One of the tricky parts of any new FF season is choosing players from promoted teams that could represent good value. Established favourites like Cech, Lampard, Gerrard and Torres are always going to score points and be selected by thousands of managers. But its the new squads that often have the cheaper players that hit form early and whose value rockets as players jump on board the bandwagon early - think of Geovanni's early success at Hull last season.

After the opening round's somewhat surprising outlay of points, there is already a wave of activity happening on the fantasy transfer market. This means some players are set to rise in value, and if you are after a short term monetary gain, then jumping on these players at the earliest opportunity is the way to make it happen.

Kudos are clearly warranted for Clint Dempsey as he hits his second goal in as many weeks for Fulham FC. While his first professional coach and likely mentor, ex-Liverpool great Steve Nicol, might not immediately love that Clint helped Fulham take down Liverpool, it was clearly a significant achievement following a goal the prior week against wanna-be powerhouse Manchester City.

Manchester City are spending more money on players than Elton John does on flowers and most people I know are immediately assuming that a top four finish on the cards for them at the expense of Arsenal.
It makes me laugh. Of course if Manchester City keep spending at the rate they are then they will eventually challenge for a place in the top four.

The Twitter bandwagon is in full flow - some would say slowing down, almost - and there is a steady flow of footballers and football related Twitterers appearing in the micro-blogging sphere. It really hit the back (and front) pages with Darren Bent's Twitter 'rant' at Daniel Levy a few weeks back - but did you know that Hull's new striker, signed on the back of Daryl Murphy and Bobby Zamora turning them down, was also there?

That's what I heard at the end of the DC United vs Chivas USA match. I made the trip up to RFK Stadium and took in the 2-0 loss in person. It is time to give up on this season and start to look at changes for next season. The first 2 changes are find a new goalkeeper and a new head coach. Josh Wicks is looking at a suspension by the US Soccer Federation from his actions during the US Open Cup final.

So Melbourne will have a second team in the 2010-11 season. A local derby will have many Victory fans excited but can a second team survive in the long term? I think so but it will be a bumpy ride.
Since the Peter Sidwell backed bid was officially confirmed as the 11th A-league licence there has been a lot of discussion in football circles around where their members will come from.

What do Steven Gerrard and John Terry have in common? They both play at the highest level of football; they've both captained the English national team; they've both played in a Champions league final; oh, and they're both arguably xenophobes.
In November 2007, Steven Gerrard hit out at ‘foreigners' in the Premiership, complaining that if a quota system is not introduced, ‘foreigners' will ‘take over'.

Chester Stadium currently under construction. (Photo via Philadelphia Union)

Editor's Note: Geoff Reid appears on WVHooligan each week. Today he is back to discuss something that is very close to home, the soon to be expansion Philadelphia Union. Geoff lives just 15 minutes away from the new club.

There's nothing quite like the buzz and thrill of expectancy when your club announces a new signing. Let's face it, it doesn't matter if you follow a team in the lowest echelons of the Conference South or one of the European superpowers at completely the other end of the spectrum, you just can't beat that feel-good feeling of a new recruit.

It's official. RoM is on the Franck Ribery bandwagon. Sign him up, give him the number 7 shirt, and fuck off Carlos Tevez.

A moment of clarity...

"I'm On The Ribery Bandwagon" was originally published at The Republik of Mancunia.

If there is one person who will always have a rant at Arsenal its Tony Cascarino. The former Chelsea striker is the first one to jump on the bash Arsenal band-wagon. It is his job, but with Cascarino it is always one way traffic.

When we sold Adebayor and Toure, Cascarino was the first to jump on the anti-Arsenal bandwagon.

Jamie Redknapp is the latest former player to come out and criticise Rafa Benitez by claiming the manager manipulates Liverpool fans. Redknapp should get himself to his local GP; as it seems he has a case of verbal Diarrhoea. It's easy to kick a man while he's down, and to jump on the bandwagon slagging Benitez [.

I purposely waited until the end of the United States' three Confederations Cup group-stage games before voicing an opinion about their performance, mainly because 1) I didn't want to jump to conclusions and join the "Fire Bob Bradley because he can't win big games" bandwagon prematurely, and 2) I thought it would be fair to give the players until the end of the tournament before judging their individual performances.

