Showing posts with label West Ham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label West Ham. Show all posts

Saturday, 10 May 2014

Victory with 10 men in Nagoya followed by a footballing lesson from Lippi's Evergrande

Yamashita got sent off but with both Forlan and Kakitani now looking increasingly dangerous in the J. League we left Nagoya with three points, excellent result. Later that day Spurs would lose to West Ham after Kaboul got sent off in an eerily similar fashion to Yamashita but Spurs showed no fight or confidence at all. I want the Premier League season to finish soon, which it will on Sunday, West Ham have beaten us three times this season.


A proper footballing lesson here. Everything Guangzhou Evergrande did was so much better than us. Amazing to see Marcelo Lippi in Yanmar Stadium but that was pretty depressing to watch. Particularly as I realised one of their best players on the night, Alessandro Diamanti, is ex-West Ham.

This is the AFC Champions League!

Incredible number of away fans

A big flag for a big occasion

Elkeson's penalty

Popovic and Lippi

Final Score

We should have known we were in trouble when a World Cup winning manager looks on!

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Tuesday, 22 March 2011

ACL away in China: Shandong 2-0 Cerezo

Shandong Luneng were good, well done to our fans who made the trip, it was emotional after the earthquake/tsunami and I think most people at the stadium felt that. So we lost, but our first away game in the ACL was action packed and we had some good chances, it's all very new for Cerezo and the group itself is still obviously wide open. We can qualify but need to concentrate a whole lot more for 90 minutes. Jin-Hyeon also made a penalty save at the second attempt. Renato and Wang Yongpo scored for Shandong.
Shandong Sports Centre
...and the army were waiting inside.


A warm welcome...










In other news Spurs drew with West Ham which was shown live on J-Sports 2,featuring a MOM performance from their keeper Robert Green and an "I still love West Ham" performance from Jermain Defoe missing some good chances, and Wayne Bridge played really well for the Hammers. Plus we have Real Madrid to look forward to in the Champions League quarter finals. The main worry at the moment though is whether we (Spurs and/or Cerezo) can clinch another Champions League spot for next season.

Saturday, 12 February 2011

Stadium choices for Cerezo, Spurs and West Ham!

Tickets went on sale yesterday for our first home Asian Champions League game against Arema from Indonesia. This game will be played in Nagai Stadium, the one with a running track. The choice is most likely down to the fact you can fit a lot more people in this stadium but the fans are pretty far from the action, West Ham take note. Our first home game in the J-League will be in Kincho stadium which has a reduced capacity but the fans are much closer to the action, possibly the closest you can get in Japan. It's a difficult one, since I've been watching we rarely get huge crowds at the former World Cup venue, with the athletics track. Look at the layout of the two stadiums below. The prices are the same for both stadiums with the pink being sections being the cheapest! It seems odd that Cerezo can choose between 2, or indeed 3, grounds all in the same park while Spurs and West Ham have both been encouraged to go for gold, in the Olympic sense so to speak in East London.
Kincho Stadium

Nagai Stadium ( Complete with athletics facilities! )
So West Ham won the bid to take over the Olympic Stadium. It is going to be in East London but there are so many question marks about the future under the Hammers. Can they fill the stadium (heading into the Championship as they are) ? Will the Boleyn faithfull be happy with having the track between them and the players? So it's back to the drawing board for Spurs and the new stadium but here's a quick reminder of what the club had on the drawing board for the Olympic site ( no athletics stuff here! ).
London - look at what we could have had...

Saturday, 5 February 2011

The January transfer window

So Harry Redknapp (or just Levy?) bid for a number of strikers, Aguerro, Llorente, Carroll, Negredo, Forlan, and even midfielder Charlie Adam and utility man Phil Neville. This despite Luis Fabiano having been the most likely mover. At the same time he loaned out Robbie Keane to his first love, West Ham, he scored of course in his first game there, while our three remaining strikers have struggled in the league. We got stuffed by Fulham, down to ten men for some time, but thanks to Peter Crouch's 2nd league goal of the season beat Blackburn. The similarites between Peter and Cerezo's Rui Komatsu are either endless or non-existent depending on whether you are aware of either of them by the way. Anyway Harry seems to have given up on a Champions League qualifying spot although he did say we weren't in the market for any more players before our last minute let downs so let's see what he really means later. The Torres transfer shows the importance of Champions League football for world class players which might be worrying for us Spurs fans (we do have some world class talent) depending on the final table come the end of this season. Torres vs Liverpool and Adriano vs Cerezo on their debut games for their respective new clubs, nice. Chelsea just reminding everyone that their recent success is largely due to Roman's checkbook and fax machine (both still heavily involved in football but largely redundant elsewhere). Mercenaries, outcasts or boyhood supporters, only time will tell. At least we have shown we have cash to spend unlike Arsenal who probably do have money but Wenger knows best. This window around £225 million was spent in England compared to about £30 million last year. Hungry, talented players available for relatively cheap seem to be the best option. Look a the list (link below) and think about how many of those players did not/have not yet prove/proven their worth. With this in mind perhaps Juventus want BAE? Tottenham make the British transfer top ten list thanks to Dimitar Berbatov, outgoing, maybe we could be on the incoming list but if we really meant it we would have started the bidding earlier, not a problem. Then came Andy (when's he due back in court?) Carroll. He is now, quite ridiculously, the 8th most expensive football player of all time! Does that seem right? Yuto Nagatomo went on loan to Inter from Cesena who got Davide Santon in return which has been dominating the sports news here in Japan, rightly so. Pienaar has recovered from his fellow newcomer South African mistaking his head for the ball to be available for the game against Bolton at the Lane later. Thank you J-Sports for showing the game on J-Sports 2! COYS