With the upcoming Cascadia Cup match against the Portland Timbers arch rivals the Seattle
Sounders just over a week away, there are undoubtedly a lot of fans who are placing their remaining
hopes of the season on winning the regional trophy. After all, with the chances of making the play
offs all but mathematically ruled out, there's little else for Timbers fans to get excited for.
I have spent most of the day on here catching up with bits and pieces that had been said in recent
weeks leading up to the Champions League final and in this post I want to concentrate on Bobby Di
Matteo's comments at the Player of the Year awards night last week.
People outside of the club would have just taken what he said with a pinch of salt, but for Chelsea
players and supporters it was important to listen.
Hello, and happy last day of the working week. Today finds me in fettle less than fine, but
that's a story for another day, or better yet, never. Let's just say it was late when I got to bed
last night, and I could do with more sleep. Yes, that's it. Sleep is what I need most. And possibly
a drip.
Hello, and happy last day of the working week. Today finds me in fettle less than fine, but
that's a story for another day, or better yet, never. Let's just say it was late when I got to bed
last night, and I could do with more sleep. Yes, that's it. Sleep is what I need most. And possibly
a drip.
Morning all. A few bits and pieces from yesterday's press conference and beyond to get us
going.
We'll start with Arsene Wenger declaring football to be too conservative when it comes to
introducing video technology. The manager reckons it's high time we sorted this out to provide an
aid to referees who, due to the fact they're not robots, will make mistakes and miss things.
How is it that you can wake up with hiccups? I thought you had to have been drinking too
quickly, or something, to get a case of hiccups. It seems entirely unreasonable that you could
suddenly find yourself waking up hiccuping, but that's what's happened to me today. Perhaps I was
dreaming about drinking too much or perhaps my body's just objecting to getting up at this time of
day and is finding passive aggressive ways of registering its displeasure.
You know those mornings where you lie in bed and doze through the alarm, but it doesn't matter
because you've not really got anything to do anyway, so you just snooze and snooze, in your warm
comfy bed until you're entirely ready to wake up? I love those days.
Today is not one of them. I woke up at half past four, was much more awake than anyone should
ever be at half past four, but decided to go back to sleep until my alarm went off at six, and now
I really do want to doze and doze all day, but instead of that I have some meetings with some
people, pretty much all day long, which means I won't get any proper work done.
Good morning to you. It's another scorcher in Edinburgh.
Thanks to all for the kind messages re: Mrs Blogs and the marathon running. I can think of a
million things to do on a hot day like that, running 26 miles is really not one of them. Sitting in
the park supportively drinking cold beer before going to finish line to see a sunburnt Mrs Blogs
arrive was one of them.
another week comes to an end as we push further forward into the "summer" and there are a few
bits and pieces going on this morning.
Firstly, Jack Wilshere is off to Sweden to have a 'minor procedure' on his knee which the club
say shouldn't significantly delay his comeback next season.
Good morning from the windiest place on earth (besides an old folks on home on semolina
night).
A few bits and pieces going on this morning as we head into a kind of natural lull considering
we don't play again until Monday. A report in the Telegraph this morning says that Arsenal have had
informal meetings with Theo Walcott over his future.
Good morning. I woke up late and I have somewhere to be this morning. Funny how you never wake
up late when you have nowhere to be. And it's all my alarm's fault.
I don't know about you but I need to change the sound every so often, otherwise I just get used
to it and I'll sleep through it.
To the people who emailed me yesterday asking why there was no Arshavin content in the blog
despite the title, well, I just meant it was a little short. As you might imagine there is a
similar dearth of material today, just like yesterday, and today's blog could be Time Bandit
sized.
there's a rather important game this evening so before we think about players who don't want to
be here any more and who might replace them, we'll focus on that.
The team news is that Johan Djourou travels, as do Armand Traore and Tomas Rosicky. The latter
is still not a definite starter and will have further fitness tests pre-game to see if he can take
part.
As Premier League teams have begun their summer training camps this week, we have quite a few links
and bits and pieces of news to report from around the footie world. Here's what's going on in
Butt's Brain: Samir Nasri ... Continue reading →
A pattern has emerged recently that after major disappointment the club goes into a kind of
lockdown, a media silence ensues and we're drip fed bits and pieces via Arsenal.com. In some ways
this isn't a bad thing. I know I wasn't alone in finding the timing of some articles a bit hard to
take.
