This furore over Luis Suarez Suarez 'non-handshake' with that Evra fella has gone out of control and is totally out of proportion for what has occurred.
True, Suarez is guilty of going back on his promise to shake that man Evra's hand and he did make a mistake there after previously promising to Liverpool that he would do so.

In the space of 45 minutes Louis Saha won over a huge proportion of Spurs fans who were wondering just why Harry Redknapp had moved to secure the Frenchman at the end of the transfer window.

One game doesn't prove everything however and although the striker looked sharp, he will need to stay fit through the rest of the campaign to convince the club that he is worthy of a further contract.

By Azeem Banatwalla

The footballing world in its entirety knows what happened before and after the clash between Manchester United and Liverpool yesterday. YouTube is a wonderful thing, isn't it? So there's not much point repeating what happened, but in the aftermath of yesterday's events, debates have sprung up, as they usually do, on Facebook status updates, newspaper websites, and pretty much every space of internet brave enough to host a comments section.

Celtic v Inverness Preview, Prediction, TV Listings, Betting Odds SPL 11 February 2012 - The 90th Minute Soccer Blog

Celtic have not lost a league match since early October as they host 10th place Inverness in the Scottish Premier League. The match will take place at Celtic Park in Glasgow, Scotland on Saturday, February 11, 2012.

"We don't think he should ever have been away but we are delighted to get him back," Kenny Dalglish said when asked about the return of Luis Suarez following Monday's match against Tottenham. The response from the papers was immediate—and exactly what one would have guessed it would be.

"Kenny Dalglish has risked infuriating Manchester United ahead of Luis Suarez's appearance at Old Trafford next weekend," began the always understated Daily Mail.

If there is one thing I've noticed about the Liverpool fan forums, it's that our level of performance and league position in relation to them is directly correlated to how much they bitch and moan about Spurs and how many posts riddled with bile spewing hatred of us there are.
As you can imagine, this is currently a high proportion.

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.

Wayne Rooney has against reiterated his respect for Sir Alex Ferguson after the manager was presented with FIFA's Presidential Award at the Ballon d'Or ceremony last night.

Following Rooney's Boxing Day meal out, the press have been reporting of a big rift between the player and manager.

Either Rooney and Ferguson are better actors than we thought or the newspapers have been blowing the situation out of proportion this week.

According to Populus, nearly 50% more members of the black and ethnic minority community attend Premier League matches than are a proportion of the overall population.

The lawyer of Luis Suarez believes the Liverpool striker will likely appeal against an eight-match ban handed down by the Football Association.
On Tuesday, Suarez was handed the ban and a £40,000 fine after being found guilty of racially abusing Manchester United defender Patrice Evra.
The FA have since confirmed that the suspension could be extended if he launches a failed appeal, but Alejandro Balbi, who is also Suarez's agent, said the Uruguay international was "convinced" the decision could be reversed.

At the onset of his tenure, it wouldn't have taken much effort to find predictions about the brand of football Alex McLeish's Aston Villa side were destined to serve up. None were particularly exciting or encouraging.

I prefer a 'wait and see' policy myself, but I think we're far enough into the season now to look at some statistics and draw some conclusions.

Anyone else reached the slightly absurd conclusion that we should really win all but two of our remaining 27 fixtures? The bubble will presumably burst at some point, but if the earth continues its merry rotation around the sun in the time-honoured fashion of a few thousand years there is little reason to expect anything other than the standard, slightly tortuous three-point haul.

Photo: Nicolae Stoian

The playoffs are now in full swing and, with the loss to Houston on Sunday, the Philadelphia Union are in need of goals if they are to advance to the Eastern Conference Final. Where have the Union's goals came from this season? The question arose after I noticed how often the Dynamo scored from crosses this year (as we now well know after Sunday).

Former Liverpool striker Stan Collymore has vehemently criticised Chelsea and their 'cocky' manager Andre Villas-Boas for for 'failing to take racism seriously' , and for claiming that the John Terry-Anton Ferdinand situation had been 'blown out of proportion'.
Collymore, scathed:
"You can now add Chelsea to the list of top clubs who fail to take racism seriously.

