EskWeston

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha, what a load of s**t, what manager in the world doesn't have to get their transfers agreed by the owner or the board first....

Shocking that the press would make up more stuff isn't it!!! Probably just rehased their old stories which were lies at the time they printed them as well.

It is a fantastic achievment for Frank to reach and i am sure he will do it very very soon. Like Ollie said Frank won't get the same treatment Giggs got for his but Franks is far better. For a midfielder to score so many goals is just incredible.

Lol, what an absolute wonker that lanky streak of piss is!!!! First he says there is no excuses for his tackle and then goes on to list countless excuses Mikel did nothing wrong. And for the fat spanish waiter to excuse Crouch's foul is a discrace.

His shooting was better last night than it had been recently, he has had a couple of stinkers recently. But the way he was running at their defence second half was incredible. I can't see Sheva's injury being too much of a problem. I remember us playing Blackburn last season in the cup with a forward 3 of Kalou, SWP and J.Cole... We could do the same if our strikers are all out.

Thought Kalou was excellant last night..... Pizarro had the sniffles, off with a note from his mummy aparently.

It is very important that we have wingers who run at players, and why Sinclair should get more games as it will only improve him, young players need time to become the great players they can be - Ronaldo at Man you was very hit and miss for a few seasons but he got regular games to improve. Sinclair did some fantastic things last night that you just couldn't beleive he got through. Saw on SSN this morning someone from the press discussing the papers and he couldn't believe Rafa was defending Crouch, can't understand what he was thinking, Mikel did nothing could have been a real leg breaker had he connected properly. And as for Liverpools second string? Theres was no more second string than ours, they had 1 young player and so did we, the rest were all first team players.

I don't know, i think most people would agree, even if we qualified or not that there is a problem with the set up of English football. Young players are not allowed to enjoy football and are taught to win at all costs which does not encourage the breeding of creative and skillful players. If we had qualified it would just have given the FA an excuse to put off making the changes that are needed to sort out the mess we have at the moment.

Lol, yep Essien had a good game, though to be fair to him he did have 2 shots go very very close which is pretty good for him really. I agree on Kalou, much better on the left, and Sinclair looked more comfortable on the right too.

Thats the side of Kalou we need to be seeing more of, he had a very good game last night overall and was unlucky not to score.

Fantastic result, and even more so because we was by far the better team than them. Was good to see Sinclair get a run out, he brings something completely different to the wings in that he just runs at people which scares the life out of defenders and creates chances, obviously it didn't come off everytime but he is a great option for us. Mikel was just awesome last night and my man of the match, the boy is just so good and getting better every game. Kalou was fantastic in the second half once he decided to have a real go at their defence and in one run took on half their team, and got through. Good to see Sheva scoring because he had a pretty decent game overall.

Well there is no doubt a striker will come in January. If we have to play Sahar then we will, we could do a lot worse. But it would be more likely that Kalou will play the forward role is Sheva and Pizarro were missing.

Hopefully Sheva only came off as a precaution and will be ready for the next game. Pizarro as well seems to be unwell so we are really down to the bare bones of the squad now just at the wrong time....

Lol, Mikel still looks like a very large child too......

Well he is 18 so if he does come in the January transfer window then i see no problem having him in the first team already if he is as good as they say. And at over 6ft he is not exactly a small lad...

Chelsea have won the race to sign Argentine hot-shot Franco Di Santo. The Blues have agreed a deal worth $7million (£3.4million) with his club - Chilean outfit Audax Italiano. Di Santo started his career in the youth side of Godoy Cruz de Mendoza - but he then opted to switch to Chile and he has since flourished with Audax. From 35 starts he has bagged 13 goals in less than two seasons, and has also shone for Argentina's youth sides after he opted to play for the country of his birth rather than Chile - who also wanted him. Now Chelsea have beaten a host of clubs from around Europe - to seal a deal for Di Santo - who is free to move to England as he holds an Italian passport. Indeed Chelsea are understood to have held off competition from nine rival Premier League clubs - including Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal - who all expressed an interest. "Everything is nearly agreed, there are only a few details to be resolved but there will not be any problems," Audax president Valentin Cantergiani confirmed. "We only have to agree the fee that Audax will receive if Di Santo is transferred again in the future and that's all. All the rest has been arranged. "We are exchanging the last documents." Cantergiani admitted that Chelsea have been very good to deal with. "Chelsea has been more than a year following Franco and all the negotiations have been all the time very polite. "They want to add him their squad when the transfer window opens in January. As Franco holds an Italian passport he can be at once part of their team." Source: Sky Sports

Absolutely. As a top 4 club you HAVE to win your home games against the other big 4, that goes for the Arse too, a draw would have been a fantastic result for us. We still have to play all of them at the Bridge still this season and can quite easily claw those points back. A couple of new players and our key returning to fitness and we will be in fantastic shape.