We lost last night after being a goal up at the Etihad and I am gutted to say the least.
As you know I have been unable to watch any of the games so was following bits and pieces on
Twitter and by all accounts was a pretty drab affair in the first half?
We got the goal and again looked ok with Torres working hard again but one he came off it went
wrong?
Ireland international Seamus Coleman believes his background in Gaelic football has put him
in good stead for life in the Premier League with Everton.
The 23-year-old tasted success with underage Donegal teams and well as his club side Killybegs
before opting to pursue a career in soccer when former Sligo Rovers manager Sean Connor saw enough
of the St Catherine's defender to offer him a contract in the League of Ireland.
It makes no difference to me that his New England Revolution rebranding effort and his recent
post about "The Revs in the Age of Mutual Love" are good. Really good. (Though, just in case,
perhaps you should go check them out.)
Now, please don't misunderstand, I've not met him or spoken to him and only recently found his
work online.
The opening weekend of the 2012 MLS season will feature a Canadian derby.
The Vancouver Whitecaps will host the Montreal Impact at BC Place on March 10 as part of MLS
First Kick, the league announced on Tuesday, as bits and pieces of next season's schedule begin to
be released.
Mike Magee became the unlikely goalkeeper hero for LA in SJ this weekend. (Getty Images)
I don't honestly think I'll tak about the US-Mexico game. I watched bits and pieces of it during
the FC Dallas-Portland Timbers game on Saturday. Either way you spill it the US got sucked into a
black hole once Jonathan Bornstein came onto the pitch.
Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp has confirmed to BBC Sport that he
expects David Beckham to finalise his loan move from LA Galaxy to White Hart Lane
at some point over the weekend.
Well so much for that. Last winter D.C. United went out a bit to get Troy Perkins back in MLS
from Europe and today it seems as though that experiment is over.
D.C. United traded the veteran goalkeeper to Portland on Friday in exchange for Timbers
goalkeeper Steve Cronin and allocation money.
Well, the last couple of days have been one of those stretches. First, the match yesterday gets
switched to ESPN2. No worries I think to myself. I pull out my handy DirecTV phone app and DVR the
game on ESPN2 just as the match is set to start. I was only able to catch bits and pieces of the
game at work, so I planned on settling down to watch the full match last night and provide a full
writeup.
Having watched bits and pieces of last night's Gold Cup opener for the United States men's national
team against Canada, there were several striking observations about our beloved national side:
The pace and tactical imagination of last night's game was miles beneath Saturday's friendly
against Spain.
After much discussion and some rather tricky fiddling with WordPress, I am delighted to announce
that Arseblog and Arseblog News are now both available in Chinese!
From now on every single post on both sites will be available on our Chinese sites
http://arseblog.cn.com and http://news.arseblog.
There is one new name appearing in the transfer gossip columns this morning and it's that of
Celtic winger James Forrest. Unlike many of the stories we've seen over the last few months,
manager Harry Redknapp has declared an interest in the 20 year old, but admits things haven't
progressed any further.
Liverpool-related action slows down remarkably today, as the round of internationals grinds to a
halt and transfer murmurings, at least for the time being, fade to white noise. There is some
CONCACAF Gold Cup action to watch, as well as a friendly between Poland and France later in the
day, but otherwise we're left to the few bits and pieces of news that we can scrounge up.
I'm delighted to announce that in response to absolutely nobody asking I have added one more site
to my little corner of cyber space.
Asian Football Memorabilia is a look at some of the wacky and fascinating bits and pieces I have
accumulated over the years since I started Jakarta Casual.
No text, it's just gonna be images of tickets, programmes, brochures and souvenirs from South East
Asian clubs; a cornucopia of football memorabilia that has, as far as I'm aware, never previously
been made available before in one place.
Chris Smalling has revealed how easily he has settled in to life at Manchester United and how
playing in more games helps him feel like he belongs.
"A lot of the young lads have been here for a long time," he said. "I only came
here in the summer and I wasn't at Fulham for too long, so I have surprised myself how settled I
have become.
