This is the 1st guest post by TSG community member Jacob Chambliss. Well done.

As promising as the latest MLS expansion teams seem, their inception does little to dull my own apathy regarding the league's newest franchises (Disclaimer: I do love Jay DeMerit).

By Eric Beard

You do know this is the same guy most of you have been in awe of all year, right?

It's hard to find many cases more explicitly capturing the fickle nature of the neutral football fan (and journalist) than the double-standard that is placed upon Lionel Messi when he's wearing blue and red in Barcelona and when he's wearing blue and white in Buenos Aires.

Roof goes here.Ask Toronto FC supporters what is wrong with the failing, and seemingly flailing, club right now and many will give an arms-length list of problems dressed in red kits or holding clipboards. In a season where on-field successes have been few and far between, it is hard to fault the average member of BMO Field's faithful for pointing at the pitch and screaming in exasperated frustration.

I'm glad I don't write about England. You'd smell the apathy the second you clicked the link. I do, for my sins, still watch them when I can. Sometimes that's as much to see other talents in action as much as it is England. On Saturday, it was for Xhaka and Shaqiri mainly. They along with Inler and especially Barnetta lived up to their hype.

"Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is."- Rollo May
　
For the first few years of Toronto FC's existence, the club, so desperate for a positive spin, dined out on the media propelled designation that BMO Field had "the best fans in the league". Boisterous, loud and loyal, the supporters were the only thing worth putting on a billboard to promote a club so bereft of quality on the pitch.

No matter how down Seattle Sounders fans are about their results, nothing compares to what the Toronto FC faithful have gone through. They didn't even win their national championship in the first possible year, at least the Sounders got the US Open Cup and didn't lose it to a D2 team. This year only a weather decision prevented them from losing the Voyageurs Cup to Vancouver.

Liverpool 6: Adam 27′, Ngog 68′ 69′, Maxi 76′ 90′, Kuyt 94′
Malaysia XI 3: Rahim 40′, Mohd Sali 79′ 80′

Charlie Adam gets his first goal in Liverpool shirt, David Ngog and Maxi get two a piece, and Liverpool wrap up their Asian tour with a victory in front of 80,000 fans at Bukit Jalil National Stadium in Kuala Lampur.

It's been four months and seventeen days since I wrote my last post at BigFourZa (and if you thought I pulled that fact out of my ass, wait till you read the rest of this post). To put that into perspective, that's almost twenty eight months in dog years, or in a more footballing context, a time when Chelsea actually had hopes of winning the Premier League.

There are empty seats at Wembley this evening. The FA's hyperbolic per-match ticket advertising for this match may have made inferences to this being the match that everybody wants to see, but the fact that the advertisements were on display anywhere at all told its own story. There are red dots pock-marking the background at the national stadium this evening, betraying the feeling that this match is more of a tussle than a battle of Britain.

As we approach the halfway point in the League One season, more or less nothing has yet been decided and with each passing week more questions are being asked of which more or less none are being definitively answered. No matter which we way we choose to interpret this league table, it makes for extraordinary reading.

Excuse my piss poor French!
But the SLeague champions, with less than two weeks to their Charity Shield game against Tampines Rovers, have done little on the PR front. Their website, for example, has been untouched for yonks.
If they can't be bothered to keep fans up to date with what's going on, and I'm sorry but Facebook and Twitter don't count, then they shouldn't be surprised if fans, and potential fans, lose interest.

The nation mourned when Emile Heskey retired from international football last year, and rightly so -for England knew that what stretched out before them was what adulterous husbands tend to refer to as a 'transitional period' when the kids finally ask why Mummy hasn't been home in nearly three weeks.

Why do we plop down on the couch to watch a sporting event? Wait, don't say boredom, general malaise or apathy to do anything else productive with your life that doesn't involve holding a remote in one hand and a Bud Light in the other.Beyond my general cynicism, it's a simple question to answer when you have a vested rooting interest in one of the participants.

I personally want to thank Rich for coming up with great content these past few weeks. I really have nothing to add regarding Fulham at the moment other than a year ago to the date we beat Wolfsburg 2-1 at the Cottage.

Is it me, or does it feels like the last time we had a string of games where we could conjure up something meaningful about was around Christmas.

