All posts by h79snht.top

Guangzhou came from a goal down to beat Henan Jianye 3-1 on Sunday, preserving their 100 per cent start to the Chinese Super League season.Henan, second from bottom in the table, led through Leandro Netto’s 71st-minute strike.

But goals from Zheng Zhi, Jiang Ning and Feng Xiaoting, all in the final 13 minutes, turned the match around to ensure Guangzhou finished the day one point clear at the top.

Beijing Guoan moved to second after a 2-0 win at home to Qingdao Jonoon.

Portuguese striker Roberto and Honduran midfielder Walter Martinez notched both goals late on for Beijing.

Hangzhou Lucheng are third, level on points with Beijing, after they saw off the visit of Shandong Luneng 1-0, with Shen Longyuan netting the only goal in the 65th minute.

Liaoning Hongyun took fourth place, two points off the lead, courtesy of a 2-1 win at Nanchang Bayi.

Visitors Liaoning led through first-half efforts from Yu Hanchao and Yang Xu.

Zhu Baojie pulled back for the home side on 65 minutes, but Nanchang were unable to find the equaliser.

In other matches, Chengdu Blades defeated Shaanxi Chanba 1-0 away from home.

Australian striker Adam Kwasnik – on loan from A-League champions Central Coast Mariners – struck the winner 18 minutes into the match.

A 2-1 win at home to Tianjin Teda saw Shanghai Shenhua retain fifth place, while bottom side Shenzhen Ruby gained a point with a 0-0 draw away to Dalian Shide.

Jiangsu Shuntian climbed out of the relegation zone with their first win of the season, 1-0 at home to Changchun Yatai.

Harry Redknapp has revealed that Tottenham have not offered him a new deal to remain at White Hart Lane. Reports in the papers this week had suggested that Daniel Levy was set to offer Harry a bumper pay rise and a £50m transfer kitty to ensure that the North Londoners can challenge for the title next season. This is all news to the Spurs boss who remained very coy about his future and links to the England job.

This week at FFC we have seen a mixed bag of blogs that includes Spurs most important deal in the summer; is Scott Parker fit for the long term, while the FA are right to take the softly-softly approach.

Best of FFC

Tottenham Would Be Mad To Appoint Him…Wouldn’t They?

Right to respect Tottenham by taking the softly-softly approach

Spurs Most Important Summer Deal?

Do Tottenham really need a big name?

Is Parker fit for the long-term?

WAG Weekly – Tottenham and Man United beauties fight it out

Scott Parker: Captain Marvel?

Tottenham keeping tabs on Rovers ace

Spurs and Newcastle on alert as Ajax ace talks up Premier League move

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Best of WEB

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Spurs in crisis meltdown: Demonstration planned – Dear Mr Levy

Problems pile up for Harry. – Spurs Musings From JimmyG2

Time To Hold Our Nerve –Tottenham On My Mind

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Chesney Wishes Europa League on Spurs – Who Framed Ruel Fox?

Levy Needs To Fire Arry TONIGHT – Harry Hotspur

Daniel Levy To Offer His Best Player £3.5M Golden Handcuffs – Transfer Tavern

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“If people want to say I’m diving they can, but at the end of the day I’m trying to get out of the way and save myself and my career, you’ve just got to try to be a bit clever about it. I’ve got a few people sent off this year by doing that. When you have got people flying in at you all the time, it’s not really diving, you’re just trying to get out of the way of the challenges. If you stand there you’re going to get a whack. At the end of the day I would rather dive than get hurt.”

“I suppose you can take it as a compliment. They think it’s the only way they can stop you. But the best players just get on with it. If they get knocked down, they just get up again until it really hurts,” Bale speaking out against accusations that he goes down to easily.

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Kolo Toure became ‘obsessed with his weight’, according to the English FA’s hearing into the Manchester City defender’s doping ban.Toure was handed a six-month suspension on May 26 after failing a doping test, with the 30-year-old admitting to taking his wife’s diet tablets.

Claims that Toure had received permission from Manchester City club doctor Jamie Butler were denied by a commission into the hearing, with the details released on Friday: “(Butler) never told him it was safe to use water tablets. He would have unequivocally have said such were prohibited and should not be used,” a report read.

The report said ‘the FA does not positively assert that (Toure) had an intention to enhance sporting performance or to mask the use of a performance-enhancing substance’.

But it also stated ‘there was no dispute that (Toure) was at fault’, and the committee rejected the request from Toure’s counsel Adam Lewis that the suspension should not be longer than three months.

