Lawro v Piers Morgan

Mark Lawrenson's latest predictions are against Piers Morgan. Twat.

Not much from Morgan other than some typically bitter pot shots at Ashley Cole, Samir Nasri and Ant & Dec.

Onto a couple of Lawro pearls:

Chelsea v West Brom

226 words before he mentions anything of relevance to this game or anything relating to a possible prediction of the result. The worst of those words include:

The whole situation at Stamford Bridge has turned into a soap opera

I’m fed up of people in sports media writing shit like this. It’s all been created as a figment of the media’s imagination, and when they constantly print lies about what is happening inside the club hiding behind unnamed sources it should not count as a soap opera.

Southampton v QPR

They are definitely due a victory (…)although I know that does sound daft for a team that has only won two out of 27 league games so far this season.

According to Lawro’s league table QPR are in 7^th with 13 wins. Sounds daft to me.

Mike Celizic - HatGuy

Once upon a time I used to read a wonderful blog called firejoemorgan. That blog is the reason I write what you are reading now. They haven't updated that site for years but this glorious day they have returned on Deadspin
Firstly I implore you to click the link and also to read their original blog which should be on your screen somewhere to the right of this post. Secondly a word about a sports journalist that they used to write about.

Mike Celizic, known as HatGuy wrote some absolute rubbish about baseball for a long time, and FJM rightly destroyed him for it. He was recently diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma and sadly today he died. His last blog post was beautifully written and felt to me like a farewell from a warm old friend. A man whose ideas on baseball I couldn't have agreed less with, but a witty and intelligent writer who will leave the world a less interesting and fun place.
Perspective is a wonderful thing. Mike Celizic wrote the kind of stuff I regularly abuse people for on this blog, but as a man he was deserving of nothing but praise. So remember that some crappy sports journalism does not mean I hate the person, just I think what they wrote was garbage.

So raise a hot fudge sundae and say farewell to HatGuy, proof that a person and their work are not the same. Except for Piers Morgan, the twat.

Piers Morgan, look in the mirror.

Piers Morgan. Anyone who has seen him on screen cannot argue that his arrogance and love of himself is matched only by that of Richard Madeley. So it is quite remarkable that he would lambast Rafa Benitez for being very much the same.

There has always been something very irritating about the Spaniard.

There has always been something very irritating about the self-important moral outrage of a filth-monger like Morgan.

The cheap-looking glasses, hideous patterned ties and ill-fitting suits do nothing to counter the general impression of a middle- ranking bank manager. But the most annoying thing about him is that he could be so much more successful if he just managed to find a few seconds in every day to stop thinking about himself and dwell on his team for a moment.

Wow. Really wow.

Valencia:
La Liga Winner: 2001-02, 2003-04
UEFA Cup Winner: 2003-04

Liverpool:
FA Cup Winner: 2006
UEFA Champions League Winner: 2004-05

What a tale of woe for Rafa. He won the Spanish League with fucking VALENCIA. Twice.

Considering the strength of the Premier League you can make a very good case that Liverpool are the 3rd or 4th best side in Europe. Hardly Rafa's fault that there is a Man Utd dynasty going on and Chelsea have limitless amounts of money.

Oh yes he did win the Champions League with Liverpool. Here's a few names for you: Biscan, Baros, Smicer.

This guy has managed teams that have consistently over-achieved.

Morgan's crowning achievement? Not sure but here's a few select highlights:

Achtung! Surrender headline
Insider trading
Iraqi torture hoax pictures

Benitez has to be the most arrogant manager ever to grace the Premier League...

You just know that he wakes up every morning, struts to the bathroom in his purple Noel Coward smoking jacket, takes a long, hard look at himself in the mirror, and smirks: 'Rafa, you is looking the bizzo today!'

Seriously I don't know he has the balls to write this. You've got to admire the bare faced cheek I suppose. Arrogance and self-love oozing out of Piers Morgan's skin. He really is one of the most irritating pieces of shit ever to float to the top of the showbiz pond. At least there is something genuine about Rafa. He is honest, open and interesting, qualities that Morgan can only dream of having.

Liverpool were cruising at the top of the League at the turn of the year. They looked strong in depth and focused and I genuinely thought, if Gerrard and Torres stayed fit, they might go on and win the title. Then came Dossier Day. The moment that Benitez decided to make it all about himself again.

Fernanado Torres number of Premier League games missed this season: 13

But of course this article is all about Benitez. It is true that Rafa lost the plot with Fergie but I very much doubt that had any effect on his players. Another case of the media blowing something out of all proportion, then presuming that the players are effected by it just because they put it in the papers and then reciting it as gospel fact when it is actually all made up by them.

This season was the closest Liverpool have come to winning the Premier League and they almost certainly blew it when they had it in their hands. Because, at the crucial moment, when the players looked to their manager for the kind of supreme Churchillian 'Let us go forward together' speech that might drive them on to victory, he turned it into the Rafa Benitez show.

No one except you, the media, have made it the "Rafa Benitez show" by continuously writing pointless repetitive articles about a slightly interesting press conference rather than focusing on what is happening on the pitch.

