In my very humble opinion of course. Having initially railed against the generally negative reaction to Hodgson’s appointment as England manager, I find myself sharing in the antipathy towards his squad selection for Poland Ukraine. His position is no lose – if England fail, he can cite the lack of preparation time; perform above expectation and the credit is all his. Such a position called for bold selection, yet instead he’s relied on the same old tired and proven short formula. Few agree he’s selected the best combination of players from the options at his disposal. I hope to be proven wrong come June, but I don’t see this squad making it out of the group phase.

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The Champions League Final is upon us once again, and as is the modern norm, the ecstasy supporters feel seeing their side reach the pinnacle of club football soon subsides to the scramble for a gold dust ticket. It is a fact of life that demand will always outstrip supply for such occasions, but could UEFA do more to ensure tickets end up in the ‘right’ hands? This, and other questions, answered by our man on the inside.

There were complaints last season over the allocation Barcelona and Manchester United supporters received for the Champions League Final at Wembley. Chelsea and Bayern Munich are receiving an even smaller percentage of the stadiums capacity this Saturday. Is this fair?

The percentages are marginally smaller while the stadium is significantly smaller. I’m not sure what the actual capacity will be at the final but I’d imagine there’ll be circa 30,000 less tickets available in total. The fan percentage was cut, but so were other areas (even staff allocations). I think it’ll be a while before the final is in a sub-75,000 seater stadium again.

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One of the most bizarre, roller coaster of a football season that I can remember has been punctuated by the sacking of Kenny Dalglish and I feel numb. To look at the league table, the case for a change in management is there is black and white. The facts are cold and hard. No amount of references to statistics, woodwork striking or chance conversion rates can mask the disappointment that this league season was. 8th place, a lack of coherence and an appalling home record. All things to which an objective observer could point and say the club has delivered an under par performance and somebody should be held accountable.

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Newdless shares with us his unique and peculiar thoughts on the footballing week…

Congratulations are in order for City (despite them technically not leading the race until after everyone else had crossed the finish line). Putting my United hat on for a minute though, I’ve been trying to pin down what made the difference, and found there are two different lines of thought. The first is the excuses. Would United have picked up the 1 extra point required if Vidic had been fit all season? It’s more than likely they would have. How about if THAT penalty hadn’t been awarded to Newcastle at Old Trafford? There’s an almost definite extra two points…but this is all subjective. If United had picked up the extra point or two somewhere along the line, who’s to say they wouldn’t have then squandered them somewhere else?

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I hate the play offs-almost as much as Skysports appear to love them- and the fact that Huddersfield are usually spectacularly poor in them certainly contributes to this.    As soon as it became clear that we weren’t going to go up automatically, I immediately started to dread them, I even briefly started hoping we could drop out and just finish seventh as I couldn’t stand the pain anymore.

However, our poor form in the past month have actually dampened the expectations enough for it actually not to matter as much, or just allow me to relax a little about it, as I just don’t think we’ll actually do it, so why worry anymore.

Now it isn’t that I’ve lost the love for Huddersfield, that’s interwoven into my fibres, but I have lost the belief. Standing in Old Trafford with t-shirts raining down heavily on the pitch, as we go down 3-0 to Peterborough, was a soul sapping experience, and made the play offs something to be dreaded rather than something to enjoy.

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Well, well, well. What do you want me to say? It’s the end, the end of a long and at times tortuous season. As many know I am a Manchester United fan. This means this season could have killed me at the end, but no, I’m still here, and feeling very pensive, some of those thoughts are going to be written here, so here goes.
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Who doesn’t love an underdog? Zlatan Ibrahimovic literally came from nowhere, raised in a little suburb outside of Malmö in far from lavish conditions. Coming from where he does, you have to be mentally strong and sure of yourself to make it. Many talented kids fall through the system, not because they lack talent but because they lack self-belief. He’s often criticised for his attitude, but it’s just a part of him. Would you for example want Wayne Rooney to lose his edge? I believe they’d be lesser footballers if you stripped them of that.

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Less than a month ago, Manchester United were eight points clear at the summit of the Premier League with six games remaining. A record twentieth title all but in the bag. The noisy neighbours firmly put back in their place. And then it went wrong. Horribly wrong. Scandalously wrong. A team that simply couldn’t stop winning had suddenly fallen off the rails. Limp failure at Wigan. Rancid capitulation against Everton. Inevitable surrender at City. Now only the team with the worst away record in the league stand between Mancini’s men, and a stunning first championship in forty-four years. Forlorn abject misery for United supporters, and a stark reminder of the previous occasion we royally pissed it up the wall at the last… the first division title run in, 1991/92 season.

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Not so long ago the head of the Mexican FA (FMF) declared that major changes were coming to the Mexican League. We do need those changes, urgently. The league has become predictably irregular, there are no long-term projects and previous attempts to change the league format have been all but outrageous. The day came, and the changes that could come, in principle, were announced. A new format that “will entertain everyone and will increase competition and punish mediocrity”, the FMF came out and said. Surely, you would think, they would eliminate the old-fashioned League+Play-offs format and implement a new one.  At first, they announced they would punish the 0-0 draws and implement a new point-system, but they seemed to have trashed that, and they are now trying to replicate the major European Leagues. Where is this taking the Mexican League, though?  Read the rest of this entry »

Newdless shares with us his unique and peculiar thoughts on the footballing week…

Here’s the thing, if you decide to de-value the FA cup by scheduling it on a League fixture day, you can’t then claim the lost sense of significance back by moving all except one of the league games to the next day. All that does is make it a crap league fixture day…and since when did it become so important nothing clashes with the 3PM kick off of the FA cup final, that even the FA cup final isn’t allowed to kick off until after it technically should have finished? You’ve a hard enough job on your hands making an occasion appealing when Didier Drogba is genuinely the most likable character involved in the whole affair.

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18 months ago he was lying on the ground. He knew he was in trouble and the pain was excruciating. Bizzarely, he felt seasickness too. Proof, because it’s most certainly needed, that Antonio Valencia isn’t a machine. TonyV, as he’s commonly known, has stealthily established himself as the Premier League’s best winger thanks to some thumping performances. In a world where teenagers playing on other continents (hello, Neymar) are in the footballing conscious, it’s a minor miracle that a Manchester United player has fought his way to the top of the mountain without the spotlight following him every step of the way. TonyV, the best winger in the Premier League — an impressive feat in more ways than one.

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Well well well. Some of you may have noticed I haven’t been writing of late, I decided to have a bit of a break, hell I’m still on that break, I just got too annoyed to shut up, so here I am, in rant mode for a change. This time, I’m going to say this slowly, I’m defending those I normally attack. I am going to defend the FA. This doesn’t happen often as you know, so savour this. Well, I say that, I’m still attacking one of my usual victims, but point remains.

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