The six-month suspension was upheld as the ‘appropriate penalty’, as was the date (March 2) it was handed down.

Toure can return to playing for City from September 2, but will be subjected to a two-year period of target testing that began in May.

Chelsea manager Andre Villas Boas has defended striker Fernando Torres following his horror miss against Manchester United, and feels his side are still title contenders.

The Spanish forward has been the subject of criticism due to uninspiring performances since his £50 million move from Liverpool in January, and despite scoring in a 3-1 defeat on Sunday, missed a second clear-cut chance.

Torres rounded Reds goalkeeper David de Gea in the 83rd minute, only to slice his effort wide of the post; but the Portuguese coach has come to his defence, comparing the miss to Wayne Rooney failing to convert a penalty in the game.

“You have to be fair that the best world strikers have both missed great opportunities. It happened to Fernando but it happened to Wayne Rooney, too,” he told reporters after the game.

“But, yes, a 3-2 score at that period of the game would give us a mental edge for the rest of the match.”

The victory has extended United’s unbeaten run to five matches, and Sir Alex Ferguson’s men are now top of the league, five points clear of Chelsea.

Despite this, Villas Boas has still backed the Stamford Bridge club to be in the title run come the end of the season.

“What I can say is that last year we started very well and unfortunately it didn’t happen towards the winter period,” he told Sky Sports.

“This way at the moment we are five points behind Man Utd but we could say we wouldn’t expect Man City to lose points at Fulham, so this Premier League is unpredictable.

“We always consider ourselves title contenders and will have to get three points straightaway against Swansea because it gives us a good mental reaction to a defeat. And it’s important for us to continue to believe in our work.

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“They are in a good position now but it is very, very early. Nothing that would happen here will mean anything in the Premier League table, and today, not that I want to overemphasise it, you had Man City going to Fulham and Fulham getting a point.

“Arsenal lost and Liverpool lost, so all five contenders are there and anything can happen. The most regular has been United but we showed we are up to the levels of the champions – it is just this time this game didn’t go our way but we will be up there competing for the title and I am glad Sir Alex corroborates in this opinion,” he concluded.

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The debate about which league is the best in the world is boring, but that doesn’t mean that the arguments for the Premier League are irrelevant. The major draw of the Premier League over other leagues such as La Liga has been that, over the last decade, in England the league has been more competitive. And it’s true; in comparison to the duopoly in Spain our league is competitive. The recent influx of foreign money to has made the title race and competition for Champions League places a tighter affair and the same can be said of clubs further down the table too such as Queens Park Rangers. However, despite this perceived increased competitive edge certain facts suggest that this isn’t true.

For example at Christmas last year Wolves were only a point away from their current total yet they were bottom of the league. This year they sit in seventeenth , two points ahead of the drop zone and five clear of last year’s position. Obviously this alone is not the be all and end all but there are other issues too. You can look at the league and see very little between the teams but it was like that last year and what we can take from this is that all of the teams who were in the relegation zone last year would currently sit above it this year. The difference is that teams from both the upper and lower halves of the table have been performing worse.

We also have to consider what it is to be ‘competitive’. Is competition within our own league enough to make the fact that the league is competitive a positive attribute? Or has the demise of both of the Manchester club’s European campaigns helped to emphasise the demise of the strength of quality in English football?

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When a small team beats a top club we all like to say that our league is so exciting and anyone can beat anyone, and this is true, but when you have the top clubs like Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal all conceding five or more goals against their rivals in a single game you have to come to the conclusion that it is less a case of the bottom teams getting better and more a case of the top teams getting worse.

Yes, Manchester City’s rise has made the top of the table more competitive, as has Spurs’, but does that sentiment ring true if the clubs who were previously thought of as ‘top’ clubs appear to be in some sort of demise? And what sort of statement do we as a country send out to the continent if our top two clubs can’t even make it out of the group stages of the Champions League.

If our league was, as everyone seems to suggest, becoming more of a tightly run contest then why do the bottom clubs have fewer points than they did at this stage last year and the top clubs have more? In fact, after the Boxing Day games last year Manchester United topped the table with 37 points. This year Manchester City are top with 45 points. Moreover, the top five teams all have more points than the same stage last year and the bottom five teams all have fewer points. Therefore you can only come to the conclusion that the league is less competitive than it was last year, and all this in despite of the fact that teams like Arsenal and Chelsea are performing far worse than they were twelve months ago.

Believing they hype from fans and watching the build up to games on Sky Sports might have you in some sort of montage induced frenzy thinking that this is the year that your team can scale new heights, but when you look at the facts it appears that our league is more dominated by the few than ever, it is just that those teams are not the same ones as last year.

