On Thursday, Part 1 of Mark's blog looked at off-the field factors that influenced Town's 10th year in the second tier of English Football League.
Today, Mark looks in detail at the man in charge of the on-field action, the man who currently holds the key to the future of Ipswich Town, the man I've been trying so hard to have faith in this season: Paul Jewell.

Over the weekend, Jurgen Klinsmann announced final additions to his 27 player roster for the upcoming games which include the start of World Cup qualifying.

When Chivas USA defeated the rival Galaxy 1-0 on Saturday night, a few new faces donned their signature Red & White.

This past Thursday, the club announced two deals, acquiring US international Juan Agudelo from the Red Bulls and finally completing the Danny Califf trade with the Philadelphia Union, which had been at the forefront of the rumor mill the few days prior to the trade.

Jurgen Klinsmann announced the additions of 11 more players today, filling the U.S. camp for the summer. The total number is now 26, which will be trimmed down to 23 by Friday.

Including today's 11 additions, the USMNT has 27 going for 23 spots in the "tourney simulation squad" starting with Saturday's Scotland friendly. I may have additional thoughts later, but for now I'm just trying to figure out why Eric Lichaj is not along (while Alfredo Morales is). And Zusi over Kljestan?

The Croatian Eagles figure to make a few additions to their roster before facing the Chicago Fire PDL team in a first-round match of the 99th Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup next Tuesday night in Bridgeview, Ill.

As for the roster for the Fire's developmental team, it appears that not much likely will be known until closer to gameday.

Jay Spearing insists leaving Liverpool has never crossed his mind, despite seeing a number of international stars drafted into the Anfield ranks.
A product of the Reds' academy system, Spearing has faced a fight to be noticed at senior level.
While the likes of Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher have paved the way for home-grown stars, Liverpool has bolstered their squad with big-money additions on a regular basis.

Morning all, a new week begins and begins with Arsenal looking to stretch their lead in third place to a healthy 8 points, despite the fact that T*ttenham will have a game in hand.

Starting with the team news and we've lost nobody since Wolves and there may be a couple of additions. Arsene says Gervinho is 80:20 to make the squad tonight while Kieran Gibbs is 50:50.

Liverpool FC director of football Damien Comolli has said that he doesn't expect the club to bring in many additions this summer after last year's spending blitz , when Liverpool brought in £120million worth of new talent and broke the British transfer record (buying Andy Carroll).

"It is early days.

The first of many match threads to come for 2012 and this one happens to be against a west coast rival in San Jose Earthquakes. But, before I begin, let me just state that the Portland Timbers WILL be streaming this game online for those who can't make it out to the game. So there's some good news.

As usual it is past midnight and I am finding it hard to sleep so I boot-up my computer and start looking at all the soccer related websites I frequent the most and stumbled across this thread. The thread talks about the offseason moves of each team and how many minutes each player who is no longer on the team contributed during the 2011 season.

via Goff...

Also, the Insider has learned the club is planning to look at a left back, where United lacks depth.

Christ! "Planning" to look? Now that the regular season is less than a month away?
Left back was one of the weakest spots on the roster as far as incumbent starters, had its depth removed in December (Burch gone via Re-Entry draft), and has been consistently identified by United punditry writ large as one of the two gaping holes in the roster for months.

Let's get the obvious out of the way up front, shall we? There is not currently, nor has there ever been, a full, traditional system of on-field-merit-based promotion and relegation in any American pro soccer endeavor that I'm aware of[1].

With that said, the essence of promotion and relegation, the ability to move between levels of a nebulous pyramid, does exist, and has for more than a decade[2].

The Philadelphia Union have officially completed a trade of Kyle Nakazawa to the LA Galaxy. Nakazawa will be sent to California with a second round selection in the 2012 MLS SuperDraft for one of the Galaxy's international roster spots.

Nakazawa was reported to be on his way to the Galaxy early this morning, when the Brotherly Game published a storywith information from a source knowledgeable on the situation.

Photo: Paul Rudderow

Philadelphia Union goalkeeper Faryd Mondragon remains a Union player.

