By "The Other 87 Minutes" / Senior Unemployed English Major CorrespondentsWay back in April, in what I'm pretty sure was our first-ever Tuesday XI, we devised a lineup of superheroes, ready to take the pitch against all-comers. Here now at last, we've found the comers, an opposition squad ready to give those heroes the fight of their lives, or at least a game every now and then on Sundays.

Right. I'm back. Well not really- I'm still temporarily on hiatus exploring the vast riches that Monaco has to offer at the moment. But, I couldn't resist the urge to get something online after leaving Jack to fend for himself for what seems like an eternity. The basics? Yes, I'm married. Yes, I'm delighted.

Alex McLeish was in awe of Luis Suarez after the Liverpool striker tormented his Aston Villa side at Villa Park on Sunday.
The Reds ran out 2-0 winners against the Villains thanks to early strikes from Craig Bellamy and Martin Skrtel, and climbed to sixth in the Barclays Premier League.
It was Suarez, though, who stole the show for Liverpool, with the Uruguayan proving a thorn in the side of the Villa defence for the majority of the afternoon.

After ending November with a shock home loss to Crystal Palace in the Carling Cup quarterfinals, Manchester United will look to open a busy and pivotal December with a win, as they visit Aston Villa this weekend.

United are always a popular Premier League betting pick, and they'll be favored to take the spoils in Saturday's showdown at Villa Park.

Where to begin?
There are times when perhaps we should just hold our hands up and say well done to both teams, neither deserve to lose. Go on, share the bloody thing. Won't happen though. We demand winners and where there is a winner there must be a loser. The crying shame of sport.
On 18' with Indonesia leading 1-0 through Dwi Cahyo Gunawan I turned to the wife and said Malaysia would win.

The Best Things In Life Dukla Prague 1-3 Jablonec (22:10:11) So, things we learnt from watching football in Prague: Slavia Prague are the big boys but Sparta Prague are bigger. Bohemians 1905 are the cool guys - saved by fans who paid off a portion of the clubs debts - whereas FK Bohemians Praha are the villains of the piece; buying out the logo and using the name Bohemians even though court

A year after becoming the heroes who saved Liverpool from financial armageddon, Fenway Sports Group opted to to become the villains of the day. Not necessarily in the eyes of Liverpool fans but certainly in those of the rest of the football world.
Sooner or later, one of the big clubs was going to start making noises about the splitting of television rights.

So... it transpires that England weren't rubbish after all, just in an impossibly difficult group. Mexico sit proudly in the Under-20s World Cup semi-final line-up and Argentina should have been alongside them. The apologies of a nation are due to Brian Eastick and his team. Details of Mexico's elimination of tournament hosts Colombia were impossible to find without possession of Eurosport HD among your package of cable channels, as the match was the only one not to feature on ‘ordinary' British Eurosport.

So Cesc Fabregas has finally joined FC Barcelona. Thank God!

As an Arsenal fan, transfer windows are never something that I look forward to. But this summer has been particularly painful, most notably because of the whole "Cesc saga".

Naturally, I'll admit that I'm absolutely gutted to see Cesc go.

What do Javier Hernandez, Scott Parker and Andy Carroll have in common? They were all players we named as players to watch in the EPL last season! Again, we take a look at upcoming stars and several players who we expect to shine in the season ahead.

Ted and Zach are back to dissect the MLS All-Star Game, pick our favorite villains in MLS and wax philosophic about Bob Bradley coming back to the league after being fired from the USMNT. CSRN MEDIA PLAYER

This should really go without saying, but it let's say it anyway. Joanna Lohman:

The suspense of the Women's World Cup in Germany is over and although our country cannot celebrate a finals victory, we can bask in the glory of what was one of the greatest tournaments in any sport, of all time.

Have fun with this interactive graph from the Wall Street Journal that allows you to click and drag the victims of the NOTW phone hacking in line with the chain of villains who actually carried out these black ops. All unintentional of course but worthy of a snicker or two.

You can do this with Ryan Giggs, Paul Gascoigne, Jude Law, and liberal firebrand George Galloway, all of them hacking victims amongst many.

A dozen footballing figures which caught my eye this week...0 - The number of times Bolivia were caught offside in this month's Copa America.3 - The number of Zinedine Zidane's sons enrolled in Real Madrid's academy.7 - The goals netted by the 2014 World Cup's top gunner so far, Vietnam's Lê Công Vinh.

Houllier Backs Downing for Liverpool Success

Former Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier has backed Stewart Downing to achieve great things at his new club. The Frenchman, who knows both player and club very well, has given a glowing review of Liverpool's latest signing; insisting that he will be a big asset to the team.

Houllier Backs Downing for Liverpool Success

Former Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier has backed Stewart Downing to achieve great things at his new club. The Frenchman, who knows both player and club very well, has given a glowing review of Liverpool's latest signing; insisting that he will be a big asset to the team.

