Tom Doyle :: TALK

In 2006 I was disappointed that Ferguson decided to keep Cristiano Ronaldo at United. Even more so after his disgusting back stabbing of his club team mate, Wayne Rooney, in the World Cup.

Yet again, Ferguson is running to the players side to try and convince him to stay after he announced yesterday that he would love to move to Real Madrid, if they coughed up United’s asking price.

God Fergie, let him go! He’s an arrogant, immature, cocky little fecker! Yes we put up with Cantona, but he still loved United, he didn’t want to leave. Surely with your years of experience you can see that he’s a player that just thinks of himself and not the club, which you’ve always said is bigger than any player!!???

Let him go - even after his mind blowing form this season, I’d be happy to see the back of him!

• Barcelona to join race for Cristiano Ronaldo
• Ronaldo today: I want to play for Real Madrid
• Ronaldo comes clean over Real hope
• Cristiano Ronaldo’s Real Madrid ‘wish’ sets up summer of strife for Manchester United
• Real may get their man - but it will cost them a fortune
• ‘I want to play for Real Madrid’: Cristiano Ronaldo

Well my beloved Man United have done it again! Well done lads!!!

In a tightly fought competition they came out on top again to win the league by 2 points. That’s another item of my new year predictions

I can’t believe Newcastle United have yet again sacked a manager without giving him ample time to get his feet into the job. Yes, Sam Allardyce was sacked today.

I know the results have not been great for Sam since he has arrived. But there is no doubting his great talent as a football manager. Look what he did with Bolton!

I just don’t understand it anymore. Newcastle remind me of the music industry of today. There is no way we’ll ever have another U2 if record companies continue to work the way they do. For a new artist, if they don’t have a hit record with their first album they are dropped. Even if their second album does badly, the artist is questioned about thier ability. They should think back to u2’s first albums and how badly they went.

Newcastle are doing the same, except with football managers. You just have to look at Manchester United and Alex Ferguson. If he wasn’t given the many chances that he received, United probably would never have succeeded to become the club they are today.

Newcastle United football club and it’s supporters have to take a serious look at themselves. The fans want to take a bet on their legend Alan Shearer instead of supporting and putting their hope behind a proven master of football management.

You’re just digging a bigger hole NUFC!

Funniest football video in a while…

Celtic had a fantastic night in Europe last night, fending off the European champions, by beating them 2-1. The game however was marred by a silly incident created by a Celtic leprechaun fan.

After Celtic scored their winner, a silly little scottish bloke, about 5 foot nothing, runs on to the pitch starts dancing in front of AC Milans goalkeeper Dida and then proceeds to “tickle” him in the neck/chest area.

With that, super fit, 6 foot four Dida, runs after him. Dida instantly saw that this little leprechaun’s pace was just too much and he was never going to catch him, so he gives up his chase and throws himself to the ground. Within seconds the medical staff were on hand to give him some loving care. After about 3 minutes of attention, Dida is strectured off the pitch, holding an ice pack to his face……………

Now, being a man, I know that when you get a kick in the “sensitive area”, the pain can travel to your stomach and be a lot worse than the tap you’ve had - but never in my life have I had a tickle on the chest or neck and it travel to my face. Nevermind the fact that a tickle has never given me the need to use an ice pack.

View a short video clip here >>
Here’s a better view and opinions from the managers and the Sky Sports panel >>

Dida - when you read my blog today - let me tell you how sickened I am by you. A tall tower of strength, feigning injury in such a manner is a mockery to the beautiful game that is football. You had a very poor game, probably the blame for both goals, but there’s no need to lower the game to these disgraceful levels….

DIDA - YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED!!!!

Another disappointing night for Ireland. In fairness though, I should really have been writing this post after Saturdays draw with Slovakia. The Czech Republic aren’t the worst team around and I was really hoping against hope that we could get a win last night.

The Irish side were poor again last night and I don’t think that was the fault of the players. I lay that blame solely on Steve Stauntons shoulders. His team selection was poor, he still doesn’t seem to know how to motivate his team and he is far from a leader off the pitch.

The only ray of hope we seemed to have was when Stephen Hunt came on. Through his OWN desire he took the game by the scruff of the neck and carved out a few opportunities for us. But why wasn’t our manager able to instill this believe in the rest of the players?? That is his job at the end of the day.

I think it’s only fair to say now that that should have been Steve Stauntons last game as manager of the Republic of Ireland soccer team. We need the time now, to give a new manager the best chance of bringing this team to the next World Cup. I also believe it’s time to get rid of that John Delaney guy he seems to be making what he calls “World class” decisions.

Watching the analysis on RTE after the game was quite funny. Eamon Dunphy went off on another one, likening Steve Stauntons lack of training for the job to someone without a train driving license. He posed the question to Bill O’Herlihy, “Would you let someone drive the train to Cork without lessons?”. He even went as far as mimicking out someone with a steering wheel, so one things for sure, don’t let Eamon Dunphy drive a train to Cork, he thinks trains have steering wheels……

One person I felt a bit sorry for though, was Liam Brady. When he was asked did he agree that Staunton should be sacked to allow time for a new manager to come in and do something with the team, he reluctantly agreed. He admitted that he was a good friend of Steve Staunton and that he was only giving his professional opinion, even though he would have preferred not to.

