Dutch champions PSV will probably be without their highly rated playmaker Ibrahim Afellay for the Champions League match against Liverpool.

Dutch giants PSV lost their first Champions League match 3-0 against Atletico Madrid and need a good result in the away match against Liverpool. However, they will most likely be missing key man Ibrahim Afellay. Click to continue reading...

Morning all. We've got the Champions League again tonight and I'm pretty excited about it. Not only is European competition great to watch but it gives us another chance to rebound from the defeat to Hull before we play in the league again. It's FC Port tonight, a Portuguese team known for producing great young talents such as Deco, Paulo Ferreira, Ricardo Carvalho, Maniche, Costinha, Benni McCarthy, Jose Bosingwa and Ricardo Quaresma, and won't be an easy match to say the least. Click to continue reading...

How did New York win the Super Bowl? They peaked at the end of their season, going into the playoffs. That's a different sport, of course, but it's a good lesson to remember: to win a title, you have to finish strong. And so far, the Rapids are doing just that.

It's hard to say that the Rapids don't have momentum right now.

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This game had classic written all over and it sure fitted up to its billing as Persik took a surprise three points from Bung Karno Stadium.

You never know what you're getting from Arcan Iurie's men on the road. Last time out at Persela they were feeble but not today. Not after Christian Gonzalez was allowed space in the box after 4' minutes and gave the White Tigers an early lead. Click to continue reading...

There have been many critics of Jermaine Pennat – a good portion of them Liverpool fans – yet I have always failed to understand the reason for all the negativity. I appreciate that he's probably not good enough, or at least not consistent enough, to be playing each week for a team with title ambitions but, as a squad player, he isn't a bad option. Click to continue reading...

Gerrard scored his 100th goal, only for the referee to disallow it for some unknown reason. It's one thing for the crowd to be labelled the 12th man, but when the referee is the 12th man, it's a bit of a sucker punch. Can't really blame the referee for 2 points lost though.

The harsh reality is we lacked the creativity required to carve open a stubborn Stoke City who were determined to defend for 90 minutes. Click to continue reading...

Serious bloggers actually blog immediately after the game.

The rest of us go to Oktoberfest.

Game story from a Galaxy perspective.

The United view.

By the way, David Beckham had yet another sub-par game complete with errant passes, petulant behavior and little creativity.

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I didn't watch the Valencia-Almeria match yesterday as the game wasn't shown here in the United States. So instead of reveling in our 2-2 draw against Unai Emery's former squad, I was treated to the New England Patriots pasting my New York Jets (the Levante of the National Football League) with a quarterback who hadn't started since high school .

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Devoid of ideas and creativity, Brazil were held to a goalless World Cup qualifying draw at home to a 10-man Bolivia team which had shipped 16 goals in losing their previous four away games. Click to continue reading...

Six points in the bag and little doubt the US will advance to the hexagonal. However the truth be told I think the United States finishes third in the hexagonal on current form and must improve its linkup play and general possession play in the final four matches of this qualifying stage. With this in mind this is the lineup I would like to see tomorrow assuming the bucket is being used by Bradley again.

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UK qualifier results
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I don't like the look of this, I'll be honest. England again devoid of creativity until the only Englishman in the team that could pull on a yellow and blue jersey for Brasil tomorrow if asked showed up. Chelsea winger Joe Cole, again, the catalyst for the win. Click to continue reading...

I was questioning yesterday whether Juande Ramos was happy with the performance of the Spurs hierarchy in the transfer market. Well it seems like he is judging by his interview with tottenhamhotspur.com

"I have little doubt that we have a squad of greater overall quality now than when I began at this club a year ago," Ramos said. Click to continue reading...

Many stories doing the rounds indicate that Arsenal have wrapped up the signature of Sporting Lisbon midfielder Miguel Veloso for £15M.  Veloso has been on many clubs radar including Manchester United, Chelsea, Everton and AC Milan. Veloso is 22 years old and is a dynamic central midfielder who can replicate the energy and creativity that has [. Click to continue reading...

IT clearly wasn't in Rafael Benitez's plans to get to a day from the end of the transfer window and be watching Gareth Barry playing for the opposition.

But it was the players missing from his own squad that proved the greatest frustration for the Liverpool manager.

Steven Gerrard's absence already assured Liverpool would be suffering from a lack of creativity – but having to make do for an hour without Fernando Torres, the one player who can make something happen out of nothing, left Benitez on a hiding to nothing. Click to continue reading...

Watching Liverpool set up stall for a draw against Aston Villa was very disappointing. With the quality we've got in the squad (should be enough to cover the loss of Torres & Gerrard), I had hoped for a lot more ambition from Rafa and the lads.

Playing a 4-1-4-1 formation with Keane as a left winger didn't seem like a smart move, and the problem was compounded by bringing on Ngog to play the lone striker role. Click to continue reading...

Newcastle United are on the brink of capturing their third South American of the summer with Uruguay international Ignacio Gonzalez en route to Tyneside from Valencia. (setanta)

The midfielder has only just agreed to join the Che from Uruguayan club Danubio but will immediately be loaned to The Magpies for the coming season to join Fabricio Coloccini and Jonas Gutierrez in Kevin Keegan's squad. Click to continue reading...

By 1970's Gooner Midfield inspiration is what was clearly lacking against Fulham and midfield inspiration is what we got against Twente in the Champions League in the form of Cesc Fabregas. The question is what will Arsenal do if and when Cesc is injured or unavailable in some other way. There is simply no one ready to replace his trickery, vision and creativity. Click to continue reading...

