Premier League Match Time: Aston Villa Vs Birmingham

Birmingham City will visit Villa Park for a lunch-time derby against Aston Villa, on Sunday, in match week 10 of the Premier League.

Aston Villa have dominated matches in the middle of these sides, recently, and have won six in a row. Birmingham will seek to end that streak in Sunday's derby against the Villans. And the Blues will look to Liam Ridgewell to contribute the spark against his previous club. Birmingham will also look to their big striker Hikola Zigic to stand up to be counted. Zigic, alongwith Ridewell, was one of the goal scorers in the 2-0 win over Blackpool last week.

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Villa are advent off a 1-0 loss suffered against Sunderland at the Stadium of Light last week, and they will seek atonement against the Blues. Houllier will be keen to stamp his personality on the fortunes of the squad that is still emerging from Martin O'Neill's shadow.

Premier League Match Time: Aston Villa Vs Birmingham

Last season Birmngham concluded ninth on the league table, and they haven't yet lived up to that promise, this season. This could be because of tactiacl errors by team manger McLeish. Equally, the Blues haven't been helped by the fact that summer signings like Hleb and Zigic are yet to gel with the team.

Birmingham are pre-dominantly defensive and Villa will have their task cut out in trying to break down City's back-line, where Scott Dann and Roger Johnson have shone in tandem; goalkeeper look after has also played his part..

That said, full-backs Stephen Carr and Liam Ridgewell will need to stay busy to stave off flank attacks by Villa's Ashley Young and Stewart Downing.

Perhaps the biggest threat to the Blues' goal will come from old warhorse Heskey, who has already netted four times for Houllier's squad this season.

Ahead of Sunday's game, three Villa players are on the injury list. They are Agbonlahor, L Young and Delph. City have their own injury worries with McFadden and Beausejour sidelined. Those apart, Gardner is serving a one-match suspension after receiving a second yellow card in the last match.

Aston Villa fielded the following eleven players in their game against Sunderland in match week nine: Friedel, Beye, Collins, Dunne, Warnock, Downing, Reo-Coker, Petrov, Young, Ireland, Heskey.

The substitutes were: Albrighton, Clark, Guzan, Bannan, Sidwell, Carew, Cuellar.

The following players were in the beginning eleven for Birmingham in their game with Blackpool: Foster, Carr, Johnson, Dann, Ridgewell, Larsson, Ferguson, Hleb, Fahey, O'Connor, Zigic.

The substitutes were: Derbyshire, Murphy, Michel, Taylor, Phillips, Bowyer, Jiranek.

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Premier League Match Time: Wigan Vs West Brom

It's Premier League match time with West Bromwich Albion due to visit the Dw Stadium Upton Park on Saturday afternoon to take on Wigan Athletic.

The Latics are stuck in relegation zone having won just one of their last nine matches in this Premiership campaign. But they are arrival off a morale-boosting 1-1 draw against Liverpool in game week twelve.

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Wigan have had problems up front with a dearth of goal scorers this season. In their twelve matches, thus far, the Latics have just nine goals to show. They last won against Wolves on October 2, and would be desperate to get the elusive win playing before their home fans on Saturday.

Premier League Match Time: Wigan Vs West Brom

Rodalegga with four goals and N'Zogbia with three have been the Latics' top goal scorers this season, while Odemwingie with four strikes heads the goal tally for the Baggies.

West Brom in eleventh place in the points table have also not done well in modern matches; their last win came six matches ago against Fulham. In a tight mid-table a particular loss can mean a plummet down the table.

The Baggies will welcome the return to the side by Odemwingie who played against West Ham after a hiatus of a month. The Nigerian forward lends psychological power to the squad apart from his undoubted playing skills.

Despite their poor run in away games, West Brom beat Arsenal at the Emirates, their only win in 22 matches on the road. That said, the Baggies have concerns about their back line, having conceded in each of their last ten games.

Wigan's Boyce with a hamstring problem, McCarthy with an ankle injury, and Politt with an injured elbow are sidelined ahead of the match.

