Ugh... remember that lady behind me on the flight back from London? The one who was coughing her lungs up mere inches away from my face? Well, I think I got her cold. I feel miserable today, worse than yesterday by far and yet I absolutely must go in to work today. It's not fair [...]

The ink was barely dry on their one record breaking contract to snag Kaka when Real Madrid turned around and destroyed their own previous transfer record and purchased Christiano Ronaldo from Man U for £80m. No need to link to a specific article, it's all over the news, hell, it made NPR this morning.

Bit of a different format today, owing to the deluge of news that always happens on a Friday so let's get stuck in, shall we?

Injury Update

Eduardo and Silvestre are both out for Saturday. Dudu is being rumored to be out for the rest of the season with his groin strain while Silvestre will be a late test for Tuesday.

For those of you who follow my Google Reader shares (link there on the left to my page and an RSS Feed on the right of the blog) you'll already know that we've got a lot of stupidity to get through today. But before we get to the stupidity, I just want to say that [...]

Of all the problems plaguing modern football the biggest, and the first that I would change, is international football. No more World Cup, no more Euro Cup, no more Under 19, Under 16, Under 3, nationalistic pointlessness, I'd get rid of it all. It just seems like a holdover from when Europeans used to kill [.

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A 'business of football' exclusive this weekend from fellow blogger One-One-Eight.

EPL chief Scudamore has been a busy little boy this week, rattling sabers, and proposing all sorts of wondrous rule changes. Changes that he thinks will save English football for Englishmen, stamp out debt, prevent another Leeds United style collapse, prevent unseemly characters from taking over clubs, and even had time to hail the Respect Campaign as an overwhelming success (link works best in Internet Explorer, ugh).

The Premier League today gave the illusion that they are working their way towards the "6+5" rule. Unfortunately for those of us who believe the rule would better European football, the Premier League does not seem to be taking the issue of domestic talent seriously. Let us look at the new rule:

The rule that was announced today states that from next year on every team must name a squad of 25 players, of which 8 must be home grown.

If you consider yourself a political junkie on top of being an EPL newshound, then we certainly have quite the interview for you today. With FIFA's proposed ‘6+5' rule to place limits on the number of foreign-born players in domestic club teams rearing its ugly head in the press once again in recent weeks, we here [.

So I got a very thoughtful reply to a year-old post I made on the 6+5 rule "FIFA Approves Blatter's Rule: Or When 6+5=0". You can read the post for yourself, but the gist of it is that I think 6-5 rule sucks and is an affront to free trade, capitalism and economics.

The letter-writer, Michael, disagrees.