After another two hours of torturous footballing tedium interspersed with (inevitable) periods of headless chikenry and a disturbing lack of creativity, here are my ratings for Liverpool FC's alleged 'team'.

Reina – 8

Man of the Match. If not for Reina's superb saves, Liverpool would be in the UEFA cup right now. Click to continue reading...

Papa Bouba Diop does, however, get points for creativity as he attempts to put Anderson out for the count. (AFP/FIFA) Click to continue reading...

Despite scoring in both Premier League matches so far, Tottenham have been pretty toothless, although many would argue that's more down to the lack of creativity and invention than firepower. Nevertheless, while Darren Bent continues to plough a lone furrow up front, Spurs could be short of goals and it's . Click to continue reading...

Liverpool have won their opening two premiership games for the first time in a staggering 14 years. Yes, you read that right: 14 years.

The last time the club achieved this seemingly rare feat was back in the 1994-95 season. Roy Evans was at the helm; club legends John Barnes, Jan Molby and Ian Rush were still going strong; Phil Babb and Neil Ruddock were in defence (*shudder*); Kenny Dalglish managed Blackburn to an improbable Premiership triumph and Robbie Fowler scored 31 goals in all competitions. Click to continue reading...

There's a buzz on the streets of Valencia this weekend that has nothing to do with our beloved Valencia CF. What could it possibly be?

If you're an F-1 Formula One racing fan, you know that Valencia hosts the European Grand Prix this weekend, an opportunity for the city to show off a little, show the world how far they've come the last few years.

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Instead of rambling on about England, plucking problems out of the air, I have decided there is a better way to find England's problems and their solutions. All of the match reports are written within an hour or two of the match's climax. The reports wrote down England's most obvious deficiency's. The one's that caused that awful performance. Click to continue reading...

What an upset!

I didn't even give the U.S. a chance. I thought they looked too slow and didn't have enough offense or creativity to stand a chance against Brazil.

While it may have been lacking throughout the game, there was certain enough creative firepower in the goal scored. What a confident strike by Carli Lloyd. Click to continue reading...

Germany played like Germany and Brazil played like Brazil, and it was the latter's free-flowing creativity that won the day. Birgit Prinz opened the scoring after ten minutes, and for much of the first half, Germany enjoyed possession and some good chances. Click to continue reading...

Germany played like Germany and Brazil played like Brazil, and it was the latter's free-flowing creativity that won the day. Birgit Prinz opened the scoring after ten minutes, and for much of the first half, Germany enjoyed possession and some good chances. Click to continue reading...

Arsenal 1 (Nasri 4) West Brom 0 Premiership With a side still depleted through injury, and with a midfield still awaiting bolstering before the end of the transfer window, the early matches in this season are simply about getting the right result. Shorn of much of the side's creativity, Saturday's opening match was always going to be a close [. Click to continue reading...

Manchester United and Newcastle captured the first draw of the 2008-2009 Premiership season and from the 60th minute on, it was clear that Manchester Untied were never going to break through the Newcastle defense.

Shay Given was extremely confident in goal for the Magpies and the fact that most of Man U's second half chances were either off target or lacking in creativity, certainly helped his cause. Click to continue reading...

Well, this game was supposed to be the game when Boro's season kicked into action. Instead another poor defensive display and a lack of creativity in the final third led to Stevenage being beaten by newly promoted Eastbourne by 3 goals to 1. Graham Westley made 3 changes from the team that started against Wrexham on [. Click to continue reading...

Goalkeeper Zach Thornton made his Chivas USA debut a day after being traded by New York, striker Ante Razov was out injured and the Fire's John Thorrington (Chadwick School) was man of the match as Chicago Saturday downed an unconvincing Chivas USA, 1-0.

How much did Chivas USA miss the midfield creativity and spark of Sacha Kljestan?

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QPR went down 1-0 although the Official Site is pretty positive about the game and Ian Dowie speaks about QPR having dominated. On the bright side, it was only a pre-season friendly and Gorkss set-to-be-signed came on as a sub! On the other hand, Kilmarnock had lost 0-3 to Wolves on Saturday and fans are not really assuaged by hearing club comments on how they dominated but failed to score (especially when the club has failed to sign a slew of available strikers). Click to continue reading...

In the long line of exciting Footballers from Romania, Gabriel Torje is emerging in the footsteps of the regions tradition. The youngest player of Romania's U21 squad at only eighteen years of age commands respect on the pitch for his creativity and flourish. Plying his trade for the illustrious FC Click to continue reading...

He didn't come, he didn't see and he certainly didn't conquer. The Colorado Rapids today traded college midfielder, Bruno Guarda, to FC Dallas. In return, they received multiple draft picks and an undisclosed allocation. The Rapids picked up Guarda in the MLS lottery last week and the much vaunted SMU star immediately became the subject of many approaches from other teams. Click to continue reading...

Robbie Keane and Fernando Torres are likely to form the most potent strike partnership we've had since Dalglish and Rush. Torres has his awesome 'bounce song', Robbie is deserving of his own too.
I think it's fair to say that Scousers can be counted on to come up with a cool new song rather than sing a Manchester United 'song' (the mere thought of the Kop singing there's only one Keano makes me cringe). Click to continue reading...

Given the focus that this blog has given to United's roster this year, I thought it would be appropriate to base our Mid-Season Review specifically on the roster moves that the team has made. In part 1, we will look at United's acquisitions, meaning the players that the team added since the end of last season that they didn't have to give up anything for. Click to continue reading...