54 years ago in Munich, 8 of Manchester United's brightest stars were killed when the aircraft that was bringing them back home crashed. Along with them, 3 of the backroom staff, 8 journalists and 2 other passengers also perished bringing the total casualty count to 21. Nothing could have prepared the city of Manchester and indeed the whole footballing world for a tragedy of that scale.

Saturday 15th October 2011.
Celtic, fresh from a defeat at Tynecastle, are 3-0 down at half time to Kilmarnock.
Winning the title looks a long way off, Neil Lennon's managerial coat seems to hang on an ever shooglier peg.
They came back to draw 3-3, three goals in a 10 minute burst from Anthony Stokes and Charlie Mulgrew salvaging a point.

We've semi-regularly tried to post a Friday "What to Watch this Weekend" (WtWtW) viewing guide. Starting today, we'll aim to bookend that with a companion "What We Watched this Weekend" (WWWtW) summary pulled primarily from weekend email chatter among the CultFootball crew, maybe spiced up with some video highlights.

Tottenham Hotspur tonight moved level on points with second placed Manchester United after a performance of patience and high quality.

Everton turned up at The Lane as many teams now do, to sit deep and try and frustrate Spurs. It's to the credit of Harry Redknapp and his team that they didn't get frustrated and saw the opposition off to seal the points.

While we were waiting for the van Win had to get something off his chest. "Listen," he said with gravity, "the money is getting huge now. What I want you to know is that, after every game' we can decide to quit and take the money. Or we can continue to the next game, thereby risking losing it all.

A bright first 15-20 minutes in which we probably should have been more clinical. However, without Lennon we have no shape and the attacks are rare and the match quickly turned sloppy. Chelsea probably should have won it and we could have nicked it at the end and a draw was probably a fair result. Did you also notice John Terry was wearing white boots?

In the 2011/12 season we are approximately 35% of the way through the campaign and it is the same two players who stand out on the world stage as usual. Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. Since Cristiano Ronaldo joined Real Madrid in the summer of 2009 he has scored 106 goals in 108 matches, an incredible feat that would appear unbeatable in the modern age.

We sit and we watch. Sometimes we cheer, we jump, raise our arms, shout, scream, moan, groan, put our head in our hands, yawn, eat a sandwich, chat about something else, but more or less enjoy the game.

Not everyone. Some people see football as a chance to 'let off steam', to shout at the referee over minor infringements, to argue every 50/50 decision even if it probably was made correctly.

Chelsea's André Villas-Boas says Fernando Torres still worth £50m

• Villas-Boas insists Torres is performing well for Chelsea • 'He's one of our best suppliers of assists,' says manager André Villas-Boas has insisted that Fernando Torres has been worth the British-record £50m fee paid to Liverpool to secure his services last January and believes he can still rediscover the goalscoring form of his early days in the Premier League.

I've heard there was a special chord

That Ray Hudson sang when Messi scored

But you don't really care for pundits, do you?

It goes like this

The fourth, the fifth

The Xavi pass, the Andres split

The baffled d decomposing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was low you needed a lift

You saw him darting on the pitch

His beauty in the floodlights overthrew you

He glued you to a Nou Camp chair

He climbed your throne, he showed you flair

And from your lips he drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Halleluja, Hallelujah

There was a time when you tread below

Dinho was fat & Marquez slow

But now you look down upon me, do you?

What a great month! October has produced four wins, one draw and ten goals. I've picked out the best ones below for your selection.Vote box below.
VDV v Arsenal - Defoe ran at the heart of the Arsenal defence and laid wide to Adebayor whose cross was chested down and volleyed home by Van der Vaart.

Steven Gerrard scored a great free kick against Manchester United earlier as Liverpool were held at Anfield.Charlie Adam made a great burst forward and was brought down by United's Rio Ferdinand, and Gerrard scored from the resulting free kick. After the game, Ferdinand admitted that there was actually contact, but he claimed it was not enough for Adam to go down.

Tonight, the New England Revolution will take on the Seattle Sounders in a match where the Revs are battling for postseason relevance. Mathematically, anyway. Realistically, they're trying to play spoiler and get a couple of good performances at home in the books to close the door on what has been a most disappointing and dismal season to date.

1. After making a better start to the season than Sir Alex Ferguson has ever managed with Manchester United, we dropped our first points on Saturday evening. Based on the performance, we can have no complaints. We didn't create enough opportunities to score and didn't deal with the Freak well enough for a cross.

1. It's not often we'll beat Chelsea 3-1 and still feel like that at the final whistle. Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted with the result and don't want to come across as too much of a brat, but it wasn't an enjoyable second half. After thrashing them in the first half we seemed to lose the plot in the second.

By JOHN BOSCHINI

The playoff picture is slowly coming in to focus as the NASL has less than one month left in the regular season.

FC Edmonton was fortunate to play the woeful Atlanta Silverbacks last weekend to snap an eight-game winless streak but faces a much tougher test against Puerto Rico on Saturday.

First we had the Silent Generation born after 1925 – those prone to doffing their caps to their betters. Then we had the baby boomers – the post war generation and the first to enjoy heightened prosperity. Then we had Generation X, famously depicted by Douglas Coupland – those born when that burst of fertility lessened and synonymous with the uncertainties of superpower rivalry and political and

So Clichy has left and gone to Manchester City for £7M and apart from Arsenal fans nobody is crying over this departure.

When Gael first burst onto the scene we thought we found the perfect replacement for Ashley Cole, and whilst Clichy had speed to close players down, he offered little going forward.

