.

I wonder how the blood passport system works. I take a few litres of my own blood out in the winter and then turn up for the tour with a hemocrit level of lets say 45%. I then use my own blood to boost that to 49.9% right before the start of the tour and my first blood test. Then daily throughout the tour I inject a little more of my blood into my system to top up my hemocrit level and keep it just below the magic 50% level allowed. Would I be caught, am I a doper?

If the NFL played one pre-season game in London every year, it would sell out, but scheduling real games there is a slap in the face of the fans who lose 1 of their 8 home games...

I don't think a preseason game would sell out beause on the whole, they're shite. It would be a slap in the face for Foreskin/Packers fans who sell out their stadium every week but its not a big deal for joke franchises like the Jags to give up a home game given that their home games usually have 1 man and his dog at them. The problem is that the longer they leave it without moving a franchise to the UK the more time fans have to pick a team to follow. Then when a franchise moves to london its going to be hard for people to switch allegiances.

Feel a bit sorry for him. He's become collateral damage of the McLeish era.

I don't, he's shite and its acceptable for the club to try and force him out as he is/was a spectacular waste of money.

Does anyone know of a good summary of what's been released for us laymen?

WOuld love to know exactly what's in what they've released, but not sure I could make sense of, or have the time for, a 200 page dossier.

I haven't read it but from what I have seen it just confirms what everyone knew all along. Armstrong was the head of a team that systematically doped for ~a decade. Every member of the team was forced to dope with Armstrong distributing the drugs himself. 11 of his former team mates all tesified against him or in laymans terms, told the truth, and their stories showed how normal doping was for the team. One team member singing songs about taking EPO on the team bus! The hope is that the UCI will be forced to address the doping issues properly now but I don't expect them to. They will just bury their heads in the sand and hope all of this goes away.

Replace:

Barry with Delph,

Young with NZogbia,

Milner with Ireland

Downing with Holman

and now Bent with this Guy and people are still discussing why we are rubbish now and where the problem is?

+1. We used to be a half decent side with some good players, now we are a poor side with no good players. Not exactly rocket science. If Lambert wants to replace Bent with this guy or some other striker thats fine he's the manager and he should decide who to buy. However if his signings don't come good then we are going to be in trouble as we don't have established experienced players that we can rely on. (IMO).

I don't think it would damage the pitch at all really. If its more money for the club then why not.

Never deserved the reputation that he had. Bizarre how a manager like him can become a media darling when he had achieved so little.

They're all dead Dave.

World of Warcraft cities hacked

Hackers have massacred all the virtual characters in some of online adventure game World of Warcraft's major cities.

They appear to have created a character able to destroy those of other players and those controlled by the game.

Game creator Blizzard Activision has appealed for information, but added: "This exploit has already been hot-fixed, so it should not be repeatable."

More than 10 million subscribers play World of Warcraft (WoW), almost half are believed to be in China.

Numbers had dipped from a peak of 12 million in 2010 to 9.1 million at the beginning of 2012, but have swelled since the release at the end of September of an expansion called the Mists of Pandaria.

Writing in an online forum, Blizzard said it was taking the action "very seriously".

"Earlier today, certain realms were affected by an in-game exploit, resulting in the deaths of player characters and non-player characters in some of the major cities," wrote a representative going by the name of Nethaera, on Sunday.

Olivia Grace, contributing editor of website WoW Insider, said: "It was a significant hack.

"They discovered a method to roll a level-one [beginner] character, which ran to the major cities.

"We don't know exactly what they did, but somehow they were able to kill every single player's character in that city and every single computer controlled character - and they were doing this repeatedly."

Ms Grace said she believed the same hackers had attacked WoW before but not to this extent, with characters being destroyed again after "reincarnation" as is normal within the confines of the game.

bbc

The lad is only 21.

Is he though, or is he another in a long line of African born players with a birth cert written in crayon?

Poor enough game so far. I predict Delph to be sent off in the second half and the yids to win 1-0 when we go doen to ten men.

Looks great, Clean & Clear®

Yesterday was the first game I have seen him play and he managed to make Heskey look good. I'd say he had the touch of a rapist but that would be harsh on rapists. Toblerone Feet. Should have been hooked at half time and it was astonishing that Lambert persisted with him for so long.

sorry forgot to say that of course i wont be judging him having only seen him play once

Surprised to see him dropped given that he's the only player we have that you think will get us a goal. Should be one of the first names on the teamsheet for every game.

Yesterday was the first game I have seen him play and he managed to make Heskey look good. I'd say he had the touch of a rapist but that would be harsh on rapists. Toblerone Feet. Should have been hooked at half time and it was astonishing that Lambert persisted with him for so long.

I think I remember hearing that Derek Llambias and Pardew are very close, hence the original 5 year contract he got despite having no real record of being a successful manager. A new 8 year contract smacks of "here you go mate, your virtually unsackable now and if Ashley does decide to axe you then you'll get a monster payoff".

It would be fantastic to put Nintendo back on the map.

I'm not sure how they can adapt their business model to make themselves competitive again to be honest. The handheld market is going to collapse (if it hasn't already) and nintendo used to make a fortune off gameboys etc. Also as The_rev said above alot of Wii buyers won't be back for the Wii U. The real nail in the coffin is the abandonement of nintendo by the big 3rd party developers. They have decided to focus on Ps3 and Xbox and I can't see that changing, ever. The lack of game sales means that when people stop buying a console like they did with the wii you income falls off a cliff as you don't have any continous income from games sales.

True, look at the Luka Modric situation, although think he wanted to leave to win Silverware.

Do you think he'd have left spurs for Real Madrid if he had to take a pay cut? Money is what its about, the possibility of sliverware is just an added bonus.

One thing to note is that I don't think players are to blame in any of this. They have short careers and its fair enough they seek out the best contracts they can get, I'd do the exact same.

But the best players will generally always want to play for the best teams, and they happen to be the ones that are paying the highest wages.

Slight correction here, The best players will generally always want to play for the teams paying the highest wages, i.e Man City, Man Utd. Anzhi Makhachkala. And then as a result of this those rich clubs win things, its rarely about the club and nearly always about the money.

If it was the case that the best players wanted to play for the best clubs, then those best clubs could actually pay less wages as player's would be willing to take a pay cut just to play there. Of course that's not the case.

No thanks, Don't want to be a plastic club.

Can you explain what this means? What's a plastic club exactly? Is it one that buys players? One that pays high wages? One that wins things?

It infuriates me when people try to belittle Chelsea and Man City for "buying success" and then go on to praise Man Utd./Arsenal for doing it the "right" way. All clubs in the premier league since it has been founded have bought the title. Its just the reality of football. People seem to get jealous of City and Chelsea because they were unsuccessful, "small" clubs and accuse them of being plastic. They don't seem to have the same jealousy when it comes to Man Utd. buying the title, maybe they just enjoy the status quo. i.e. "its okay to see united buying the title every year but I'll be damned if I'm going to watch Fulham/Stoke/etc. do it...".

But the article is pretty hilarious from start to finish, if it wasn't the head of an international sporting group making a fool out of himself (I'm 72 don't you know!!!).

Reminds me of Fifa a completely incomponent senile buffoon running a massive sporting organisation. I guess you reap what you sow...