George Murphy of Yanks Abroad.com writes about showing resolve and not jumping off 'the Bob Bradley bandwagon'.
I purposely waited until the end of the United States' three Confederations Cup group-stage games before voicing an opinion about their performance, mainly because 1) I didn't want to jump to conclusions and join the "Fire Bob Bradley because he can't win big games" bandwagon prematurely, and 2) I thought it would be fair to give the players until the end of the tournament before judging their individual performances.

Everton begin this season pretty much where they left off last... a good, but thin squad decimated by injuries. Looking at the possible starting XI below, that's how they will likely line up, but certainly not how they would like to line up. Missing from the eleven are their best player at each level - Arteta, Yakubu and Jagielka.

Fans of ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons, aka "The Sports Guy," may remember his short-lived dalliance with the English Premier League three years ago. In the lengthy but entertaining style that is his trademark, Simmons analyzed the pros and cons of supporting all 20 EPL teams, counting them down in reverse order.

Montreal inches closer to a MLS expansion bid.

By now we've all seen the lovely quote from MLS commissioner Don Garber yesterday about future league expansion.

"We've had productive conversations with Montreal to be our 19th team," said Garber.

With all the issues going on with the USL/TOA crap you have to think that Montreal owner Joey Saputo is trying to figure out the best way to get his club into the top-tier league instead of a new breakaway league.

What a surprise - The 'Liverpool Echo' has jumped on the anti-Ryan Babel bandwagon, and is increasingly taking delight in belittling the player and doing its best to place him in a bad light.
As we all know, unless your name is Gerrard or Carragher, you're pretty much fair game when it comes to the Liverpool Echo.

A mixed bag this week for Liverpool, some links and miscellany before the weekend.

The week started with the 4-0 spanking of Blackburn at Anfield. Fernando Torres scored a sublime opener after some sexy chest control, added a second with his head on a free kick from Xabi Alonso, Daniel Agger hit an absolute thumper for the third, and David N'Gog finished things off heading into an empty net.

Rave Green In The City of Angels - New Sounders FC Supporters Group Takes Hold
The Sounder's support continues to impress. It has all the makings of that dreaded word "superclub" as supporters groups in cities not named Seattle spring up. Yes, the bandwagon is big enough for them all.
As if Los Angeles didn't have enough choice in a team to support with both LA Galaxy and CD Chivas USA they now have a new one to rally behind: Seattle Sounders FC
We received this from our good friends at excellent Seattle soccer blog Prost Amerika Soccer:

Rave Green Turn out Twice as Big as Expected
April 21
Sounders FC may have suffered a 2-0 reverse on the pitch at the Home Depot on Saturday, but off the pitch there was a success story for the Seattle franchise.

As I mentioned the breaking news yesterday, the whirlwind of a week at Portman Road culminated early today when Roy Keane was officially introduced as manager of Ipswich Town Football Club; becoming just the 12th man in our esteemed history to be honored with the post.
Take your pick of the news articles, and I wont repeat the details of the story, but there will plenty more commentary on the way and, no doubt, plenty of room for debate.

It had been a bit quiet on the Mourinho front. Papers were overtaken by the excitement of the Premier League; the battle to stay up and the fight for the title. Jose couldn't get a word in - even after he clinched the Serie A title in his first season in charge.

So to tempt us into listening, Jose jumped on the Real Madrid bandwagon.

I declared RoM on the Franck Ribery bandwagon last week, but who the fans are interested in signing matters little if Sir Alex Ferguson doesn't fancy them at the club.

Fortunately, it appears as though United are keen to sign Ribery, although unfortunately, we're not the only ones, with Real Madrid, Chelsea and Barcelona all trying to get in on the action, and Bayern Munich are playing hard ball.

With so few games this past week there really wasn't a lot of change in the Power Rankings. Even with some wins for clubs near the bottom of the pack I just couldn't punish those in SuperLiga play.

The only real movement was near the top-middle half of the order. This was mainly due to Colorado's two game week that saw them draw Dallas at home (really could have been a loss) and a blowout loss at Seattle.

Sir Alex Ferguson has made a few things clear about his plans for our central midfielders today, and it answered some questions (and debunked some rumours doing the rounds lately).

When asked about Carrick and Anderson, he said, "there are no issues at all."

