Today's SPL. All of our dirty dozen are in action. Here's a very quick look ahead.
St Mirren v Celtic
Ah, St Mirren. 2-1 up last week with their opponents down to ten men. They lost 5-2.
A season in 90 minutes. The promise, the impressive moments, the entertainment and the frequent disappointments.

Shocking move by the Colorado Rockies who fired coach Gary Smith. What makes this decision such a head scratcher is that Smith led the Rapids to their first MLS Cup less than a year ago.

Managing director Jeff Plush said Monday that he decided not to renew Smith's contract, which ended after the season.

Early in the season the NSC Stars gained a reputation of being a difficult team to play against at home. The Minnesota league-owned team with one of the lower player budgets in the league would put in yeoman's work and fight for results. However, that work effort and ability to keep games close at home [.

Football Manager 2012: New Features, Screenshots and Video Previews - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

Football Manager 2012 will be launched before Christmas (most likely in November to give enough time for holiday-season Football Manager madness and the inevitable post-release Football Manager patch).

Whenever you follow multiple different professional sports, you inevitably start to notice the unique aspects of each of them. For instance, I remember Martin writing a while back about how odd it would be for an NBA basketball fan to endure various different international breaks during the middle of the regular season.

A lot of crazy things can happen in football. For example: teams favored in a game can end up losing by disproportionate numbers. Of course in the end the better teams tend to win out. Time is a factor in every season and as things wear on, the smaller clubs with their tiny budgets just cannot keep up.

Barcelona might be preparing for its annual summer tempest involving Cesc Fabregas but the Arsenal captain introduces his moment of Zen saying in so many words if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.

"Barcelona are the best team in the world and going there guarantees titles.

It behooves any country with serious aspirations on the world soccer scene to entrust the development of its young players to the pros. To the country's professional clubs, that is. Like in most endeavors, privatization tends to lead to more efficiency, and Major League Soccer's nascent academies are slowly but very concertedly wresting youth soccer away from the traditional avenues.

On a busy soccer Saturday (Champions League Final, Mexico v Ecuador at Qwest, Sounders v Real Salt Lake) the University of Washington released its soccer schedule for the coming fall. It is a schedule that should help their RPI come tournament selection time with Dawgs playing 2010's #4 (Cal), #6 (SMU), #8 (UCLA), #21 (Tulsa) and #34 (Florida Gulf Coast) all ranked higher than they were.

Earlier this month, Neil Cotton visited the Hampshire Senior Cup final, and used the match as an opportunity to reflect upon the peculiar pleasures of cup football in general.

It's almost customary to refer to romance when it comes to cup competitions. There's just something about the winner takes all simplicity which makes for Roy of the Rovers style story-lines.

It's not often anyone has all that much to say about Albion Rovers. So now that they've got quite a good side and at the midway point of this two-legged play-off final look favourites to go up to the second division, let me take a few moments to do so.

It doesn't help that they have a rather undistinguishable named.

Boro travel the short distance up to Northampton in potentially our last away game of the season. Danny Brothers from the 'A load of Cobblers' site has answered some questions ahead of the game. Take a look.

Relegation into the Conference looks a real possibility, especially as Barnet have hit some form.

As the English football season heads towards another exciting and intriguing finale, the top clubs from the Premiership and particularly in the Football League are finding their squads becoming increasingly stretched as key playing staff are lost through injury and suspension as their clubs press for trophies and promotion on a multitude of fronts.

AT LAST!!!
Lib-Dem councillors attack spending cuts
More than 90 prominent Liberal Democrat councillors, including the leaders of 18 local authorities, have criticised the scale and pace of government cuts.
In a letter to the Times, they say cuts will have "an undoubted impact on all front-line council services, including care services to the vulnerable".

These are apparently representatives from Mexican club Pachuca. Don't ask why. It's the middle of winter, you're going to complain about pretty girls?

Yeah, that's the best I could come up with. I'm multitasking. Sue me.

Word came last night from Jose Garcia's soccer blog in the Arizona Republic that the Phoenix Monsoon will play in the Professional Arena Soccer League this fall and winter.

Does anyone know who's leading the Liga? No, not La Liga; the Liga, the Primeira Liga Portugal's first tier of domestic football. Does anyone know? Does anyone care?

Heck, even I've been known to look past the Primeira Liga, and I'm Portuguese. That's the lure of the fast-paced, money-rich, crowd-packed Premier Leagues and Bundesligas and La Ligas of this world, whose fan-friendly cable packages are often too much to resist when the alternative is a game between Paços de Ferreira and Olhanense in an empty back-lot stadium that wouldn't make it in League Two in England.

After plenty of indignation and threats things seem to have gone quiet over at the PSSI. Three weeks in to the new, unsanctioned, Liga Primer Indonesia and nothing much has happened.
Irfan Bachdim has been told he can't play for the national team. And that's about it.
No foreign players have been deported.

Aaron Davidson was making the rounds on Monday night granting interview requests on a number of radio talk shows. He took time between those interviews to talk to IMS and explain what the NASL has done in response to US Soccer's rejection of his leagues bid for sanctioning of D2 soccer last Thursday.

Before the introduction into European football of ‘registration periods,' more commonly known as ‘transfer windows,' you may remember that players could pretty much come and go as they please, right up until the closing weeks of the season. However, times have changed and now, in England specifically, the summer window runs from the last day of the season right up until the 1st September.

We're about halfway through the current season of the Major Indoor Soccer League (yes, there is still an MISL, this is the third version, basically, long story, tell you later) and average attendance is about where it was last year.

Which is to say, not good. Not good at all.

With 27 of the 50 scheduled games in the books as of this morning, the MISL is averaging under 4,000 (announced) per game, following a season that saw the league average dip under 4k for the first time this century.

Scot has worked wonders on the tightest of budgets It has been a busy old season in the Championship. Before football had even started, six managers were starting their career with new clubs. Incredibly, since August ten more managers have left clubs, from the Steve Coppell debacle at Bristol City to Sheffield United having three [.

Financial planning website, Mint.com, (why they're all of a sudden doing this we dunno) posted this fascinating graphic comparing American soccer's salaries, budgets, etc with other American sports.
The contrast, in graphic form, is well.... graphic.
Thoughts, anyone?
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