Two goals from Marta helped Brazil beat Norway and move the Brazilians into the quarter-finals of the Women's World Cup.

Norway now face Australia in the final group match with the winner joining Brazil in the last eight. The South Americans need just a point from their final outing against Equatorial Guinea to guarantee top spot.

Liverpool is the latest club to be linked to Caen rising star M'baye Niang and are reported to have made an initial enquiry to the French club.
Skysports.com understands that Tottenham made a bid for the 16-year-old sensation in the closing days of June after watching the striker burst onto the scene at the end of last season.

I've eschewed writing this post for some time mostly because it it could come across in a misrepresented way but with the absolutely terrific Steve Zakuani tribute on Saturday and positing the question to the audience, well, I'd say it's about time.

And let me comment, that I hope "on-the-minute" soccer tributes live-on, regardless of nation or team or any qualifier.

The second burst of TTU Awards will be rolled out from this Tuesday, with our site having reached the giddy age of two years old. Last time out, some men in Tangerine dominated the voting, with Charlie Adam winning a tight battle for Player of the Year over Graham Dorrans - an outcome perhaps justified by subsequent events.

By Chris Wright

The latest in Pies' 'Fruit of Footballing Loins' series sees Robinho allow his three-year old son, Robson Junior, to tag along with him to Selecao training only to be completely skinned for pace by his wee sprog (0:30), before the little man evades the evil clutches of Elano to round his old man with a burst of acceleration and tucks one away from close range (0:47).

By Chris Wright

The latest in Pies' 'Fruit of Footballing Loins' series sees Robinho allow his three-year old son, Robson Junior, to tag along with him to Selecao training only to be completely skinned for pace by his wee sprog (0:30), before the little man evades the evil clutches of Elano to round his old man with a burst of acceleration and tucks one away from close range (0:47).

I finally had the opportunity to see Tim Ream play in person when the Nerb (New York Red Bulls) faced the Gals (LA Galaxy) at the HDC a couple of weeks ago. I was truly impressed. Unlike most MLS defenders, he took his time distributing the ball out of the back. And he didn't just boot it or pass it off.

Tonight, the Seattle Sounders try to wash a bad taste. This is not the taste of poor play, but of poor circumstances. Two of their own will be out for months, and so now Seattle faces Toronto FC not just looking for 3 points, but looking for answers as to what the future holds.

Aron Winter has been trying to get a 4-2-1-3/4-2-3-1 to work, but is struggling to find the right personnel.

Not just back-to-back wins, back-to-back 3-0 wins. How about that? And one of them was away. These are heady times we live in.

Sunderland looked like a team with no forwards and no interest. When you play against a midfield containing Cattermole and Henderson you expect to have a battle on your hands, but according to the BBC Sunderland committed precisely one foul in the whole of the first half.

Friday evenings double fracture to Steve Zakuani's leg left the Sounders community with a huge loss. His presence is defined as much on the field as off, and as in most major injuries the first priority must be on the injured man, not the team. The 1-0 win felt much more like a loss, but as the loss of Nkufo, this is now a fact.

Photo by Jose L. Argueta/ISIphotos.com

Andy Najar will apparently end the mystery Tuesday afternoon.

D.C. United has scheduled a press conference for 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday during which Najar will discuss his national team future and presumably pick which country he will represent, either his native Honduras or the United States.

He may have come off the bench and he wasn't the player of the game, but the night belonged to Charlie Davies. Just one goal was enough to make it an unforgettable night at RFK, but that would have been too ordinary for Davies' story. There had to be something even more special than his penalty conversion, it had to be two.

Ducky's Note: Yes, it's me, with a note again. But hey, if it's to introduce another contributor to the growing BigFourZa family, then I'm glad to keep noting away to glory. Utkarsh is our latest writer from the Red part of Merseyside, and he promises to never let us walk alone for the Liverpool section of this blog anymore.

Finally Whitecaps fans's prayers have been answered! Fans continuously asked for a designated player and a forward, and now they've got both in the form of Eric Hassli. But... are they really that happy? I'll admit it, when I saw that the Whitecaps signed Eric Hassli as their designated player, I was slightly disappointed.

I had mixed feelings after this one. The primary one was exasperation. But I also saw a team of players who haven't played together work hard and play with the right attitude. It's not easy to play the Arsenal way with so many of the starting eleven being non-regulars.

For large parts of the game Arsenal went forward and controlled the game without really creating gilt-edged chances.

I first heard of 17 year old Juan Manuel Iturbe back in the spring, though I believe it to be much earlier, just that at that point, he was merely 'that Paraguayan-Argentinean kid'.

The point being his stature was hardly demanding the type of hype he's now enjoying in some sort of super breakout season.

By Chris Wright

Once the heroically brazen ego-vacuum that is Zlatan Ibramihovic decided that he had graced Spanish minnows Barcelona with far too much of his precious time and precocious talent last summer, he began to tout loan offers from other clubs clubs in dire need of a fresh burst of 'Zlatanation'.

Davide Santon burst onto the scene for Inter in the 2008-2009 season, and it seemed as if he was destined for dizzying heights. Then, knee injury struck the following season and he was never quite fully re-installed back into the starting XI. This season he hasn't played with Inter as consistently as any party would've liked and he's been shipped off to Cesena for some maturing.

Hey, did you know the South American U-20 Tournament is happening right now? Probably not, as like any good football fan, one January international tournament is all one can really handle.

And though the world may forgive you, Neymar will not. He of the infinite suitors and equally infinite mullet played the part of Brazilian savior and tournament ambassador by announcing its arrival with a four goal burst in Brazil's opening game.