*** Official 2011 / 2012 Football Season Thread ***

[madride]

Solid performance bring on the semi. Must be the worst Sunderland performance since O'Neill took over
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Nil Satis Nisi Optimum

[Indestructible]

[Grumbledook]

Manchester City executive Patrick Vieira says title rivals Manchester United benefit from preferential treatment from referees.

"I think when you go to United, Madrid, Barcelona, or Milan, when the referees referee these kind of games, it's always difficult to go against these kind of teams.

"This is the way it is.

"It's something the teams who are used to winning get all the time, so we need to win games so we have this advantage in the future."

[The Dean]

[Seb]

I saw pretty convincing stats that showed that a team's home advantage was actually due to the pressure the crowd could put on the referee. But Man City would have it in proportion to their crowd size/volume as much as anyone.

[Indestructible]

[The Dean]

[The Dean]

[Grumbledook]

indy didn't see the newcastle game at old trafford

[Indestructible]

[Indestructible]

Patrick Vieira has expressed his disappointment and anger at what he feels is a serious and cynical misrepresentation of an interview he gave to the BBC.
Manchester City’s Football Development Executive gave the interview at the annual SoccerEx exhibition at the GMEX Convention Centre on Wednesday afternoon. He was representing Football Against Hunger, a campaign to tackle starvation in Africa.

An interview given to the BBC’s Dan Roan contained what Patrick feels was a very leading line of questions regarding Manchester United supposedly receiving favourable treatment by referees. Patrick feels that his views have been deliberately taken out of context.

He said: “I am very angry with Dan Roan. I feel he has misrepresented me. I made it clear in the interview twice that I wanted to avoid criticising United and even stated that I didn’t watch the United game against Fulham and had not seen the incident to which the reporter referred.

“That part of the interview was ignored and my comments were taken completely out of context. I called the reporter twice to ask for a retraction and an apology which has not come. I feel Dan Roan and the BBC have shown a complete lack of respect for me, the ‘Football Against Hunger’ charity and Manchester City Football Club.”

Manchester City support Patrick in his strong feelings on this matter and have confirmed to the BBC that the reporter will now be banned from all Manchester City media activity.

Chief Communications Officer, Vicky Kloss, said: “Despite the Charity arranging the interview with Dan Roan for the purposes of promoting the Football Against Hunger campaign, the reporter pursued a leading and aggressive line of questioning, through which Patrick was very careful to tread a diplomatic path.

“A misrepresentative article by Dan Roan appeared on the BBC’s website a short time later which omitted significant comments of clarification and took the interview completely out of context. Manchester City promotes a positive and welcoming approach to media outlets, however it is felt, in the absence of any correction or apology that there is no option but to issue an immediate ban to Dan Roan from future media activity.”

Googled Dan Roan BBC and this pic came up

[Grumbledook]

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[eye n eye]

[Grumbledook]

oh well

lol at those city fans who left with 11 mins left to go

[eye n eye]

Surely if Utd win against Blackburn it's game over