Liverpool Agree Downing Fee

Liverpool have agreed a fee with Aston Villa for the sale of Stewart Downing, the club has revealed. The winger will now discuss personal terms before undergoing a medical and putting pen to paper on a 5-year deal. The Reds' original offer for Downing was rejected but, as was revealed on Kopsource last week , the club were determined to wrap up a deal quickly and returned with a bid of around £20m which proved too good for the Villains to turn down.

De Jong: City are football's panto villains

'You can feel the hate for us during away games' claims star

View the full story here: The Mirror

A news article on 2011-07-12 09:03:39 from: The Mirror

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

Jude Ellery writes the Football Farrago site as well as editing Man & Ball, and he is sitting in for us this evening with an allegory involving... well, interpret it as you wish.

The tribe – for that was what they were – foraged day and night for the perfect tree.

The NBA Finals this year has unexpectedly produced quite a few storylines for U.S. sports fans. The general consensus from fans seems to be for them to root against the Miami Heat. The Heat have painted themselves as villains, but not on purpose. They did it unintentionally.
The Heat's main contributors, Lebron James and Dwayne Wade, have all the moves on the basketball court, but apparently, not all the moves off when courting public opinion.

Liverpool is set to raid Aston Villa for the clubs two England wingers Ashley Young and Stewart Downing who have both enjoyed am impressive season with the midlands club.
Former Watford midfielder Ashley Young is a long term target of Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish and appears likely to leave at the end of the season after refusing to enter into negotiations to sign a new contract.

Outwardly benign, really rather malevolent.
Inviting your enemies round for a house party is a nice gesture. Until they realise that most of the guests have only turned up to celebrate your achievements.
Cruel that.
Spare a thought for Falkirk's fans. Off the pace in the First Division title race, financially suspect, offloading players here, there and everywhere and stuck with a divisive manager for another season.

In the first of what we hope will become a semi-regular series suggested by John McGee of the Carlisle United Blog ‘Bring Me the Head of Keith Mincher' he revisits the dirty past of some of his club's most notorious villains to suggest that history should, perhaps, cast a fairer eye on their efforts.

Hold the damn phone, Chelsea isn't dead yet. Two precious away goals in the Danish capital help extinguish nightmarish memories of the weekend, and perhaps signal a way forward for our embattled leader.

Thing are looking up?

Alluding to later visual awesomeness, may we all now join in a collective fist pump following this much-needed win?

(When it comes to the Champions League, I can't help but root for any English team, unless that team is playing against Arsenal... How the Gunners beat Barcelona is not for me to decide, for I'm certainly not an analyst. My best answer is that Arsenal beat Barca the same way Arsenal can be beaten: Solid defending and goalkeeping, making chances count, waiting for a couple sloppy passes and scoring on the break.

Dumb & Dumber!

Greetings my friends who have recovered from the radioactive mutant of a match we played at the weekend. Shake your head clear, brush off any blood, tears and other assorted bodily fluids from your body and gather round me as we dissect (figuratively) the performance and (literally) the villains responsible for it.

On Saturday, the Cottagers struggled to get anything going against Aston Villa. They scored an own goal early on and failed to truly test the keeper much in the first half. However, Andy Johnson tallied eight minutes into the second stanza before the Villains regained the lead 20 minutes later.

Shout out to Micheal Bradley for his loan to Aston Villa. With 4 Yanks now on the books the Villains have moved well beyond Fulham in the "we'll sign anyone with a whiff of light beer & cheeseburgers about them"-race and that's kinda special. Keeps it interesting.
I'll tell you this as well: if Baby Bradley plays for Villa as well as he's played Heerenveen and Borussia MonchenGladWrap I guarantee you he will not be there long before his loan goes permanent or he gets snatched up by one of the EPL's glamor clubs.

Dundee United v HibsA Sunday kick off allows me to use today's match preview to sneak in what is now becoming a far too regular rant about the many deficiencies that currently haunt Hibs.
This one is slightly different though. It's the "sticking up for Colin Calderwood and finding hope for the future" post.

A signed photo of SVC. Signed by Darren Bent, of course OTP readers, I give you exhibit A: a photograph of Stan Collymore autographed by Aston Villa's new hero Darren Bent. Dig a little deeper and you will notice that the ex-Villa striker admits he has been critical of the Villains' latest big-money signing underneath [.

The January transfer window has received one of its biggest shocks in recent times as Sunderland striker Darren Bent has handed in a written transfer request in order to sanction an £18million move to Aston Villa.

If this had been mooted last summer it wouldn't have seemed that much of a shock.

Once Napoleon had roused himself and his remaining army from the ashes of Moscow, only to be pummeled at Maloyaroslavets and then smashed again at Berezina, one wonders whether he took a moment to survey the wreckage and think about what a kick he was getting from it all.

To my astonishment I'm getting as much fun out of following Liverpool this season as I ever have.