Saturday 4th February 1pm

The Emirates Stadium

This Saturday afternoon we welcome Blackburn Rovers to The Emirates for yet another in the constant list of must win matches.

Rovers were established on 5th November 1875 and became founder members of The Football League in 1888.

Chasing The Big Leagues Southampton and the challengers (English Championship) is a post from: Just Football

Tales from Tier Two is a series on Just Football in partnership with @tiertwofooty, in which we assess the promotion chances of the clubs in tier two of Europe's major leagues at the midway point of 2011/12.

A weekend for remembrance The Premier League and Football League are enthralling, wonderful spectacles, but sometimes a greater force overtakes our love for all things football. On Wednesday afternoon, 80 people went to a football match in Egypt to support their team. They could never know that they would never come home.

A weekend for remembrance The Premier League and Football League are enthralling, wonderful spectacles, but sometimes a greater force overtakes our love for all things football. On Wednesday afternoon, 80 people went to a football match in Egypt to support their team. They could never know that they would never come home.

Chasing The Big Leagues West Ham United (English Championship) is a post from: Just Football

Tales from Tier Two is a series on Just Football in partnership with @tiertwofooty, in which we assess the promotion chances of the clubs in tier two of Europe's major leagues at the midway point of 2011/12.

Signing of the season?

So one of the most exciting days of the season is over, and Jim White's excitable gossip-hungry clone can go back into suspended animation until next year. Yet spending is down nearly 70% versus last year's January deadline, where Torres and Carroll dominated the headlines.

It was, as things turned out, a mercifully quiet transfer deadline day, but the most curious acquisition of the day ended up involving a young player with just a handful of first team substitute appearances under his belt but also, it would seem, the capacity for potential brilliance and and self-destruction in roughly equal measures.

By Chris Wright

After three years in charge, a promotion from League One and decent finish in the Championship last year, Leeds United have seen fit in their infinite wisdom to sack manager Simon Grayson with the club 'languishing' in tenth position after losing 4-1 at home to Birmingham last night.

By Chris Wright

What you're looking at here is the league table for the Isles of Scilly League the smallest registered football league (it's affiliated with the FA) on the entire planet...

No draws! We hope, for the Woolpack Wanderers' sake, that relegation isn't going to be an issue come the end of the season.

If the draw for the Fifth Round of this year's FA Cup was notable for anything in particular, what really stood out was the presence of two clubs for whom an appearance at this stage of the competition would been inconceivable just a couple of decades ago. Last weekend, both Crawley Town and Stevenage chalked up notable wins in the Fourth Round of the competition both by a single goal, with Crawley's coming at Hull City and Stevenage's against Notts County - and the reward for each is a home match against Premier League in the next round, in the form of Stoke City and Tottenham Hotspur respectively.

If the draw for the Fifth Round of this year's FA Cup was notable for anything in particular, what really stood out was the presence of two clubs for whom an appearance at this stage of the competition would been inconceivable just a couple of decades ago. Last weekend, both Crawley Town and Stevenage chalked up notable wins in the Fourth Round of the competition both by a single goal, with Crawley's coming at Hull City and Stevenage's against Notts County - and the reward for each is a home match against Premier League in the next round, in the form of Stoke City and Tottenham Hotspur respectively.

Over recent months, we have called upon regular followers of non-league football in order to guess at which players might stand a chance of forging a career in the Football League, should they wish to take the opportunity. First up was Michael Hudson; the proprietor of The Accidental Groundhopper website running the rule over the Northern League.

Deloitte report assessing the financial impact of The FA Cup reveals: £650m earned by clubs in the past 10 years Crawley Town receive £1m pay day from single FA Cup tie

As excitement builds ahead of The FA Cup with Budweiser Fourth Round Proper, the financial impact of the competition has been revealed in a new report by the Sports Business Group at Deloitte.

Stage 3 of our examination of the financial architecture of the Football League's clubs sees us head to Coventry. Ian Palmer is a friend and associate of Neil Allison, custodian of the Sky Blues Blog and here provides his thoughts on the slough of despond facing the Sky Blues, a situation that has been allowed to develop both on and off the pitch.

