The Life of Me

My beloved Wanderers take on Middlesbrough today in the 2004 Carling Cup Final.

I was hoping to be in Cardiff with them, but due to a major farce with the ticketing arrangements that wasn’t to be so. So I’ll be tucking into plenty of beers from early morning till late evening and hopefully celebrating a win.

Good luck to “Big Sam” and the boys. Come on lads… Do us proud!

Call me sad, but I couldn’t help but drool at this Football Manager 2005 preview over at Boomtown.

You can guarantee that I’ll lose plenty of sleep (friends too?) once that it hits the shelves.

in addition to the “basic” features of the game which includes playable leagues in 43 countries; more than 140 playable senior divisions and over 100 playable cup competitions; reserve and junior league competitions; more than 235,000 players and staff from 145 different countries; a database of more than 14,000 clubs, of which 3,000 can be managed; an updated 2D match engine; improved radio commentary; increased interaction with the media; a reworked injury, scouting and finance system; inclusion of U18 Caps and a more realistic awards system.

An excellent creative write-up on Dr. Sam’s healing ways.

This weekend is another massive weekend for the top few teams, and more importantly Arsenal & Liverpool. If Arsenal win they keep the number one spot for another week, if Liverpool win they jump up a few places and start to nip at the heels of the leaders.

Who will come out on top this weekend?.. I don’t care as long as my beloved Bolton win on Sunday.

Predictions for this week are…

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In a week dominated by the Arsenal & Manchester United “big brawl”, there are no big games, and no real derby games this weekend… so maybe it will be a good week for my predictions?

Game of the weekend, in my opinion is going to be… erm… I’m not sure.

As usual, here are my predictions:

• Arsenal 2 vs 2 Newcastle
• Birmingham 2 vs 2 Portsmouth
• Blackburn 2 vs 1 Fulham
• Bolton 3 vs 1 Wolves
• Charlton 1 vs 3 Liverpool
• Chelsea 3 vs 1 Aston Villa
• Everton 2 vs 0 Leeds
• Leicester 0 vs 4 Man Utd
• Man City 2 vs 1 Tottenham
• Southampton 1 vs 1 Middlesbrough

Think you can do better? Think you’ve got it sussed? Lets hear what you’ve got in the comments section!

The game of the weekend is Manchester United vs Arsenal, with United winning big this week in the Champions League and arsenal losing quite heavily, I predict a pretty stale affair between the two sides.

I also think that this weekend will be a pretty boring one, filled with draws and low scoring games.

• Aston Villa 1 v 1 Charlton
• Fulham 1 v 3 Man City
• Leeds 2 v 1 Birmingham
• Liverpool 2 v 0 Leicester
• Newcastle 1 v 1 Bolton
• Portsmouth 2 v 1 Blackburn
• Tottenham 2 v 1 Southampton
• Wolves 1 v 4 Chelsea (Saturday)
• Man Utd 2 v 2 Arsenal (Sunday)
• Middlesbrough 1 v 2 Everton (Sunday)

Only time will tell, but lets see what the rest of you think before kick-off, the winner gets a his/her name and a link on the front page.

Here are my predictions for this weekends games:

• Arsenal 4 v 0 Portsmouth
• Blackburn 1 v 2 Liverpool
• Bolton 2 v 1 Middlesbrough
• Charlton 1 v 3 Man Utd
• Chelsea 2 v 1 Tottenham
• Everton 2 v 2 Newcastle
• Southampton 2 v 2 Wolves

I think Arsenal are capable of destroying Portsmouth this weekend, while a strong Manchester United performance can rip Charlton to pieces if everyone isn’t suffering from fatigue from this weeks international games.

For the past few weeks my predictions have been “rubbish” to say the least, so lets see how much better some of you readers do by leaving your own predictions as a comment.

This weeks best prediction(s) win… nothing (sorry). Although you will get a mention, and also a link if you have your own site, on the front page.

I want to have more football related posts featuring on the site and England’s win against Liechtenstein tonight seemed the perfect opportunity to start. Don’t worry though, as I’m not going to start covering each game, transfer or win… just the things that seem important enough to talk about.

Two goals were enough (again) to take England to the top of Euro 2004 Qualifying Group 7.

1 goal each from Liverpool’s Michael Owen and Everton’s Wayne Rooney were enough to kill off lowly Liechtenstein within 10 minutes of the first half.

David Beckham and Steven Gerrard both made it through the game without picking up a booking and therefor both are available for the Turkey game. Going into the Turkey game England know they only need to take a point to guarantee automatic qualification… and to avoid having to go through the play-off process.

Liechtenstein’s only shot on target came in the 89th minute of the game and was easily saved by David James.

England’s performances haven’t been brilliant thoughout the qualifying stages but they have ground out the much needed results… but are we good enough to take it further?.. Let me know what you think.

To predict the outcome of this weeks games is going to be pretty hard considering most teams are facing almost equal opposition. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are quite a few draws this weekend… but seeing as I got it so wrong last week, this week couldn’t be any worse… could it?

The big game this weekend has to be the Merseyside Derby, Liverpool against Everton. I think Liverpool can just edge it as long as Everton’s Wayne Rooney and co aren’t on form and playing well.

I predict 2-1 or 3-2 to Liverpool… I’m not quite sure which scoreline I like best so I thought I’d offer both.

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It’s Friday, and every week I hope to be able to give my predictions for the weekends Premiership football games. This week the biggest game of the weekend has to be Manchester United vs Newcastle United. I hope, and think, that Newcastle can pull off a surprise win this weekend against the reigning champions, but we’ll have to see… and that’s why I’ve gone for a draw between these two teams.

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The season has started again for my beloved Bolton Wanderers and as with almost every game I struggled to get hold of an away ticket so that I could go and watch them play Manchester United at Old Trafford… but just as last year Man Utd gave us a small allocation of tickets for the match so I ended up going watching the “Beam back” at the Reebok stadium along with 5500 other people.

It was a good day out if I’m honest even if we did lose, but the score line (4-0) didn’t really reflect the performance of both teams. Cristiano Ronaldo certainly had an impact on the game… as did the referee albeit for different reasons!