A Union official confirmed Sunday that Mondragon is in camp with the Union and said the club has not talked with Deportivo Cali, despite Colombian reports that Mondragon could sign with his hometown club, Deportivo Cali.

Long rumored Trinidad & Tobago U-20 national and Port of Spain Defence Force FC player Cordell Cato is no longer rumor, nor trialist, but has in fact signed with Seattle Sounders FC. Cato continues the expansion of Seattle's international roster slots, forcing even more competition.

"Cordell provides us speed and versatility as he can play on the flank and up front," said Sigi Schmid, Sounders FC head coach via press release.

Leicester City - Nottingham Forest 2:30pm - Fox Soccer FA Cup Third Round replay for Robbie Findley's Nottingham Forest and a reminder that draws don't lead to overtime and penalties in the venerable FA Cup. Instead, they lead to hastily arranged additions to the schedule. Findley was used as a substitute over the weekend, with Forest in the relegation zone in the Championship at 22nd.

The draft is over and next Friday players report to Portland and the Portland Timbers are hinting they are not done adding to their roster. Rumors are swirling as to who and what position said player plays. All of these leaves us fans in what seems like an internal state of nervous energy.

So lets take a look at what the roster looks like and what we can piece together from tweets and quotes over the last few weeks.

We're not gonna do this. Not right now. Just go read the Blackburn recap. Or the Swansea recap. Or any other match in which Liverpool never really looked like doing something worth watching, subtract any chances that were created but not taken, punch yourself in the face for watching the whole thing, and then go back to drinking yourself into oblivion.

With neither of Seattle Sounders FC's MLS SuperDraft picks being from Generation Adidas nor pre-signed seniors or internationals the two players are going to have to fight to make the tight roster. A roster than may get even tighter before they report as General Manager Adrian Hanauer said during today's conference call there are "other deals that are possibly pending or getting close.

United States Under-23 National Team coach Caleb Porter announced three additions to the squad currently training in Carson, California, along with two players unable to attend camp due to injury. Columbus Crew goalkeeper Matt Lampson, Los Angeles Galaxy goalkeeper Brian Perk, and Stuttgart defender Royal-Dominique Fennel have joined the camp, with goalkeeper David Bingham and defender Gale Agbossoumonde unavailable due to injury.

By Joel Greenwaldt
Baltimore Blast (7-3) vs. Milwaukee Wave (8-0)
Game Time: 12/31/2011 3:00 PM
http://www.misllivesoccer.com/
What needs to go right for the Blast:

• Continue to take advantage of the power play: Baltimore is currently ranked first in the MISL with a 50% success rate when they have the power play advantage.

As the Serie A season enters the winter break, Lazio sit firmly in fourth position on 30 points after an encouraging start to the season. They have only lost two games in the league (against Juventus and, once high-flying, Genoa) and they have qualified from the Europa League group stages. The additions made to the squad in the summer have been incredibly influential in helping carry the squad.

Liverpool are monitoring PSV Eindhoven pair Kevin Strootman and Georginio Wijnaldum hopeful of a potential £22m bid to sign the duo.
The raid to sign the pair could take place in January or in the summer. Boss Kenny Dalglish has brought in a number of youthful additions to the Liverpool squad over the past year and sees Strootman as a central midfielder with a great deal of potential.

Liverpool wing wizard target Diego Perotti has admitted he would leave Sevilla if the club needed money.
The 23-year-old was heavily linked with a move to Anfield at the end of last season, with The Sunday People claiming that Kenny Dalglish made an enquiry over the player in March.
Reports surfaced on Sky Sports in April before leading into the summer, leading to Los Rojiblancos president Jose Maria Del Nido claiming that the player would not be sold to clubs in England or Italy.

Photo: Daniel Gajdamowicz

Philadelphia Union

The "2011 in Review" articles for the Philadelphia Union are now up on the MLS website. One provides decent insight, the other, not so much. In the Q & A cobbled together from the last press conference of the season, in addition to relating that Freddy Adu was at "60 percent" for much of the end of the season due to a back injury and the need for defensive additions and competition within the various positions on the field, Peter Nowak discusses the mindset the team needs to win a championship:

"I told you guys at the press conferences we've had all year long that we believe in what we're building, we believe what is the culture around the team.

