By Chris Wright

Sir Alex Ferguson didn't hold back in his assessment of Luis Suarez in his post-match interview with the BBC:

"Suarez is a disgrace to Liverpool Football Club. He should not be allowed to play for Liverpool again. He could have caused a riot.

The Last Post
This will be the last post on European Football Weekends. But hey, don't be shedding any tears - it's been a thunderously good ride. At the start of 2012 I decided to take a little break from EFW, and see how things panned out. I've enjoyed that freedom so much that it now feels right to hang up the old keyboard.

We're quite certain this falls into the "breaking news" category, but we'll be damned if we put the effort into Googling the amount of times a 'baller has been seen with his sweetie at Cricket. For as long as we've been spouting nonsense and abalicious photos, it's never happened.

Perhaps Charlie's fiancée fancied herself a pair of limited edition Ruthie Davis hi-tops with signature spikes, something she's been recently lusting over on Twitter.

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.

The magic of the FA Cup. The combined furor of two players and thus two clubs and two sets of support groups embroiled in an alleged race row.

And, of course, handshake gate revisited.

Not again

Saturday's FA Cup fixture between visiting Chelsea and Queens Park Rangers at Loftus Road is brimmed with subplots.

Despite the nonsense about some other matchup in the Copa del Rey right now can't quite remember the names of those rather insignificant teams at the moment the real story is not east, not west, but down. Way down in the third division. Mirandes, a humble little club in the north of Spain, knocked off their third yes, third La Liga opponent to get to the Copa del Rey.

Usually, after a defeat like the one we experienced against United, and one in which the main talking point wasn't the football itself, there's a tendency for the club to go into lock-down mode.

Not this time though. We've got a reaction from various players to what's gone on, not least of which is Robin van Persie's exclusive in The Sun (why there and not the official site?

I'm back (kind of)! For those who used to visit The Offside but haven't in a while, welcome back. For those who have never visited before, welcome. As Cesar mentioned in the previous post, it's sad that I closed down Loco4LosChe, but I'm very excited to be a part of The Offside team now, as I think it better suits me at this time in my life to write one to two articles a week instead of daily news updates.

BBC pundit Mark Lawrenson reckons Thierry Henry won't find the net in another competitive game for Arsenal before he jets back to America. The ex-Liverpool defender is refusing to join the Henry love-in and says he would be happy to wager that Henry's days of scoring in the Premier League are over. In his BBC [.

The stories this week that Newcastle may have a cut price deal to get Andy Carroll back to Newcastle are simply made-up nonsense. Andy Carroll when he singed for Liverpool just less than a year ago The news is that Liverpool were offering Carroll back to Newcastle for £20M, and then the story was Newcastle would take him back for £10M.

By Chris Wright

According to several of this morning's newsrags, a 55-year old junior chef has been cautioned and 29 bags of cannabis have been seized from a locker at Rio Ferdinand's 'Rosso' restaurant (the sordid den of inequity where Wayne Rooney reportedly solicited the services of one 'Juicy' Jenni Thompson over a candlelit bowl of chicken nuggets) in Manchester following a Police #drugsraid at the Italian eatery on Friday afternoon.

Fiorentina midfielder Riccardo Montolivo is latest midfielder to be (dubiously) linked with a move to Liverpool, but the Italian's Agent has confirmed that the speculation surrounding his client is pure nonsense. Six days ago, Italian website Calciomercato alleged that Liverpool were interested in Montolivo.

The old adage is that everything has been done before, there ain't nothing new under the sun. I always believed that myself. That was until i started covering Indonesian football; now I expect the new or outrageous and I must admit I am disappointed when something normal happens.
You will be aware, no doubt, that Indonesia has two leagues up and running for the second consecutive season.

They say, "Never meet your heroes." Quite who 'they' are, I'll never know. But forget that. Last night after we squeaked past QPR at the Emirates with a 1-0 win me and my old man bumped into Sammy Nelson. He was having a beer at Victoria Station before he hopped on a train back to his home in Brighton.