"It only took nine years" was the cry from South-West London last summer, when AFC Wimbledon won promotion back to the Football League after a dramatic penalty-shoot-out win as if there is any other sort against Luton Town at The City of Manchester Stadium in the Blue Square Premier play-off final.

"It only took nine years" was the cry from South-West London last summer, when AFC Wimbledon won promotion back to the Football League after a dramatic penalty-shoot-out win as if there is any other sort against Luton Town at The City of Manchester Stadium in the Blue Square Premier play-off final.

Photo by ISIphotos.com

George John has yet to make his debut with West Ham United, but he soon could after putting together a strong showing in his first match since joining the club.

John, on loan from FC Dallas until the beginning of March, starred in his first game for West Ham's developmental squad on Tuesday, putting together a strong defensive outing while scoring a goal in the Hammers' 1-1 draw with Gillingham.

This week, we shall be running a series of five posts examining the fortunes of 5 clubs that have experienced significant financial and/or organisational turmoil in recent times. Unfortunately, this cross section is but the very precarious tip of a very grubby iceberg indeed - and if you think the problems we shall detail are unique to this quintet alone or indeed the 72 clubs in the Football League, then think again.

Former Liverpool midfielder Dietmar Hamann believes winning the Carling Cup would represent a major step forward for the club and put the Reds "back on the map".
Kenny Dalglish's team takes a 1-0 lead into Wednesday's semi-final second leg at Anfield against Manchester City, another of the ex-Germany international's sides.

So, Fantasy Football Owner is being played at Pompey yet again. Against a background of a HMRC winding up order for two months unpaid PAYE a total of £1.6m the familiar dance of chancers, secret consortia and mad millionaires continues. Yet no serious candidate has emerged. The transfer window advances towards slamming point and all our promising new manager, Mike Appleton, can do is manipulate a-one-in-one-out situation with our expensive but depleted eighteen man squad.

So, Fantasy Football Owner is being played at Pompey yet again. Against a background of a HMRC winding up order for two months unpaid PAYE a total of £1.6m the familiar dance of chancers, secret consortia and mad millionaires continues. Yet no serious candidate has emerged. The transfer window advances towards slamming point and all our promising new manager, Mike Appleton, can do is manipulate a-one-in-one-out situation with our expensive but depleted eighteen man squad.

We have noted before on this site that football supporters can be considerably more patient than we are ever given credit for. Indeed, some might even say that we are too patient. In recent years, we have put up with increasing ticket prices, the desecration of the atmosphere inside grounds and policing methods that would raise an eyebrow were they to be practiced in a totalitarian state.

Coventry City's Alex Nimely celebrates scoring their second goal of their terrific win against Middlesborough

Every week, my brother places an accumulator on various Football League results, only a few quid, but enough to make it fairly interesting. To this date, he has never won.

Six years ago to this very day, Theo Walcott signed for Arsenal Football Club at the age of just 16-years old. The teenager, who had set the Football League Championship and the south coast alight whilst playing for Southampton, was signed by Arsene Wenger just a couple of months before his 17th birthday.

It took barely three weeks for the blue sky thinking to start again in 2012, but this time the idea came from one of the more unlikely of available sources. In an interview with The Guardian, Andres Villa Boas has stated an opinion that Chelsea should be allowed to field a 'B' team in the Championship.

There is, perhaps, little surprising in the fact that the most confusing tie of the Third Round of the FA Cup should involve Wrexham. The Blue Square Premier club the last non-league club still involved in this year's competition have had possibly the most convoluted twelve months of any side in the entire English league system, and this extended into the arrangements for this match against Brighton & Hove Albion, following their 1-1 draw at The American Express Community Stadium a week and a half ago.

One advantage of Peter Ridsdale and Graham Westley being together as chairman and manager respectively of Preston North End is that they may only end up annoying each other and messing around with only one club. I recognise that will not have brightened the day of any Lilywhites fans. And I can only apologise.

One advantage of Peter Ridsdale and Graham Westley being together as chairman and manager respectively of Preston North End is that they may only end up annoying each other and messing around with only one club. I recognise that will not have brightened the day of any Lilywhites fans. And I can only apologise.