West Brom have a larger number of indisposed players. Both Miller with an abdominal strain, and Olsson with an Achilles problem are sidelined. Jara is a serving a one-match suspension, while there's a cloud over the participation of Bednar who is ill, Shorey who has an ankle problem, and Dorrans who has a foot ailment. But Bednar, Shorey and Dorrans could still play after a late check on their match fitness. Mulumbu is also returning from suspension.

Wigan had the following players in their beginning eleven against Liverpool on Wednesday: Al Habsi, Stam, Caldwell, Alcaraz, Figueroa, Thomas, Diame, Cleverley, Gomez, N'Zogbia and Rodalegga; Moses and Di Santo came in as substitutes.

West Brom's beginning eleven in the game against West Ham comprised: Carson, Cech, Pablo, Tamas, Reid, Scharner, Brunt, Thomas, Dorrans, Morrison and Odemwingie;  Barnes, Cox and Fortune were used as substitutes.

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Chelsea Soccer

Chelsea soccer has been a great part of countless football fans in Europe. This is mainly because of the Chelsea Football Club which has been a key team in the European Tournaments. This football team is based on West London and was established more than a hundred years ago. It has had its years of success and remains a top contender in the Premier League. It has achieved four Fa Cups, Three league titles, two Uefa Cup Winner's Cups and four League Cups. At Chelsea, a lot of players have come and gone but the spirit of the respected team remains.

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea football club in June 2003 from Ken Bates. The reported amount of the buy was 140 million pounds which was at the time the most high-priced sale in English soccer history. The club's coach at that time, Italian Claudion Raniers, who took Chelsea to the 2002 Fa Cup final and Champions League qualification was initially retained but was later sacked for being unable to get titles for the team. Successful coach Jose Mourinho from Portugal then took over as Chelsea's new guide.

Premier League

The home field of this preeminent soccer club is the Stamford Bridge Football stadium which is located in Fulham in West London. The players of Chelsea wear royal blues shirts with white socks. The club's primary sticker is a lion that holds a staff but was modified in 2005.

Chelsea Soccer

Loyal fans just can't get sufficient of Chelsea soccer. The club's game is characterized by endless and strong will to win. By the way they play, the team has a great opportunity to even enhance despite its already rich and colorful history.

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What Are the Qualities of a Football Team Winger?

A winger is a player that operates from the wings during a football match. There are two classes of wingers which include left winger and right winger.

A football team cannot do without wingers because if the defence is so tight for the strikers to penetrate the wingers can turn things around by either getting the goals or supplying the crosses from the flanks that could result in goals.

The only thing about the crosses from the wingers is that the crosses should be so accurate that the opponents will not make mess of them by being stronger in the air than the team. That is to say that crosses can only help a team to win a match if the team players are good in aerial battle and they can head the ball on target.

A team that has tall players is often at an advantage when it comes to crosses from the wingers. This is why it is good for a team to have tall strikers that can use their head very well. Also, it is good for an opposing team to have tall defenders that can use their head very well.

One unique quality of a good winger is speed. A winger that has speed can send an opposing team to the cleaners with his or her mesmerizing runs with the ball.

Christiano Ronaldo of Portuguese national team and Manchester United of England is one player that I cherish so much as a winger. He runs like a cheetah up and down the flanks.

A winger could be short or tall but he or she cannot afford to lack speed. So, the greatest quality, among other qualities, of a winger is speed. A winger should also be able to cross the ball very well.

The Unseen Threat From Europe - the Premier League's Dominance of European Football is in Danger

So, Manchester United look like they are going to win the Premier League title again. And with Chelsea dying a slow death in West London and Arsenal constantly shooting themselves in the foot, while Liverpool argue with their own manager, can anyone challenge them?

The Reds one-sided success (this year would make it 11 wins out of 17) in the English Premier League puts the league in danger of turning itself into an Eastern European backwater-type league where a single team is dominant for decades, as the rest of the country scratches around for scraps. The red herring this season is Aston Villa, who have broken into the top four, but is that because they have improved to meet the top four, or is it that the three below Man Utd are drifting down to meet them?

The fact that the top tier in the English league has an obvious second league of teams nowhere near good enough to challenge for anything other than mid-table obscurity, underline the crossroads English football appears to be at.