Follow me on Twitter @H_Mackay

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So many authorities, so many agendas. Football today is at the whim of so many different authoritative bodies that the work they do is arguably conflicting. Just take England for example. The top clubs have to deal with rules from the Premier League, the FA, UEFA and FIFA. It isn’t possible for clubs to adhere with full effect to all of the agendas set out in front of them. Furthermore the actions of some undermine the proposals of others. How can UEFA expect the European clubs to take them seriously on the implication of the financial fair play rules when there are never ending exposures of widespread corruption within FIFA? It may not be UEFA’s fault but ultimately if the top governing football body does not set an example how are people supposed to learn. FIFA has its own agenda, mainly the spread of football to nations that do not currently participate to any high level. However this goes against the idea of a meritocracy that UEFA is trying to introduce. FIFA giving the World Cup to Qatar is like saying that this year’s Champions League Final should be played in someone’s back garden in Luxembourg. The agendas don’t match. But what are we going to do about it?

What this really comes down to is an argument that has plagued politics for years: central vs. local government. Which is the more effective way to govern?

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Centralised Government

So what are the benefits of organizing sport through a more centralised system? Firstly: clearer objectives. Not only that but a clearer prioritisation of objectives that clubs and countries must adhere to. Centralised government provides, in theory, better organisation by using the top minds to set out plans for the whole of football instead of letting lesser minds at lower levels determine how things are run.

If we put this in football terms it would be similar to taking away the powers of the FA and having a FIFA committee determining what the FA should be doing each year. The benefit of this is that, in theory, with more people to choose from FIFA should have more competent people working for it who have better strategies at hand. Certainly the FA is not the best-run organisation in the world and at times it definitely seems as though it could do with some help. Moreover, if the FA is not directly accountable to FIFA or UEFA then the rules they could be imposing might contradict measures imposed by other bodies. Also, with one higher organisation dictating the agenda for our country there wouldn’t be conflict between the FA and the Premier League.

Local Government

The benefits of local government, or localized football authorities, are that it is far easier for them to identify the problems at hand within the areas of governance. They should also, in theory, be more efficient with their resources as the amount of red tape involved is less than it would be if they had to report everything back to, and have their actions approved by, a higher body. Ultimately this is the deciding factor.

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Football as a sport is too large to be governed by one singular institution. But that does not mean that our system does not need to be altered. There needs to be local authorities that are properly represented by both FIFA and UEFA. The local authorities need not be directly accountable to the higher bodies but they should have some input into the agendas of the more international organisations. There is no ‘either or’ argument for this debate in football just as there isn’t in politics. The lack of cohesion in the organisation of football is damaging for the game but inevitably a worldwide body would not have the ability to identify and address the problems that football faces in each country. The representation of each country in FIFA and UEFA is what needs to improve. Only then can we combine the necessary authority of a singular body with the local expertise of national organisations.

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Swansea’s challenge for an automatic promotion spot took a blow after a 2-1 loss to lowly Preston North End in the Championship.Trailing Norwich by just one point heading into the match, Swansea knew a victory away at bottom-side Preston could move them back into the top two.

Ashley Williams? 24th minute goal looked like it would at least give Swansea a share of the points after Iain Hume scored from the penalty spot on three minutes for Preston.

But a second from Hume in the 83rd minute gave Preston a much-needed three points, while Swansea drop down to fourth.

It was a much different story for Norwich City, who cemented their top-two spot with a 6-0 hammering of 10-man Scunthorpe United.

Scunthorpe were already a goal down when Paul Reid saw red in the 31st minute and Norwich went for the kill after that, with both Grant Holt and Simeon Jackson scoring hat-tricks.

Cardiff City broke their four-game winless streak and moved into third with a 4-1 thrashing of Derby County.

Jay Bothroyd, Dekel Keinan, Paul Quinn and Peter Whittingham were all on the scoresheet for Cardiff, with Robbie Savage’s late penalty a mere consolation for Derby.

Leeds jumped to fourth after a 4-1 win over Nottingham Forest in a heated battle at Elland Road.

The dismissal of Forrest?s Chris Cohen in the first half saw tempers boil over, with several scuffles breaking out across the pitch.

It took Leeds until the 51 minute mark to make the most of their numerical advantage, with Jonathon Howson eventually putting them ahead.

Luciano Becchio doubled their lead soon after only for Garath McCleary to pull one back for the visitors on 65 minutes.

A late double from Max Gradel settled the matter, consigning Forest to their eighth successive game without a win.

