Devin is slammed and I'm sick (laryngitis). That being said, we're not sure a preview of Everton will be making an appearance prior to the match. Apologies. What we do have for you, however, are some excellent pieces on Chelsea's finances.

Someone asked us about the recent release of our financials for the year (June 2010-June 2011).

Our latest guest post comes from Adam Orton, one half of Debra Orton Illustration - bloggers and sellers of limited edition football print artwork and proud Highbury residents. It may surprise watchers of Match of the Day that Norwich City's current successes are far from a novelty in the history of the club and here, Adam takes an entertaining look back to a previous occasion when the Norfolk club ascended out of Hades.

Sometimes items from Soccer America can be a total miss but check out today's MLS Confidential on the Galaxy. For anyone out there that couldn't get how the LA Galaxy was able to squeeze in Edson Buddle to their salary cap, check this article out.

By bringing back Edson Buddle into the fold, even if he costs slightly more than the $178,488 salary he earned in 2010 before leaving for Germany, the Galaxy probably hasn't crunched its salary cap to any great extent, because of player departures as well as amassing allocation money.

Sorry about the title, but I can't resist a good pun if possible. Misleading as it might be, I must stress that I am not saying Johan Djourou deserves any credit for his performance against Manchester United.

However, for all the criticism surrounding Arsene Wenger for his choice to remove Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain just as he'd made our equaliser and was at the centre of everything good we were doing, a rather more bold move by the boss has gone largely ignored: replacing the more experienced Djourou, terrible as he was, for Premier League debutant Nico Yennaris, a move that proved more successful than bringing on Andrey Arshavin later.

And with the arrival of Manchester United to the Emirates, so to there is the slightly less heralded return of myself to the exalted company of the Untold bloggers. Fortunately Tony hadn't put me on probation for crimes against sportswriting, in actual fact I had to put my blogging commitments on pause with university workload [.

Sometimes in my life as a professional freelancer, I get stretched in so many different directions that I must stop and take account of my sundry platforms and obligations. So, let's see:

Sports Illustrated.com (SI.com) ... I'm on it.

For MLSSoccer.

We're a bit in the doldrums here at Arsenal Arsenal. At the moment we're still numb from the defeat on Sunday and finding it hard to be upbeat and forward thinking. Our twin posts today are in celebration of the return of Thierry Henry. Hopefully our bloggers will come out from behind the sofa and remember the positives of this season so far, but don't let that stop you commenting on where we go from here.

Today's post is written by Neil, a QPR supporter who we met up with before the game last Saturday. These are his thoughts on the game and the Emirates experience.

I got the chance to visit the Emirates stadium as I have always wanted to, as iI had heard a lot about it and it always looks great on TV.

I hope everyone had a happy and safe New Year celebration. It seems odd to be writing a preview one day after a recap, but so it goes. Our boys are back in action tomorrow, taking on Fulham at Craven Cottage. Our opponents aren't having the best of seasons, currently sitting in 13th place with 20 points, and a -5 goal differential (which is also the same record as 14th place Swansea).

Compiled by Eric Beard

Let's go with a classic scenario. What if you spent the last 12 months fighting for your life on an island after a shipwreck? How would you acclimate back into society? Well, you would probably want to catch up on what you missed. If you're a fan of football and love reading about the game, then you would want to read the best pieces from 2011.

Now that we're at the halfway mark, it becomes the duty of Arsenal bloggers to write about how things have gone up to this point in the season, and how things are likely headed in the future. Since opinions are probably even more diverse than ever this year, I thought it would be fun to write two completely different midseason reviews.

Why do Spanish players insist on letting their hair get so long and stringy? I get that Latin men like long hair, yada, yada, yada. Let's face it: long hair on men only works if you have a thick mop of luxurious hair. There isn't a time where Cesc Fabregas doesn't look awful because of his moppy mess of hair.

...if you do then I need you all to do something important. Amanda from the fantastic Miss-SW6.com and three others need your votes. Here's what they are doing:

Four Chelsea supporters, three from the UK and one from the US, will embark on a journey to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to Keep the Blue Flag Flying High.

adidas is all in and why you should be too - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

We may be going into 2012 but with PR agencies it still feels like 2006 at times.

I started Soccerlens.com way back in April 2006 and one of the lasting memories of the last five and a half years has been the treatment of football bloggers by PR agencies promoting their clients.

adidas is all in and why you should be too - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

We may be going into 2012 but with PR agencies it still feels like 2006 at times.

I started Soccerlens.com way back in April 2006 and one of the lasting memories of the last five and a half years has been the treatment of football bloggers by PR agencies promoting their clients.

American McCarver is a moderately terrible sports blog run by tech journalists and bloggers. And yet this post just seems to have so much zeitgeist in it:

The point — you were totally expecting a plural there, weren't you? — came an hour and a quarter into the game, when someone apparently kicked the ball into a net or something.

(Photo: Nicolae Stoian)

Editor's note: At the end of the 2010 season, we posted a series of raves "Raves" about our favorite Philadelphia players. They need not be the team's best players, but they're guys and gals we like. Over the next two weeks, we continue the series again with some of the PSP writers and contributors favorite players of 2011.

One thing that winds me up about the media, especially after a poor Chelsea performance and result, is the fact that they dig up any old tom, dick or harry who has some kind of affiliation with the club to comment on the situation.
There are a couple out there who like to give their opinions but one person in particular is making himself a career out of pointing out the complete obvious and that's Tony Cascarino.

What are the effects of "offering" free employment?

On Wednesday, one of Britain's longest running and highly respect newspapers, The Guardian, announced a new, bold idea for its sport section of its website, . The concept, the Guardian Sports Network, would basically establish a sort of partnership between Guardian Sport and a selected number of sport blogs (most of which are centered on soccer/football).

