Tag: real madrid

Pre-Season Football

Pre-Season Football

Not much to be read into pre season friendlies TBH. As a manager you are looking at new players, either acquired or coming up through the ranks and assessing things for the next season. Results are not paramount, injuries are and when I looked into pre-season friendlies a few years ago there seemed to be little correlation to the start of the new season.

What I do look for though is new transfers, which does give a clue to performances …

23/07/2013 | By | Reply More
Real problems for Man Utd?

Real problems for Man Utd?

My favourite champions league memory comes from a Man Utd vs Juventus match back in 1999, before the dawn of betting exchanges.

A friend phoned me and told me he had a spare ticket for the match and “Did I want to go?”. I immediately dropped everything and headed up to Manchester. I needed a hotel, so picked a reasonable one on a late booking and headed straight there. Remarkably I’d managed to pick the hotel where the Juventus were …

05/03/2013 | By | Reply More
A perfect start to the Champions League

A perfect start to the Champions League

Well that was just a fantastic start to the Champions league group stages! Let’s hope the remaining fixtures bring up a few similar results. It’s easy to use the oft quoted, and often misused, phrase ‘It was a traders dream’, but it was!

Both the Man City and Arsenal games, where there was the bulk of liquidity, ended up in situations where if you backed or laid either team or the draw before the off you could have traded out …

19/09/2012 | By More
Forgone conclusion?

Forgone conclusion?

You can’t help but think, like the rest of the community, that the two champions league semi finals are forgone conclusions. I looked at the weekend markets and curiously all teams lost, so no clues in there. But it was possible to start opposing Man Utd after it dawned to me that they may have half an eye on the semi final.

The market is discounting a win by one goal for Barcelona tonight but much depends on whether Real …

03/05/2011 | By More
Farcelona

Farcelona

That was the word on the street after the sending off last night. It seems a common trait to dislike success, but you can’t escape the fact that Barcelona have proved on many occasions that they are by far the best team in the tournament and did so again last night. It’s just such a shame they have often degraded their performances with gamesmanship.

It’s also a shame that the first leg was a duplicate of the other semi final, …

28/04/2011 | By More
Dropa del rey

Dropa del rey

Look at this image. Police men, firemen, bus stopped, everybody rushing to aid the dire situation at hand. Looks nasty, but infact it wasn’t a pedestrian under the wheels of this bus, it was the Copa del rey! For a video of the most entertaining part of this 0-0 draw view the following: –

https://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/13155619.stm

21/04/2011 | By More
Nothing’s impossible

Nothing’s impossible

That has to be the message that Harry Redknapp will send to his team this evening. But just what chance does he have?

When you can lay Real Madrid at 1.02 to qualify, so the market thinks Harry has less than a 2% chance. But memories are still fresh for me with that remarkable run Middlesbrough had in the UEFA cup a few years ago.

Spurs are priced at 3.35 for a win, the match is only priced for …

13/04/2011 | By More
When Harry met Jose

When Harry met Jose

Home wins look the order of the day for the first leg of the champions league this evening. It’s difficult to see beyond that, but as we seen already, anything is possible. When Harry last visited Madrid he got mugged, most Spurs fans will hope it doesn’t happen again on the field of play.

The pressure has to be on Real Madrid to get a result at home against Champions league novices Spurs. Spurs best chance of progressing has to …

05/04/2011 | By More
Real Copa Crash

Real Copa Crash

Real Madrid crashed out of the Copa Del Rey last night. As though that wasn’t bad enough for Real Fans it was to lowly AD Alcorcon. Priced at 1.39 to win the first leg away Real Madrid promptly got thrashed 4-0. But that was OK because they had 90 minutes of the second leg to turn it around. Last night they stumbled to a late 1-0 win and stumbled out of the cup.

Real Madrid play Zurich at home in …

11/11/2009 | By More
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