I’m not a Steve Staunton hater, I just never believed he was the right man for the job. Why get rid of Brian Kerr who had at least some experience in coaching and managing to bring in a novice? Anyway, here’s hoping we can qualify for the World Cup, since we’ve another summer of football without our participation

In the last couple of weeks, there have been at least two high profile footballers that have collapsed during a football match. Both cases were linked to heart problems. Sadly Sevilla player, 22 year old Puerta died after collapsing during a game.

In recent years this seems to have become alarmingly common amoung what we see as extremely fit sports men. All cases of deaths are treated as “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome”, I guess because the experts just can’t put their finger on what the causes actually are.

I have my own theory, generally based around my love of football. Over the past decade or more, the game of football has become a much more athletic type of game. The days of players coming out to play for their club after being out on the tear the night before are long gone.

It’s not good enough to just be a talented footballer, you now need to be very athletic and super fit to play with the rest of them. So obviously, the conditioning and training of players is a lot more intense than it used to be. There are cases of teams not letting their players play, or being classed as being unfit if they have a body fat percentage of over 12%.

Could this higher level of fittest actually max the capabillities of a persons heart? I think there could definitely be a link here.

There is of course the common use of supplements used by players that could also be a factor. Either way, I think it’s time for the fittest coaches to take a serious lok at their strategies and see if anything they are doing could be causing these unfortunate circumstances so that we can eradicate it from happening again in the future.

Yeah, I’m sure all you die hard Man United fans jumped on this post in hope of confirmation that United had finally sealed the Tevez deal…. but I’m sorry but eh… no.

Today is my first day out of bed since I was struck down with some sort of vomitting bug that has kept me in my bedroom away from the real world… and thank god for that.

In an attempt to catch up on the hundreds of emails that have graced my unkempt inbox, I sat on the sofa with the laptop where it should be (on my lap) and turned on sky news, for some background noise and of course to catch up on what’s been happening in the days I’ve missed.

At this stage, I’m just sick and tired of this story now. Everytime they decide to go for a break, they have their trade mark “swwwooossshhhh” noise and breaking news - New signing for Man United, more after the break. I, foolishly in my hours of recovery, get excited, forgetting about the hours before where I have been extremely disappointed to hear that United have in fact only signed a new 9 year old wonderkid. Who can be seen here : http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,31200-1278249,.html

No offence intended to the young lad, he looks like a great little player, but  God!! Do Sky have nothing better to report about on their news channel???

Maybe they should listen to Newstalk 106 for a while to get some ideas!!!

Barcelona wizz kid, Lionel Mezzi scored one of the greatest goals in the history of the game last night against Getafe.

The goal can be seen here…..

Astonishing goal from the 19 year old, let’s hope he doesn’t burn out like so many of our new upcoming stars seem to do nowadays!

Last night must have been one of the most hillarious moments in Irish soccer on TV since this….

The panel, made up of the usual suspects, Johnny Giles, Liam Brady and Eamonn Dunphy completely lashed Manchester United and Ronaldo ahead of their game against Roma in Old Trafford last night.

Not one of the panel believed that United could even scrape a one goal win that would secure them a place in this years champions league semi-final.

At half time, when United had gone 4 goals ahead of Roma, I think the panel looked more shell shocked than Roma themselves. Johnny Giles, looked so embarrassed and came out with a statement such as “I’ve never seen United play like that before”.

After they all agreed before the game that Ronaldo would have to show his talents in game as big as this to prove he is a world class player, they rebuked the comments at full-time by saying that he must prove it more often.

Lads face it, you’ve made complete arses of yourselves and got it completely wrong again!!! But I don’t think you’ve ever been this wrong before…. To use the excuse that “if we had of known United would play like that…” - What way did you expect them to play?

Anyway, my analysis of the game is a bit different than all our pundits. I personally believe United have been playing like this most of the season. The one major factor between last nights performance and any other of the season is that United took their chances!!

Every shot we had last night, seemed to have that midas touch. If you look closely at Rooney’s goal, he even scuffed it, but it went in last night. (p.s. I’m not knocking the fact that he made an amazing run to get into that area!)

One point that annoyed me about the Irish pundits was the fact that “Carrick is never usually in that position”. They were talking about his positioning for his two goals.

They were ignorant enough to ignore the starting line up, in which it was obvious with the introduction of Fletcher, that Carrick would in fact be taking up Scholes position and playing in a more advanced role than his typical holding midfielder role.

Ronaldo - well - I can’t really disagree with them much on this. I’m not a huge fan of Ronaldo, he’s a selfish player and ignores the game of football in favour of self glory. HOWEVER!! Last night he was fantastic and he even tried to play football at times. I don’t think he’s far off being a world class and top player, but he still has some work to do.

All in all, 7-1 was a great win for us last night, I always thought United had it in them to get at least a 1-0 win over Roma. I never expected the result we got last night…. LONG MAY IT CONTINUE!! :):)