Of course, there's the money. Last week it was announced that Sky accidentally blew Setanta out of the water and took five out of six Premier League TV packages by upping their bid to £1.4bn over three years. All good for clubs who can continue to throw money at players in a bid for the Holy Grail of football, a place in the top four .
But that money is only the base on which the big clubs are building their brands - and Man Utd's success is such that they are in danger of getting too big for British football. A survey last year suggested that United had 333m fans worldwide compared with 75m in 2003. Clearly, success is paying off globally - one only has to look at the growing percentage of southeast Asian fans popping up at Old Trafford for visual evidence.
 
Man Utd's dominance would not threaten "Brand Premier League" on its own: what the English leagues should be really worried about is that the rest of Europe appears to be getting its act together. As TV pays the bills, and global branding pays for the pretty dresses, any danger to Brand Premier on the world stage will be disastrous, particularly as the world lurches into a financial crisis.

The four big leagues (France, Italy, Spain and Germany) are in the midst of becoming more exciting by the week, with competition at the top and engaging action at the bottom, with a little quality, too. There finances appear to be improving rapidly, too. France's Ligue 1 has seven teams vying for the title this year: perhaps because the team that has dominated for a decade, Lyon, has not had the global branding Man Utd has had. And the French leagues hit the jackpot in 2005 when a bidding war put the price of TV packages at £1.6bn - almost on a par with the Premier League.

Last year, the German Bundesliga took over the English Premiership's mantle as the league making the most money out of shirt sponsorship: a small part of a club's overall revenue but significant in that it suggests how bankable the league is in terms of marketability.
A year ago a rather doom-laden Spanish La Liga was looking at multiple bankruptcies as economists warned that clubs had radically overspent to keep up with Real Madrid and Barcelona. But the fact that Spain has two clubs bigger than Man Utd means that it will always be more competitive on a global market. It also has the advantage that there are more football-mad nations that speak Spanish than English-speaking nations.
 
The fate of Italian clubs, meanwhile, should serve as a warning for the money-bloated Premier League. For years they fed on bloated cheques from rich owners - often local companies done good or senior politicians or Italian oligarchs. Now it doesn't look so good. Juventus has been dropped a league and since returned, while many other clubs suffered from wage bills hitting 85% of income. Now, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Clubs like Napoli, which suffered from the previous wage profligacy (Maradona and Paul Gascoigne the highest profile luxuries), are back in the black and highflying in Serie A.  Oh, and Italy still has four of the top 20 richest clubs in Europe.

Perhaps more importantly is the strong support in Italy for a salary cap which, if implemented, will drive Italian clubs back up to the top in Europe.
 
If the Premier League continues on its current path, three things could happen:

1) Of course, everything could work out fine, with the money levelling off as Brand Premier begins to help every club in the league. Competition becomes more intense, the world is hooked,

2) Man Utd continue to dominate and the fans slowly but surely switch off. United decides it doesn't want to share the TV money so, as the only show in town, decides to break away from the TV package and sell itself. With little or no competition at home European action becomes more important. The spectre of a European super league raises its ugly head again.

3) Brand Premier goes the way of Italy: money breeds corruption, breeds alienation and eventually the English falls into a bitter sea of fear, court cases and recriminations. Millions worldwide switch back to a revitalized Serie A and La Liga and the old world order is duly re-established.
 
Sepp Blatter allows himself a quiet, triumphant smile.

Premier League 2010-2011 - Two Weeks Til Kick Off!

The new Premier League season kicks off in just two weeks time. Oh yesss! Doesn't it seem ridiculous that just a couple of weeks ago we were bathing in World Cup footie, and in two more weeks the English Premiership kicks off yet again?

Not that I'm complaining. It just seems to have been a very short summer, with copious amounts of football to keep us occupied and our minds off boring transfer sagas that usually end up meaning a leading Premiership player being courted by a leading European side (this summer it has of course been Cesc Fabregas being hunted by Barcelona). Transfer rumours that seem to have a lot of life left in them, despite what some might say.

