International break

Well they come around quite often these days, and let's be honest we both love and hate the international breaks. On one hand, we get to see the nations of the world compete, however, it always seems a worse week without the league at the end of it!

For England, we faced Montenegro away and it ended in what seemed a pretty desperate 1-1 draw, first half was fine for us (apart from the lack of taking our chances) however what I witnessed in the second half was quite frankly depressing. We fell apart, and what's worse is that we could all see it happening from kick off, except for Roy Hodgson, I believe he is a good manager for us but there needed to be changes a lot earlier in that match. 

We didn't have our strongest team out and in my opinion Cleverly and Welbeck should have started on the bench, with the likes of Lampard/Parker playing in the middle while we could of had Oxlade-Chamberlain out wide. Of course we are lacking Wilshere and Walcott through injury and for me, they are key players for this team to work - just look at the friendly against Brazil. 

We can still qualify if we just play to our ability, we are the strongest team in our group but we are simply not showing it, why are the players being paid a ludicrous amount of money to display these half hearted kind of performances I'll never know. 

England vs Europe

Well, as I write this post, there is only three English teams left in European competitions, so here's a little round up of us Brits against the rest...

Of course everyone knows by now of Arsenal's glorified but overall fruitless win against Bayern Munich last night, if they played like that in the first leg they would probably still be in the competition but as it is, that was the end of any English club competing for the champions league so lets move on.

The Europa league fixtures were played tonight and in one of the most exciting fixtures Inter Milan went about repairing that 3-0 loss to Spurs. In a thrilling match Inter went 3-0 up to take it to extra time only for that man Adebayor to come along with a goal made for the born and bred poacher, it ended 4-1 with Tottenham through on away goals.

Newcastle also left it late with pretty much the last move of the match Cisse popping up to connect with a fine cross to head them through against the Russian money men of Anzhi Makhachkala. So two of the three teams in England through leaving just Chelsea to battle it out against Stauer Bucharest.

After suffering to a 1-0 defeat in Romania, the blues had it all to do, but much like at the weekend in Manchester, they had a poor first half followed by an inspired second, with Torres, no that's not a mistake, scoring the winner for Chelsea to hold on to a 3-1 win.

As much as it gets slated as a smaller European competition, in my opinion, the Europa league can yield just as much excitement as its big brother. So as we head into the quarter finals, expect some good football and a good chance for all three English clubs to go all the way!

The rules of the game

In light of the 'controversial' red card in the Manchester United - Real Madrid game, I thought I'd do a post on my view footballs rules and regulations in this particular area. Now, for me, Nani's red card was definitely the correct decision (and of course I'll be accused of biased and United fans will disagree), for one, it was regarded as dangerous play - which seems reasonable as Nani has, albeit inadvertently, studded another player in the ribs! The counter argument is that he was not looking at the player and there was no intent... So what, it is still dangerous play, I could shoot someone without looking, or intending to cause major harm, it doesn't change the fact that I've gone and blown somebodies head off does it? Okay, so maybe that was a poor analogy but you get the point, Nani still put another player at risk of serious injury.

At this point you would usually get many a united fan hurling abuse and possibly pointing to the fact that a yellow card would have been suitable and that the ref has just ruined a major European cup tie. Well, first of all, maybe a yellow would have sufficed, I wouldn't have been surprised if got either yellow or red. However, to say it ruined the game, as I have heard many a commentator exclaim, is in my opinion, complete rubbish. Let's look at one perfect example of how that statement is ridiculous; Barcelona v Chelsea 2012 champions league semi-final second leg, Chelsea go down to ten men deservedly after Terry made the mistake of kneeing another player in the back for no reason, did this ruin the game... No.

The game remained tense and exciting, ending up in that memorable Torres equaliser to seal the blues aggregate victory or the even more memorable Gary Neville score-gasm. It was plain to see that Chelsea parked the proverbial bus while Barcelona squandered a few chances and at no point did anyone say the red card ruined the game.

So why should this be said about Manchester United? Clearly because they lost, in my eyes it was still very competitive, United had a number of big chances and definitely piled the pressure on Madrid. It is clear to me that matches in many cases have been made even the more exciting with a dismissal in my eyes; red cards change games but never ruin the contest.