John am Rhein

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Some 'a them buggaz can meeke the ball SWERVE! We'll beet them with IRON, son

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Sat 10 June (1400): England v Paraguay (Gp B) Tue 13 June (1400): South Korea v Togo (Gp G) Sat 17 June (1400): Portugal v Iran (Gp D) Wed 21 June (2000): Holland v Argentina (Gp C) Sat 1 July (2000): Quarter-final Apart from the first one, it's looking good. Bear in mind that Cologne, Kaiserslautern and, at a push, Nurnberg are all within reasonable travelling distance.

I remember Hugh McIlvaney interviewing George Steinbrenner (baseball). One of the things Steinbrenner said was that McIlvaney was better informed than most of the US journalists he met.

But the point here was that certain types of football supposedly "can only take you so far" and the European Cup is somehow out of reach if you play a certain way. Man U (and other circuses like Barcelona) are supposedly the alternative to this with their more politically correct styles of football. Arsenal - who have zero European Cups - also presumably fall into that category. These clubs show the exact failing it was suggested Chelsea will suffer from: they can't sustain success at the top level (i.e. the European Cup).

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Porto had the massive advantage of having less money. Chelsea's massive financial resources mean that they can only go so far

Their financial muscle will be reflected on the pitch - as it already has been.

You do really.

And then some people complain that Chelsea are too good and they'll be dominating football for the next 20,000 years and the rules should be changed to stop them - nothing to do with Man U fans, of course. The basic fact is the're just a very good team - and as likely to sustain their success as anybody ever was. Not least because of their financial resources.

The press SHOULD hate them but they don't. Everyone else does.

Exactly what is wrong with their brand of football? And how long were Man U successful at the top for? All they did was fluke one European Cup win. Would I be right in assuming you prefer Arsenal's brand of football circa 2002? They didn't exactly stay at the top for long, did they? In fact the dour 'mechanical' types of football are more likely to bring sustained success than any other - as the history of LFC shows.

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Everything everybody says is 'in their opinion' - what are you making reference to that for? Being restricted to buying types of players (and the're no more or less restricted than anyone else, apart from the fact that they have more money) is no handicap. The evidence we've seen thus far is that they are League Champions and clear favourites to repeat that, probably more than once. It's your assessment of what has and doesn't have value in football which needs re-assessing.

Hardly surprising since the media's full of fascist sympathizers.

There as likely to win the European Cup as anybody and they've got as much ability to vary their play as anybody as well. There's no limit to how far their (or any) type of football can take a team.

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thought you liked Italy

They were switching one striker for another, though, weren't they? I think putting on an additional (third) striker makes very little sense unless you're basically hoping to give yourself more chance of being first to any loose balls in the goalmouth. What tends to happen is that one of the three ends up playing in a withdrawn or wide role anyway, in which case you'd be better off bringing on a player more suited for that role - assuming you have one. Bringing on a second striker when you're playing 1-upfront makes a lot more sense, though.

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