We are only days from the opening of the January transfer window. The rumor mill has already been spinning out of control over the past few weeks but, of course, as the new year approaches the links with a Chelsea clearly in need of something special will reach new levels of absurdity.

So, with that being said, why not take the absurdity to new heights ourselves?

Liverpool look poised to open talks with FC Porto for the transfer of defensive midfielder Fernando.
The Reds recently lost Lucas to injury, depriving boss Kenny Dalglish of his favoured holding midfielder.
But Dalglish is looking beyond Lucas' spell on the sidelines – Fernando's potential presence at Anfield would allow the Scot to play two midfield enforcers when required, but at other times the option to play Lucas in a more advanced role would be explored.

By Tony Attwood

It seems it doesn't matter how many examples of media nonsense is printed about football, some people go on believing the press. Each day if you look on any of the news accumulator sites you will see article after article about the players that Arsenal are going to sign. We all know [.

Last night, the Daily Mail ran a story claiming that former Liverpool striker Fernando Torres would be available in the January transfer window at a knock-down price. Rather unsurprisingly, Chelsea have publicly refuted the story.A spokesman for the Stamford Bridge club blasted the false speculation:"The story is total nonsense.

Afternoon. I think this in the business is what they call a round-up. But seeing as I'm not exactly sure what this business is or even if I'm in it, I'll just go ahead and scatter-gun some nonsense at you and see if anything sticks.

Tottenham pull Cheltenham out of the old F.A Cup hat, then.

Which two Singaporean international keepers started their careers in the Geylang United youth team?Which two players have spent the longest with one team in Singapore and what was that team?Which SLeague team had never won at Bedok Stadium since the competition began?
This kind of trivia is commonplace in England where fans are quick to absorb all sorts of nonsense about the game and their favourite team.

American McCarver is a moderately terrible sports blog run by tech journalists and bloggers. And yet this post just seems to have so much zeitgeist in it:

The point — you were totally expecting a plural there, weren't you? — came an hour and a quarter into the game, when someone apparently kicked the ball into a net or something.

I see a lot of frustration brewing around how the media have been portraying Arsenal in recent weeks. After a couple of months of daily 'crisis' articles, many have been chasing other negative angles due to the team's improved performances and results on the pitch. There was Van Persie's contract (which still has nearly two years to run), Walcott's contract (ditto), the 'one man team' nonsense, and finally the completely out of context claims that Wenger said he might leave at the end of the season.

Ginge is back with his reactions to the latest USMNT friendlies in France and Slovenia. He also explains why he's pleased Charlie Davis didn't win the Comeback Player of the Year award in MLS and sounds off on Sepp Blatter's latest nonsense and explains the only way change can possibly happen at FIFA.

So, here we are. Internationals are over, real football is about to begin again, and yet there's no news. This is the post Interlull depression, from now on known as the Lullfunk. It occurs when the players have returned to their clubs but no pre-real football interviews have been given.

Today, the Lullfunk will be broken by Arsene giving an interview with the official site and there'll be some team news and so on, but for now we simply wait.

Old Gold by Off The Post on Mixcloud Taking a leaf out of Carlos Tevez's book, the OTP Podcast is missing in action this week. Indeed, it's the winter break that the Pod team has long been calling for and will surely lead to a spring in our audio steps leading up to next summer. [...]

Richard and Ginge return in the midst on an international break with plenty of news to discuss including more over-reaction and general nonsense from Newcastle United supporters. We cover the first legs of the Euro 2012 playoff qualifiers and Richard breaks down England's 1-0 over Spain at Wembley.

By Alan Duffy

In a heartening new development from across the pond, it has emerged that the fast-growing MLS has now taken the game to new heights in the US. New reports now put soccer as the third-best attended sport in America, ahead of stalwarts such as the NBA and NHL.