"Michael wasn't involved against Birmingham or Wigan because we played Burnley on the Wednesday and it was a chance to freshen up.

Part the first:
Aston Villa 2 - 0 Fulham
I'm not sure we can draw any conclusions from this match. Fulham must have been absolutely wiped out after their trip to the Urals. Villa are a real Jekyll and Hyde team so far this season, but I think they'll continue to improve.

Fernando Torres has jumped aboard the 'Liverpool can't compete because of money' bandwagon. Displaying a defeatist attitude in public is bad enough, but blaming the team's lack of trophies on lack of money is worse because, in my view, it just isn't true.
In an interview, Torres said:
"I think we are close to getting a trophy but it's very difficult.

Whether it's empty, half-baked ‘Spirit of Shankly' rhetoric or brainwashed fans jumping on the ‘Hicks and Gillett are the devil' bandwagon (without actually knowing WHY), there is a damaging and pointless agenda being peddled in the press at the moment by alleged Liverpool fans that needs to be highlighted.

div style="text-align: justify;"That was disgraceful. There's no point in looking at this game in-depth - it was awful. We might as well have just sat down on the pitch for 90 minutes. Here are John Carver's post-game thoughts. He basically says everything that needs to be said.br /br /iframe src="http://torontofc.

So-called 'mind games' have been receiving lots of press coverage in recent weeks, and Sir Alex Ferguson is the most famous for his ‘attacks', but just how effective are they?
Despite deficiencies in spending power and squad depth, we've seen Liverpool become the main challengers to United's dominance this season.

FC Inter - VPS

I am just about to hop on the VPS bandwagon. They scored two goals against RoPS on Sunday, a rare treat for their fans, and rumours are circulating that the central market place in Vaasa has already been booked for VPS' title celebrations in October.

Still, Inter are too strong for the Ostrobothnian side.

Another year, another bandwagon for Spurs to make it into Europe or even break into the elite. But while there are signs of progress, it wouldn't be Spurs without their seemingly repeating their mistakes. So for every good signing like Palacios, who gives them a real presence in midfield, there is a head-scratcher like Naughton.

We here at Blog Central have always enjoyed the notion of getting on the bandwagon of specific players early. Those of you who have been reading know that we were high on Ashley Young before Watford and Young made their Premier League debut. We were on Dean Ashton as he came on with Norwich. We were on Milner before he was on the outside of the England squad.

Everton: a model for success teetering on the edge. by Phil Gregory Very easy to stick the knife in here, but I'm not going to jump on that bandwagon just yet. We all know Moyes has done a fantastic job with them over the years, but can we really see them breaking the top four as they [...]

I know I´m trying to jump on the bandwagon just as it disappears round the corner, well actually two bandwagons, like a crazed charioteer out of Ben Hur, but first: what is the point of Emile ´the bulldozer´ Heskey? And second didn´t our boys do well? So that's me nicely caught up to date and its only Manchester Utd.

WELL, wasn't that a disappointing performance. Perth Glory were held to a 1-1 draw by a 10-man North Queensland side which didn't even look like scoring.
In the past couple of weeks, the Glory have claimed the points when, arguably, they didn't deserve a single thing. But there is only so long that a side can benefit from luck until it runs out - just like yesterday.

When we beat the Mancs last week, everyone including his pet rock was jumping with joy I am certain. Everyone except those in the clueless bandwagon. Then, afterwe lost to Fulham, the dam burst further!

How do some fans miss the obvious I do not know. We have been overachieving with Rafa at the helm and yet these people scream murder and want Rafa to be sacked.

It makes me laugh to read 'expert' punditry from the likes of Stan Collymore, Mark Lawrenson and their muggy mates.
All season long they have stuck a knife into Arsenal's back and twisted it more than a game of twister. They wrote us off more than a written off car. Wankers.
When it seemed that Arsenal would struggle to finish in the top four they all jumped on the 'Arsenal are finished' bandwagon.

Six games left, and while trips to Old Trafford, Goodison and Anfield look tricky, our home games vs West Brom, Man City and, first of all, Newcastle, are eminently winnable.

If you look carefully, the words "home banker" can clearly be seen etched across this fixture. On current form Newcastle are amongst the worst in the Premiership.