A Shane Long double gave Reading a 2-0 win at home to Portsmouth, while Coventry City won by the same margin against Watford.

Ipswich Town won 2-1 on their trip to Burnley thanks to first-half goals from David Norris and Connor Wickham, while a late penalty from James Vaughan gave Crystal Palace a 2-1 win at home against Barnsley.

A last-gasp goal from Shane McManus salvaged a 3-3 draw for Middlesbrough against Leicester City after a Yakubu hat-trick had earlier put the visitors 3-1 up.

Britsol City beat Doncaster Rovers 1-0 courtesy of Nicky Maynard’s 76th minute goal.

Serie A front runners AC Milan are lining up a double swoop this summer for Porto’s Brazilian duo, Fernando and Hulk. 

The reports in Italian paper Corriere dello Sport suggest AC Milan chief Ariedo Braida has outlined the Porto pair as his main transfer targets for the summer.Milan’s aging squad is in need of an injection of fresh talent if they want to make an assault on The Champions League next season. Luring Fernando and Hulk away from the Estadio do Dragao over the summer would certainly augment the Rossonari’s credentials

Fernando would be seen as a long term replacement for Andrea Pirlo, while Hulk’s physical presence and fierce shooting ability would add power to Milan’s attack.

Porto’s resistance will be tested if the Milanese giants come in with hefty concrete offers for their two star performers. The temptation of playing in front of 80,000 supporters in the San Siro in a top league may prove sufficient to unsettle the players.

It was only last week AC Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi reportedly wanted to sign Cristiano Ronaldo. The link to Hulk and Fernando seems a much more realistic prospect.

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Mark Hughes has quashed speculation linking him with the manager’s job at Bayern Munich, insisting he is fully committed to Fulham.Reports have suggested that Hughes, who took over at Fulham at the beginning of the season after Roy Hodgson’s departure to Liverpool, is on the shortlist to take the reins at the German club after confirmation current manager Louis van Gaal would leave at the end of the current campaign.But the Welshman denied he was considering leaving Craven Cottage.”I wasn’t aware that I was in for the (Bayern Munich) job,” Hughes said. “I’m not interested as I am quite happy here at the moment.””If an opportunity presents itself in the future then we will see, however, I am not even considering looking at the moment.””I am enjoying my time at the club and I think we are going in the right direction. I think if we can invest more in the players next season I believe we can kick on. That’s certainly my focus at the minute.”Hughes’ side face Everton this Saturday, and the Fulham boss hopes to have midfielder Dickson Etuhu available for the game at Goodison Park.Etuhu aggravated a hamstring injury against Blackburn a fortnight ago, but Hughes may be handed a major boost by the midfielder’s return to fitness.”Etuhu twinged his hamstring last week but he trained today (Thursday). We will just have to wait and see how he does tomorrow,” Hughes said.But despite the possibility of a return for Etuhu, fellow-midfielder Steve Sidwell will not be available for the trip to Merseyside because of a knee injury.The game, which is the Premier League’s late kick-off on Saturday, looks set to be a tight affair with Fulham sitting 11th in the Premier League, only two places behind Everton.However, Fulham are yet to pick up a point at Goodison Park in the Premier League and have only scored five goals in their last nine games at Everton in the league.

English Premier League club Chelsea have lodged a complaint to the Malaysian FA over racist abuse targeting Yossi Benayoun.The Israeli midfielder was jeered and booed during the club’s 1-0 friendly victory over the Malaysia national team in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday.

Chelsea, who toured also toured Thailand and Hong Kong as part of their pre-season programme, feel the baiting was of an anti-Semitic nature, with Malaysia being a largely Muslim country.

“Notwithstanding most fans behaving appropriately on the night, we believe Yossi was subjected to anti-Semitic abuse by a number of supporters at the game,” a statement posted on the club’s website on Wednesday read.

“Such behaviour is offensive, totally unacceptable and has no place in football.”

Chelsea also explained why an initial complaint was not made, with the incident not rearing its head until six days after the match had been completed.

“The club did not make representations at the time as it was initially unclear as to the nature of the abuse Yossi received, as several players from both teams experienced similar treatment, sometimes louder and longer.”

“However, having taken time to consider the issue fully, it has become apparent that a formal complaint was necessary.”

“Our stay in Malaysia was, on the whole, a very positive experience for all the team travelling on the pre-season tour. It is a shame, therefore, that the behaviour of a minority of supporters is also a memory we take away.”

The Football Association of Malaysia will investigate the matter, with its findings to be published in the coming days.