Reading striker Leroy Lita is a proud man, especially of his sexual exploits. The 22-year-old apparently made a mobile sex video allegedly with his girlfriend that he then sent to teammates as a laugh. Trouble began when those teammates sent it to friends at other Premiership clubs and now the U21 England International is receiving taunts from players around the league.

Arsenal 2 Newcastle 0 - Carling Cup 3rd round Emirates Stadium, London 25th Sep, 2007 Arsenal Goals

Benayoun's strike
Torres' 1st
Torres 2nd (and best, in my opinion)
Torres 3rd

There is a history behind the guy who single-handedly acted as executioner in Manchester United's 2-0 loss to Championship side Coventry City in the Carling Cup. Mifsud scored an early goal and a clincher in the 70th minute to put the Red Devils on edge in front of over 70,000 at Old Trafford. Man Utd's Anderson [...]

It's just a Carling Cup tie, but there are folks around the world that would love to see this match. The match is not on TV here in the States. Does anyone know where this match can be viewed?

Daryl from The Offside eluded after Sheva's game against Blackburn Rovers on Saturday that Sheva should pack his bags and move on. I know there are sites on the Internet that want Sheva back at AC Milan, the club that Roman Abramovich paid £30m for Sheva's services 14 months ago.

As Daryl also pointed out and the story maybe more true than false, that Sheva was an Abramovich signing more than a Mourinho signing.

Arsene Wenger is once again deploying a veritable "B" Team for the Carling Cup this season. So far, so good, as the hosts defeated Newcastle 2-0 behind goals from Nicklas Bendtner and Deilson, each coming in the last 10 minutes of the match.

More later, but you can see the lineups after the jump.

Itandje
Finnan Carragher Arbeloa Aurelio
Benayoun Lucas Sissoko Leto
Torres Crouch
Goals:
Benayoun 23'
Convey 28'
Torres 50'
Halls 54'
Torres 72'
Torres 86'
I sincerely apologize for second guessing Rafa Benitez, I really should know better by now. Of course after all that was written, Torres would score his first hat trick for the club and be the difference between the two sides.

Man Utd
29 Kuszczak
26 Bardsley (45 Brown )
23 Evans (56 Carrick )
19 Pique
25 Simpson
17 Nani
30 Martin (45 Campbell )
22 O'Shea
33 Eagles
21 Dong
08 Anderson

*Sir Alex takes the piss with that team*

I pity the poor season ticket holders that were forced to pay for a ticket to that shambles.

The Carling Cup 3rd Round draw was announced today, and it threw up some interesting matchups: Blackburn v Birmingham Reading v Liverpool Manchester United v Coventry Tottenham v Middlesbrough Hull v Chelsea Blackpool v Southend West Ham v Plymouth Arsenal v Newcastle Luton v Charlton Manchester City v Norwich Sheffield United v Morecambe Sheffield Wednesday v Everton Fulham v Bolton Burnley v Portsmouth Aston Villa v Nottingham Forest or [.

Phew. What a week. So much going on everywhere, particularly here in dear old England. Lots to take in and much that's no doubt passed some of us by. Let's take a look back at an event-filled week of football that had plenty to catch the eye...
Carling Cup gathers momentum
The second round of the Carling Cup (that's the League Cup for older visitors) took place on Tuesday and Wednesday and it's the stage of the competition where most of the Premier League teams enter the field of battle - often with disastrous consequences.

Lets get the decaying news out of the way first. In a last minute transfer before the 'window' closed, Lassana Di....ar......ra left Chelsea for the new ski, (Chelski is old hat now) so let's welcome Arseski. Diarra was a firm fans favourite and with no disrespect to the lad he has gone on and increased Wenger's French foreign legion so weclome Frenchnal and Arseski - No it won't kick off - there will only be one ski and thats Chelski, but there will only be one Frenchnal!

Happy days as Premiership action returns this weekend and Chelsea have a chance to lay the ghost of the disappointing defeat at Villa a couple of weeks ago with a home game against Blackburn Rovers and former Chelsea legend, Mark Hughes who is Rovers manager.

Rovers are on an unbeaten 14 match domestic run and the last team to beat Rovers.

From yesterdays Carling Cup action.

Newcastle at home was arguably the hardest tie for anyone in the Carling Cup 3rd round. Newcastle wanted to have a run in this cup and Wenger was sure to play the reserves. This was clear as only Senderos, Walcott and Eduardo started from Saturday. The bench included 4 players who had not appeared for the first team as yet. There was no Fabregas, Adebayor, Van Persie or Toure in sight.

