Soccer Blog|Football News, Reviews, Quizzes

The deal is finally done. Peter Crouch has moved from Liverpool to Portsmouth in a deal estimated to be worth £11m. Crouch returns to Fratton Park after a gap of six years, and is reunited with old manager Harry Redknapp. Portsmouth, who signed Crouch from QPR in 2001 for £1.25 million, sold him to Aston Villa for £5m the next season.

Crouch has signed a four year contract at Portsmouth, and is expected to partner Jermain Defoe upfront. The move also sees him in the same team as former Liverpool defender Djimi Traore.

In his time at Anfield, Crouch notched up some memorable performances. He was also the first England player to score 10 international goals in a calendar year. Anfield fans will remember Crouch for his stunning overhead kick against Galatasaray as well as his hat trick against Arsenal, among other memories.

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Highly rated Danish teenager Nikola Saric has completed his move to Anfield from Herfølge. The 17 year old attacking talent is primarily a left footed striker, but can also play on the right or in the centre. Bosnian born Saric has represented Denmark at the U-18 level, and was also apparently being chased by Barcelona and Tottenham Hotspur.

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After five injury filled seasons at Liverpool, Australian winger Harry Kewell has left the Premiership and moved to Turkish club Galatasaray. Kewell has signed a two year contract with the Turkish giants after being released on a free transfer by the Reds. Roma, Spartak Moscow and Portsmouth were also reportedly chasing his signature.

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Judging by reports in the press, Togo forward Emmanuel Adebayor will not be reunited with Mathieu Flamini next season. AC Milan, who had earlier expressed interest in signing the Arsenal striker, have said that they cannot meet Arsenal’s 45 million euro valuation of the player. Barcelona have already had a £25 million pound bid rejected.

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Trinidad and Tobago veteran Dwight Yorke has signed a one year contract extension at Sunderland, thus putting an end to speculation that he would leave the Stadium of Light for other clubs. Sydney FC, the A-League club from where he moved to the Black Cats for £200,000 in August 2006, were reportedly interested in re signing him.

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Thaksin Shinawatra has signed his number one target for the vacant manager’s position at Manchester City with Mark Hughes arriving from Blackburn. He replaces Swede Sven Goran Eriksson who has now taken over the reins of the Mexican national team

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The race for Cardiff City’s teenaged wonder Aaron Ramsey is heating up, and according to latest reports, Everton have had their £5m accepted by the Bluebirds. Manchester United and Arsenal have already made similar bids, with Liverpool reportedly considering making an offer for a player who has been tipped by many to reach Ryan Giggs’ stature.

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Sunderland have announced that they will not be renewing the contracts of eight players this summer, including Andy Cole and Ian Harte. The other six players to be shown the door by the Black Cats are Stanislav Varga, Stephen Wright, Jack Pelter,Gavin Donoghue, Billy Dennehy and Jake Richardson. The future of Dwight Yorke is also unclear, but the former Manchester United striker is reported to be negotiating a deal that will allow him to slowly move into a coaching role.

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Sven Goran Eriksson managed Manchester City will play in the UEFA Cup season next season, after the Eastlands club claimed the last UEFA Cup Spot by winning England’s Fair Play Award. The Premiership Fairplay Table can be seen here. As the table clearly shows, Manchester City are sixth with 1263 points. The top five, from first to fifth are Spurs, Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Everton. Spurs will play in the UEFA Cup thanks to their brilliant League Cup win over Avram Grant’s Chelsea. Liverpool, United and Arsenal are in the Champions League, and Everton finished fifth in the Premiership table, which meant that they took England’s solitary Premiership UEFA Cup spot.

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On loan goalkeeper Scott Carson has termed Liverpool’s 10 million pound valuation of him “stupid”. The Whitehaven born goalkeeper was sent to Villa Park on loan, and started in 35 games for Midlands club last season. No permanent deal has been agreed upon, but Villa retain the first option on the player they paid around £2m in loan fees for. If Villa do agree to shell out 10 million pounds for 22 year old keeper, Carson will become the most expensive keeper in British transfer history. Sunderland currently hold the record, having paid £9m for Hearts of Midlothian’s Gordon Brown in August 2007. In fact, Aston Villa were keen contenders for Brown’s signature, and it was due to their failure to bring him to Villa Park that they made the loan move for Carson.

