Winter Transfer Deadline Day!

[the4thjuliek.livejournal.com]

So today (February 2) is the day that winter transfer window closes. And let's face it, summers transfers are way more fun and worrying.

But anyway, what are your thoughts about this window? Has your club signed someone useful (or useless)? Have they missed out on any special player that you had your eye on? Any news/hopes/dreams about summer transfers? And while we're on the subject, what were the best transfers made by your club? Any shocking ones? Ones that made you weep or cheer or laugh?

There are tissues for tears and champagne for celebration available (silly, I know.)




Something worth reading (and I agree):

How much does the January transfer deadline day matter?

To keep track of things:

The Telegraph's live thread for deadline day.

The Independent's live thread.

The Guardian's live thread.

The BBC's live thread.

Also, if you're bored, let's make this a regular FFA.

Comments

RE: OT.

[mrscrapbag.livejournal.com]

lol. i don't even bother delving into american football tbh. it's too capricious with all the stopping every minute or so. imo it's pretty much glorified wrestling with a 'ball' thrown in for good measure. lol

RE: OT.

[the4thjuliek.livejournal.com]

Lol, I'm trying to understand the game because I wanna know what the big deal is. But it's too confusing and yes, the stop-start-stop-start part and the 50 million ads are incredibly annoying.

RE: OT.

[mrscrapbag.livejournal.com]

yup. and their "world champion" title, like bitch pls.. no one cares about your super bowl outside of america. don't try competing with the world cup.

RE: OT.

[the4thjuliek.livejournal.com]

Lol, and they're so surprised to hear that the World Cup/CL gets more viewers than the Superbowl. Like hello, 900 million is the average for a WC. And this week, the City-Chelsea match has 6 times the viewership than the Superbowl (660 million apparently).

RE: OT.

[mrscrapbag.livejournal.com]

america with their egocentrism once again. what about el clasicos though? i heard it's one of the most watched matches aside from CL and WC.

RE: OT.

[the4thjuliek.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it is! I think 500 million watched the last one alone. I don't know the numbers but United-Arsenal and United-Liverpool are also fixtures with high viewership.

RE: OT.

[enen-chan.livejournal.com]

'world champion' - but it's mainly only americans who play american football no? at least at a professional level...

RE: OT.

[the4thjuliek.livejournal.com]

Lol, they are the World Champions of America. They even have the World Series in baseball. At first I thought it was the WC of baseball but apparently, it's contested only by American teams!

RE: OT.

[enen-chan.livejournal.com]

Seriously?!?


There's egocentric, and then there's American egocentric...

RE: OT.

[ms-geekette.livejournal.com]

Ha, there are actually a few Canadian teams in major league baseball...so World Series of North America! ;-P

(Canadians would be pretty annoyed if you called them American.)

RE: OT.

[the4thjuliek.livejournal.com]

They should actually do that! We have the South Asian series in cricket sometimes where India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka play a tournament and believe you me, it's more than insulting calling it The Indian Subcontinent Series.

RE: OT.

[ms-geekette.livejournal.com]

Well, when I said major league baseball, I actually meant the MLB. Toronto and Montreal have pro baseball teams in the league (oops, well, just Toronto now...Montreal moved to Washington)...and actually I think at least Toronto has won a "world series." But really other than some Asian countries and Central America/Caribbean, I think that's about the only other people who play baseball at a pro level...I don't think there are a ton of teams. And some of those players come to play in North America (especially Caribbean players).

The Little League World Series (for kids) is actually more of a world-wide competition. According to wikipedia, South Korea won it last.

North America: the land of games people don't really play in tons of other countries. XD

RE: OT.

[the4thjuliek.livejournal.com]

Lol, it goes for cricket that only Commonwealth countries play it. Hardly a world sport though it being the most popular sport in a country of more than 1 billion people does help its cause.

As for baseball, I know that there's a league in Japan but I'm not sure with Korea. It's surprising that it hasn't caught on here in India though. I think it's part snobbery, part money.

But apparently, there was talk about trying to re-introduce baseball at the Olympics which didn't go down well in the cricket world.

RE: OT.

[ms-geekette.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't know about Korea either. I think it's pretty popular in Japan...possibly more popular than it is in the US now. I don't think Canada has ever really cared about baseball that much.

I can see why the cricket folks are not thrilled about baseball, though. But it would be shorter games, haha.

RE: OT.

[the4thjuliek.livejournal.com]

How long are baseball matches? For cricket, it goes something like this:

Test matches: Played 8 hours over the course of 5 days.
One Day International (ODI): Played 8 hours over one day.
20/20: Twenty overs (120 ball throws) which last for about two hours.

RE: OT.

[ms-geekette.livejournal.com]

Man, I haven't watched baseball in ages, but games are generally longer than a 20/20. Maybe 3 hours? There are generally 9 innings with 3 strikes for each team. It's not a set number of pitches.

RE: OT.

[the4thjuliek.livejournal.com]

Ah! Do you guys have points or runs? (I know nothing about baseball, lol).

RE: OT.

[ms-geekette.livejournal.com]

Well, you see, they score points, but they call them runs, haha. Their "runs" are just one point. Except for a "grand slam," which is a home run with the bases loaded. That would be 4 points since 4 different players would score. And regular home runs (hitting the ball "out of the park"...out of the legal field of play in the outfield) or just hauling ass around the bases can end up getting more than one point if there are player(s) already on base(s).

I know pretty much nothing about cricket, so we are even!

RE: OT.

[the4thjuliek.livejournal.com]

Hey, it's very similar to cricket! Instead of rotating players, there are 2 batsmen who score until they both get out (through various ways) and are replaced by new ones. So if you don't get out, you can stay on the pitch and score 100, 200 runs and stuff. And in cricket, they don't run around the pitch to get the run, they run up and down a rectangular section in the middle of the pitch.

And if you hit it 'out of the park' = 6 runs
And if you hit the boundary of the pitch = 4 runs

RE: OT.

[ms-geekette.livejournal.com]

One day I'll have to dig into cricket more, but today is not that day. :-D

Baseball does have a "mercy killing" rule. I can't remember the specifics exactly, but if a team is way, way ahead of the other team by a certain inning (or maybe also a certain number of points/runs), they will call the game early. No hundreds of runs in baseball, for sure!

RE: OT.

[ms-geekette.livejournal.com]

Canada has the CFL, but they don't play the NFL officially. It's not *exactly* the same...I think their field might be a tad shorter, but otherwise it's pretty similar, I think.

Re: OT.

[blackjedii.livejournal.com]

basically the main premise of american football is everyone gets a chance to run the ball to the other end and you have to not get smacked into on the way over there
and commercial breaks

it is not american football without paid commercial advertisements

RE: Re: OT.

[enen-chan.livejournal.com]

what i've gathered from american friends and twitter, superbowl's more about the ads than the actual football... but seriously, how many ads are they able to put into a game..? and how long are these breaks to be able to have such a big deal made out of them?

RE: Re: OT.

[blackjedii.livejournal.com]

Well technically speaking American football is played in 4 15 minute rounds.
Add in the ad time and these rounds last eleven minutes meaning there is really only 44 minutes of play (which is probably enough - it's not necessarily as athletic as football-football but you are still running into each other like brick walls at high speeds)
and you stretch those 44 minutes out for 2 - 3 hours with regular/normal commercials in the meantime.

Last year was $322 million in ad revenue. I don't know the figures for this one yet. But it's the quasi-Oscars of commercials wherein you show off the best and brightest and keep what works for the next few months. I usually like the Doritos ones but it's pretty dumb.