Despite Newcastle performing well at the moment and the turmoil we've been through this week, the Newcastle fans aren't overly confident about getting a result down at the Lane. We're difficult to beat at home and they worry about their defence up against an inform Bale. Then again there are some fans that reckon they can get at least a draw or cheeky win out of us given that our strike force is misfiring and our current main threat in Bale had a shocker against Liverpool.

English football in 'shambles' shocker. With a major tournament around the corner, the FA intervene and strip John Terry of the England captain without consulting the manager. The manager resigns. England have no captain, no manager and naff all chance of winning Euro 2012.
In many ways, I don't blame Fabio Capello for leaving.

Photo Credit: Alfonso Jimenez via Wikimedia Commons
Ever since Amado Guevara was shown the door, I've been clamoring for an actual #10 Creative Midfielder for our team - to absolutely no avail. That genius Bruce Arena (besides destroying our pretty good backline in 2007) saddled us with the perenially injured Claudio Reyna, who (as a defensive midfielder) was absolutely not the creative player we needed.

"It just got off from a shaky footing when there are many in reality is trying so hard to look good..."

Clementi Stadium in rainJust less than a week from the kickoff of the 2012 S.League season, the league authority dropped another shocker that totally caught everyone in the fraternity off guard when it was announced defending champions Tampines Rovers will be relocated to Clementi Stadium, while its previous tenants Tanjong Pagar United will be "heading home" to Queenstown Stadium.

By Joel Greenwaldt
@JoelGreenwaldt (On Twitter)
At this point of the MISL season, it's safe to say that barring an unprecedented collapse by one or both teams, the Milwaukee Wave and Baltimore Blast will win their respective divisions. While it's no surprise that either of these teams will likely be the top seed in their respective semifinal playoff match ups, the biggest shocker may be that the race for the top spot in each division has virtually been secured this early in the season.

"Behind you Andy! Oh... never mind."A little bit of a shocker out of TFC's pre-pre-season today as the club confirmed that both Andy Iro and Peri Marosevic will not return to The Reds in 2012. "Both Andy and Peri declined our contract extension offers and now the club is ready to move on," were the words from the Dutch Master Aron Winter who is no doubt ready to welcome new recruits to fill their roles.

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.

Manchester City 0
Liverpool 1 Steven Gerrard 13′ (pk)

A week after falling 3-0 to Manchester City in the league, a Liverpool side without two of their top players returned to face a City side missing three of their best for the first leg of the League Cup semi-finals.

The Serie began its second half with a shocker. Fourth placed Lazio was pounded by 17th placed Siena into submission. Emanuele Calaiò converted two penalties and fellow striker Mattia Destro poured in another brace.

Creative midfielders. We've talked about the need for one at Chelsea at length over the past several months. Napoli's Marek Hamsik definitely fits the mold of what we should be looking at. Plus, he's got the hair. That shit is seriously epic in either a good or hilariously bad way depending on your take.

Clint Dempsey enjoyed a career year in England in 2011, and he will look to take his first step toward a great 2012 when he and Fulham take on Arsenal in today's slate of English Premier League matches.

Chelsea kicks things off today, hoping to erase the bad taste of a stunning lost to Aston Villa at Stamford Bridge on Saturday.

In their second surprise result of the campaign, Blackburn Rovers proved opportunistic, spoiling Sir Alex Ferguson's 70th birthday at Old Trafford with a 3-2 shocker over second place Manchester United. The home side started the match with a...
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Liverpool were desperate for a win after drawing 5 of their last 6 home games.

To make matters worse they had to lineup without top goal scorer Luis Suarez, after the striker received a one match ban from his finger gesture to Fulham fans. This could be a sign of things to come in the new year as his 8 match ban for racism is still under appeal.

Liverpool were desperate for a win after drawing 5 of their last 6 home games.

To make matters worse they had to lineup without top goal scorer Luis Suarez, after the striker received a one match ban from his finger gesture to Fulham fans. This could be a sign of things to come in the new year as his 8 match ban for racism is still under appeal.

This right here is a shocker. Eh, not really.

The club today confirmed that it had agreed a fee with Bolton for Gary Cahill. It's not a done deal yet, though, with personal terms still far off between the two parties.

Moving in

Andre Villas-Boas spoke of Cahill at his pre-match presser for Aston Villa.

Stephen Ireland wouldn't dare forget to bring his snakeskin pants to Ronaldinho's next pyjama party...would he?

If you think this is good, just wait.

It gets better.

Saturday

- We offered our steamiest congrats to Barcelona's Victor Valdes, who received the Catalan Athlete of the year award.

Chelsea score a vital three points away to Newcastle in a match that was, well, fucking insane. I mean, Salomon Kalou played clearly at the suggestion of Devin and even contrived to score the pivotal second. Yes, it was that bizarre of a day.

Old Man Winter

Um, yeah.

For some time, Texas has been considered untouchable for Republicans. Major elections have been owned by them. Texas has voted Republican for President, Governor and Senators for years.
But, Rick Perry is pushing hard to give Democrats a chance in these next elections by acting like a person confounded by his beliefs, tongue-twisted with his verbal skills and unaware of the impact of his actions.

By Alan Duffy

Yes, it's another 'Tabloid paper in insensitivity shocker' stories, this time courtesy of the Daily Star. No doubt the story that there may be other footballers suffering from depression is newsworthy, but Jesus do it with a bit of respect and responsibility.

Last night I got stuck at work till 2200 so Sky+'d the game. Obviously kept up to date with the score while I was here and knew we had lost. I was reading twitter comments and some comments posted on here last night and had the impression that this was a shambles and Chelsea had a shocker! My view is far from that and we were hard done by.

