grandrake

Maybe not top managers or managers of top clubs/countries, but certainly good/great players: - Thomas Nkono, Cameroon - Eric Gerets, Morocco - Alain Giresse, Mali - Roberto Donadoni, Cagliari - Dan Petrescu, Kuban Krasnodar - Jan Ceulemans, Westerlo - Andrei Kanchelskis, FC Ufa

Think he's defensively suspect. He's played some at LM as well though, so on that count, it might be a decent move for squad depth. He can't be worse than what Jovanovic and Babel have shown us down the left. Another fullback who is probably more useful to us as a midfielder though - just what we need to plug our defensive woes!

To be fair on the lad there was this little part he played in this game: * Sorry, couldn't embed video - not sure which bbcode we use here. Hyypia's goal in that clip was just awesome. How could someone hammer a header like that from so far out? Brilliant stuff. If only Kenny could help us find the Torres and Babel in that clip again. Okay, sorry for going OT.

Interesting interview in The Sunday Times in March 2010: Steve Clarke: It's time for me to be the guy who makes decisions | West Ham - Times Online ---- From The Sunday Times March 14, 2010 Steve Clarke: ‘It’s time for me to be the guy who makes decisions’ Steve Clarke has served alongside the very best – now he wants to be a boss in his own right Simon Buckland “This is what I think about Steve Clarke: if, at this moment, he had the chance to manage a club, even a big club like Chelsea, he would be ready for that. He is that good.” — Jose Mourinho Steve Clarke was 23 when he left a Scottish football domestic scene he was “already bored of” by accepting a transfer from St Mirren to Chelsea. The same number of years on, he still hasn’t come back for anything other than family visits. After a long playing career at Chelsea, he went on to assist Ruud Gullit and Sir Bobby Robson at Newcastle before returning to Stamford Bridge to work directly under Jose Mourinho, Avram Grant and, briefly, Luiz Felipe Scolari before accepting his current role as Gianfranco Zola’s deputy at West Ham. Some big names there, but Clarke remains determined to make his own. Having assisted others for so long, Clarke feels the time is approaching to help himself to a manager’s job. It isn’t that he is unhappy at West Ham, where is contracted until 2013, it is just that he won’t be content until he has given being No 1 a go. “It’s the last one to be ticked off,” he says. “I’ve done all the groundwork. I’ve done everything. I’ve been the player, the youth team coach, the European scout, the assistant manager, first-team coach, I’ve worked with a whole spectrum of players, now it’s time for me to be the guy who makes the decisions and takes the stick. To have done so much to get to this stage and not give it a go would be foolish. I have to try it. I just need somebody to give me the opportunity.” In the likes of Mourinho and Gullit he has won friends, but can he influence the people who make these appointments? There have been expressions of interest from third parties before but, as yet, not a single offer to manage a club. Clarke realises he may be seen as just a supporting act, more at ease in the background, but meeting him it is evident he feels wrongly typecast. “I want to be a manager,” he insists. “I want to be the guy who has all the pressure on him, who makes the decisions and leads the group. “It’s always been an ambition. It’s a reason why I left Chelsea. People were thinking, ‘He’s in a comfort zone, no ambition to push himself’, but I came out of that to take the job at West Ham. Franco said he would only take it if I went with him and I just felt the time was right for a change. I could have sat at Chelsea and still be there now, but I didn’t really want that Mr Chelsea image, I wanted to push myself on. “The next step is finding a chairman who’s willing to give me that chance. If you’re asking me, ‘Could I manage a Premier League club?’, I’d have to answer, ‘Yes’. Whether it’s this year, next year, I don’t know. I’ve never been in a position where I’ve had to make a decision on it. I’m still waiting for someone to test my resolve. In my strange little plan, this would be my last job as an assistant and the next one I’d want to be manager. If it works out, great, if it doesn’t then maybe I have to make another detour. I’ve got no problem with people judging me as a manager. When I decide to be a manager, I think I’m going to be a good one.” Much of that confidence came from his stint with Mourinho. Clarke was a youth-team coach at Chelsea before the Portuguese promoted him as soon as he met him. When Mourinho left and Chelsea threatened to implode, it was Clarke who stayed and detonated the tension. “I’d be a liar if I didn’t think maybe they could have given the job to me on a temporary basis to see how it went when Jose left,” he admits. “It didn’t happen. They gave it to Avram Grant and it wasn’t easy to continue in what was a turbulent time, but he made sure I was completely involved. It was only under Scolari that I felt isolated. “Jose and Roman [Abramovich] deciding it was time to go their separate ways was a big disappointment, personally, and for the club. They’d have done better to knuckle down, sort it out and try to keep going. Because of the success we had, Jose stands out a mile. As a manager, he was head and shoulders above any other. Working