Sack Vanderlei Luxemburgo or part ways with Ronaldinho? That was the choice Flamengo president Patricia Amorim had to make yesterday as she picked the star player over the 59 year old tactician.

It is not quite certain why Luxemburgo was sacked, however, many believe that his icy relationship with Ronaldinho was a major factor that led to his dismissal.

By Chris Wright

You may have noticed that Everton's win over Man City at Goodison had to be halted last night for five or so minutes when a fan made his way onto the pitch and handcuffed himself to the frame of Joe Hart's goal, before having the cuffs taken off with boltcutters, being forcibly removed by the police and ejected from the ground entirely.

Welp, it's done.

Baguettes & Brioche

After months of exile, Alex is once again on the verge of relevance. His protracted transfer saga has come to a close, with PSG concluding a deal to acquire the defender for 4 million quid. After turning down the chance to ply his trade at QPR, that massive club, he elected to reunite with former gaffer Carlo Ancelotti and take his talents to the Champs Elysses.

Arsene Wenger has made it clear that he is strongly opposed to loan deals such as Emmanuel Adebayor's spell with Tottenham Hotspur.

Adebayor has been in fine form this season, scoring nine goals in 19 games for the Spurs after parent club Manchester City chose to loan him out at the beginning of the season.

Liverpool and Queens Park Rangers have been alerted to the availability of former Arsenal midfielder Alexander Hleb, with Barcelona ready to make the out-of-favour Belarusian a free agent, after talks over cancelling his contract.
The move comes two weeks after Hleb returned to Barcelona following a failed loan spell with Bundesliga outfit Wolfsburg, who had asked to terminate his season-long agreement six months early, after the 30-year-old struggled with form and fitness, making just four appearances this term.

Arsenal legend Alan Smith has criticised current manager Arsene Wenger's recruitment policy, which he believes could cost the Gunners a UEFA Champions League spot at the end of the season. The retired striker, who has now turned to commentating, also believes that Wenger should have pursued central defender Gary Cahill more aggressively before he was signed by their London rivals Chelsea earlier this month.

David Hytner's article hints at Ivan Gazidis's plans to sell the Arsenal brand:

" Gazidis has identified a huge discrepancy between the worldwide reach of the Arsenal brand and the revenue that it generates. He believes that bringing the latter up to speed - the club have sophisticated strategies in place to do so - is the surest way forward.

The name of Mauro Zarate has featured before in these pages but stories are gathering momentum today over a proposed loan move for the striker who is already playing on loan at Inter after failing to nail down a regular slot at parent club Lazio.

The player's agent is certainly talking up the possibility of a move this month.

Over the last few seasons Arsene Wenger has gathered an assortment of players, paid them good wages and has waited for them to deliver. Unfortunately, they have not delivered the goods nor have they developed into the world class players we thought they would turn into.

For a few transfer windows we have been expecting these players to be sold, but the ridiculous wages, for their limited wages has meant we have not been able to get rid of these deadwood players.

Fresh from the news, Chelsea's manager Andre Villas-Boas proposed that the English League adopts the system which uses Premier League Reserve Teams in lower divisions.
It is widely known, that this system is widely used in Spain and Germany, and has benefited the young talents of Spain to progress faster and more efficiently to professional football.

Abou Diaby: Permanently crocked and drawing tens of thousands in weekly wages

The eternal question is does Arsenal have a "war chest" to buy players? And if so, why don't they? This post which I discovered via Arseblog lays it out very nicely. In summation, we don't because of huge overheads and a wage bill that continues to grow contributing to a less than salubrious situation.

This is what many clubs including potential suitors Inter Milan are starting to realise as transfer talks with Manchester City seem to have hit a snag.

City are said to be holding out for a £25 million for Tevez are have since rejected any offers that have fallen short including Inter's £21 million bid.

At the end of yesterday, Darlington FC remained alive albeit on life support. Today, however, stories started to emerge which threaten to fragment an increasingly fractious fan-base as the matter of this club's survival draws closer and closer to its denouement.
There have been words of encouragement and support funds and fury from many supporters that a situation such as this should be allowed to happen to the same club yet again but, at the time of writing, we are still nowhere near knowing whether the club will saved or, if it will, who by.