Fulham are the visitors to Stamford Bridge this afternoon in the first Premiership game since Jose Mourinho left the club and the match is new coach Avram Grant's first home game in charge. I believe there is still lots of anger and resentment at the way Jose departed and it will be interesting to see how the fans react for the first time in force today.

After navigating a potentially tricky tie at Bristol City in midweek, we are rewarded with a home tie against Norwich in the net round, a game which on paper at least should be one we get through fairly comfortably.
Full draw:
Blackburn v Birmingham
Reading v Liverpool
Manchester United v Coventry
Tottenham v Middlesbrough
Hull City v Chelsea
Blackpool v Southend
West Ham v Plymouth
Arsenal v Newcastle
Luton v Charlton
Manchester City v Norwich
Sheffield United v Morecambe
Sheffield Wednesday v Everton
Fulham v Bolton
Burnley v Portsmouth
Aston Villa v Nottingham Forest or Leicester City
West Brom v Cardiff City
Ties to be played week commencing September 24th end.

Big Sam has talked of our away tie in the third round of the Carling Cup against Arsenal. Having seen the Arsenal game against Portsmouth at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday (TV), Arsenal definitely seem to be coming back to their old form. It seems like many of their youngsters have developed well over the last [...]

- Both Danny Agger and Xabi Alonso will be out up to six weeks with foot injuries. With Riise declared fit for our upcoming Birmingham match at Anfield on Saturday, we should be fine, but once again after seemingly getting out of depth issues concerning our backline, we're nearly right back where we started from. Aurelio coming back is a huge boost as Arbeloa will no longer be needed to share duty on the left.

- Sami Hyypia has been the latest star player at the club to vocally back his boss' rotation policy. The 33-year-old Finnish International has deemed Rafa's tinkering critics 'silly'. I've actually been thinking a lot about the pros and cons of Benitez' ways and will write a post with my conclusion later today. Meanwhile there are talks of Hyypia getting either a contract extension now or a new contract offer at the end of the season when his current one runs out.

Liverpool at Reading Carling Cup Third Round 7:45pm (2:45pm EST) Tuesday, September 25 The Lowdown: M-I-C... K-E-Y.... M-O-U-S-E!! It's probably still not fair to refer to the Carling Cup as the Mickey Mouse Cup, but old habits die and it's still a bit amusing. As far as priorities go, the CC has to be last (once again) for Liverpool [...]

Away from league action tonight as we take on Norwich City (and confident former player Lee Croft) in the Carling Cup - a game which I expect us to comfortably progress in.
Whilst not quite the wholesale changes rung by Eriksson in the Bristol City victory, there will be some shuffling of the side with Joe Hart, the 'struggling' Rolando Bianchi (and we see why he has remained on the bench) and perhaps most surprisingly Georgios Samaras expected to start - with Eriksson saying this of Samaras:

"It would be a mistake to forget about Samaras," warned the
Blues boss.

Rafa looks to be taking this match quite seriously.
Here's the line-up:
Itandje
Aurelio
Carragher
Arbeloa
Finnan
Leto
Sissoko
Lucas
Benayoun
Crouch
Torres
Subs:
Martin
Gerrard
Riise
Hobbs
Putterill
I'm pretty pumped to see Leto there as well as Lucas and Torres on the same pitch with him.

I'll admit it, Rafa has me utterly baffled and exasperated. I really don't know what to think or even expect after tonight's Carling Cup line-up. The starting XI: Itandje, Finnan, Carra, Arbeloa, Aurielo, Benayoun, Lucas, Sissoko, Leto, Torres, Crouch. The bench: Martin, Gerrard, Riise, Hobbs, Putterill. I have my issues with starting Arbeloa ahead of Hobbs, but that [.

Its been almost SEVEN days since Jose left, and it feels like a lifetime. I still can't get my head around WHY Chelsea and Jose parted the way they did!!! To me the most appropriate time to part company should have been at the end of last season, especially with all the press speculation from January that Jose was 'on his bike.'

I watched a programme last night with two 'respected' sports journalists and they said they are as 'gobsmacked' as the fans as to why Jose left and they are in 'the know.

A roundup of the midweek Carling Cup Round 3 matches: Tuesday 25 September 2007 Arsenal 2 Newcastle 0 I didn't watch the match, instead opting to tune in on an audio stream but it sounded darn good from an Arsenal perspective. Newcastle fielded a pretty full strength side and I admit, I was worried. Having reached the final [...]

