Week six of the Mexican Apertura is going to feature some key games in the fight to stay in La Primera. Some teams all of you may be familiar with are in really bad shape while others are mid-table waiting for that spark to put them at the top. After the break, we give a short preview of when and where you can watch the games this weekend along with a Fire/MLS connection where applicable.

Harry Redknapp was found innocent of tax evasion on Wednesday afternoon in London. The court hearing did not merely determine whether Harry Redknapp was going to find himself imprisoned, or at the very least fined and reprimanded, for tax evasion but, perhaps just as importantly, whether Harry Redknapp was still on course for the top job in English football.

By Alan Duffy

Queens Park Rangers 1-2 Wolverhampton Wanderers Premier League 4th February 2012

Djibril Cisse could never be described as a shrinking violet, so it will come as little surprise that the former Liverpool man was once again the centre of attention at Loftus Road, albeit for all the wrong reasons.

Now that the January transfer window is closed, clubs are gearing up to be ready for the rest of the season. For promoted clubs in particular, the Premiership adventure has entered the second - and possibly last - half of the season. Whether they will be able to continue their adventure is anyone's guess, but judging from the league table, Norwich and Swansea look to be in a good position to stay up.

A little gallows humour can go a long way. Kettering Town's patchwork team played Gateshead in the Blue Square Premier in Tuesday night. Another crowd of under one thousand, another critical evening in a relegation battle that may yet prove to be highly important should the club somehow scrape through its current woes.

By Alan Duffy

Bolton Wanderers 3-1 Liverpool Premier League 21 January 2012

Starting without a genuine defensive midfielder was always going to leave the visiting Reds somewhat vulnerable at the Reebok. Still,with Steven Gerrard orchestrating things from midfield and Bolton ensconced in a relegation battle, Kenny Dalglish and co.

Stevenage are on the road again this weekend as they make a trip up to Glanford Park to face Alan Knill's Scunthorpe United. Boro are still managerless after Graham Westley's departure last Friday, but they will be confident going into the game after a run of 10 away games in all competitions without defeat.

As soon as Graham Westley had parked his Bentley into the car park at Deepdale, bookmakers online were offering odds on who will be the next manager to step into the Broadhall Way hotseat. It's arguably the best management position currently on offer in the Football League. Stevenage sit 6th in the League 1 table, are still in the FA Cup and have a squad full of young, hungry players with room to improve even further.

The defender had been set to move to Chelsea for a fee rumoured to be around the £7 million mark. Complications began when personal terms were discussed. It appears that Gary Cahill's representatives believed the player was worthy of a far more lucrative contract than Chelsea were willing to offer him.

With the January transfer window opening up in just a few days, we look ahead at some of the players most likely to be changing clubs in the January sales.

1. Carlos Tevez, Man City. Hopefully Tevez will finally leave and join AC Milan, with the transfer saga dragging on for a long time already.

1 Hard Times on the Thames

Manchester United is a very good club. This season, they've tossed aside inferior opponents with a startling ease. Despite that, there's no reason Fulham should've lost to them 5-nil at home yesterday. The South London club looked completely unprepared to deal with the likes of Danny Welbeck, Nani and Wayne Rooney.

Looking around this morning, it's probably best to start with positive injury news, which unfortunately comes almost exclusively in terms of Villa missing players.
It seems that Bent, Heskey, Herd and possibly also Collins are out for Villa.

Sitting five points off the coveted Champions League places, Liverpool will look to gain maximum points in their upcoming fixtures. If they can stay close to fourth over the coming weeks, with the January transfer window looming and Dalglish being clear they have the option to buy or not and Steven Gerrard's return imminent; there will surely be the belief and potential within the club to be genuine contenders for fourth, right to the final whistle of the season.

The big game in the Premier League this weekend is a clash between Manchester City and Arsenal and City captain Vincent Kompany is confident his side can bounce back to winning ways:

"I definitely have a lot of respect for Arsenal," Kompany said. "On Sunday, we are looking to do what they have done.

Preston chairman has wasted no time in stamping his authority in club, sacking the club's manager Phil Brown barely a week in the job.
Brown took over the Lancashire club last January and was immediately plunged into a relegation battle.
Those who bet on the Championship certainly fancied Brown's men to lose their fight against the drop, which they duly did, given the desperate nature of the situation it did not reflect poorly on Brown.

After Sunday saw Boca Juniors win the title, Monday saw a match that could prove just as important come the end of the season (i.e. Clausura); the relegation battle between San Lorenzo and Tigre. The resurgent visitors were beaten by ... Continue reading →

This season's Premier League is more difficult to predict than any other in recent history. The title race is a genuine two horse race: Man United's supremacy has finally been challenged by Man City, and the relegation battle is anyone's call. With so much unpredictability about, football betting tips with Onebooker is a sure-fire source [.

At the beginning of the season it was fair to say that Arsenal were playing shit.
We seemed a bigger shambles than a pissed up David Hasselhoff trying to eat a hamburger.
At the time there many people jumping on an RIP Arsenal Football Club bandwagon. A bandwagon that was gaining more speed than Keanu Reeves on a bus.

This season's Premier League is more difficult to predict than any other in recent history. The title race is a genuine two horse race: Man United's supremacy has finally been challenged by Man City, and the relegation battle is anyone's call. With so much unpredictability about, football betting tips with Onebooker is a sure-fire source [.

Arsenal 2 (Van Persie 49, 86) Borussia Dortmund 1 (Kagawa 90)
(Champions League)

You should never get ahead of yourself in football. Sing the praises of a team too early, and they can fade away and make you seem foolish (see the pundits handing Chelsea the title after five games of last season).

