Chelsea boss Andre Villas-Boas admitted that as his side prepares to kick-off at Goodison Park this afternoon, damage control is the only ambition for the Blues in a Premier League campaign where they have not been 'very honorable'.

With Tottenham seven points ahead in third and Newcastle, Arsenal, and Liverpool all within striking distance of Chelsea's current fourth position in the table, Villas-Boas acknowledges that it has been a shaky ride for a side that was assembled to chase glory.

Arsenal's massive 7-1 victory was highlighted with another special performance from Robin Van Persie, who bagged a hat-trick on the night, but it was youngster, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

The youngsters scored two goals on the match and once again provides an important contribution for his club, leaving his manager, Arsene Wenger in awe with Oxlade-Chamberlain speedy development.

Clint Dempsey scored his 10th goal of the Premier League campaign in Fulham's 1-1 draw against West Bromwich Albion on Wednesday, putting him in seventh place in the goalscoring leaderboard this season.
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After a flying start to the 2011-12 Premier League campaign, Manchester City has struggled since the December 12th loss at Stamford Bridge to Chelsea. In that match, the bad luck that has dogged the Citizens reared its ugly head. With ...
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The club has announced that Tom Carroll has joined Derby County on loan and will stay there until the end of the season. Tom has featured heavily in our Europa League campaign and this looks to be an ideal move for the player as Derby look to push into the play off places.

"We are delighted to welcome Tom on board.

Liverpool has made Swansea midfielder Joe Allen one of their primary summer targets reports the Independent.
The 21-year-old Wales international has impressed in the Swans' debut Barclays Premier League campaign, and has captured the attention of a number of rival suitors.
His sensible use of the ball has helped teammate Leon Britton be ranked among Europe's leading passers - beating the likes of Barcelona duo Xavi and Andreas Iniesta.

With just two weeks of the January transfer window left, Tottenham Hotspur yesterday made their first signing. Iago Falque's loan from Juventus was made permanent for a fee rumoured to be around £1.5m. The young Spaniard was immediately sent out on loan to Championship club Southampton.

By Greg Evans

Over the course of the past few weeks, the footballing headlines have read a little something like this: 'Henry comes of the bench to seal win for the Gunners'; 'Star striker Robbie Keane signs for Aston Villa'; 'Scholes goal spurns United on to victory', 'Carlton Palmer makes himself available for England Euro 2012 duty', etc , etc.

It's a question that can make some people uncomfortable but I think it deserves some consideration.

Many seem to agree that last season crashing out of all three Cups in a short span of time flung the squad into a confidence depriving free fall that the manager could not curtail. It had a massive impact on the players' psyche, Arsenal's league position at the end of the season, and quite possibly played a part in some of the summer's transfers.

Today's the day football gets rediscovered in Singapore with the Daftly Named LionsX11 hosting Kelantan at the Jalan Besar Stadium and all 7,500 tickets sold out.
One round of SLeague games, six games, would never have accumulated that many fans yet they come crawling out the woodwork for this game.

Paul Scholes made a surprise return to the Manchester United line up on Sunday. The player had made his last appearance as a professional player for Manchester United in the Champions League final loss of 2011 against Barcelona, where he featured as a late substitute.

The fiery midfielder, renowned for his passing, technical ability and clinical finishing, had retired at the end of the previous season citing his lack of ability to make an impact in the bigger matches and his deteriorating fitness as the main reasons.

There are injury concerns over Scott Parker ahead of tonight's match with the Baggies but our midfield general is just one of a host of players that Harry may take a chance on this evening. It's thought that both Ledley King and Aaron Lennon are in with a chance of returning to the side tonight as Harry looks to put a bit of impetus back into Spurs' league campaign.

I hope everyone had a happy and safe New Year celebration. It seems odd to be writing a preview one day after a recap, but so it goes. Our boys are back in action tomorrow, taking on Fulham at Craven Cottage. Our opponents aren't having the best of seasons, currently sitting in 13th place with 20 points, and a -5 goal differential (which is also the same record as 14th place Swansea).

Swiss side FC Sion have been docked 36 points by their national federation, the Schweizer Fussball Verband. The deduction came into force with the club losing three points for every game which featured any of six ineligible players – namely Stefan Glarner, Pascal Feindouno, José Julio Gomes Gonçalves, Billy Ketkeophomphone, Mario Mutsch und Gabriel Garcia de la Tore in the country's Axpo Super League.