The Vancouver Whitecaps' first season in MLS ended as so many other "expansion" teams' season have ended in U.S. leagues throughout the years: basement and struggling to build for the future.* After the near immediate success of recent MLS additions ...
Visit http://www.majorleaguesoccertalk.

Habib Beye is keen to stay at Doncaster Rovers for the rest of the season as he has no desire to head back to his parent club.
The right-back joined the Yorkshire club on loan from Aston Villa until January, but he is hoping to secure a longer move after making his first appearance in a 0-0 draw with Watford this weekend.

On Twitter @Untold Arsenal Making the Arsenal the book The Untold Index More links at the end

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Untold Injury Index – Gameweek 12

By Dale Higginbottom

Wow, those international breaks have been kind on us this season. As far as I can see no additions to our injury list [.

Norwich 1-2 Arsenal

Another game, another win. I've not dusted that little phrase down for a while now but it looks nice in print (and in pixels). Since losing at our lovely neighbours on October 2nd, we have registered seven wins and one draw in eight games fine form indeed.

Real Salt Lake's Luis Gil and Sporting Kansas City's Teal Bunbury saw their MLS seasons ended on Sunday as their teams suffered conference final defeats, but neither will have much time to sulk after being called into the U.S. Under-23 national team camp in Germany.

Gil and Bunbury bring the total number of players in the camp to 37 players.

I thought it might be interesting to look at the points per match of each of the expansion teams since RSL and Chivas joined the league in 2005. I could have gone back to 1999 when Chicago and Miami joined the league. But that just seems like a totally different era, and there was contraction between that time and the additions of Chivas and Salt Lake.

Photo by ISIPhotos.com

By DAVID GUBALA

The Chicago Fire didn't make the playoffs in 2011, but the team's strong finish to the regular season has interim head coach Frank Klopas looking look a good candidate to keep the coaching job. No decision has been made yet, but Klopas, also the team's Technical Director, does plan on being with the club in 2012, whether as the head coach or in another role.

It will take a week or two to let everything settle in my mind and get a proper season wrap up piece out. However, I have been thinking of a couple of things in restrospect the past couple of days and I felt now would be a good time to discuss those things. The past couple of months have been a roller coaster for Fire fans.

Via a really well written Jason Quick piece. I wish he would write Timbers more often. In addition to this stuff, there's some quality stuff on Paulson himself. Great article. Juicy article.

There has been some fairly scary (to me, anyway) financial talk in the past, but Paulson sounds really ambitious in this article:

"We are already looking at three to four guys who will be big, big additions in this offseason.

Stephen Dunn/Getty Images (Bleacher Report) With European home grown talent continuing to rise in its value, more and more Europea clubs will be searching for alternatives to high priced local boys.
In the next year or so, more and more young American based talent, whether it is North or South American, will be flowing over to Europe.

Darrius Barnes has had an impressive three years in Major League Soccer. He entered the league in the 2009 SuperDraft. He was drafted by the New England Revolution and has remained a stalwart defender from day one. In his first season, he played every minute. That's no small feat for any player, let alone a rookie.

Damien Comolli believes Liverpool squad is 'complete' & does not need further additions

The Frenchman insists new signings should be given the time to gel before being scrutinised, and reiterates that club did not want to sell Raul Meireles in the summer

View the full story here: Goal

A news article on 2011-09-14 07:41:00 from: Goal

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

While many Arsenal fans are pleasantly surprised by the five unexpected additions that the club made before the summer transfer window closed, some are disappointed by the fact that, with the possible exception of Per ...

If you were asked to name your preferred first eleven now that the transfer window has shut, you would pretty much pick 6 or 7 similar players in a 4-3-3 formation under AVB.
There is an argument that Chelsea have become predictable since last season and pretty much for three halves of football at the start of this season.