I know. It's appalling, isn't it? The trouble is, all the German commercial channels spend so much on broadcasting rights that they only have enough money left over to pay one presenter - hence Pflaume getting the Bayern gig.
You can bet your life that if Pro 7 had the rights, Stefan fucking Raab would be commentating. (Or "Elton", if Leverkusen were playing).
"Elton" would also cover Unterhaching, given his bobsleigh experience.
And yes, those of you lucky enough not to know what we are talking about, that is our boy Kai promoting the UEFA Cup tie between Getafe and Bayern by standing on the pitch in Camp F*cking Nou.
Bayern Munich getting through is for the greater good. We all know what would have happened if Getafe had played Rangers in the final. Ninety minutes of faeces culminating in the wrong result.
The alternative is even worse. But I will probably find something better to do that night, given that we all know what the outcome of the tie is going to be (0-0, 1-0, Thomson 90'+6').
I see Banjo Boy got a yellow card tonight. His tally for the season now stands at three bookings in Europe and 0 in the SPL. If only other players could be as well-behaved as that . . .
dalliance is excellent at popping up when Rangers are doing well but remaining curiously silent whenever they're going through a bad patch...
By banjo boy, do you mean Kevin Thomson, HB? Because he got booked against Celtic last week.
That was a completely expected result last night, not in the least surprising.
I think I might have to stick £20 on Rangers to win this now, just as a bit of insurance in case the worst happens. They are by quite some distance the worst footballing side left of the four but Walter Smith's career has been built on assembling gangs of strong, brutish neds and using their physicality to win matches against more talented teams, so they have every chance.
I never, ever thought I'd find myself saying this but thank fuck Bayern scored two jammy late goals to knock out the lovable underdogs last night.
I know I shouldn't laugh at a "Nakamura ate mah dug" banner. But it represents an instance of humour amongst the Rangers' support, rarely seen since the days of the Anton Rogan Loyal.
but Walter Smith's career has been built on assembling gangs of strong, brutish neds and using their physicality to win matches against more talented teams, so they have every chance.
That's not right though is it. During the 1990s Smith had a number of good footballers by any standards, yet Rangers teams in Europe always performed poorer than the sum of their parts through poor preparation and lack of tactical nous.
What has impressed me about Smith is that he has shown an old dog can learn new tricks, first with Scotland and now Rangers. They may not have players like Gascoigne and Laudrup anymore, but they do have a level of well drilled organisation missing from most of his sides during his first stint. I never thought I would see a Walter Smith side that could play a formation that wasn't 442, he has shown adaptability there too.
And as for the 'physicality to win matches against more talented sides' comment. What exactly are you expecting from a Scottish side in Europe ?
Henryk Larsson has a lot to answer for. His bountiful skills dazzled enough people to ensure a collective amnesia that the last Scottish side to reach a European Final was something different from him with ten worker drones alongside him. Rangers go for the full 11 worker drones, albeit having been working on a much smaller budget.
As if there is any other way a Scottish side
can do well in Europe.
Hey, I'm not knocking the approach at all in terms of its outcomes. Smith has done exceptionally well to get Rangers so far on limited resources. He's done exactly the right thing to maximise the resources available to him.
It doesn't mean I can't make cheap, bitter jibes about it, though.
In the 90s, Smith was given the money to sign players like Laudrup, but he still played a pretty physical style of football, with players like McCall, McPherson and Cleland doing the spadework. They had more talented players back then but it was still fundamentally based on quite a physical approach, albeit with a couple of genuinely skillful players tacked on.
Loth though I am to admit it, I love goals like Whittaker's - they're completely unlike solo goals by yer Maradonas and Ronaldos: you can tell, basically, that he had no real ambition to go on and score when he picked up the ball, but as he went on, tentatively at first but then growing in confidence, you could see him thinking "fuck, I can actually go all the way here".
Still, FA Cup aside, what a hideous season this is turning out to be.
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