You'll Never Walk and Moan

Like many of you, I have spent this season constantly screaming at the telly, swearing at the woodwork and tearing my hair out at every missed opportunity. Draws against newly promoted teams, a thrashing at Spurs, poor finishing and lucky wins through penalties and opposition red cards have defined the past 4 months as a LFC supporter.

In football, or any other sport for that matter, there is always a brilliant underdog story that fascinates supporters around the world.

Gillette has sponsored a contest that captures the touching stories of many such underdogs who went the extra mile to achieve greatness that sets a strong example.

By Chris Wright

Huzzah! Razor-merchants Braun have just announced that they have thrust a small fortune Jose Mourinho's way in return for him signing up as their new 'global brand ambassador' meaning that he'll now be gouging people's eyes out with the supreme confidence that having a face as smooth as Isaac Hayes singing a ballad about a baby's bottom tends to afford a man.

Do I even need to bother recapping this game? You might as well just read my last post. It meets all the requirements: disappointment, 2-2 draw, second half comeback, Ballouchy being useless... you know, the usual. Just when you think they can't draw against a crappier team, they do. The Revs, proud owners of the most anemic offense in the league, still managed to take a 2-0 lead against New York and it took a 87th minute equalizer to walk away with a point.

The new season is upon us and this weekend looks like a good'un. I have also got a sneaky feeling that you want to play Jeff Stirling's Soccer Saturday Drinking Game....So here are the official rules! Official Rules:- - Every time a goal is scored:- 1 shot of beer - Every sending off:- 1 shot of Jager [.

The new season is upon us and this weekend looks like a good'un. I have also got a sneaky feeling that you want to play Jeff Stirling's Soccer Saturday Drinking Game....So here are the official rules! Official Rules:- - Every time a goal is scored:- 1 shot of beer - Every sending off:- 1 shot of Jager [.

Recently I tweeted out asking what you think is wrong with MLS. I got a plethora of responses. Some were well thought out and some simply ranted and moaned without being realistic. I thought I'd address some of the more thought out ones. Number one on my list was a follow up to my previous thoughts on Jurgen Klinsmann.

When talks were first being held for the formation of the supporter's union that eventually came to be known as Spirit of Shankly, it was to Karen Gill that they turned. From her, the grand daughter of Bill Shankly, they wanted confirmation that they could refer to the great man in the name of this union that was being set up to help save the club that he himself had transformed in the sixties.

Ian Ayre, Liverpool's MD, is an honest and refreshing man with a good commercial pedigree and thus far has proved himself to be the ideal man at the helm of Liverpool FC.
In a candid interview today he discussed the proposed new stadium, the former disasterous previous owners Hicks and Gillette and he praised current custodians FSG.

It seems generally accepted in the MLS community, if not the US Soccer community, that soccer specific stadiums are key to the growth of soccer in the USA.

The reasons are many, and include everything from the emotionally-relevant display of faith in the sport in this country, to the very practical ownership of parking and other associated revenue streams.

In an area already rich in history, the U.S. team has added a tiny chapter to the success story here. Since 1990, the USA has posted a combined 16-1-5 record at Foxboro and Gillette stadia. What's more, a total of 15 matches have been in official competitions between World Cup qualifying and the Gold Cup (seven and eight, respectively).

If you're going to be in Foxboro for the U.S. Men's National Team game against Spain AND a member of the U.S. supporters group, American Outlaws, you are in for a pretty sweet treat.
In addition to another victory over the defending World Cup champions, every AO member is going to pick up one of these awesome Nike/AO collaboration shirts to to help pain Gillette Stadium red for the afternoon's match (too bad that's also the main color of Spain's jersey, but whatever.

Liverpool's nightmare season has finally come to an end with a 1-0 defeat to Aston Villa, meaning we miss out on European football after finishing 6th in the league.

The 10/11 season will be remembered by most Liverpool fans for finally getting rid of Hicks, Gillette and Purslow, along with the long awaited return of King Kenny as manager.

On the one hand, the New England Revolution will have to look at last night's result as two points lost. The Colorado Rapids side that met the Revs at Gillette were not the MLS Cup Champion Rapids; they were horribly depleted by injuries and playing their third match in seven days. Especially with Conor Casey and Omar Cumming missing it appeared the perfect opportunity for New England to pick up a valuable win against one of the league's class sides, and they failed to do that.

I've neglected my little space on the Intertubes here, largely because of Twitter. The instant gratification and dialogue is a lot more satisfying than having to seed this sucker on other blogs. I love writing here, but my Twitter feed http://twitter.com/#!/starting_eleven is a lot more fun. Sorry peeps.

Former Liverpool chairman Sir Martin Broughton will be remembered by most fans as part of the team that got rid of Hicks and Gillette, but looking back he made a few bad decisions in his time - firstly sacking Rafa Benitez, and secondly choosing Hodgson over Dalglish; claiming Kenny was never a proper candidate for the job.

This past weekend, just one year after opening the most expensive purpose-built soccer stadium in America (ignoring Gillette and a host of other NFLy stadia) in the middle of the country's largest market, New York distributed fewer tickets and may have drawn fewer fans than did their old, cold, and busted single entity partner in Columbus, Ohio by a count of 13,664 to 14,549.

Manchester United will return to the USA in July for this summer's pre-season tour. The Reds will play five matches - three against MLS clubs in Boston, Seattle and Chicago, a meeting with the MLS All-Stars in New Jersey and finally a clash with Spanish giants Barcelona in Washington DC. Here's the complete schedule for Man United's USA Tour 2011 13 July v New England Revolution, Gillette

With actual MLS clubs involved in competition for the first time in months, we got to wondering whether the Champions League, which has struggled to capture even hard care MLS supporters, could ever be a draw European soccer fans. Out of town with only intermittent internet access, we thought now would be a good time to re-run Part III from our 2009 Bringing the Fans series.

Tom Hicks, the man I hate more than some of my former bosses,has been in Court in London this week attempting to overturn the International injunction against him and George Gillette pursuing damages against NESV, Martin Broughton, RBS Holdings and LFC.The clearly deluded Texan believes that he was swindled out of Liverpool Football club by the £300 sale to John W Henry of Fenway Sports.

While the New England Revolution fans have been waiting for news of a big dollar, big name Designated Player (DP), the team has instead added a couple experienced, if not front of mind, French internationals: Ousmane Dabo and Didier Domi.

The first question across many Revolution fans' minds: Who?