Former Liverpool striker Stan Collymore has vehemently criticised Chelsea and their 'cocky' manager Andre Villas-Boas for for 'failing to take racism seriously' , and for claiming that the John Terry-Anton Ferdinand situation had been 'blown out of proportion'.
Collymore, scathed:
"You can now add Chelsea to the list of top clubs who fail to take racism seriously.

Kicking and passing with the 'outside of the foot' is a very elegant and advanced skill that is mastered by only small number of players. I will cover in this series some of these players.
This year the Saudi league started with a storming media and legal debate of the Cameroonian player at Al-Hilal Achille Emana, did he give a finger or he didn't?

Rooney deserves his three-match ban.. and we're to blame for indulging him

I heard the earth-shattering news about Wayne Rooney's three-game ban on TalkSport. "Clearly someone doesn't want us to do well in the European championships," said a furious Adrian Durham. Within minutes the Twittersphere was filled with gems like this from Phil Neville: "If it was a Dutch, Spanish or Italian player they wouldn't even get one game.

Yesterday in Plymouth, some people with lots of money demanded more money, some people with much less money were told they were getting no more money, until the people with lots of money got more money. This was morally indefensible. Doubtless, there will be people on hand to claim "it isn't as simple as that.

Why the only thing that can stop Rooney is his own head (despite UEFA's best efforts)

I'm often accused of wanting to get my own name in the paper, but a three-game ban for what Wayne Rooney did in Montenegro really is savage. It's out of all proportion and indefensible.

The Carlos Tevez debacle seems to be taking new dimensions with every passing hour. It is now emerging that the Argentine could be sacked and even sued after his disrespectful and historic actions on Tuesday night.

According to Tevez, the whole issue was a misunderstanding and has been blown way out of proportion.

Today's TTnT is brought to you by the letters R, S, L, C, and K and by the numbers 2 and 3.

RSL, of course, is Real Salt Lake, who have the most Euro-poser name in the league, at least until Garber announces the introduction of Bayern Milwaukee. CK stands for corner kick, and two is the number of goals that RSL scored off corners in their last game, played at home against the Philadelphia Union.

Liverpool's Kenny Dalglish backs Andy Carroll after Capello criticism

• Fabio Capello questioned the £35m striker's drinking habits • Dalglish asks that Carroll be judged on performances Kenny Dalglish has dismissed criticism of Andy Carroll's lifestyle as "totally unfair" and insisted there is no concern at Liverpool over the striker's form or drinking habits.

Tomorrow is Labor Day here in the United States. So naturally, I've been thinking about how we measure work performance in football. It's also a long weekend, with most people off from work for three days. If they spending it catching up on the Premier League season so far, they could be forgiven for scratching their heads upon finding out that last year's top scorers in the Premier League Dimitar Berbatov and Carlos Tevez have yet to start a singe match this season.

Arsenal fans have been asking Arsene Wenger to sign a center-half now all summer and it appears that the Gunners have finally done that. The surprise is that it is Germany centre-back Per Mertesacker and not England center-half Gary Cahill.

It appears that the Cahill deal is dead (will be interesting if he signs at Arsenal next summer on a free) and that instead Arsenal instead signed Mertesacker for a reported £8million.

Arsenal fans have been asking Arsene Wenger to sign a center-half now all summer and it appears that the Gunners have finally done that. The surprise is that it is Germany centre-back Per Mertesacker and not England center-half Gary Cahill.

It appears that the Cahill deal is dead (will be interesting if he signs at Arsenal next summer on a free) and that instead Arsenal instead signed Mertesacker for a reported £8million.

It doesn't take much to bring out the obsessive in many men of any age, and this is something that advertisers and hawkers have been aware of for a long time and acting upon this sort of impulse with greater and greater sophistication in recent years. Football supporters, of course, can be amongst the worst for obsessive behaviour, and one of the more obvious manifestations of this comes in the form of football programmes.

