Champions league football is back! We all love that wonderful theme tune, and last night we were given some great football matches to go along with the return of footballs biggest competition.
Some brilliant goals to mention as well as results; first Cristiano Ronaldo's hat trick finished off with a tremendous solo run to cap off Real Madrid's demolishing of Galatasaray 1-6.
Another goal came from the game in Greece between Olympiakos and PSG, Weiss with a nutmeg and a shimmy to go round two defenders before slotting it home, sadly for him thats as good as it got with PSG going on to win 1-4.
Both Manchester clubs started with convincing wins, United beating Bayern Leverkusen 4-2, while City cleaned up in the Czech Republic 0-3.
Tonight Chelsea, Arsenal, and Celtic play. For me Chelsea have the easiest job at home to FC Basel and should win convincingly, Arsenal have a tough match against Marseille so while a win is not out of reach, a draw would also be a good away result. Celtic have the hardest task up against AC Milan away with the likes of Balotelli, would do very well to get anything from the San Siro.
As a Chelsea fan, I for one can't wait for another European journey to begin!
Wednesday, 18 September 2013
Tuesday, 13 August 2013
Football is back!
The Premier league season is so close we can almost touch, and boy am I excited!
With the championship and lower leagues underway as well as the Bundesliga and Ligue 1, fantasy football leagues are thriving and table predictions are flying around especially with the transfer window still wide open, so here are my predictions...
Lets start at the top; in my opinion it will be a lot closer than last year and for me Manchester City's squad looks the strongest, in particular i'm looking forward to seeing the attacking talents of Navas from Sevilla as well as Fernandinho from Donetsk.
So with City first it could go either way between Chelsea and United for 2nd and 3rd both look strong and while neither have signed many new players, Chelsea have got players back from loan that look really promising, Romelu Lukaku for one proved himself in the Premiership with West Brom while Kevin De Bruyne looked very accomplished in the premier league.
At the bottom, my guess is as good as yours, perhaps the three promoted teams will fall back down although the likes of Stoke look fairly precarious.
Any how, the season looks like it could one of the most exciting ever from top to bottom, and I couldn't be more happy to say... Football is back!
Saturday, 15 June 2013
Season 2013-2014
It's that time of the year again when us football fans wallow in glum during the off season, with transfer rumours good and bad flying around at the usual rate, what have we got to look forward to next year?
Well as a chelsea fan I had the joy of Mourinho returning and hopefully for a much longer reign, he told the press that this time he looks to build an empire from his young team and this looks like it could be another successful term for 'the special one'.
Manchester United begin the season without Sir Alex Ferguson for the first time in over two decades and most other club supporters are very happy about this, next season will see if David Moyes can continue their success or will he stutter and splutter before getting some silver wear as a red?
Manchester City have now got Pellegrini at the helm, untested in the premier league but with very good records at previous clubs like Malaga. With surely another big budget and also players already on their way to City like Fernandinho and Jesus Navas, the midfield and attack of the sky blues looks quite frankly terrifying.
Well I for one cannot wait for next season and until August arrives we will just have to settle for friendlies and internationals to get us through!
Well as a chelsea fan I had the joy of Mourinho returning and hopefully for a much longer reign, he told the press that this time he looks to build an empire from his young team and this looks like it could be another successful term for 'the special one'.
Manchester United begin the season without Sir Alex Ferguson for the first time in over two decades and most other club supporters are very happy about this, next season will see if David Moyes can continue their success or will he stutter and splutter before getting some silver wear as a red?
Manchester City have now got Pellegrini at the helm, untested in the premier league but with very good records at previous clubs like Malaga. With surely another big budget and also players already on their way to City like Fernandinho and Jesus Navas, the midfield and attack of the sky blues looks quite frankly terrifying.
Well I for one cannot wait for next season and until August arrives we will just have to settle for friendlies and internationals to get us through!
Tuesday, 14 May 2013
Measure of success
The other day I was having one of those classic football arguments with a friend, the old my club's better than your club stuff, but how do you actually measure the success of a football club?
Now I'm pretty sure most people would turn to the trophy cabinet at this point, but some may say that football is a business and money has become the most important. As a Chelsea fan, I myself am sitting quite smug at the moment, of course there's the whole glory hunter and buying the league taunts I suffer through daily but that doesn't change our recent success, other clubs however may be a bit more harder to please so look at the history books for comfort.
Looking at it closely I came to realise what football is - football is a sport, a form of entertainment and so it seems that the most entertaining clubs should be given the title of most successful, maybe your Barcelona's and Real Madrid's come into contention for their style of play and wonderful football.
Well, for me, any club and every club can be entertaining. It only takes one match, one player, one goal to inspire all the passion and excitement in the world - so that just leaves me to say we can all be happy with the true excitement of our football teams, with or without a trophy.
Now I'm pretty sure most people would turn to the trophy cabinet at this point, but some may say that football is a business and money has become the most important. As a Chelsea fan, I myself am sitting quite smug at the moment, of course there's the whole glory hunter and buying the league taunts I suffer through daily but that doesn't change our recent success, other clubs however may be a bit more harder to please so look at the history books for comfort.
Looking at it closely I came to realise what football is - football is a sport, a form of entertainment and so it seems that the most entertaining clubs should be given the title of most successful, maybe your Barcelona's and Real Madrid's come into contention for their style of play and wonderful football.
Well, for me, any club and every club can be entertaining. It only takes one match, one player, one goal to inspire all the passion and excitement in the world - so that just leaves me to say we can all be happy with the true excitement of our football teams, with or without a trophy.
Wednesday, 17 April 2013
Football finish line
Well here we are, coming to the last stretch of fixtures in the season around Europe and the premier league so here's my run down of what we could see in the run in to that final day!
In the premier league of course, many people now expect Manchester United to take the title - and rightly so, although they've not been their best every game this season, they have shown us yet again that consistency wins the premiership. They have not had sporadic dips in form like those below them so it'll be more than a miracle to see City catch up.
For the champions league spots everything is still to play for, City should take 2nd, but after that 3rd and 4th spots are up for grabs between Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, and even Everton. I would say Chelsea would be favourites with just a couple of points behind Arsenal who sit in 3rd but they have a couple of games in hand over their London rivals. However, as we know, the league is unpredictable so can change at anytime and I believe these places will not be settled until the last day.
As for relegation Reading and QPR look as though they're going to have to pray to stay in the league as both are stuck at the bottom with 24 points, the last place with 5 games to go is however still very much open, from Wigan up to 13th placed Newcastle there is still a danger and all the teams involved will be clawing at the points like no tomorrow to escape the drop!
So as we have arrived at the tail end of the season we have seen some great games, contentious decisions and absolute world class goals. But it's not quite over yet so hold on to your hats cos it's gonna be one bumpy ride!
Friday, 29 March 2013
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.
Thursday, 14 March 2013
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!
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!
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