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If news in the press are to be believed, Roman and Chelsea are willing to make a mockery of all previous football transfer records to bring Barcelona forward Lionel Messi to Stamford Bridge.

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Gary Megson’s Bolton Wanderers were saved by a Kevin Davies goal as they beat West Ham United 1-0 at the Reebok. Davies’ goal came just after the break, and was the 100th goal of his career. Unfortunately, Davies also earned a booking for unsporting behaviour in the second half, which means Bolton will have to do with his services for a while as they fight to stay afloat in the Premiership.
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Arsenal goalkeeper Manuel Almunia has signed an extension to his contract at the Emirates Stadium. The duration of the extension is not known, but it is rumoured to be long term  and not a short one. Arsenal do not reveal information about player contracts.
Almunia has become Arsenal’s No.1 under the sticks, relegating German goalkeeper Jens Lehmann to the bench.

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All you Red Devils, do not get angry at the headline. It is not Luis Carlos Almeida da Cunha who is heading to Upton Park, but Brescia sporting director Gianluca Nani.

The Italian, 45, will begin his role as West Ham’s technical director in June.  The appointment of Nani signals the end of a six month long search by the Hammers for the right candidate.

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Tottenham and Chelsea will slog it out for the Carling Cup final today. Had Spurs not beaten Arsenal in the semis, Eduardo Da Silva would have probably been able to avoid the horrendous injury that occurred in the third minute of the Arsenal- Birmingham League Cup game. Blues defender Martin Taylor was sent off for the challenge on the Brazilian born Croatian striker, with both Arsenal and Birmingham players looking stunned as Eduardo received medical treatment on the pitch for nearly 7-8 minutes before being stretchered off
After initially saying that Taylor should never play football again, Arsene Wenger later retracted his statement.

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This seems to be very interesting news. The Premier League is contemplating to have a round of games abroad. The move to increase the number of matches per team/ season to 39 was given the thumbs up signal by all 20 Premiership clubs.

Although this unlikely to materialise before 2011, the news has already evoked mixed reactions from the footballing community.

BBC sports editor Mihir Bose views it as a logical move ( see BBC report), while several others have clearly expressed that they do not approve of the plan .

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Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Munich crash that resulted in the deaths of eight members of the victorious Manchester United side who were returning home from Yugoslavia after a European Cup match. Duncan Edwards, Tommy Taylor, David Pegg, Liam Whelan, Eddie Colman, Geoff Bent, Mark Jones and Roger Byrne were those unfortunate eight. Other members, such as the legendary Bobby Charlton and manager Matt Busby survived a crash that probably extinguished England’s hopes to end Real Madrid’s winning streak in Europe.

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Manchester United were fined 25,000 pounds by the FA for having greater than six players booked in the game against Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday. Seven United and three Spurs players were awarded yellows by referee Mark Clattenburg in an ill tempered game that saw United salvage a point thanks to Carlos Tevez’s late strike.

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This round of games had some interesting fixtures on paper. Believe it or not, all the games on the 29th had the winning teams keeping clean sheets.

Arsenal 3-0 Newcastle ( Emmanuel Adebayor, Mathieu Flamini, Cesc Fabregas)

Newcastle didn’t pose a threat all to the Gunners, and slumped to their eight defeat in 12 games away from St.James’ Park. Dennis Wise would surely not have been impressed.

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Wigan Athletic have signed striker Marlon King from Watford on a three and a half year contract. The move comes hours after Fulham, who were once favourites to sign King, let Collins John move to Vicarage Road.

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Apart from movies and news, people usually watch television for sports. Rupert Murdoch once reportedly said that he saw sport as the ” battering ram ” for pay television. Indeed, broadcasters fork out millions of dollars for winning rights to sporting events. A major reason why BSkyB is such a prominent player in the UK today is because of its access to exclusive football rights. It was Sky which encouraged the Premier League to break away from the Football League in 1992. Sky had a monopoly over telecasting live football games, until Irish broadcaster Setanta sports took 2 of the six packages offered by the Premier League from the 2007 season. Setanta Sports forked out £392 million, while Sky paid £1.3 billion for the remaining for packages. The deal meant that Sky pays around £4.8m for each game, while Setanta pays £2.8m. Setanta telecasts 46 games from the Premiership, while Sky owns the rights to 92.

