Month: December 2015

                           As you know, 2015 has been a great year of sport, with some big matches and tournaments taking place with lots of dramatic endings. I decided with my sister, the Deputy Beast of Sport, to make a list of nominees. This list is not in order.

Jack Butland: Football

Andy Murray: Tennis

Conor McGregor: UFC

Dan Carter: Rugby

Todd Frazier: Baseball

Tom Brady: American Football

Hope Solo: Football.

I thought hard about this list. But I knew that I could only pick one of these awesome athletes. I realised that not only did the person I picked have a good year, but he really has had an amazing career up to this point. Not that the other athletes haven’t. My Beast of the Year is Conor McGregor because he has essentially conquered the UFC. He beat Chad Mendes to win the UFC championship and then he more than backed up his trash talk by beating Aldo to win the UFC championship in 13 seconds!!!!!!!!!!!! A world record. He also made the UFC lots more popular not only in Ireland but the world. He is really entertaining and seems to be able call his fights before they happen. He hasn’t lost in his professional UFC career. So for all these reasons and more Conor McGregor is my Beast  of the Year.
  

My friend Ollie and I both play for Barnet FC Academy U11. On the field we are both teammates, but I am a Man City fan and he is a Stoke fan so we decided to give two different perspectives on the Man City v Stoke game yesterday. 

The Man City Perspective.

From a Man City fan’s point of view, I think that we were all over the place. The first two goals were really poor defending. But in the second half Stoke bossed us around and in truth I think that we should have lost at least 5-0 with Joe Hart making some great saves to keep City in it and the score respectable. We only had TWO shots on target that looked like they could have given us a point. Jack Butland barely had to do anything but he still looks like he could push Joe Hart as England No1 (I know Ollie certainly thinks so!).

 Man City should be top of the table but they are dropping easy points on the road so the title race is wide open. In fairness to Stoke they were outstanding and they fully deserved to win that game.

The Stoke Point of View:

From a Stoke City fan’s point of view, Mark Hughes changed the team formation to a 4-3-3 and it worked perfectly. The front players of Shaqiri, Arnautovic and Bojan were brilliant and with great technical ability they gave the Man City defence so many problems. So I agree with Toby that it could have been 5-0.

Man City did have some injuries and without Aguero, Kompany and Toure are not quite the same team, but I still expected them to be much better, regardless of how well Stoke played. I find it odd to say it was possibly Stoke’s easiest game of the season so far, and Jack Butland’s quietest game!!!

 Stoke are really starting to hit form and have now had six clean sheets in the last eight games, and are in the semi final of the Capital Cup – so being a Stoke fan is good right now!!! I would love Stoke to play Man City in the Capital Cup final and dream Stoke play as good as they did today…..but get a few more goals. 🙂

Below is the link to the highlights of the game:

http://hoofoot.com/?match=Stoke_city_2_-_0_Manchester_City_2015_12_05

As you may have heard on the news Jamie Vardy has scored 14 goals this season. But the main thing he has done is score in 11 consecutive games! That already ties the Premier League record. However if he scores today he will set a new Premier League record and tie the all time top flight record. An amazing achievement for someone who was not even playing professional football at any level two years ago. Vardy’s 14 goals are the most in the Premier League this season and if he keeps it up he will probably score more than 35 goals this year. His achievements have basically carried Leicester to the top of the table. Considering the fact that Leicester barely survived last year it is amazing to think that they have only lost ONE GAME this season. They have also scored in every game but only because of magic man Vardy. I think that Vardy could become a star on the England team and a star in the Premier League.