Taipan

Makelele will play either this game, or the Arse on Sunday. Definately not both. With that in mind I'd start Mikel this game, and Makelele on Sunday. Maka aside, don't rest anyone. After Sunday there is an 8 day break before the next game against Boro to recover. Maybe look to get Essien on early for Ballack and Anelka for Drogba if possible. The only other difference I'd look at between this game and Sunday is the fullbacks. I'd play Cole and Ferreira against Spurs for their defensive ability against Lennon, but play Belletti and Bridge on Sunday for their better crossing ability as I think Gallas and Toure will struggle in the air against Drogba: Cech Ferreira Carvalho Terry Cole Mikel Lampard Ballack Cole Kalou Drogba

Assuming Mikel's pro contract with Lynn was forged, I think the Manc defence against refunding the money to us might go something like this: We didn't know the contract was forged. We want any money we paid to Lynn refunded to us. As the contract was a forgery, Mikel had no pro contract and was actually a free agent. He signed with us. Then we agreed a settlement with Chelsea. If Chelsea want to go and try to get their money back off Lynn then that is a metter for them. But Chelsea agreed a fee with us for our legally contracted player to move to them. Our case for a refund probably goes something like this: Mikel signed for United as a result of forgery and coersion. His agent - the person Mikel hired to advise him and represent his interests on contractual issues - was deliberately excluded from the entire process by those who have resorted to forgery to get him to sign for United. No contract can be valid under these circumstances. United and Lynn have both benefited by many millions of pounds as a result of criminal activity. All the money must be repaid. It all depends if United's contract with Mikel was valid despite Lynn's forgery. Personally I think they are on thin ice.

The new axis of evil now that the G14 have stopped thwarting our every move. In the end we thwarted the G14. They had to disband and come over and try to join us for a seat at the table where the important decisions are made.

That is exactly what I thought when I saw the picture. Next time you hear a Fat Frank jibe from a scouser show that pic of StevieMe and one of Frank from earlier this season and which is the fat one:

tick.....tock.....tick...... Benitez in his last days or hours. On a positive note for them, the design is in on the new redesigned, cheaper stadium that they can afford have been approved:

It was ugly, but the effort was there. But there was an exception. ACole got dispossesed in his own half by Jerome, putting the defence under a lot of pressure. Jerome passed the ball and bolted forward in support, while Cole just jogged back slowly. Jerome got the ball back and it was only great defending from Riccy that bailed us out. Cole should have tracked his man back. It was his mistake that put his under pressure, but then not making an effort to get back into position like the Brum players made it much worse. Cashley gets very low marks from me for this game.

Just to add a little on the reporting of Drogba's comments. Soccernet reported him as saying "'And why not? It would be something exceptional. 'They (a club) would have to get their chequebook out, though!' " (link) Very vague as to who they are. But Sky report his comments as "I don't see why it should not happen. It would be something exceptional. But Barcelona would need to get their chequebook out to make it happen. " (link) My take is that it is that Drogba was being vague and it was probably poor reporting from Sky (and others) to insert 'Barcelona' into his quote. They might still be right, but it would be by luck.

My first hope was that the target is Dos Santos, but now Drogba gives us a hint that it might be Eto: Drogba hints at 'exceptional' pairing with Eto'o Of course, he could mean that he dreams of playing with Eto at Barcelona.

Is BrianM going to bite your head off for suggesting that too?

Please stop posting stories from the Sun or Tribal.

Has anyone seen or got an image of Drogba's face with the laser on it? I haven't seen it, but heard that Sky featured it and and you could clearly see the laser light on his face. Anyone got an image?

The current UEFA team rankings make good reading: link We are currently ranked second. Behind only AC Milan. Those are the rankings used to make the draw for next season. They'll still be updated as the CL season progresses, but we are now firmly established in the top eight. I've never liked that ranking system because I believe it is a rort which hands the elite and easy draw and helps them keep most of the huge pot of CL money for themselves. But at least now it is a rort working in our favour. It is a bit strange that for last season, Chelsea, Liverpool, Sevilla and Espanyol all got more ranking points than CL winners Milan.

According to Physioroom: Drogba - No date Lampard - Sept 12 Carvalho - Sept 15 Shevchenko - Sept 15 Bridge - Sept 29 Ballack - Sept 15 That is only a general guide. I can't see Ballack being back in anything like that timeframe.

Belletti was my pick, which suprises me because I didn't expect him to be much good.I don't think he got skinned on the second goal though. When his winger got the ball Villa had a 3 vs 2 in attack. If Belletti had committed to the tackle the Villa winger would have passed it and it would have become a 2 vs 1. I thought Belletti did okay there - despite being outnumbered he prevented his player from having a shot, and forced him to pass.