On Monday December 26th, Boxing Day in England, Clint Dempsey scored his 6th goal of the 2011-2012 Barclay Premier League campaign. The American who is about to start in his 5th season with Fulham, has clearly learned a thing or two during his time in the Premiership. He's improved his overall play, especially his defensive [.

With Spurs about to take on Swansea on New Year's Eve, media attention has focussed on Steven Caulker, Tottenham's on loan centre half who has contributed to the mean defence that has done much to stabilise the Swans' first Premiership campaign.

Caulker is unavailable for the match due to Premier League rules but yesterday Harry Redknapp indicated that he believes the player can have a big future at the Lane,

"I've got big plans for this boy when he returns from his loan spell at Swansea in the summer," Harry said.

Arsene Wenger's worse fear regarding one of his Arsenal's players health condition turns out to be true after the manager found out that his defender, Kieran Gibbs, will still be out for at least another month after suffering a setback.

Gibbs has actually been sidelined since October due to a hernia removal surgery but the player has started training not long ago and scheduled to return around this Christmas period, but unfortunately there's still a problem with his health condition.

It must be near to January: the transfer rumour mill is going into overdrive. Manchester United's midfield problems seem to be the current hot topic. Despite Michael Carrick showing a new-found propensity for lung-busting runs into the box and scoring goals, the papers seem to think that Sir Alex Ferguson will spend money in the [.

It must be near to January: the transfer rumour mill is going into overdrive. Manchester United's midfield problems seem to be the current hot topic. Despite Michael Carrick showing a new-found propensity for lung-busting runs into the box and scoring goals, the papers seem to think that Sir Alex Ferguson will spend money in the [.

As we learned last week, Christmas cheer may be high all across the Serie A, but come the weekend, festivities had to be put on hold for some actual football. This weekend's round of fixtures was the penultimate before the winter break. So what happened this weekend?

On Saturday, current reigning champions Milan retook their place at the top of the table with a hard-won victory over struggling Siena.

Following today's draws in the European club competitions one can't help but feel that there could've been some tastier matches upon the horizon going into the knockout rounds of each competition. Nonetheless the teams that do remain in each tournament will have their eyes firmly focused on the big prize.

Disappointing midweek arrived for English teams in their Europa League campaign, Fulham have to forget their European ambition as they're journey ended on Wednesday after only picking up a point against Odense BK.

Meanwhile, Stoke City suffered their first defeat in the competition but still secure their passage into the next round although that loss relegated the Potters into runners up position behind Besiktas.

THFC1882 present a guest preview by Rob:

Shamrock Rovers v Tottenham Hotspur, Thursday 15th December 6pm KO ITV4

So here we are, at the last match in the laborious group stage of the Europa League. A competition that is supposed to be the second best European competition to win but in my opinion is just plain second rate as shown by the fact that not that many teams are interested in playing in it.

The club announced over the weekend that reserve players Jake Livermore and Tom Carroll had both signed new contracts that would keep them at White Hart Lane until 2016.

Both have featured heavily in our Europa League campaign although it may have been a surprise to note on the club announcement that Jake had featured in 18 out of 21 games this season.

Bundesliga blog: Can Cologne hold on to their most prized asset in January?

Welcome to our new German football blog, courtesy of BundesligaFussball's Ross Dunbar *** The festive period will bring mixed emotions for FC Cologne boss Stale Solbakken with the January transfer window and the winter break interrupting the league campaign.

Tonight is huge and AVB has had his say ahead of the game. He has spoken of City's fantastic start to the Premier League campaign so far this season, what a win would mean to them tonight but to remember this is Chelsea they face tonight.
He said:

"City set an extreme standard of performance, They have made one of the best starts ever to the Premier League and the further they go in the league with the amount of wins they're having, the more they'll believe this is their year.

After ten games in this A-League campaign we sit 8th on the table with six draws, two losses and just two wins. When you also consider that the team are playing like shit 95% of the time I think its fair to say that Melbourne Victory are stuck in a rut. rut noun • a

Manchester United put the demons of the terrible disappointment of being knocked out in the Champions League to rest by crushing Wolves 4-1 at Old Trafford. Much has been said and will, no doubt, be said about United's defeat against Basel that ended their Champions League campaign prematurely, but the Champions responded in the best [.