Much will be made of United's shock Carling Cup exit after Coventry City dumped the Reds out of the competition on Wednesday after Maltese star Mifsud scored in either half in front of a reported crowd of 74,055 fans.
After the game Ferguson said that he was 'flabbergasted' and everyone is 'shocked'. The manager doesn't believe in publicly blaming individual players and last night was no different.

At the moment Chelsea fans who are still in shock over Jose's departure and the very quick appointment of Avram Grant shouldn't go too mad about the win at Hull City last night. I mean no disrespect to Hull City and their fans, I am past the days of 'slagging off' other teams nowadays, unless that team plays in the red-half of Liverpool.

But Hull City sit at the extreme lower end of the Championship and they did suffer a 'shock' 1-0 defeat at Sheff Wed on Saturday, so the game last night and the scoreline suggested where the power and who the power team was.

After the Carlin Cup 3rd round matches midweek, pundits roundly criticised Manchester United's squad depth. I appreciate such criticism as much as anyone else, mainly because it helps us biased fans see what we might have missed otherwise - what with the rose-tinted specs and all. So in the spirit of fighting fair, I thought [...]

Wow, great job rigging the draw whoever did. Not only do we get a relatively easy opponent for our fourth round Carling Cup tie, but 'God' gets to return to Anfield. This match could be played on All Hallows' Eve as well.

Newcastle United have been handed a difficult tie against Arsenal away in the pick of the Carling Cup Third Round. Newcastle beat Barnsley 2-0 in the second round to reach this stage and will now face Arsenal at the Emirates stadium. It will be interesting to see what team Arsenal will select against Newcastle since the Magpies [...]

Yeah, I know it's the Carling Cup now, but it was so much more fun to make fun of when you could call it the "Worthless Cup". I mean, what play on the name Carling can you make? I went...

David Rozehnal has been speaking to Lee Ryder of the Newcastle Evening Chronicle and talked about 3 upcoming games. The first one is tonight against Ireland, when he will be up against team-mate Shay Given in the Czech Republic vs Ireland European qualifier. The second is Newcastle's vital 3rd round Carling Cup tie at the Emirates stadium [...]

Fast approaching is Round 3 of the Carling Cup, which of course means that the bigger guns are about to join in. What I am to discuss here is just how important the cup competition is, if indeed at all and mainly how the big guns should treat it because it's something opinion is largely [...]

2:45pm EST. Shown at 6pm on Setanta Sports.
Last 3 head-to-head:
2-1 Liverpool (a) 04.07.07
2-0 Liverpool (h) 11.04.06
4-3 Liverpool (a; Carling Cup) 10.25.06
Last 3 matches:
Liverpool: 0-0 Brum (h); 1-1 Porto (a); 0-0 Portsmouth (a)
Reading: 2-1 Wigan (h); 1-2 Sunderland (a); 0-3 West Ham (h)
Referee: Martin Atkinson
Guess at a squad:
Itandje
Darby Arbeloa Hobbs Aurelio
El Zhar Sissoko Lucas Leto
Crouch Lindfield
I'll be honest, I'm not really bothered one way or the other whether Liverpool has a decent Carling Cup run.

- Marseille's Samir Nasri is set to miss his side's Champions League match next week with us due to meningitis-type flu. The 20-year-old attacking midfielder was hospitalized last weekend and has yet to be released. He is expected to require at least a two week convalescence period.
- Jamie Carragher is set to make his 476th appearance for Liverpool tonight against Reading.

United begin their participation in English football's fourth most important competition tomorrow with the third round Carling Cup tie against Coventry City at Old Trafford. What can we expect?

*A begging Wayne Rooney should make an appearance...

*It'll likely be a mostly youthful squad however...

*The Coventry players are urged to enjoy the occasion.

Two things happened early in the second half of this match that allowed Liverpool to play their game. First, we got an early goal on a well-played ball from Benayoun to Torres who beat Duberry and slotted it into side of the net past Federici. Then I guess the ref got tired of watching Reading turn the beautiful game into a pub brawl and started handing out the yellow cards.

At the end of the game last night Newcastle United were a well beaten side – but they were also a tired side having been forced to play within 48 hours of their good victory on Sunday against West Ham United. It was obvious that some of the players ran out of steam – especially in [...]

Once again, Reading failed to live with Liverpool's (mostly) reserve squad and got beaten up by a brilliant Fernando Torres hattrick. While it seems incredible that in a Liverpool shirt, Torres does not display any of the profligacy in front of goal compared to his time with Atletico Madrid, do note other than the goal he scored against Chelsea, the other few were against the lesser teams.