I've been doing mostly women's games lately, which is OK by me; especially as it gets hotter. I never do as well as I want then it gets hot and sticky. I can out-perform most players I ref for when it's cool or cold out, but my body seems to deal with the heat harder than those same players. Must be my heritage or something; because I know I hydrate OK (comes from working the Renaissance Festival, where you wear 4-5 layers of clothing in the middle of summer - it's hydrate or die); it's just my performance suffers in proportion to how much better I am compared to the same people in near freezing weather.

I've previously written about home field advantage in football. While there's no shortage of debate about the actual source of the home field advantage by learned and and not so learned minds alike, the facts are straightforward: home field advantage is a statistical fact. Across the big leagues of European football, more matches end with the home team winning than end with any other outcome (away win or draw).

Recently I'd compiled a comprehensive list of weaknesses associated with Arsenal. Then I compared how England fared against the same list. I was wondering how a team with over 40 well-known and oft-repeated issues can stay in the top four despite other clubs spending hundreds of millions. Even more interestingly, England didn't seem to have most of those weaknesses.

Turns out that when it comes to sports injuries, women aren't faking it.
Female soccer players are half as likely to fake an injury as their male counterparts, according to a study from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
Published in the July edition of Research in Sports Medicine, the study reviewed 47 televised matches from two international women's tournaments, dividing all apparent injuries into "definite" -- those when a player left the field within five minutes or was visibly bleeding -- with the rest being classified as questionable.

Roberto Martinez has been in the news quite a bit lately, and for all the right reasons, it seems. His Latics managed to avoid relegation, and he was courted heavily by Aston Villa. He said no, apparently out of loyalty:

"Over the last two years the chairman has been very supportive to me and loyal, and now I feel I need to be loyal and supportive back to him.

Over the past week or so we've had bookies' favourite after bookies' favourite billed as the next Aston Villa manager, only to later be dismissed almost as quickly as they emerged. I could count all the posts on the subject from the various Aston Villa blogs and news outlets I subscribe to, but I'm pretty certain it's easily in triple digits.

Over the past week or so we've had bookies' favourite after bookies' favourite billed as the next Aston Villa manager, only to later be dismissed almost as quickly as they emerged. I could count all the posts on the subject from the various Aston Villa blogs and news outlets I subscribe to, but I'm pretty certain it's easily in triple digits.

The proportion of income that Premier League clubs spend on wages hit a record 68% in 2009-10, a report into football finances by Deloitte says.

Roger Levesque realises a moment too late that his generosity is about to be exploited in a most alarming manner. Images: AP Photo/Daylife, Getty Images/Zimbio.

We like to feel that in the years we have existed, our influence has infiltrated the collective consciousness of the footballing world in some small way.

You never know what you're oing to get with Gombak United. Before last night's game with Geylang United they had won six and drawn six of their opening 15 games. Well, now they have lost seven so figure them to win their next game. Geylang defeated them 1-0 thanks to Vasile Ghindau's second half penaty.

- Jason Davis UEFA chief Michel Platini's baby - a soft salary cap that would require clubs to keep player compensation in proportion with their revenues dubbed "financial fair-play" - is supposed to take effect by the start of the next European season. No one yet knows what the ramifications will be; bigger clubs might not take a hit at all (or could even benefit), while smaller clubs will constantly have to watch the books to ensure they're in compliance.

As a striker, young Nile Ranger hasn't been the best at hitting the target so on that logic I think this is a story that has been blown way out of proportion. When he shoots, he often misses, gaining him the appropriately affectionate nickname of "Nil Ranger". Jokes aside, the above is a new picture [.

Interesting:

This seems to have come remarkably close. As a reminder, I took Fulham's last four seasons, weighted them so recent seasons were more important than older ones, and added Mark Hughes' managerial record for good measure. This gave me an idea of the proportion of wins, draws and losses we might expect.

Interesting:

This seems to have come remarkably close. As a reminder, I took Fulham's last four seasons, weighted them so recent seasons were more important than older ones, and added Mark Hughes' managerial record for good measure. This gave me an idea of the proportion of wins, draws and losses we might expect.