-
On this day one year ago, September 30, 1997...West Bromwich Albion crushed QPR 5-1; QPR were alone at the bottom with 3 points from 7 games; and John Gregory was set to depart..QPR (4-4-2): Camp; Rehman (Curtis HT), Cullip, Stewart, Barker (Bignot 60); Ainsworth, Bolder, Sahar (Ephraim 60), Rowlands; Moore, Blackstock. Click to continue reading...

Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has today praised referee Rob Styles. United profited from an extremely poor penalty decision from Styles during their 2-0 win against Bolton at Old Trafford on Saturday.

Cristiano Ronaldo was taken down by Bolton defender Jlloyd Samuel, however replays clearly showed Samuel getting a touch on the ball. Click to continue reading...

In light of the recent accusations that Lyon get favored by arbitration by getting calls decided their way and the brouhaha over video replays, I thought I would post the results of an in depth investigation by Nice Matin, who took a look at every single error in every single Ligue 1 match in the 2007/2008 season.

Click to continue reading...

Watford captain Jay DeMerit has told Soccerphile only video replays will stop a repeat of the phantom goal 'scored' by Reading on Saturday.

The Hornets were the victims of outrageous fortune in the 13th minute when John Eustace put the ball out of play wide of the post. Working on the advice of assistant Nigel Bannister, referee Stuart Atwell stunned the Vicarage Road crowd and the 22 players, who were running back in expectation of a goal kick, by signalling a goal. Click to continue reading...

Today's big game in the Premier League saw Chelsea and Manchester draw 1-1. In truth both Luis Filipe Scolari and Sir Alex Ferguson will be reasonably happy with the point although with Chelsea being at home, Scolari may feel a little upset.

Man United's Ji-Sung Park put the visitors in front after Chelsea keeper Peter Cech parried Dimitar Berbatov's straight into the path of the on-rushing Park. Click to continue reading...

Arsenal have today beaten Bolton Wanderers 3-1 to move to the top of the Premier League table. The home side took a surprise lead after just 15 minutes at the Reebok when Kevin Davies headed in a Joey O'Brien corner.

But the lead didn't last long. After some intense pressure from the Gunners, Emmanuel Eboue scored his first goal for the club getting onto the end of a Nicklas Bendtner ball through, although replays suggested he may of been offside. Click to continue reading...

You don't expect Persik to get much on their travels, especially when they are shorn of their leading scorer Christian Gonzalez, and last night was n o exception as they got beat 2-0 by Persela at a poorly lit Surajaya Stadium in Lamongan.

Giving away free kicks on the edge of the area is never a good idea when you have Marcio Souza ready to have a pop but the Persik defence did it time and time again. Click to continue reading...

Make sure you see all the replays. Looks like the Inter guy got jobbed.

And the other dude clearly sold it like, well, an Italian league soccer player. This is why this sport struggles to make it in this country. Click to continue reading...

Having let it settle a bit, I thought it appropriate to revisit what happened in Kiev yesterday. A definite winneable game was blown thanks to some poor finishing. It isn't really much more than that. The penalty awarded to Kiev was without doubt a dodgy decision. A first glance at it and it look like Sagna tackled Ognjen Vukojevic in the box.

Click to continue reading...

Arsene Wenger felt a draw would be a good result against Kiev and given the circumstances I suppose it was.

A last-gasp equaliser from William Gallas salvaged a point but in truth we should have won that game. We had the chances in the first half to have made life much more comfortable for ourselves but failed to take them.

Click to continue reading...

Adelaide holding out against Antlers in Japan - Paul Reid missed a three-on-one with the Antler keeper. TV must be Japanese as there are no replays of any Adelaide moves - 3 or 4 of anything the Japanese do.

Japanese teams on the look out for A-League Australians - Umm where are all these players gonna come from? Click to continue reading...

