First Premiership Weekend (SPOILERS) - 19th & 20th August

[IceBus]

Saturday, 19 August 2006

Arsenal v Aston Villa, 15:00
Bolton v Tottenham, 17:15 - Sky Premplus
Everton v Watford, 15:00
Newcastle v Wigan, 15:00
Portsmouth v Blackburn, 15:00
Reading v Middlesbrough, 15:00
Sheff Utd v Liverpool, 12:45 - Skysports 1 & Skysports HD
West Ham v Charlton, 15:00

Sunday, 20 August 2006

Chelsea v Man City, 16:00 - Skysports 1 & Skysports HD
Man Utd v Fulham, 13:30 - Sky Premplus

I cannot wait for tomorrow The Premiership is back

 

[IceBus]

Very solid from Sheffield so far. Some really nice turns and tight control and a few decent chances. If this is the quality of the promoted clubs, I can't wait to see Reading. The quality of football in general is just so great after a lacklustre World Cup. Glad Riise and Carragher are OK though as they're in my Fantasy side!

I'm already counting down the hours to MoTD and Utd vs Fulham tomorrow Come on the Blades!

 

[IceBus]

GOOOAAAAALLLL!!!!

1-0 Hulse

 

[IceBus]

Very soft penalty decision. Contact looked extremely minimal to say the least.

Nice to see 'pool lose a couple of points already though.

Those of you criticising Ian Darke are very quick to forget the abysmal commentating in the World Cup I agree that Martin Tyler and Andy are the best duo but Ian Darke is not a bad commentator by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[IceBus]

Kickoff in fifty minutes.

I'm hoping for a comprehensive performance today. Something like 2-0 would be great and put the pressure on Chelsea straight off.

 

[IceBus]

Squads:-

Manchester United (from): Van der Sar, Kuszczak, Neville, O'Shea, Brown, Ferdinand, Silvestre, Ronaldo, Park Ji-Sung, Scholes, Giggs, Saha, Rooney, Rossi, Evans, Evra, Richardson, Fletcher.

Fulham (from): Niemi, Crossley, Drobny, Queudrue, Rosenior, Volz, Knight, Bocanegra, Pearce, Christanval, Zakuani, Brown, Boa Morte, Diop, Bullard, Timlin, Pembridge, Elrich, Helguson, McBride, John, Radzinski, Runstrom.

 

[IceBus]

Rio, own goal \o/

It wasn't an own goal leave the insults out. It was a severe deflection from a shot. Rio couldn't do anything about it.

Absolutely stonking performance so far from an attacking perspective. We look a bit worryingly fragile at the back though. The Fulham goal came from Evra being so far out of position he couldn't track back effectively.

Great performance from Ronaldo and Scholes so far, both he and Rooney will be a huge loss for the next three games.

 

[IceBus]

Excellent result and brilliant performance. Scholes, Evra, Ronaldo and Rooney were all absolutely excellent. The linkup and one touch stuff was reminiscent of the mid-90s.

Really can't wait to see what we'd be like with Heinze, Carrick, Hargreaves and *maybe* Torres in the lineup

 

[IceBus]

Fulham were crap, poor poor defending for every one of the goals. Good to see Man U get a big opening day win, will have all the fans buzzing etc and ill be able to make some stupid bets with the Man U supporters in work tomorrow morning for the season ahead. Thing is boys dont get carried away with this result because Fulham truely were woeful the first half of the game.

I don't care how awful Fulham were tbh. What I was pleased to see was how slick our passing and running off the ball was. We wouldn't have scored anywhere near that many against a better side (sorry Fulham) but our possession was brilliant.

 

[IceBus]

no, he put in some decent ones, but there was nobody attacking the ball for the most part.

there wa s anice one across the face also to saha i think, but he didnt get to it..

Agree wholeheartedly. This is one of the best matches I've seen Ronaldo have, simply because most of the time he chose the right ball. Nothing fancy until we were cruising, and played the simple ball to feet a lot more than I've seen him do for us before. He also didn't dwell on it or try to do too much himself.

 

[IceBus]

yep, and we play better football without RvN. we actually did some half decent moves, 1-2's down the flanks etc to make ground and then played eithera cutback or a cross

i think we are looking half decent, given a defensive mid in place of o'shea.

The thing is, those were the sort of moves Ruud used to be integral too, but the last few seasons with him we somehow turned into a side who didn't make supporting runs, meaning 90% of his job was holding the ball up for support and the other 10% was tap ins.

Now it looks like we've finally rediscovered the flowing football that won us the treble.

 

[IceBus]

In regards to Evra:

He wasn't THAT good. I dont think some of you watched the game closely enough. Yes he did make some great tackles and was good on the ball today, but he made a lot of mistakes that would be taken advantage of against a better team.

Absolutely stonking performance so far from an attacking perspective. We look a bit worryingly fragile at the back though. The Fulham goal came from Evra being so far out of position he couldn't track back effectively

Zing