Thursday 25 October 2012

Champions league results

It wasn't a great day for British clubs on match day three of the Champions league. Arsenal lost at home to Schalke 2-0. It was Arsene Wenger's first defeat to a German club at home. Klaas-Jan Huntelaar scored Schalke's first and then Ibrahim Afellay added to that. It now means that Wenger's men have not kept a clean sheet since September.

It was a miserable day for Manchester City as they lost to Ajax 3-1 in Holland. Samir Nasri opened the scoring for Man City before Siem De Jong equalised on the half way mark, Ajax then added another 11 minutes later via Niklas Moisander and the damage was done when Christian Eriksen fired home.

The results mean that Arsenal slip to second and Man City are rock bottom. Here are the other results: Zenit St Petersburg 1-0 Anderlecht, Borussia Dortmund 2-1 Real Madrid, Dinamo Zagreb 0-2 PSG,  FC Porto 3-2 Dynamo Kiev, Montpellier 1-2 Olympiakos, Malaga 1-0 AC Milan.
Here is what the tables look like at the half way point:
B
Schalke
Arsenal
Olympiakos
Montpellier
D
Borussia Dortmund
Real Madrid
Ajax
Man City
E
Shaktar Donetsk
Chelsea
Juventus
Nordsjaelland
G
Barcelona
Celtic
Spartak Moscow
Benifica
H
Man Utd
CFR-Cluj-Napoca
Braga
Galatasaray

Wednesday 24 October 2012

Champions League

There were some surprises in the Champions league yesterday. Manchester United came from two goals down to beat Braga 3-2. Alan scored in the 2nd minute and added another one after 20 minutes, Manchester United got a goal back via a Javier Hernandez header, then Johnny Evans capitalised after Braga couldn't deal with a corner. And then Javier Hernandez headed United into the lead for the first time in the game after a sublime cross from Tom Cleverley.

Shakhtar Donetsk created an upset by beating reigning champions Chelsea 2-1 in Ukraine. The hosts went ahead after 3 minutes and added another with 52 minutes gone. Oscar grabbed a goal back after 88 minutes but it wasn't enough. It now means that no English team have beaten Shakhtar and that Chelsea's unbeaten record has been broken.

Barcelona narrowly beat Celtic 2-1 thanks to Jordi Alba's late goal. Samaras got Celtic's goal and Iniesta got Barcelona's first goal.

Other results were: Nordsjaelland 1-1 Juventus, BATE Borisov 0-3 Valencia, Lille 0-1 Bayern Munich, Spartak Moscow 2-1 Benifica, Galatasary 1-1 CFR Cluj-Napoca.

Tuesday 23 October 2012

There were horrible scenes in England's U21 1-0 win against Serbia U21. According to Jordan Henderson, players were racially abused and attacked with missiles. Despite the fact that England have now qualified for Euro 2013, it has been overlooked by the disgraceful actions by Serbia. I think that the Serbian U21 national team should be banned from all competitive competitions for a certain period of time and the players that racially abused others should be fined.

Racism needs to stop now. Its all well and good giving players bans, but do they really care? For example when Luis Suarez racially abused Patrice Evra in October 2011 he received an eight match ban. And everyone was thinking ' surely this means that no-one would ever be racist again would they? Everyone wants to play every Premier league game.' But then two months later John Terry decides to racially abuse Anton Ferdinand. This shows that players don't care if they get match bans or if they get fined three weeks wages. So the FA needs to think about punishing them in a more severe way because what they are doing now is just useless.

Saturday 13 October 2012

World cup results

It was a mixed day of results for the home nation. An impressive performance by Wales as they came back to beat Scotland 2-1 at the Cardiff City Stadium, with Gareth Bale scoring both of the goals and James Morrison scoring Scotland's goal. England beat San Marino 5-0 at Wembley, however I didn't think that England were very impressive as Montenegro scored 6 goals against San Marino AND England only scored 5. Republic of Ireland suffered a 6-1 defeat at home to the hands of Germany with Andy Keogh scoring their only goal.

These results now mean that Wales move up to 4th and Scotland drop to 5th, England move up to 1st and Ireland drop in 3rd in their respective groups.. It was a tense game for Sweden as they narrowly avoided embarrassment against the Faroe Islands as they came behind to win 2-1 with Fulham's Alex Kacaniklic and PSG's Zlatlan Ibrahamovic scoring. Spain comfortably beat Belarus 4-0 with Pedro scoring his first Spanish hat-trick. And Belgium became the first team to beat Serbia at home in a World cup qualifier in 10 years as they comfortably won 3-0.

Would do you think the best scoreline was? My favorite was the Germany win against Ireland.

Friday 12 October 2012

England vs San Marino

Its the 3rd game of the World Cup Qualifying campaign for England! This game should be easy for us as we are the 5th best team in the world and San Marino are 207th. England are hot favorites for this fixture.

The odds for England to win is 1/100, a draw is 25/1 and San Marino to win is 125/1. For those of you who don't know about betting odds what I'm saying is that it is really likely for England to win and for San Marino to lose.

Here's what I think what the England team would look like:

Goalkeeper: Joe Hart (Man City)
Defenders: Kyle Walker (Tottenham), Phil Jagielka (Everton), Joeleon Lescott (Man City), Leighton Baines (Everton)
Midfielders: Michael Carrick (Man Utd), Tom Cleverley (Man Utd), James Milner (Man City), Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (Arsenal)
Strikers: Wayne Rooney (Man Utd), Jermaine Defoe (Tottenham)

Possible subs:
Goalkeepers:  Fraser Forster (Celtic), John Ruddy (Norwich)
Defenders: Gary Cahill (Chelsea), AshleyCole (Chelsea), Glen Johnson (Liverpool), Ryan Shawcross (Stoke)
Midfielders: Steven Gerrad (Liverpool), Adam Johnson (Sunderland), Aaron Lennon (Totenham), Jonjo Shelvey (Liverpool), Theo Walcott (Arsenal)
Striker: Andy Carroll (West Ham), Danny Welbeck (Man Utd)

What do you think the England team would be like?

Thursday 11 October 2012

Whats happening so far?

So what do we think about the Premier League so far?

Liverpool have been having a terrible season, Man City have only kept 1 clean sheet, West Ham are in 8th, Everton are in the champions league places and QPR haven't yet won a game! So mixed emotions for all clubs.

What team do we think will win the premier league? Can Man City defend their crown? Can Chelsea win after spending £64m in the summer? Can Manchester Utd snatch the title back? Or could Arsenal and Tottenham make shock title charges?

And the battle against relegation will be tough with QPR, Reading and Norwich in the relegation zone. Who will be the first manager to get sacked? Here's what I think:

1.Chris Hughton
2.Michael Laudrup
3.Roberto Martinez
4.Nigel Adkins
5.Paul Lambert

Let's see what happens!