with him gave me the self-belief I could one day be a manager. I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me. It was a professional relationship that developed into a friendship. Now I would count him as one of my friends. I’d like to think he’d count me as one of his.” Clarke’s story begins with a twist of fate. At 15, he was training at Beith Juniors when St Mirren arrived on the wrong date for a friendly. “St Mirren just turned up,” he smiles. “No-one knew they were coming. Beith Juniors didn’t have all their players so they threw me on the wing and advised me not to get kicked.” He did more than that, impressing enough to be invited to training at the Paisley club and later offered S-forms. He then returned to play for Beith Juniors before eventually accepting a part-time contract with St Mirren, allowing him to finish an apprenticeship as an instrument engineer with Beechams Pharmaceuticals in Irvine. “That gave me a feel for reality,” he says. It hasn’t left him, nor will he let it. His transfer to Chelsea was a strange affair. Ken Bates, the then chairman, flew to Glasgow under an assumed name to trump a smaller offer from Celtic and clinched the deal by throwing in a Fridge — Les Fridge, a goalkeeper. Clarke, who prefers to make his decisions on instinct, signed without hesitation. “My wife almost fell off the chair when I phoned her and said I’d signed for Chelsea. She thought I was going to Celtic. We went to London the next day,” recalls Clarke. “Chelsea said I could return and start Monday, but I said, ‘No, I want to play Saturday’. Chelsea when I signed and Chelsea when I left, were like two different clubs. It had the same name, but it wasn’t the same club. I can’t say I’m surprised to have stayed south so long because I’ve never hankered to go back.” While he wouldn’t rule out taking a managerial job in Scotland, a recent return to visit his parents in Saltcoats made him realise the alarming contrast between where he has ended up and where he started. “I went up about a month ago to watch St Mirren versus Dundee United,” says Clarke. “I’d never been to the new St Mirren Park so thought I’d take the chance with a weekend off. I was quite disappointed with the standard. I know it’s a difficult time for everyone, but it seems to be particularly bad in Scotland. I’m looking at the game for young players and don’t see too many that excite me. “One or two have come out, [steven] Fletcher at Burnley has done well, but it’s a very big transition now. Surely somebody somewhere will say, ‘Okay, enough’s enough, let’s find a way to improve the standard’. Maybe the SFA will stand up and say we haven’t got the same quantity so we have to look harder for the quality. There must be people within Scottish football looking to improve the situation. Is it to change the coaching structure at Largs? Is it time to freshen that up and encourage new faces, different people with different ideas? I just felt the game I saw was more disappointing than I thought it would be. “Maybe it was a particuarly poor game, I don’t know. St Mirren are near the bottom, but Dundee United are third. They’ll say, ‘We won the game’, but I expected a little bit more from them. I’m not having a go, it’s just an honest assessment.” In reference to West Ham, Clarke jokingly puts fingers in his ears at the question of whether they are too good to go down. He doesn’t want to hear that. “Since we went to West Ham there’s been turmoil,” he says of his partnership with Zola. “About 10 days after we went in was the start of the downturn for the Icelandic banks. It’s been difficult, but in a strange way enjoyable. For Franco, it’s a job that looks difficult from the outside, but I can tell you from the inside it’s even more difficult. Our friendship is strong. We resolved at the start, ‘No matter what happens, the friendship is first and the professional relationship second’, and we’ve always respected that.” Clarke’s rationale to being an assistant is to challenge the manager in private, but always to back him in public. He maintained that even when Gullit confounded him by dropping Alan Shearer at Newcastle. “Behind closed doors I quite like arguing,” smiles Clarke. “That’s my style as an assistant. If you have two people with the same ideas it doesn’t work.” Clarke’s single game as a manager was August 30, 1999. As caretaker at Newcastle he reintroduced Shearer and another deposed favourite, Rob Lee. Newcastle still lost. A 5-1 drubbing by Manchester United at Old Trafford. He has done more than enough to merit a second attempt somewhere soon. ----

Well, if you're looking for stuff to lengthen the report (not sure why you'd want to torture yourself) - you missed the incident where Cole won a free kick at the edge of their box in the 2nd half, and took the ball from Pacheco as the eager youngster was preparing to have a crack himself. The freekick routine that followed was laughable, with Cole eventually sending it into the wall. Summed up Cole's performance last night really - utter rubbish. Pacheco probably choked laughing at that mess. Not that he played much better himself though.

It's 4:00am here and I've just finished reading this. Wanted to sleep earlier once I'd let the excitement of our triumph over Chelsea pass, but this account was just too riveting and I couldn't stop reading on. In other words, that was brilliant stuff!