I could write any old nonsense in this first bit, given the sheer sauciness of the post's meat. What do you mean it's all nonsense anyway? Well. I am shocked. Shocked and appalled. Okay, you've got a point. But if you can ignore that for a second and the rather delicious prize we've got on offer, we'll first try and wade through some of the Hotspur related news that might've unearthed itself over the last day or so.

Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson recently contended that Luis Suarez 'dives all over the place', and this was followed up by Paul Scharner hinting that Suarez dived to win a penalty in Liverpool's game with West Brom. With increased media attention on Suarez as a result of these accusations, Liverpool legend Ray Houghton worries that it might start to affect the judgment of referees.

Corluka's new squeeze, 27 year old Croatian model Vedrana Linardić. Apparently Vedrana loves the way Vedran can talk for ages about anything. Vedrana also admits to wanting to be internationally recognised before the end of her career. Dating the premiership footballer Vedran, will probably help Vedrana achieve this aim.

Ray Houghton knows all about entertaining football; as part of Kenny Dalglish's lat 1980s Liverpool team, he was an integral part of one of the most skilful and entertaining Liverpool sides in history. To be a success at Anfield, the manager has to deliver attractive football, and according to Houghton, Roy Hodgson's inability to produce that meant he was always destined to fail.

Chelsea face Everton for the second time in less than two weeks Wednesday, this time as part of the fourth round of the League Cup. A perfect occasion for another look at our superlative crop of young players, one would hope.

And a great chance to erase the nonsense that was Loftus Road on Sunday afternoon.

Liverpool FC has undoubtedly changed for the better since NESV (now Fenway Sports Group) wrestled the club away from Tom Hicks and George Gillett. A year has now passed since the new regime took over, but how has the change of ownership affected the players?
Has the day to day business of playing for Liverpool Football Club in the Premier League changed as a result of new ownership?

The goal scorer and the muffler

Not quite the class of the goal that Dennis Bergkamp scored but it was a goal that was enough to send us top of the group with a point ahead of the beaten side, Marseille. Another one of those where the result was more important than the performance. 5 wins out of 6 games now and that is momentum building.

It beggars belief that somebody could earn a salary for writing such dross but James Olley, from The London Evening Standard, has managed to do just that.

Olley claims that if Evra cannot prove that he was racially abused then he should have the book thrown at him. Is that how justice works?

Some more words of wisdom from the biggest tw*t in the Premiership to date

"However, despite criticising media intrusion into players' private lives, Barton hit out at the behaviour of England captain John Terry and Manchester United star Giggs in their private lives.

He said of the latter: "The Giggs issue in any walk of life is not right, the behaviour of the man towards another man, towards his brother.

Look, I told you we were going to persist with this 'hatred of Barry Davies' nonsense. Don't say you weren't warned...
You may want to see here first.
Mr & Mrs Davies – Part 2: At the Beach
Maureen: "What a lovely day."
Barry: "yes, you join us on this lovely Sunday afternoon with the sun blazing high in the bright blue sky.

It's half-time in the Merseyside derby, and once again the outcome of the match has been given an almighty helping-hand by the match officials, in this case one Martin Atkinson. In case you have missed this particular incident, Mr Atkinson decided that Jack Rodwell's tough, but legitimate challenge, was worthy of a straight red card.

Why Owen Hargreaves is more like an easily-led sheep than a guinea pig

At the start of this month someone created a false Owen Hargreaves Twitter account. It carried the claim United fans had daubed the word ‘Traitor' on his car. ­Nonsense, of course, but the fact it had fleeting credibility highlights the ­delicacy of Manchester's new order.

Never mind continuing his goal streak, I'll be happy be a defensive performance

There's only so many times one team can restart a season, which is why I won't even go into this thinking that this is where it begins for us again. We are now in 17th position in the league. Our next opponent, Bolton is 19th.