LA and Houston battle in the 2011 MLS Cup this weekend. (Getty Images)

Well, here we are, the final game of the 2011 season. MLS Cup 2011 or 2011 MLS Cup...whatever way you look at it we are at the final game of the year.

I've been sitting quiet all week on this game, mostly due to the work load I've had at my day job but also because there were other items to get through here.

Tonight kicks off the SB Nation Mock Expansion Draft where each current editor for each respective SBN blog will protect their chosen eleven from our soon-to-be Montreal Impact editor here with the great MLS blog family. It should be a lot of fun and I hope you join us at 4:00 PM today for the actual mock draft.

Gary Smith is now out as head coach of the Colorado Rapids. (Getty Images)

You could see the writing on the wall with this for several weeks. Gary Smith was not happy and neither were the folks above him with the Colorado Rapids.

Today, they made it official as the club announced they would be parting ways with the only head coach in their club history to guide them to a MLS Cup.

'You can't win them all' is a saying that has applied to every Premier League team, barring the Invincible's.

Tomorrow we face Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and ever since they have had their millions billions pumped in the fixture has become one of the biggest in our season, not only that, there are bragging rights at stake, especially against their fans who don't realise their club wasn't founded in the past decade.

One more weekend scorer to salute: Ironi Kiryat Shmona midfielder Bryan Gerzicich scored his first goal in 42 games with the club to cap a 3-0 road shocker at champs Maccabi Haifa. The play starts at about the 3:13 mark.- Greg Seltzer

Sydney are stronger this season - both in defence crucial to their Championship winning year under Vitaslev and in attack.
Last year they lacked the mobility, pace and craft to hurt any team and always conceded- eventually.
This year, anyone who saw their Brisbane performance will know that they were able to dominate the Roar and should have been in the lead by half-time.

Untold Injury Index – Gameweek 8: Arsenal in declining injuries shocker! By Dale Higginbottom Any international break is always a time of unease for football fans and when they appear at a time when their club is already suffering the wrath of the injury gods, it can certainly make for times of stunted fingernail growth.

We shouldn't be too surprised that the U.S. attack currently has all the potency of a spaghetti dinner.

First, there's no Landon Donovan. Over the last few years, the U.S. attack is cut pretty much in half when Donovan hasn't been around. His contributions to the U.S. effort have long been, in my opinion, routinely underrated.

Booker Prize winner: Life and Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee John Peel Festive 50 Number 1: New Order: Blue Monday Poet Laureate: John Betjeman President of Libya: Muammar al-Gaddafi First: a word of qualification. The 1983-4 season that saw Wolverhampton Wanderers promoted back into Division 1 was a shocker.

By 1970's GoonerWhat a dreadful defensive performance against a very poor relegation threatened Blackburn side. In the end my mocking friends labeled this game as a six pointer... Koscienly had a shocker and so did Djourou when he came on and so did the linesman allowing an offside goal to stand.But all these are excuses really aren't they.

Of late, it seems that Chelsea fans are beginning to question the role Frank Lampard has in the side at the moment as being honest we haven't seen Frank at anywhere near his best so far this season.
As you can imagine with news that Frank Lampard was on the bench for England's 3-0 win over Bulgaria last night, the knives have come out for him regarding his England career.

STARTERS
MLS has POSTPONED 2 East Coast games this Sunday to avoid any danger from Hurricane Irene. New York v LA and Philadelphia v New England have both been rescheduled.
-The DC v Portland game is going ahead on Saturday but the start time has been moved ahead from 6:30pm CT to 1pm CT.

"I want to come to England to win trophies and that's why I accepted Chelsea's offer. It was also a question of sporting achievement, not money. Arsenal and Tottenham were both interested in me but they did not compare with the Blues. I want the Premier League title and this is possible at Chelsea.

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.

So it was yet another missed opportunity for the Red Bulls as they played the struggling Chicago Fire to a 2-2 tie. Not a shocker, considering the Red Bulls and Fire are the Tie-Tans of MLS, with 13 and 14 respectively. This was a must win game for the Red Bulls, if they were to stay within strinking distance of Columbus & Philadelphia.

Tottenham Hotspur, the team United love to play. Spooky from the excellent Spurs blog, Dear Mr Levy, has spoken to us about his hopes for the season ahead, including finally getting a result against United.

Scott the Red: Were you happy with your Spurs' performance last season?

Spooky: Yes and no.

Eric Cantona and the New York Cosmos are headed to Vegas. (Getty Images)

Just a little heads up about a story I just posted over at SBNation.com. The New York Cosmos are apparently heading to Vegas next winter to participate in the Winter Kick.

Apparently the preseason tournament is hoping to have someone big to play the Cosmos.

Real Salt Lake entered Monday's match against New England as a heavy favorite expected to win easily. That expectation changed quite a bit after a highly-questionable red card and penalty call just three minutes into the match threatened to doom RSL.

New England took advantage of the early call to jump out to a 2-0 lead, but Real Salt Lake battled back, tying the score at 2-2, and then shaking off a Shalrie Joseph header with a Fabian Espindola goal in the 83rd minute to give RSL a 3-3 draw at Rio Tinto Stadium on Monday night.

Another great episode of this, the original RBNY-themed podcast. This week, Mark and Dave have a supersized 68 minute episode for us, where they discuss the loss @Seattle, the draw @ Chicago, the DeRo/McCarty shocker, the Open Cup victory vs FCNY and preview tomorrow's away fixture @San Jose.

In the not too dim and distant past I used to work for a health charity in Midlothian.
I'll admit I wasn't straight from central casting. The only way I become a poster boy for health and fitness is if you need someone to pose for the "before" section of your "before and after" pictures.
I'm not one of life's joggers, teetotallers or carrot chompers.