Kelly beat his man and crossed for N'gog to finish sweet high into the net for our second.

Danny Guthrie - Newcastle Very impressive stats in the Championship last season - 4 goals, 12 assists in 38 games. A few of those assists were corners I think (impressions from reading some match reports). Great to see him back in the Premiership and hope he does well. Still think we were too hasty in selling him. Looks like it's been good for his development/career though.

Correction: Darkus. Darkus Babbel.

Just out of curiosity, I've compiled the impact on the clubs if this were to come to pass. chelsea -3 man utd -6 arsenal -6 man city -6 villa -3 spurs -3 birmingham -3 everton -3 fulham -6 stoke -3 blackburn -3 sunderland -2 west ham -4 hull -1 bolton -3 We come out like major robbers. Too good a thing to be true though, I suspect. And we're the only team in the upper half of the table to take nothing from them (so far).

I might hoof a bit, but I'll keep you safe.

Was supposed to have been back, but got injured again. Went back to Liverpool for treatment, but the loan has not been cancelled. Think he's out for another couple of weeks or so.

If the head-to-head record is the same as well, I think the CL uses the count-back system, i.e. what their records are against the teams which finish first in the group, second, and so on. Not sure if the league uses the same system though. I can imagine that in a really weird/extreme case, that might still not break a tie in a small CL group, but it should suffice for the domestic league.

Here's the way I understand it: The Europa League titleholder gets a bye into the group stages of the following season's Europa League tournament. However, as Shakhtar had qualified for the CL 3rd round qualificatiers by finishing 2nd in the Ukranian Premier League, the bye for the Europa League titleholder (for the Europa League group stages) was unused. And that's what the "unused" part was referring to. * Champions League competition regulations: -- http://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles/Download/Regulations/competitions/UCL/84/52/77/845277_DOWNLOAD.pdf Look at page 42 - Annex Ia: Access List for the 2009/2010 UEFA Club Competitions Look at the table on the right under "UEFA Europa League". There you'll see the sentence "TH + UCL 10 teams (PO)". Meaning the Europa League title holders gets a bye into the group stages of the same competition the following season. Similarly, look on the left under "UEFA Champions League" and you'll see no mention of the Europa League titleholders being eligible by merit of winning the sister competition. * Shakhtar were eliminated by FC Timişoara on the away goals rule in the CL 3rd round qualifiers, and ended back in the Europa League playoff rounds as one of the 15 fallen CL teams. They then beat Sivasspor in the Europa League playoffs to advance to the group stages. Basically, they took a long route back to where they'd have been had they not finished top 2 in the domestic competition.

It looks even more impressive when you pit him against more experienced strikers in the league: Here's what 4 goals in 10 league games means: -- he's got more league goals than Emily Shitskey, Owen, Crouch, Kalou, Bendtner and Eduardo -- he's got the same no. of goals as Berbatov -- he's just a goal behind Anelka, Bellamy, Tevez, Carlton Cole and Kenwyn Jones ... and all that in fewer games (not necessarily minutes though; the exception for the no. of games are Kalou and Eduardo, who have played a game fewer).

"He's not match fit, for sure".

From the clips, he seems like a right-footer playing on the left.

He got a very neat assist in that game, but I'm not sure their second goal is credited to him. Don't think he got a touch to it. Somehow the camera followed him like he was the scorer though. Assist here: AEK Athens vs. BATE Borisov Video Highlights & Interviews (05th Nov 09) And he scored the 3rd goal (a header) in AEK's latest game, on Monday (a 3-1 win). Goal here: YouTube - aek larisa 3-1 (9-11-09)

I don't fault Kuyt for that one; I think the pass should've been ahead of Kuyt so he didn't have to break his stride to control it. Late in the game, Lucas also got outmuscled with ease by Nani, so it wasn't all peaches. Still, he deserved all the accolades he's got for this game. Best performance in a red shirt from him as far as I'm concerned; he's definitely improved a great deal this season. Hopefully he'll keep churning performances like this one on a more consistent basis.

Just doesn't look the same. Much higher degree of difficulty with what Bob's done here. But Lucas is still young; hopefully he'll get better and jump higher as time passes. The Vareta Fly:

I miss Arbeloa's Superfly goal celebrations. As for this: George Bush in an AIG shirt, supporting a twat. What a poetic montage.

I like these guys' work on the other leagues: Sid Lowe - La Liga Raphael Honigstein - Bundesliga Don't mind Dominic Fifield too.

5 or 6 pages down, and still no mention of Michael Brown? Massive Fail!

Nowt wrong with that though. He'll be doing that a lot when polishing the PL replica trophies in their cabinet during his injury spells.