If this was 2005-2010, and Chelsea played Spurs, I'd give it to Chelsea in the blink of an eye. If Manchester United played City, I'd give it to the former, or if Arsenal played Blackburn, I would undoubtedly go for the one I wouldn't today, but well, that was then. That was the former Premier League — sadly or fortunately, no more.

Sunderland Q&A: Transfers, Fans and Footballing Identity - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

Earlier this month Roker Report (Sunderland blog) editor Simon Walsh asked us if we'd like to do a Q&A on Sunderland and here it is. We talk about Sunderland's transfer policy, footballing identity (or lack thereof) as well as whether Sunderland will be in a relegation battle this season.

The Exhilaration Of Being A Premier League Fan - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

Having the opportunity to watch the world's best football league week in and week out in person, is a very special privilege.

Having had a season-ticket at my boyhood club Aston Villa for well over a decade, I have seen some of the world's best players come to Villa Park and demonstrate their imperious abilities.

With my Welsh Premier League virginity now only a distant memory, I make my way west to Carmarthen for my third match of the season. Carmarthen Town are the perennial mid-table finishers of this league, although recent seasons and form so far suggests they could be in the midst of a relegation battle.

This piece contributed by John Nyen.

It's all to play for at the end of the season.

Deride the league and the format for the MLS play-offs as much as you want, but the fact remains that with five to seven matches left for most teams, there are still 13 teams trying to climb over one-another to make the playoffs with only one, the mightly 2002-USMNT-Los Angeles Galaxy, having clinched.

By IAN HOLLIDAY

With the UEFA Champions League and Europa League group stages getting underway last week and most European leagues playing midweek games this week, managers across Europe saw their squads' depths tested this weekend, and some sides fared better than others.

In my whole entire stinking existence I have never seen Arsenal involved in a relegation scrap.
There is always a first for everything I suppose!
People say Arsenal will find it tough to get into the top four this season.
Well, at the moment, I'd be happy if we finish outside of the bottom four!

The American trio at IFK Mariehamn look to get back to winning ways, while PS Kemi Kings' Daniel Stevens and Kyle Luetkehan go into a relegation battle against Espoo.

CSKA Moscow currently top the Russian League

The 2011-12 Russian Premier League may still have a long way to go but the next nine rounds of matches will prove intriguing. After 30 rounds the league is split into a championship group and a relegation group with eight teams in each. It is, therefore, vitally important for every club that they put some form together at this crucial time.

AnfieldIndex.com Writers Predictions | 2011/12 Season

AnfieldIndex Liverpool FC Stats | Liverpool FC Blog | Liverpool FC Forum So the start of the new season has come around (super fast for us as we've been so busy) and as is usual at this time of year everyone is having their say for the predictions.

Quick Reminder, Real Life The two most important words on any West Brom fan's lips last season must surely have been: Peter Odemwingie. What a breath of fresh air in the Premier League. Odemwingie arrived at The Hawthorns and was an instant hit. The club dismissed manager Roberto Di Matteo half-way through the year in the thick of a relegation battle, and Roy Hodgson came in, steadied the

Following this morning's chat about Arsenal's season, we're now taking a look at Aston Villa's, with Damian Dugdale from The Villa Blog. With Villa replacing Gerard Houllier with Alex McLeish, who has relegated hated rivals Birmingham twice, there's maybe not an awful lot to be happy about if you're a Villa fan at the moment.

Defender Katie Kelly (Marquette) is headed back to Sweden to continue her soccer career.

Kelly, who played for FC Indiana in the Women's Premier Soccer League this summer, recently signed with Hammarby IF in the Damallsvenskan.

Hammarby (0-7-4) is in a relegation battle, sitting in 11th place in the 12-team league, the top division of women's soccer in Sweden.

United States international Jonathan Spector has signed for Championship side Birmingham on a free transfer. The former West Ham United defender played well when called up by the Hammers last season, but now finds himself a division lower after the Blues faced relegation last season.

Despite plying his trade in the nPower Championship now, Spector will have the chance to impress in the Europa League thanks to the club's unlikely Carling Cup triumph over Arsenal last season.

The Time for Honouring Yourself Will Soon Be at an End

Years of building my DVD library and watching films have given me the uncanny ability of being able to liken certain scenarios to the big screen. For example, Liam Tomkins' continuous yet comical mishaps are almost a carbon copy of 'how to lose friends and alienate people; while the constant twitter arguements I found myself in are reminiscent to a scene from 8 mile.

They are amongst the pillars of the English game. They were amongst the first bastions of professionalism in the game, were founder members of the Football League in 1888, and their name immediately conjures up something almost unfathomably romantic about the history of football in this country. That said, though, Aston Villa can occasionally give the impression of being a club that is plain damn contrary.

After a goalless draw with Serie A Champions AC Milan on the last day of the 2010/11 season, Udinese qualified for the UEFA Champions League for the first time in five years.
An extremely unpredictable result considering they were in the midst of a relegation battle the season before, eventually finishing fifteenth.

By DAVID MOSSE

Nacional entered Saturday's clash with Defensor Sporting needing only one point to secure the Clausura title, and when Richard Porta opened the scoring after just six minutes, Los Tricolores looked set to finish the job without much drama. But Sporting went down fighting, creating a number of chances and dominating large portions of this pulsating encounter at the Estadio Gran Parque Central.

A key weekend in the relegation battle in the Primera arrives. No matches were played on Friday evening, but Sunday sees a critical clash, as River Plate visit Bahía Blanca to take on one of the title challengers and ... Continue reading →

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The 2011 Premier League season has come to an end and the winners and losers have been decided. On this week's main report we take a look back at some of the highs and lows of the English football season.