Before I begin writing my predictions for this weekend, I would invite everyone into the EPL Talk Chat this weekend. Staring from 7:30 am Eastern/12:30 pm UK on Saturday and from 8:20 am Easter/1:20 pm UK on Sunday, join myself and many others as we discuss all the action from the Barclays Premier League.

Click to continue reading...

So, I'm expecting Capello to be knighted before the week is out. The English sure love their revenge.

If it's too good to be true, chances are it is.

I'm hoping and praying the English media won't get carried away with themselves, but I know without even looking that they will. I actually almost feel bad for Theo Walcott; scoring a hat-trick in Croatia in an amazing feat, but the hype he'll get and pressure he'll be under are going to be absurd. Click to continue reading...

Toronto FC has signed forward Chad Barrett to a four-year extension, club officials announced Wednesday. Barrett was brought in by Toronto on July 27th as part of the deal that sent Brian McBride's rights to the Chicago Fire; Toronto also received a 2009 first-round draft pick and conditional future considerations in the trade. Click to continue reading...

Third Half Chat times this weekend:

Saturday from 9:30 and 7:25 pm.

Sunday from 8:15 am.

As I forgot to mention the full match review games on this week's show, here they are. Middlesbrough v Stoke City (The Gods must not like me at the moment with Stoke City) and Sunderland v Manchester City.

Click to continue reading...

Predictably, much has been made of the Reds lack of a cutting edge up front without an obvious out and out striker available to Fergie. But on the evidence of the Champions performance against Portsmouth on Monday night there's little worry about, with Rooney and in particular Carlos Tevez looking razor sharp. Click to continue reading...

Matchday one is now gone and we look forward to another weekend of action from the Barclays Premier League. As I mentioned last week, I'm going to be tracking my performance in the same manner IKTS does.

Even I will admit I was pretty bad by predictions standards last week. Only six out of ten correct, none on the nose.

Click to continue reading...

The Red Bulls are on a winning streak. In August. I swear.

With some gutsy play in the face of adversity, the Red Bulls lost their two defensive anchors in Parke and Cichero and still managed to blank the Canadians 2-0.

The first half was utter domination by a hungry home side, as the Red Bulls made Sutton work for the money.

Click to continue reading...

Chat times this weekend at the Third Half:

Saturday 7:30 am and 7:15 pm

Sunday 8:15 am.

I'll also be using Stickam this weekend as I haven't heard anything yet about the issues the client I'm using now is having.

If you followed the EPL Talk Predictions League last year (that I started before moving to CSRN), I finished inside the top five (I think it was fourth, but I can't remember).

Click to continue reading...

Today saw what was effectively Arsenal's under-21 side go down to an experienced Juventus team. The only goal in the match came after veteran striker David Trezeguet turned in a wayward free kick. Replays showed that the France striker was well offside. The result, however, was not important. It is still pre-season and the match [. Click to continue reading...

Last night, the Wizards and the Chicago Fire played to a 0-0 draw that saw both teams have some decent chances and a few PK calls turned away. Throughout the game, it seemed that it was Chicago that had the better of the chances, as Wizards goalkeeper had to come up big on multiple occasions to keep Kansas City in the game. Click to continue reading...

In her conference call about her injury, Abby Wambach mentioned receiving cards and emails of support from players around the world on different teams. Not everyone was feeling sad on her behalf, though. Here's an email I received:

Just wanted to comment on your article on Abby Wambach.
As a football journalist, I usually have a lot of sympathy for players when they get injured, especially in the course of a game. Click to continue reading...

NBC has unveiled what looks the most comprehensive Web site I've seen yet that covers the men's and women's soccer tournaments at next months Olympics.

Hey, you'd come with something like that as well if you'd invested jillions of dollars for the rights to the Olympics

Check it out here.

Click to continue reading...

(Apologies for this post getting up several days late. It was supposed to run in mid-week but a technical glitch caused it not to be posted.)

What happens when a team that can't win two in a row faces a team that can't win?