What can I say? Prandelli's starting bloggers were unavailable for this friendly, so I got called up instead. I'm okay with being third choice, I've always liked Sirigu anyway. [read more]

When I began this blog over five years ago I honestly thought there were no active A-League blogs. I soon discovered I was wrong and wrote a reasonably comprehensive review of the amateur blogs which focused on the A-League at that time.
One of the things I was hungry for from the beginning was high quality, football-knowledgeable analysis of the games.

The recent unveiling of the Elite Player Performance Plan has been met with a cacophony of complaint from footballer bloggers. For Gary Andrews of Two Footed Tackle, it was not so much the straw that broke the camel's back, more a case of the straw being repeatedly driven into said back with a whopping great JCB -and as Jon Keen of The Tilehurst End pointed out, EPPP could allow acquiring clubs

Shameless plug that we'd love your help with The Not 100% Awards for Football Bloggers are accepting nominations and one of the brand new categories is "Best Tweeter." If you haven't been on Twitter yet, it truly is a ... Continue reading →

Editor's Note: "Get Stuck In" is EPL Talk's weekly column featuring review, analysis and opinion on all the happenings in the Premier League each week from different EPL Talk bloggers and podcasters. If you currently write for EPL Talk and would...
This is a content summary. Visit http://www.

Unfortunately, due to midweek craziness of school and work I have been unable to do my usual interview previews with other bloggers. I know, I know... we all love them so much. So I do apologize for that. Still, at this point, I think we should all have a fairly good grasp on the team the Timbers will be facing tonight.

It sounds like the USSF is tired of people like me and other bloggers beating the dead horse about the US Open Cup format. The Sporting News' Brian Straus is reporting that the USSF could propose a new format that does away with the current qualifying round for MLS clubs and it could see the end of the bidding process.

Editor's Note: "Get Stuck In" is EPL Talk's weekly column featuring review, analysis and opinion on all the happenings in the Premier League each week from different EPL Talk bloggers and podcasters. If you currently write for EPL Talk and would...
This is a content summary. Visit http://www.

Now that Italy are qualified for Euros next year, we decided to actually bring on some decent bloggers. Certainly you can see that the bar has been raised since announcing Gadsby last week. But today I would like to announce that we have acquired the services of yet another amazing blogger. [read more]

Aunque a muchos les cueste aceptar y digerir el partido que mas ampula saca entre los aficionados de la ciudad de México y miles mas en la republica mexicana es el partido de Pumas contra America, las aficiones son verdaderamente apasionadas, ya no los ha contado Mauricio Espejel quien ira a ciudad universitaria para visitar al enemigo.

Editor's Note: "Get Stuck In" is EPL Talk's weekly column featuring review, analysis and opinion on all the happenings in the Premier League each week from different EPL Talk bloggers and podcasters. If you currently write for EPL Talk and would...
This is a content summary. Visit http://www.

Written by Herb'sArmy

For most of us on AA, it is impossible to separate our emotions from our club, the two are intrinsically linked. It's probably fair to say that whilst both games caused a lot of pain, the Blackburn game probably wounded us deeper than the one at OT, if only because of the expectation.

This will be just a short one to hold everyone over until we post our preview. Darren will be by later to do the formal preview, and I think Señor Fluffer's owner is going to do the recap this time around. Hopefully Brenton can do his usual live bloggery, and I can just relax and watch.

Anyway, during the buildup to the match on Saturday, there has been quite a bit of talk about Gary Cahill, and his possible transfer to Arsenal in January.

How does a 20-team MLS sound to you as a stopping point? Enough? Too many?

Either way, you might just need to formulate a personal opinion on this matter, because it looks like official MLS policy is leaning in on the big 2-0.

MLS commissioner Don Garber was in Dallas over the weekend for the Red Bulls-FCD contest.

Editor's Note: "Get Stuck In" is EPL Talk's weekly column featuring review, analysis and opinion on all the happenings in the Premier League each week from different EPL Talk bloggers and podcasters. If you currently write for EPL Talk or ...
This is a content summary. Visit http://www.epltalk.

I went into a state of utter despondency at the end of this transfer window, even allowing for the entry into the Champions League stages failed to lift my spirits. The 8-2 thrashing by Manchester United rubbed salt into very big wounds. I took a break to reflect, the International Break helped in a sense, to enable common sense to dawn.

Typically, the day before a game I'll set up a interview with one of my many fellow SB Nation bloggers to discuss the upcoming game and various aspects of the opposing team. It's nice to get that sort of fan-level interaction and figure out just what the opposing team is about.

This time, however, Scott Kessler of the Brotherly Game and I have decided to take it a little further than the typical three question approach.

I was ruminating on Twitter last night about the Scottish Football Blog approaching twin milestones.
The blog is closing in on 1000 posts and its fifth birthday.
How to celebrate? The idea of Jimmy Boco appearing at a blog testimonial did appeal. But I'm fatter than Paul Kane and worse at football than Joe Tortolano so the opportunity for humiliation seems too great.

As we enter the second to last month of the MLS regular season, I would like to make a few observations. The Union's once secure hold on a playoff spot has become tenuous as of late. Despite the roster changes over the course of the season, many of the same problems that were apparent in May are still rearing their ugly heads:

1.

Editor's Note: EPL Talk is excited to present a new weekly column to readers which will incorporate various opinions from different bloggers and podcasters each Monday after the Premier League. Get Stuck In will allow each writer the chance to...
This is a content summary. Visit http://www.

By Tony Attwood There is a saying, "If you think you are beaten, you are". And certainly for many Arsenal bloggers that is true. Fortunately it is never true for Mr Wenger, a man who never knows when he is beaten, and who is therefore our most successful manager in 125 years of history. For [...]