We can now officially take off all those Arsenal linked to Gary Cahill reports. The Bolton Wanderers centre back is finally installed at Stamford Bridge for a reported £7m. There were some rumblings with personal terms and it is thought Cahill pockets £20,000 less than expected in weekly wages.

Manchester United midfielder Darron Gibson is reportedly on the verge of a move to Everton after undergoing a medical at Goodison Park on Thursday night.

The Irish midfielder has struggled to make an impact at Old Trafford and was fined a week's wages last month after turning up for training worse for wear after a night out with team mates Jonny Evans and Wayne Rooney.

Wayne Rooney was left out of the squad for our 3-2 defeat to Blackburn. Had we won that game we would now be on the same points as City at the top of the table.

Reports quickly emerged claiming that Rooney had been dropped from the squad after being deemed unfit to train following an evening out with some team mates and their wives and girlfriends.

Sam Haase likes football and he can't hold back the words anymore... From Maradona to astronomic wages; Sam slurges to you his one true love. I have grown up watching football almost my entire life I don't know any different -and for me it is quite simply the best sport in the world. The pace, [.

Mirror: Video: Darren Lewis with all the Transfer news, rumours and gossip from Tuesday's papers

The January transfer window is just around the corner so stay on top of all the latest news and rumours here. And don't miss The Top 10 transfers we expect to happen in the window and the Football Spy guide to the January transfer window.

Mirror: Never mind your fine, Rooney... this is real injustice

Wayne Rooney didn't look his old self at Newcastle on Wednesday (and I'm not just talking about his comical tufty tuft). He looked petulant, weary and distracted. Which may back up reports that he was fuming at the injustice of being dropped and fined £200,000 by Manchester United for breaking club rules after spending Boxing Night in a restaurant.

January, the start of a new year, is often seen as a month of hope. Resolutions made as the previous year came to an end are still fresh in the mind as is the belief that they will be maintained. That similar resolutions were made (but not kept) before doesn't matter. This time round will be different, this time round I will make it.

For whatever reason, the holiday season hasn't been kind to the big teams of the Premiership I have a theory based on the higher wages and proportional amount of booze that allows one to buy. Bolton was bottom of the table and looked to stay there after Tim Howard booted a clearance and it caught some wind in the sail (0:25).

By Chris Wright

As I understand it, the salient bullet points are as follows: Chelsea want to buy Gary Cahill for £7 million; Bolton want to sell Gary Cahill for £7 million, Gary Cahill wants to join Chelsea; Gary Cahill's agent asked for £120,000-a-week wages (presumably on the basis he scores more often than Fernando Torres); Chelsea aren't stupid.

Manchester United are likely to have Rio Ferdinand, Chris Smalling and Ryan Giggs back for tonight's game at St. James' Park, and that will add some experience to the Red Devil's line-up. Wayne Rooney in action against Newcastle last season And of course Wayne Rooney will be back tonight too, after being suspended and fined one week's wages (just £200K!

I think there is one question we are all asking at the moment and that's the situation with the Gary Cahill transfer from Bolton.
We know the fee was agreed last week and the player and his representatives were discussing personal terms with Chelsea but then we heard from AVB that both sides were "a million miles apart" when it came to finalising a deal for the young international centre back.

Out of Contract LA Galaxy midfielder David Beckham will not be joining French side PSG after all. Club President Nasser Al Khelaifi revealed that the deal had been called off.

Beckham who had been linked with the Paris based club since late last year seems set to re-sign with Galaxy.

You have to love the drama of matches in the highly-competitive Premiership competition. And over the holidays we had drama a-plenty: massive upsets, last-minute victories, players too hung-over to train and so fined a week's wages, accusations of players' plots...

News has broken this morning as the now the transfer window is open, that Alex will speak to QPR about a possible move to Loftus Road as early as today.
Some people have questioned with all our injury problems lately, as to why Alex has been frozen out and not called back into the squad but you have to give credit to AVB for sticking to his guns.

No one man is bigger than the club.
That old adage clearly applies at Manchester United, as Sir Alex Ferguson is renown for never compromising his ideals for the good of the team. That was on display and magnified this week when it was made public that the reason Wayne Rooney was not involved in United's team this past weekend due to disciplinary action as a violation of team rules.