You get a tie.

Click to continue reading...

Suarez' miss from the penalty spot.

Photo by Scott Varley

Game story.

Box score.

Here's Claudio Suarez on missing the first half penalty kick:

"I feel bad for having missed it because it influenced the result. If I'd put it in it would have changed the game.

Click to continue reading...

I'm watching the San Jose-Colorado match and I saw two things that I you don't see every day:

- San Jose scored a goal
- Frank Yallop got sent off

First, the goal. Ryan Johnson smashed a diving header past Bouna Coundoul with about 30 minutes left in the game. Unfortunately for the 'Quakes, Conor Casey equalized about five minutes after. Click to continue reading...

The whole point of last night's friendly with Burnley FC was to impress upon Burnley's millionaire director Brendan Flood and his organization that the Carolina RailHawks were a club worthy of partnering with for future player and business development opportunities.
By all impressions, both the players on the pitch and the front office did their job impeccably well last night. Click to continue reading...

For those of you who are taking a break from the European leagues, there still is plenty of soccer on TV to keep you going. We have the MLS games on every weekend and there are also plenty of great matches from some of the South American leagues on GOL TV this weekend including replays of the final matches of the Colombian League season between Boyacá Chicó and America de Cali. Click to continue reading...

We had very high hopes for this match, didn't we? When pressed, this was going to be the classic of the two matches. The match that would repeated in slow motion with a light opera and indie rock soundtrack. As it turned out, though, Russia vs Spain was a comparatively one-sided match, won convincingly by Spain against a Russian team that really failed to turn up at all. Click to continue reading...

A really sad thing happened this week:
There has been a story on the local news about a murder at a hotel in Brooklyn Center (a suburb of Minneapolis). The victim it turns out was a guy I had met several years ago named Mohamed Jama.
He was a great guy that everyone knew around the Cedar Riverside neighborhood, and one of my biggest supporters when I helped start a soccer club there. Click to continue reading...

The third of this amazing tournament's quarter-finals managed to live up to the high standards set by the previous two, as the impressive Russians, coached impeccably by the Dutch master, Guus Hiddink, overcame the Netherlands in a superb display of attacking football.
With the creative talents of Andrei Arshavin playing in a slightly withdrawn position and the tireless work of Pavlyuchenko up front, Hiddink's men always look more dangerous than Van Basten's team, who despite the majority of them having had eight days rest, looked tired and lethargic compared to the Russians. Click to continue reading...

I thought for my first post that I would start this off by talking about the one thing in the modern game of soccer (I am American therefore I call it soccer, why I don't really know) that really bothers me the most and that is the use of penalty kicks to end a game. Nothing has ruined more great soccer games then penalty kicks. Click to continue reading...

I thought for my first post that I would start this off by talking about the one thing in the modern game of soccer (I am American therefore I call it soccer, why I don't really know) that really bothers me the most and that is the use of penalty kicks to end a game. Nothing has ruined more great soccer games then penalty kicks. Click to continue reading...

They say as a goalkeeper ages he becomes greater at his craft. I believe that the statement is true. How can you fault Gianluigi Buffon, with such a repertoire in between the sticks, the man commands respect for his ability, and is rightly so rated the best goalkeeper on the planet.

I won't go into the details here as both Steve and Liviu's coverage of Euro 2008 pretty much sums up the save you are about to witness again (if you have not seen it already, be ready to gasp in awe).

Click to continue reading...

So onto day three of the European Championships....with the home nations not being in it there is defintely less media coverage. This means it's tricker for the early kick-offs 'cause I need to live match updates.

Worry not though 'cause UEFA.org has one :

UEFA.org Euro 2008 live match updates

and it looks like Sky do too :

Sky Sports Live Euro 2008 updates

as do the ever reliable Times

Euro 2008 Match centre - live scores

The beeb are doing live match centres as well as their ever popular virtual replays. Click to continue reading...