As a football fan it has been about the fact that Torres has not been able to stay fit all season and that there have been quite a few teams prepared to try and to leave Anfield with 0-0. Then we look to Rafa's inability to understand how to play away from home in the Premier League.

Question his decisions in who he picks and the instructions he gives them away from Anfield and I will be right there with you.

Drivelling on about personality and issues outside of the football field and I suggest that you are projecting something of your own awful business onto sport where performance on the field is all that matters.



Twat.

Piers Morgan is a ...

Link

Football is back:

Sorry, Arsene, but you can't win title with these kids

You may or may not guess my opinion of the author of this article at some point during my analysis of it.

My name is Piers.

Twat

I'm an Arsenal season-ticket holder and I'm officially depressed.

Twat

What the hell is happening to my club?

It is supported by a twating twat for starters.
Also not much is happening as Arsenal are pretty much at the same level they have been for the last 7 or 8 years give or take the odd perfect storm of players coming good together at the right time.

I watched us struggling to beat the staggeringly ordinary FC Twente on Wednesday night and felt so frustrated I nearly switched over to Big Brother. (Only nearly, mind. We'd have to be losing 39-0 for me to do that, and even then I'd need to be manacled to a chair with my eyes stapled to the screen.)

Piers hates Big Brother! He’s one of us! Actually if we give it a few weeks of low web traffic for Morgan’s column don’t be surprised if he completely changes his mind and decides he loves BB after all as long as it keeps him in a job.

But even that performance was preferable to the dismally pedestrian effort against West Bromwich yesterday. I watched it alone in a Paris pub and felt more inspired by the women's Olympic superheavyweight weightlifting competition on another TV (I've always been strangely attracted to girls who can clean and jerk 186 kilos).

Not bad enough though to turn over to Britain’s Got Talent?

Arsene knows,they say, but not this time: Arsenal's lack of signings will condemn us to another potless season It seems almost impossible to believe this is the same Arsenal who went an entire Premiership unbeaten in 2004. I remember that achievement rather well, because it came the day after I was fired as editor of the Mirror.

Why was that again Piers? Publishing lies I believe?

At half-time in that historic game against Leicester, we were losing 1-0, the away fans began serenading us with chants of 'Invincibles - my a***' and my phone pulsated with gleeful texts of the 'When it rains, it pours' variety.

What kind of insufferable twat would you have to be for people to send you those kind of messages at half time… oh.

Three weeks previously, I'd enjoyed an even more unforgettable experience when we won the League at White Hart Lane. Me and my dad were guests of Sir Alan Sugar, who did a runner at the end faster than Wayne Rooney with a Big Mac voucher. By 8pm, the Spurs boardroom was empty, apart from us.

Rooney + Big Mac = comedy gold

Arsenal have won precisely nothing since then. Not even a Carling bloody Cup.

No?

for the first time since Wenger took over, I have absolutely no expectation that we will win anything. We didn't last year, and since then we've lost Alexander Hleb (our best technical player), Mathieu Flamini (who ran our midfield) and Gilberto Silva (who ran it when Flamini wasn't playing).

Nasri has already scored half the amount of goals that Hleb got last year (2). Also didn’t Cesc Fabregas run the midfield last season? Also fucking Gilberto Silva ran the midfield? Ran it where? Into the middle of nowhere?

In their places we've signed Samir Nasri (who's good but will take a season to adapt), Aaron Ramsey (just 16 League matches ever) and some injury-prone bloke from Werder Bremen that nobody's ever heard of. Eduardo and Tomas Rosicky are still crocked, Abou Diaby's out for a month, Cesc Fabregas's hamstring is playing up and Robin van Persie's only ever three games away from doing his leg in again. So our squad's got weaker, while Chelsea, United and Liverpool have got stronger.

Ok Flamini is yet to be replaced but Nasri > Hleb and Ramsey > Gilberto Silva. And the transfer window isn’t shut yet.

And as Jose Mourinho rightly says (not a phrase I ever thought I'd write), we're just too young. The 17-man Invincibles squad had a combined age of 480. The 17 equivalent players in this season's Arsenal squad - excluding Rosicky and Eduardo - have a combined age of just 389.

Yes Champion’s League, UEFA Cup and 2 x Premier League winner Jose Mourinho is pretty much always wrong isn’t he?
The 17 equivalent players excluding these 2 who I’ve randomly decided shouldn’t be included is compelling evidence. The 2004 squad included Keown, Cygan, Lehmann and Ray Parlour. Bar Lehmann all old players who were not that important really.

That's a difference of 91 years. Now, I'm all for a bit of youth, but this is ridiculous. At the risk of sounding Hansen-esque, you can't beat billionairefinanced, money's-no-object clubs with kids, however talented they are. Arsenal will doubtless delight and dazzle again this season, in the scintillating attacking style that Wenger loves so much.

You can’t just say that. Where is your frame of reference to prove that this even matters. Lazy, lazy sweeping generalisation and poor journalism.

Oh, and while you're at it, Arsene, buy Usain Bolt and stick him on the wing. At least, unlike Theo Walcott, he knows where's he going.

Twat.