Top Christmas Football Deals - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

The best part about holiday shopping is the amount of discounts you can find. It is very important to go around the market before buying something because you never know, you might find it for cheaper elsewhere.

Keeping that in mind, I looked around for quality presents with good discounts and picked, what I thought, were really good bargains.

Milan started off their Champions League campaign in truly inspirational form after stealing a point away to Barcelona on the opening match day. Their next two games ended according to expectation, with routine victories over BATE Borisov and Viktoria Plzen. However, following their 2-0 win over BATE Borisov on matchday three, the Rossoneri failed [.

By Geoff Reid

Group A
Manchester City vs Bayern Munich from the Etihad Stadium, Manchester
Arguably the hardest group on paper when the groups were drawn, the visiting Bavarians may have thought they'd have a harder time in this section, but already on 13 points and undefeated, they've already wrapped up the group.

Tunisian giants Espérance will make their maiden appearance in the FIFA Club World Cup following their second CAF Champions League title win, their first such title for seventeen years, which was achieved with a 1-0 aggregate victory over Moroccans WAC Casablanca in the final. Should the Tunis based side overcome the challenge of Asian champions Al Sadd in the quarter-finals, a glamour tie against UEFA Champions League winners FC Barcelona will be on the cards for one of Africa's most famous clubs.

I see my place in the centre

Hello and I hope you're having a super Saturday. There's Arsenal today and there can't be anything bad about that. Well, not if we win the game anyway. Today sees us visiting the DW Stadium to face Wigan, a team mired in the relegation zone. After the sacking of Steve Bruce at Sunderland, it would be fair to say that Roberto Martinez will be slightly worried about his position.

THFC1882 gives a debut to Siva who previews the Bolton game for us. Siva has been a Spurs fan all his life and as the man puts it himself he was born with lilywhite in his vains! The first game Siva remembers was when he was 5 or 6, Ledley King (or Mr Spurs for Siva) is his favourite player and he likes a drink in the Bell and Hare pre match.

Mexican clubs have dominated the CONCACAF Champions League in recent years and Monterrey CF kept up that trend when winning their maiden title this year. Monterrey, therefore, will enjoy their first appearance in the FIFA Club World Cup with a quarter-final tie against the winner of the qualifying play-off between Oceania champions Auckland City and the J-League champions (as yet undecided).

The Carling Cup quarterfinals aren't typically must-see TV, but when the draw for this year's edition was conducted, it resulted in some mouth-watering matchups between England's top teams.

Chelsea and Liverpool will do battle for one spot in the semifinals, while Arsenal and Manchester City clash for another.

THFC1882 welcomes back guest writer Mike Hooley with a preview of Wednesday's Europa League game:

So, Tottenham Hotspur play a European tie on a Wednesday once again, in what all Spurs fans hope will be a prelude of things to come next season.

However, the fantastic current league run – nine wins and a draw since the Manchester City defeat – is put to one side this week with the return fixture against the Greek outfit PAOK Salonika, current Group A leaders.

Dirk Kuyt: Liverpool's displays against top sides hint at bright future

• Kuyt hopes displays lead to Champions League qualification • 'The way we have played has been fantastic' The Liverpool forward Dirk Kuyt believes their performances against the top sides have improved their chances of regaining Champions League football.

A balance sheet that reads hundreds of millions more Euros in expenses than income. A defender who is just returning from a suspension enforced because of his use of banned substances. A star striker, former captain, who is on strike and refusing to play for the club anymore. On the brink of an exit from the European Champions League after a defeat by Napoli in Italy.

Last time out George got 7 results right and 3 perfect scores in last week's games.
Saturday 26th November 2011
Stoke City 1 v Blackburn 0
Bolton 1 v Everton 1
Chelsea 2 v Wolves 1
Man Utd 1 v Newcastle 0
Norwich City 3 v QPR 2
Sunderland 3 v Wigan Athletic 0
WBA 1 v Tottenham 2
Arsenal 2 v Fulham 1
Sunday 27th November 2011
Swansea City 1 v Aston Villa 1
Liverpool 1 v Manchester City 0
Boas Constricted To Just One Season?