The Soccer Blog: February 2011

It seems as though most of the news of interest from a Liverpool perspective today involves clubs and players that aren’t Liverpool. So it goes. There is a bit of Liverpool news on the injury front, though, and it isn’t pretty, as Martin Kelly could miss a month with a hamstring injury.

With Fabio Aurelio currently trapped in the void–or in 1973, or something–this leaves Liverpool with a grand total of one fullback for the foreseeable future. Hopefully everybody has enjoyed watching Jamie Carragher and Danny Wilson fill in, because chances are we’re about to get a heavy dose of just that…

* Of tangental interest on a couple of fronts, Juventus has just reported a 39.5M Euro loss in the first half of the season. Last year they made 14.2M over the entire term, while they expect to lose a similar amount in the second half of this season to bring their total losses close to 80M Euros when everything’s said and done. This is of course relevant to the previously discussed difficulty they might face in purchasing Alberto Aquilani when his loan comes due, and with hard numbers coming out it certainly paints a much more bleak picture for the grand old Italian club than one would have guessed.

It’s also of interest from a Liverpool perspective because even if part of their plummeting revenue is due to a drop in sponsorship and a re-negotiated, less favourable Sirie A television contract, the biggest single hit to Juventus’ revenue stream comes from dropping out of the Champions League and into the Europa. Premier League sides don’t report on the same schedule–the last reported numbers for Liverpool still had half a season of Champions League payments attached to them–so it will be some time before we know the full damage to Liverpool’s finances from dropping into Europe’s second level, but even with a new set of owners the kind of numbers being faced down by Juventus offer an ominous warning.

* Elsewhere, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, Wayne Rooney has escaped punishment for his elbow to the head of Wigan’s James McCarthy on the weekend. Most observers seem to feel it was a red card offense which should have seen him suspended for three matches including the upcoming game against Liverpool, but with the player not even receiving a booking at the time it was never likely the FA would hand down retroactive justice. In the end, then, they indeed didn’t hand down any kind of retroactive justice, as official Mark Clattenburg claimed he saw the event clearly at the time and so the FA claimed they had no grounds within their rules and by-laws to re-examine the situation.

While it would be easy enough to cry United favouritism while asking what would happen if this was a brutish foreigner like De Jong trying to take somebody’s head off, as always with the FA it seems to mostly boil down to institutional incompetence and a desire to cover their ears, eyes, and mouth and demand–via telegraph, perhaps, seeing as their mouths are covered–that they and their officials never, ever get a single thing wrong. Because if there’s one thing more important to the FA than getting things right, it’s saying that they got things right.

* On the lighter side of things, Torres hasn’t scored yet for Chelsea, and people have started to question his drive and form and general sulking attitude. Seeing as he’s no longer a Liverpool player–and since I now risk raising ire by discussing him–I normally would have let sleeping dogs lie at this point were it not for Annie Eaves uncovering part of The Secret Diary of Fernando Torres:

Today at training I made another faux pas. We were getting changed and JT dropped his armband, I picked it up and handed it back to him. Everyone went quiet. I had to go and stand on the naughty step for 10 minutes. Nnobody is allowed to touch his armband unless he hands it to them. I don’t even know why he needed to wear it, we were only going swimming.

Well, playing for Chelsea certainly sounds like a great deal of fun. Especially the part where Ashley Cole likes to wander around with a hunting rifle.

In the meantime, while you try to pretend that everything is in fact hunky dory, or wonder at the oddity of a day on which you’d rather read Torres’ fictionalised trials and tribulations at Chelsea because the only news worth talking about that’s directly Liverpool related is so awful you don’t quite know how to deal with it…

Some Related Liverpool Posts:Suarez Says Goodbye, Torres Says Hello, and Other Monday NotesFA Youth Cup, Poll Wrap, and Other Monday NotesMonday News and NotesXabi is Classy and Other Monday NotesTactics, Spanish Goalkeepers, and Other Friday Notes

Category: Premier League, Team News

Tags: Alberto Aquilani, Chelsea, Fabio Aurelio, Fernando Torres, Finances, I Can't Feel My Face, Juventus, Manchester United, Martin Kelly, Noel's really a bit of a dick, Premier League, Team News, Wayne Rooney
Tweet « West Ham’s Unpleasant Impressions | Home | agiambaCouple notes about Juve's figures- club site says we expect to lose 60M by the end of the year, not 80M. Second, the fuss about Aquilani is all that...a lot of fuss. It's 5.5mil for the next 3 years, certainly within our means. It all came about because Juve were interested in a lower lump-sum amount (JG Wentworth-style) and the Sun/DailyFail took that to mean we're totally broke.

Most of the money for his signing has been already budgeted, anyways. If he continues to do well (been off the last month or so) then we'll certainly sign him. If not, we'll let him go back. Not a financial question at this point.NoelThanks for a more in the know take on the Juventus situation--it's nice to know the specifics of what fans are thinking rather than relying too much on papers that may not be following things particularly closely.agiambaHappy to oblige. Seems our clubs fortunes have been rather close the last
few years.

Sorry about Poulsen.NoelHah. You can have him back whenever you want.agiambaWell, take this to heart. Now that you have a DoF, shouldn't have anymore
Poulsen incidents.YannApparently he’s worth £4.5m (est. 5.3M Euro), so Juve can take him, flog him off, and there’s almost the first Aquilani instalment. What do you say? Do we have a deal?LucasLeiva21"I don’t feel one of the boys here. At Liverpool I’d go into training, see Dirk’s face, and immediately feel better about myself. I miss this."

Somebody give Annie Eaves a Pulitzer! Shit, I doubt they have Pulitzers in the UK, but still...

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...and help arrived. A quick introduction.

…and help arrived. A quick introduction. - The Offside - Fulham FC blog

« I need help! | Home | …and help arrived. A quick introduction.By: samg | February 28th, 2011
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Hello, I’m Sam and I’ll be bloggin’ along with Jason.

I’ve been a Fulham supporter since they were playing in Division Two (League One in today’s lingo).

For a few years I lost interest in the game – somewhere in the early noughties. But then the interest returned around about the time Mr. Hodgson came to Fulham during the Great Escape.

I’ll post as regular as possible. Match previews, match reports, opinions and maybe some match/player/team analysis.

Thanks to Jason Gatties and Ian Rose in providing the opportunity.

Category: Team News

Tags: Team News
Tweet « I need help! | Home | Comments | Add your comment White Noise | February 28th, 2011 at 1:03 pm

Welcome Sam. Good to see you will be working on the excellent ‘The Offside’. You can’t have too many people writing about Fulham and I look forward to reading more from you over the rest of the season. Good luck.

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Monday 28 February 2011