Injury problems and also the upcoming African Cup most likely will force Arsene Wenger make some activity in the January transfer market especially in covering the full back and striker positions.

Arsenal are set to lose Gervinho along with Marouane Chamakh for the African Cup, while their main full backs such as Bacary Sagna, Kieran Gibbs, Andre Santos and Carl Jenkinson are all injured.

The Manchester City manager, Roberto Mancini, recently accosted the Manchester City player Wayne Bridge for, apparently, seeming to be happy and content at being nothing more than a paid squad member at the Manchester club. Wayne Bridge never features, is rarely even on the bench, and is not highly valued by his coach.

By Chris Wright

Once again, the giant globe-spanning Illuminati conspiracy established to keep Liverpool from 'having their year' has come into effect and has demanded that the FA ban the club's most effective player this season for the next eight games and fined a week's wages just for openly and admittedly calling a black man a 'negro' a few times during a game of football.

By Chris Wright

Once again, the giant globe-spanning Illuminati conspiracy established to keep Liverpool from 'having their year' has come into effect and has demanded that the FA ban the club's most effective player this season for the next eight games and fined a week's wages just for openly and admittedly calling a black man a 'negro' a few times during a game of football.

Wayne Rooney's Strategy for Charades

Just in time for the holidays, we get to go inside Rooney's mind...

"Hm... Bend It Like Beckham. Four words. Right, let's start with the fourth word. Make a squiggly line with your hand. That'll remind them of David.

It's almost impossible to have escaped the saga of the Chris Paul trade(s) in the NBA but just in case you have, here are a couple of need-to-know facts.

• Ownership of the New Orleans Hornets (Chris Paul's now former team) was sold to the NBA back in December 2010
• Every owner in the NBA owns 1/29th of the Hornets but does not have any direct say in day-to-day operations
• NBA commissioner David Stern had given full authority to Hornets General Manager Dell Demps to make whatever player moves he felt were in the team's best interest
• The Hornets best player and NBA superstar Chris Paul was under contract for only one more season
• Chris Paul recently told the Hornets he didn't want to sign with them after this season and would like to be traded
• Rather than see the Hornets get nothing when Paul walks this summer, GM Demps worked out a three-way trade less than two weeks ago that would have shipped Paul to the Los Angeles Lakers and had a couple of players from the Lakers and the Houston Rockets come to the Hornets.

I simply cannot believe the fact that we have let two important points slip away for two reasons. First of all the calamitous error from Petr Cech to simply gift Wigan their equaliser and secondly the use of our substitutions during the game.
We came into this one on a high after three real important wins against Newcastle, Valencia and City and being honest should have really taken the game to Wigan and got this won early doors.

Day five of our SPL Advent. Peace and goodwill to all me. It's a time for stout Hearts.
Somebody suggested that I could fill every day of this SPL Advent writing about Hearts.
And so I could.
The stories just keep coming.
On Thursday we got the news that the club had paid the players their November wages.

I pressed the fire control... and ahead of me rockets blazed through the sky...

No sooner had I popped a decomposed pigeon heart in an envelope and scrawled FAO Chris Foy on the side with my own blood, (actually it was just red biro- I'm not a monster) I'm hearing word that Tottenham are ready to set off a dirty great rocket under their wage ceiling to sign facially challenged frontman, Carlos Tevez.

There is more news today on the Danny Simpson contract saga. Danny Simpson agrees wages but not how they will paid It was reported a couple of days ago that Danny had turned down the latest contract offer from Newcastle, which is said to be a four and a half year deal with improved [...]

According to The Sun, Sours boss Harry Redknapp wants to unite Man City's wantaway striker with on-loan City star Emmanuel Adebayor at White Hart Lane.

A source close to the talks is quoted as saying:

"People at Tottenham reckon a deal like this could be bigger than anything since they signed Jurgen Klinsmann.

The Daily Mail is reporting this morning that Chelsea are willing to take as £30m loss on misfiring striker Fernando Torres.

According to Neil Ashton at the Daily Mail, Chelsea have considered sending Torres out on loan to rebuild his confidence, after scoring only three Premier League goals for Chelsea this year.