Ok, the game was shite, they have players who can't pass the ball, some who even looked scared of the bloody thing and there are mixed messages about kick off times. And hardly any one turns up to watch them.
There were more stewards and officials in the ground at kick off time than paying spectators!

"To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish." David Foster Wallace

"I realised that half the reason he was doing it [heroin] was because he was so damned bored.

Liga Primer Indonesia
Solo v Persebaya 0-2 (played in Surabaya)
SLeague
Young Lions v Geyang United 3-3 (Fazli Ayob, Nazrul Nazari, Haris Harun; Hafiz Rahim, Vasile, Kim Jae Hong) 523
Well, how about that?! Six goals, six yellows, one red, two penalties, two goals on half time, a penalty in the last minute.

5-2 1,2581-4 6551-1 1,0193-3 5235-0 1,1372-2 8801-4 1,4330-4 602
OK, let's put aside the fact that SLeague official attendances bear little relation to reality. They include freebies, which is the bulk of them, media and security officials. Let's even ignore the fact that half of Singapore is creaming themselves at the thought that their beloved Manchester bloody United will win the bloody EPL tonight.

What is this bullshit? I can tell you with certainty that's not me in the video wishing Fake Salt Lake the best of luck. Hanauer asked if he could borrow the Sigibot for a few minutes after practice while I was busy teaching Montero to care about the outcome of games. I was like sure, fine. I had no idea that video would be the result.

Cary Leibowitz, Misery Pennants (1989)By the end of the summer, I was in a dark place in relation to the men's game: unable to care about who wins what international tournament or league's season, because who cares what a bunch of spoiled brats do in the service of hyper-leveraged clubs that look more and more like individuated versions of the real estate bubble.

Been spending some time working with Ian Jobling as he campaigns in the Allerton & Hunts Cross ward. It's been interesting and rewarding as we work our way through an area that has been Lib Dem for about 20 years.

We see apathy and resentment of politics in general and we are still meeting a lot of traditional Lib Dems but we are seeing plenty of people annoyed with the coalition and extremely dismayed with what Clegg et al have done.

It's been four months and seventeen days since I wrote my last post at BigFourZa (and if you thought I pulled that fact out of my ass, wait till you read the rest of this post). To put that into perspective, that's almost twenty eight months in dog years, or in a more footballing context, a time when Chelsea actually had hopes of winning the Premier League.

Another week rolls by, free of blog entries. I'll happily admit I really have struggled to inspire myself to write much this summer. In June & July of 2009 the last football-free summer I blogged 14 times. This year there have been just six posts in the same period. And all this despite having more time this summer to ferret away in Google Docs than I've had in a pretty long while.

There are many problems currently afflicting football, and one of the most serious is undoubtedly the rampant cheating epidemic, which continues to devalue and destroy the heart and soul of football. What is UEFA doing to tackle this problem? Nothing. And with Michel Platini running UEFA, this is unlikely to change anytime soon.

What times to be a Hibs supporter.
Bottom of the league, a manager who has become a toxic brand, sections of the support ever more alienated from the vision the board have for the club. And sections of the support who are consistently voting with their feet.
A demonstration is planned before today's game with second bottom Aberdeen.

AFC Cup
Chonburi v Nasaf 0-1 6,434Kuwait SC v Muang Thong United 1-0 4,000Persipura v Arbil 1-2 (Zah Rahan) 15,430
Not a good night for the region's teams in the AFC Cup with three defeats and one goal scored. Persipura, all conquering at home, must fly to Iraq and win by at least two clear goals as must Chonburi.

Cheating is a growing epidemic in football these days, as is the organisational apathy and enabling attitude of fans that allows it to flourish. With a self-confessed cheat running UEFA, it comes as no surprise to me that we're getting to the stage where a manager will have no qualms about publicly exhorting his team to cheat, which is exactly what Swindon manager Paolo Di Canio has done.

"Verily I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country."
There's different levels of prophecy. My meandering mumblings on the accounts of Hibernian Football Club wouldn't have made Luke pick up his quill.
It's also easier - especially in this world of Scottish football - to herald the arrival of bad news than to proclaim the happy-clappy joys we yearn for.

Rooney is right... noon kick-offs are rubbish!

I know footballers earn a fortune, but don't have a go at Wayne Rooney for moaning about noon kickoffs. I used to hate them and I defy anyone in any walk of life to perform at their best after chewing plain pasta on an empty stomach at 9am.