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Chelsea have signed Serbia and Montenegro defender Branislav Ivanovic from Russian club Lokomotiv Moscow for an undisclosed fee. Ivanovic has been given a work permit, and has also passed a medical and finalised personal terms. According to reports, he can play anywhere in defence, but used to play as rightback for Lokomotiv.

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Here is a list of all the transfer activity from in and around the Premiership. All the below mentioned transfers have had a Premiership club involved in some way or the other. All figures in pounds. If you find an error, please report it to us using the contact button on the top right hand corner of your screen.

Arsenal

In : Luke Freeman ( Gillingham-200K)
Out : Matt Connolly ( QPR), Lassana Diarra ( Portsmouth- rumoured to be around 5.5M), Kieran Gibbs ( Norwich - loan), Mark Randall ( Burnley)

Aston Villa

In : Wayne Routledge ( Tottenham -1.25m)
Out : Chris Herd ( Port Vale- loan), Stephen O’ Halloran ( Southampton- loan), Gary Cahill ( Bolton- loan)
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The time around Christmas is always a busy one for Premiership teams. Instead of the standard one game a week, they play as many as four games in a span of 10 days. For managers, it is crunch time. The side leading the league going into the New Year is always tipped to be the favourite to win it. The managers also have to contend with tired players, and need to get their selections 100 % correct. Let us have a look at how Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United fared.

Game dates- Dec 22/23

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Thanks to Thaksin ” Frank” Sinatra’s takeover of the club, Manchester City have improved by leaps and bounds, and Sven Goran Eriksson’s boys might even upset the applecart by making it to Europe this season. A finish in the top six would do, but if they do make it to the top four and break the hegemony of the CALM group ( Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Man Utd), then we could see the beginning of a new future in English football.

A time when Everton, Portsmouth, City and Newcastle start to give the big four a run for their money. Thaksin’s large pockets have enabled Eriksson to make some interesting signings after taking over as coach- Elano, Corluka, Bianchi and Petrov for example. City have even been associated with the likes of Adriano, and have managed to snap up Nery Castillo on a year long loan deal. And while on the matter of Adriano, it is his teammate at Inter that Eriksson would pay ” any price ” for. Yes folks, the man that we are talking about is Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

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Steve Coppell’s Reading side handed Liverpool their first defeat of the season when the Royals beat the Reds 3-1 in their Saturday night game at the Madjeski. Liverpool were the only team in the Premiership not to have lost this season, but by the end of the night, one had to say that Reading were deserved winners.

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Liverpool and England midfielder Steven Gerrard has said that he would not be against a rule that imposes quotas in the Premiership.

This comes a short while after both Steve Coppell and Sir Alex Ferguson reportedly said that they were in favour of a rule that would limit the number of foreigners taking the pitch.

Even the English Prime Minister has something to say on the issue.

So the big question is- Do we need a quota system ?

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It is remarkable how one moment can make or break a football game. For bottom of the table Derby County, that moment came five minutes into the second half, with West Ham leading 1-0. Gary Teale’s cross into the box from the right was retrieved by Eddie Lewis, who crossed was intercepted by Kenny Miller’s head. Given Miller’s position, the ball should have gone into the back of the net. It however, did not, and at the other end West Ham scored another four in the next 20 minutes to win the game 5-0. Biggest home defeat of the season for Derby, although the margin was one in comparison to their 0-6 loss to Liverpool. For Alan Curbishley, it was as close to perfect as he could imagine. The win was West Ham’s biggest since 2000, which ironically came against Curbishley managed Charlton Athletic.

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Manchester United midfielder Michael Carrick is expected to be out for close to six weeks after fracturing his right elbow in the Old Trafford club’s 1-0 win over AS Roma in the Champions League. The ex West Ham and Tottenham star now joins fellow midfielders Owen Hargreaves and Darren Fletcher on the injury list, leaving veteran Paul Scholes as the only fit midfielder available for selection ahead of the game against the Latics on Saturday.

Carrick will miss the following games

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This is the second quiz in the Premiership series, and specifically focuses on the 2007-2008 season. The first quiz ( was a general Premiership one) in the series can be found here

As usual, the answers are in Rot 13 format. The questions will be added as the season moves along.

1.) What was the first game played in the 2007-2008 season?

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