The Soccer Thread (IV)

This.

 

Portsmouth manage only a 1-1 draw at home to West Ham in a true six-pointer. Not good enough.

Also not good enough? Liverpool. 0-0 away to Wolves.

Forest are now joint-top of the championship, and Leeds are all of a sudden three points off the top of League One, albeit with two games in hand.

 

Nottingham Forest are magic!

(and Newcastle United have two games in hand.)

More importantly, they're five clear of West Brom for that automatic promotion spot. The Baggies have one game in hand on Forest. As recently as October, I was tuning into "Matchtalk" on BBC Radio Nottingham, and there was a definite "We're not ready!" vibe from inside and outside the club. Got a feeling they don't believe that now.

 

This isn't major news for a lot of people since it was pretty much assumed that the entire league was fixed from the jump, but China seems to be trying to clean it up.

While this is a small blip on the radar, I think the actions actually speak a bit louder because there are broader results. I think this means that China is lining up to bid on the World Cup. They know that there is no possible way that they can be a host with the amount of corruption that exists. As such, they will clean it up, make a huge show of cleaning up and then after a year or two when things are on the up and up, they will put in a bid.

 

We've been running AP and AFP stories aplenty on this. If the corruption runs as deep (or high) as they say, weeding it out will be no easy task. Getting a few high-profile scalps is nice, but even they staff the CFA with choirboys, raising the level of the league is a whole other thing.

The first sign of progress will be when Chinese clubs stop losing to teams from Indonesia in the Champions League.

 

Setanta USA to shut down Feb. 28.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/27/sports/AP-SOC-Setanta-USA-Fox.html

 

They don't need to raise the level of play in the league to put a World Cup bid in. They just need to give the appearance that the league is clean.

As an aside, I always wanted to go to a match in Shanghai. I heard tickets were real cheap; about 8 USD.

 

Donovan scores his first goal for Everton giving them a 2-0 lead over Sunderland. You can watch that game here.

Congrats to Landon, who is showing that he belongs.

Meanwhile, I have the Rangers game on one feed, Celtic on another and, now, Everton to get a replay of the goal.

 

Awesome...



Washington Post link to the funny image of the Lakers beating the Kansas City Wizards.

 

It's all going mental at Old Trafford. United were 2-0 up, but now a goal from Tevez makes it 2-1 on the night, 3-3 on aggregate and 1-1 on away goals. Away goals only count after extra-time.

 

Surprise, surprise, it's Wayne Rooney who steps up. 3-1, 4-3. It's the first time he's scored a League Cup goal in England ... all the others he's scored were in games played in Wales.

 

More crappy defending by City.