Yes. Not at any price, but yes. If we have to lose GJ then so be it. He'd make a massive difference to us. We've got the best target striker in the world, but last season the quality of the balls we put into him was poor. For all his ability as a defender Paulo just wasn't up to delivering quality crosses. GJ, Diarra and Cashley can all delivery a cross but none of them are consistent. The one fullback we have that consistently delivers quality crosses is Bridge. Play him every game on the left and Alves on the right and get them sending in the crosses and Drogba will score twice the goals he did last season. I am one of the many who believe Alves should play when we play 4-4-2 and Paulo for the 4-3-3.

the complete wanniassa? Er, could you enlighten me please. I know the Canberra suburb but I've never heard that phrase. I googled that and the only hits were from this thread.

A young Iraq international soccer star joins Liverpool. On his debut he scores three goals. After the game he decides to phone home and share his success with the family. His mother sounds very distressed. What is wrong Mam he asks? She says your sister has been raped, I have been bashed and robbed and you father has been shot. I knew we shouldn't have come to Liverpool.

Liverpool's Steve Finnan hit and killed an 81 year old while doing 58 mph in a 30 zone. He got off with a slap on the wrist. link A few months after the fuss had all died down he got done for speeding along the same streach of road.

The teams going into the respective pots for next season are as follows: (note: teams in pots 3 and 4 need to qualify. The following tables assume that the higher ranked teams do qualify. Of course if one of those lesser ranked teams can cause an upset then they'll take the place of whoever they beat. I don't think that draw has been made yet, but there are some teams capable of upsetting one of the seeded teams: Toulouse, Fenerbache, Sparta Praha, Spartak Moscow, AEK Athens. There will be eight groups of four teams, with one team in each group to come from each pot. Pot 1 Milan Barcelona Liverpool Inter Arsenal Madrid Chelsea United Pot 2 Valencia Lyon Porto Sevilla PSV Roma Benfica Ajax Pot 3 Werder Bremen Celtic Schalke Stuttgart Steaua Bucuresti CSKA Moscow Sporting Lisbon Lazio Pot 4 Marseille Rangers Shakhtar Donetsk Besiktas Olympiakos Anderlecht Diname Kiev Levski Sophia All the detail here

Yep. Agger went to take Kaka, and he called to make sure sure Carragher had Inzaghi. Carragher only stood and watched. When Kaka put Inzaghi through Carra stopped and put his hands on his knees.

I think the player who could make the biggest difference to us is Daniel Alves. He is not better than Kaka, but he would make more of a difference to us while we persist with this diamond. In Drogba we have by far the biggest aerial threat in the world. If we could regularly supply him with good crosses he'd score far more than he has already this season. One of my biggest frustrations this season has been the crossing from the fullbacks. We are playing a system without winger so the crosses have to come from the fullbacks and overall we've been poor at this. Bridge has been very good, but doesn't get picked for the big games. Cashley, Ferreira, Geremi, Diarra and Boulahrouz have just four assists between them all season (Cashley 2 and Geremi 2). Given that they've been asked all season to pump in the crosses to the worlds best striker for getting on the end of crosses I think that is poor. (btw, on limited game time Bridge with 4 assists matches all of the other fullbacks combined) Alves would provide the quality crosses we need from the right. Bridge can do it on the left. If we played those two then Drogba would score 30 in the league, with more in the cups and Europe. Kaka at the point of the diamond would be decent too.

It is a bit heavy going in places, but the full report of the Independant commission's judgement can be found here. The bottom line is that West Ham admitted their guilt. The commission could have imposed a points deduction as a penalty. They even went as far as to say "That [a points deduction] is a course that we consider would normally follow from such a breach of these Rules". But decided not to deduct points. Curiously, the fact that West Ham have not sacked the guy apparently responsible helped their cause in deciding the punishment. To save you slogging through the entire report, here is an extract. It is the part where they decided on the penalty:

Assuming JM persists with the diamond, then putting the pieces into place: ---------------Cech--------------------- Ferreira---Terry--Boulahrouz--Bridge ----------------Makelele -----------Essien-------Mikel -----------------J.Cole -----------Drogba---Kalou I doubt we'll see Sheva. Give Lampard a rest on the bench and play our form midfielders. Arsenal's defence is too small to contain Drogba. Neither Toure or Gallas can compete with him in the air. All we need is some decent delivery from set pieces and we'll score a couple. Just let Bridge take them and we'll be fine.

guddy did really well in the 04/05 season...and he did that in an lone striker role and attacking midfielder role, who are not his natural positions. and i thought crespo was excellent last season. Indeed Gudjohnsen did play very well then. As G4 said in the opening post, that was the last time we played consistently good football. But then, Guddy wasn't playing as a support striker to Drogba. He was the sole striker with Drogba out injured. As soon as Drogba was available, Guddy was relegated to the bench and later converted to a midfielder. Out of interest, I looked up that period of time. link It was for 8 weeks in 2004, from October 20 to 26 December. We played 16, won 12, drew 3 and lost 1 (the 'dead' game away at Porto). We scored 36 goals, and on six occasions we scored 4 in a game while conceeding 9.