Premier League Football Tickets
Football Tickets, News & Commentary
From the category archives:
The ongoing anti-Glazer protests by a vocal minority of Manchester United fans seems to be having an effect as Manchester United have announced that they have failed to reach their target of season ticket sales this summer,
On not reaching their goal, Man United’s chief executive David Gill tried to spin it like this:
For the first time Premier League teams had to name a 25-man squad for the first half of the EPL season and there was a couple of surprises.
All 20 clubs had to submit a squad of up to 25 players containing no more than 17 players who do not qualify as homegrown. Homegrown players are classed as players who “irrespective of his nationality or age, has been registered with any club affiliated to the Football Association or the Football Association of Wales for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons or 36 months prior to his 21st birthday”.
Manchester United eased past a troubled and feeble West Ham United thanks to two of the greatest players this country have ever seen.
Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs single handedly won the game for Manchester United and in the process started their campaign to knock the mighty Chelsea off of their perch. Oh and how they did it.
Pass after pass was arrowed across the pitch by Paul Scholes, skill after skill was displayed by Ryan Giggs and it was this combination that led to all 3 of the goals in their 3 – 0 win.
American full back Jonathon Spector had a torrid time against Ryan Giggs (his old team mate) and after being nutmegged by the Welsh wizard, Spector brought him down to give Manchester United a penalty. A penalty which ended 1,114 minutes without a goal for Wayne Rooney.
Avid followers of the English game will know that Arsenal used to have a reputation for winning games 1-0. Their fans even had a chant that celebrated this fact. This state of affairs pre-dated Wenger though, and yesterday the Arsenal thrashed new boys Blackpool 6-0. And that scoreline has become very popular in the first two weeks of the Premier League season. Today, whilst reading about Chelsea’s second 6-0 win in two games, I witnessed Newcastle United put six goals past Aston Villa. In the Magpies first home game back in the top flight, Andy Carroll netted a hat-trick with his third goal rounding things off in the final minute.
UEFA has announced the 12 nominees for the UEFA Club Footballer of the Year. The award will be presented during the UEFA Champions League group stage draw in Monaco on Thursday 26 August.
The nominations are decided by the coaches of the 16 teams that reached the knockout stage of the 2009/10 UEFA Champions League. Each coach has the opportunity of voting for the individual positional prizes as well as to name their choice for UEFA Club Footballer of the Year 2010.
As expected last years Champions League winners Inter Milan have the most nominations with 5. Only one Premier League player, Wayne Rooney, made the list. Wesley Sneijder is getting a lot of press about winning the award, but I cannot see how Lionel Messi does not win it again.
So we draw ever nearer to the big kick-off and take a look at some more of the sides looking to make a big splash in the EPL this season.
Stoke City – Stoke are always tough to play against and any good fantasy soccer manager usually has a Stoke player or two in their side to boost their chances of a clean sheet. Yet Stoke don’t score lots of goals and so their points total at the end of the season is always modest. The side from the Potteries finished in 11th place last season which is no mean feat, and will hope to establish themselves in the top half this term. Tony Pulis hasn’t brought a striker in yet this off season but rumours are rife that Sunderland’s Kenwyne Jones is on his way to the Brittania Stadium. This could be an excellent signing for City, as Jones would definitely fit the style of play that Pulis has instilled in his team. A twenty-goal a season man could well be the key to improving their league position if they can remain defensively solid.
It was not a good weekend for Manchester City and Manchester United fans as both clubs lost to MLS teams on Sunday.
Let me repeat that. Both Manchester teams lost to teams from the Major Soccer League in America.
Man City’s 2-1 loss to Thierry Henry and the New York Red Bulls was their second pre-season loss in New York and the pressure already has to be mounting on City boss Roberto Mancini. This has been a summer where City have spent about £100m on the likes of Jerome Boateng (Hamburg, £10m), David Silva (Valencia, £24m), Yaya Toure (Barcelona, £24m) and Aleksandar Kolarov (Lazio, £17m).
Why do the media ask every player who is nearing retirement or has recently retired, if they are going to become a manager? Is it because they want another few years to have a pop at them and to make headlines from their failure? Or is it because they naively don’t undertstand what it takes to be a manager? In fact, if you look at the most successful managers in modern football, they are men who never had a prominent and lengthy playing career.
Manchester United veteran Paul Scholes has announced that he will be hanging up his boots after this season in order to pursue a career in coaching.
“I am coming to the end of my playing career and I maybe have one year left,” Scholes said in an EPL Talk Podcast. “I have started doing my coaching badges back in England and hopefully one day I will be able to coach kids or coach some kind of team somewhere.”
Scholes has had a fantastic career at Man United winning nine Premier League champion’s medals and a couple of Champions League winners medals also.
As the sun set behind the glorious table mountain last night, expectations and excitement rose inside the impressive Green Point Stadium, as the three lions of England went face to face with the desert foxes of Algeria.
90 minutes later England had failed to deliver again. This time it was much, much worse than the previous draw with USA. Algeria like all sides that are going to meet England throughout the tournament, had a game plan.
Algeria outwitted, with ease, supposedly superior individuals. Their bizarrely dressed manager had out foxed the mighty Italian Fabio Capello cut perfectly in his Armani suit. An African nation had undone a Western superpower.