Papa Babacar Diawara (alias BABÁ ) has been signed in this "Transfer Winter Market" by Spanish Football Club SEVILLA FC from the Portugueses Football League. The player signs over from the "SuperLiga" & Club MARITIMO DE FUNCHAL & has scored 10 goals this season which has caught the eye of Sevilla FC.

It has just been announced that six teams from India will be starting a new football League, primarily in the West Bengal area, and they are going to have a cricket-style auction of the some top-class veterans including the ex-Arsenal star Robert Pires. Bhaswar Goswami, the executive director of Celebrity Management Group announced that he [.

[I]t was only a matter of time before Graham Westley's achievements at Stevenage piqued the interest of more firmly established members of the Football League. And the club that tempted him from Broadhall Way could hardly be more established. Following the confirmation of Westley's appointment as Preston manager last Friday, much scepticism was expressed among the Football League Twitterati regarding the suitability of club for man, suggesting perhaps that he would have done better to wait for an offer from the league above that in which he continues to ply his trade.

Here is one for you: Andrey Arshavin has become the athlete of the year for the fourth year in a row according to a body known as the all-Russian public opinion research center. No, I am not making this up (for once). It says so, here, in black and white on AA23′s very own website.

Now, I really want to like our little Russian.

On my way to work this morning I saw a sticker in the back wondow of a car that said 'My daughter plays rugby' in bold, pink letters.
At first I thought, well that's a bit of an odd think to have advertised in your car.
But when I thought about it more I realised, actually it's not.

Matches in the Third Round of The FA Cup frequently draw attendances that are lower than they would be otherwise. The simple fact that tickets are not usually provided as part of annual season tickets combined with the possibility of people feeling the pinch in the weeks after Christmas is usually enough to keep many away.

A lot of column centimetres have been devoted to Huddersfield Town striker Jordan Rhodes in recent weeks and to have kept his head while others around him have been placing it upon the financial guillotine has been admirable – yes, that's you David Gold. Three excellent articles in The Seventy Two have explored the appeal of the man while our own blogger Ben profiled him in these pages as 2012 drew to its conclusion.

There remains a sense of great expectations surrounding Leeds United. To get a feel for the root cause for this, we only need to spin back four decades, when Don Revie's team lost out on the Football League Championship to Derby County but managed a little solace in winning the FA Cup final against Arsenal at Wembley.

FA Cup Tips: Henry returns to Arsenal and 2012′s first Manchester derby - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

Liverpool are 1.12 to beat Oldham tonight and progress into the next round of the FA Cup, and it really should be a case of how many they win by despite their poor home record.

The Reds have won all three previous meetings between the two sides in this competition, and although they have been eliminated at this stage in each of the last two seasons it's 88 years since they went three consecutive seasons without making it past the third round.

To look closely at the associated regulations is to acknowledge the Football League's existing loan system as nothing less than a free for all. ‘Temporary loan transfer' is the umbrella heading which comprises the following three types of move permissible under the current system: • ‘Standard Loans' (half or full season in length and arranged during the two transfer windows); • ‘Emergency Loans' (28-93 days in length and arranged both within the two transfer windows and during fixed periods outside these dates); • ‘Youth Loans' (identical to ‘Emergency Loans' but applies to scholars or new professionals on a work experience-type.

[I]n an article last year, The Economist coined the phrase `Londonism' to refer to what it regarded as a distinct ideology driven by the office of Mayor. It cited as the central tenets of `Londonism': enthusiasm for the financial services industry; an openness to immigration; and the unceasing pursuit of economic growth.

It is virtually impossible to forecast the next misdemeanour, potential or otherwise, to emerge from Port Vale's boardroom, without descending into the realms of bad-taste fantasy (one of the major protagonists revealing themselves to be a woman trapped in a man's body, for example).

Presumably believing Christmas to be "a week to bury bad news," Vale chairman Peter Miller informed everyone, including all fellow board members apparently, that he'd re-mortgaged the club's Vale Park ground to facilitate a £277,000 loan covering "short-term" cashflow problems, caused by the collapse of the much-vaunted "investment deal" with American sports turf firm Blue Sky International (BS).