So what will the upcoming Premiership season have in store for us? We'll be posting a preview in the next few days, but the main ingredient I see coming into play is the force of the teams just outside the standard Top Four of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool. Manchester City look set to be the team to upset the odds this season, as they've gone out and splashed some serious cash over the summer. Without a doubt, their squad on paper now looks like a very strong Premier League Top Four side. It just depends whether or not they have the ability to transfer that potential into reality. A strong start to the season and they could be in with a very serious shout.

Another side that looks like it has the power to compete is Spurs. Led by Harry "I shoulduv been Ingerlund boss" Rednapp, they had a great season last year and are now poised to strike it big in Europe (although have to get through a potentially tricky qualifying match to make it through to the group stages). They've always been the "nearly" side of London, so perhaps the tide is finally turning.

Elsewhere, Everton don't seem to have the financial clout to compete, though will always perform and fight as a team. I would love to see Newcastle do something big, but they really need a stable season to reinstate themselves back in the Premiership. And Aston Villa have perhaps one of the finest British managers around today in Martin O'Neill, but do they have enough to scare the big boys? I fear not.

Anyway, watch out for our review of the upcoming Premiership season, coming soon. We'll also be blogging our way through the season, with attention on each of the major leagues, plus of course the Champions League. We'll also be following the Hunchers Consensus, just to keep a track of how well the Hunchers community is performing. Don't forget to make your weekly football predictions!

Fernando Torres "El Nino" - The Perfect Striker?

Fernando Torres has become one of the most respected of the foreign players earning their living in the English Premier League. Ever since his transfer from Atletico de Madrid in the summer of 2007, El Nino, as he was dubbed early on his career, has impressed English football fans not only with his goalscoring abilities, but by his total attitude towards life in his adopted Liverpool.

It couldn't have been easy for Torres when he joined the Merseyside giants. He was, after all, the undoubted 'king' of Atlético; he'd been their youngest ever first team player, youngest ever captain and the talisman of both the team and its supporters almost since his debut in May, 2001. With a following of pop star like proportions, and playing for the team he loved, it was little surprise that he resisted a money-making move abroad for as long as he did.

The time was right, though, in July, 2007, for Fernando to move on. Atlético were in desperate need of money and Torres was beginning to look tired after carrying the burdens of responsibility for so long. July 4th, however, was a highly emotional day when he said his tearful goodbyes to the club he'd loved as a child and for whom he'd scored 91 goals.

It wasn't straightforward, either, joining a club like Liverpool. With a history of great strikers, and a desperation to re-establish themselves as credible championship contenders, Torres would have known that a 'settling in ' period would have been out of the question. He had to hit the ground running - and flat out, at that.

To his great credit, that was just what happened. Torres took to the pace of the Premier League game straight away - claiming that it suited his style of play much more than that of La Liga. After opening his league account against Chelsea in August, he went on to find the net 24 times in his first season and, despite some niggling injuries, has kept on scoring ever since. At the time of writing, Torres has found the net 60 times for Liverpool in only 96 games - an incredible goals per game ratio that equals anything his illustrious predecessors managed.

Liverpool supporters, of course, think the world of their 'kid' - and not just because of the way he brushed Rio Ferdinand aside to score Liverpool's first goal against Manchester United recently. He clearly loves playing at Anfield and has developed a remarkable rapport with the fans, akin to that he had at Atlético. Not that he's forgotten his former club, or its fans. After scoring the first Liverpool goal in a four nil Champions' League demolition of Real Madrid last season, Fernando expressed the hope that the Atléti fans had enjoyed watching that match as much as he had enjoyed playing in it!

Let me finish with a little illustration of one reason why, perhaps, Fernando Torres is such a popular figure. In the summer of 2009, he married his long-term girlfriend Olalla in El Escorial, Madrid. This was no elaborate 'Hello' celebrity wedding, though. Rather, it was a quiet, dignified, family affair, held without fuss and extravagance. There was only one press photographer there - a local, who was then told by the groom to sell on whatever photographs he wanted to magazines and newspapers.

Apart from being fast, strong, brave and unselfish on the football pitch, Fernando Torres is one of football's gentlemen off it! He also scored the winning goal for Spain in the final of the European Championships. What more could you want?