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Book: Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012 Football Season
Quotes of Book: Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012
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  1. Nick Hornby _ Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012

    Is there a reason for the sudden fashion for the eight-goal tie? Maybe it's because defending is hard, and boring, and thankless, and most people who are paid a six-figure sum weekly do very little that is hard or boring or thankless.
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  2. Nick Hornby _ Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012

    When they – I cannot bring myself to use the first-person plural in this instance.
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  3. Nick Hornby _ Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012

    But enough already of what grammarians will recognize as the third conditional: if + pluperfect + would.
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  4. Nick Hornby _ Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012

    In retrospect, their best chance of doing it this way was against Arsenal, in the game they won 8–2. They only needed another nine that afternoon – and they missed at least fifteen good chances.
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  5. Nick Hornby _ Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012

    I watched a lot of drunk players, too, I learned from the autobiographies published after they had retired.
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  6. Nick Hornby _ Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012

    When even the scrupulously detached BBC is exhorting us to talk to God, you know something is going on.
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  7. Nick Hornby _ Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012

    I have no idea what the record for being effectively dead is, but Fabrice Muamba didn't seem to have broken it.
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  8. Nick Hornby _ Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012

    Manchester United would have retained the Premiership if they'd won this game – or, of course, if they'd won any of the other games they drew during the course of the season. Or, seeing as one extra point would have done the trick, if they'd drawn any of the games they lost, especially the two against Manchester City. Or, seeing as they lost the trophy on goal difference, if their victories had been achieved with a bigger winning margin.
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  9. Nick Hornby _ Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012

    We are, a lot of the time, baffled by the news we see on the front pages of our newspapers, often because the stories are complex, and we missed the beginning of them anyway. {How far back do we have to go to find the roots of the Euro crisis? To 2008? 1999, when the currency came into being? 1992? 1945?} That is one of the reasons why natural disasters and murders and cases involving missing children become so involving: we understand them.
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  10. Nick Hornby _ Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012

    During the season, fans tend to observe, in as many complicated ways and with as much detail as we can come up with, only that a winning team is very good, and a losing team is hopeless. My mother or Prince Charles or probably a Martian could make the same observation, but their views would be discounted on the grounds of ignorance.
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  11. Nick Hornby _ Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012

    During the game, we find endless ways of saying that our team needs to score goals while at the same time not letting any in: 'We need a goal here,' 'We don't want to let one in now,' and so on. {'Here' and 'now' are the words intended to indicate a keen understanding of the complex nature of the particular game, but in truth they mean nothing. Teams always need to score, and never want to let one in.}
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  12. Nick Hornby _ Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012

    For us it is not comparable, the FA Cup and Champions League,' Arsène Wenger said before Arsenal played Leeds in the FA Cup. 'The Champions League is compulsory. The FA Cup is something that is for enjoyment … The basis of our life at the top level is dictated by the championship. If we can add on top of that the FA Cup it is fantastic.
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