Are you saying that the players were instructed to hit high balls to SWP?? SWP was struggling to get out of Clichys pocket the whole game and should have come off earlier. Tactically had we not conceeded somewhat of a freak goal we would have contained the Arse for at least a 0 - 0 draw, until we went all out they never came close.

What is being talked about is so basic and tried and tested in most of all the other major countries. Yet the FA are dragging their asses having this meeting and that meeting and it is all their politics that is holding it back. Kids should be allowed to enjoy the game at a young age and not have the "win at all costs" mentality. The Futsal idea is a very clever one and should be used by all academies in parnership with their normal schedules. It encourages a young player to play the tight passing game that is important in developing the kinds of players we are looking for in this country. It's no rocket science to have a look at what is a success in other countries and try and impliment that here.

I wouldn't necessarily agree with that, i think we threatened enough and had some very good chances before Pizarro came on. Playing away from home against Arsenal it was never going to be a game of lots of chances and at every stage of the game our number of chances was greater than theirs. The more chances came once we opened the game wide open to force the issue, which we would never have done from the start because it leaves you wide open at the back, which did happen. Sheva isn't ideal as the lone striker, but i don't totally agree that you need to be a Drogba type player to play with 1 striker, it depends how you utilise your wingers and what style of play your team is using. If we want to lump it up to a striker to hold up and bring others in then you are not going to get that from a Sheva type player, but if you are going to play through the middle then it doesn't really matter as long as the player is good.

Of course it's a handicap, at that age the physical development is huge. Like Clement said, you imagine us putting Hutchinson, Bertrand and Cork in that team now, over other teams it would be a massive advantage.....

We seem to be linked with a lot of Average players at the moment who are massively overhyped, Yakubu, Anelka, Berbatov - we have done the whole thing of buying players who are going to be "squad" players. Right now we need to be looking at improving quality, so we either spend big and go for a proven World class player like Eto'o, Villa or the likes or go for a young and aspiring world class player like Huntelaar.

We are still well in with a shout of competing for the title this season, but if we can't get our key players back soon then it will be extremely hard for us. Carvalho and Ballack look like being back very very soon, but Terry and Drogba are going to be missing for a long time and add to that an absense from Kalou and Essien and it is not going to be easy.

Role for futsal?: Brian Barwick famously consulted "12 wise men" from British and European football as he began his search for the new England manager. Were he now to canvas the opinions of the best players in the world about the malaise in English football, it is possible that the word futsal would come up time and time again. Cristiano Ronaldo and Ronaldinho both credit the skills-based game with making them the players they are today. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the countries who excel at futsal - Brazil, Spain, Italy and Portugal - also feature prominently in the Fifa world rankings. In contrast, England's senior futsal team is yet to win a match in 45 attempts and lost 4-2 and 6-3 in a double-header against Andorra in October. Futsal is a five-a-side game played on a basketball-sized pitch with a weighted ball. The emphasis is on improvisation, creativity and technique - you are unlikely to hear calls of "get stuck in" or "get rid of it" at a futsal match. While it is widely played by youngsters in Brazil, Portugal and Spain, the game is still rare in England, where traditional five and 11-a-side matches predominate. England's futsal coach, Graeme Dell, believes the desperate record of his team points to a wider malaise in the English game. "A lot of the success of countries like Brazil or Italy has to do with the breeding of players in the younger age groups and the fact that they grow up playing futsal," he told BBC Sport. "They learn to keep the ball in play because of the nature of the futsal ball and court." Countries such as Spain host a professional domestic futsal league, in which players are paid as much as their 11-a-side counterparts. Manchester City and England defender Micah Richards is one of the few top English footballers to have played futsal as a youngster. "It did improve my technique," he told BBC Sport. "It makes you more composed on the ball and makes you want the ball more, so you can do something with it." Brentford introduced futsal to their training programmes a year ago, and coach Luis Melville says it is already making a difference to the technique of his players. "Futsal makes players more difficult to play against in 11-a-side and gives them more tools in their armoury to be a more complete footballer," he told BBC Sport. "Players find it challenging. Because space is at a premium on a futsal court, the ball has to be manipulated far more closely to the body. "Players also have to do clever things with the ball and their foot skills improve. There is no hiding place on the court, so decision making is absolutely paramount." Zinedine Zidane once said he was fortunate to have played football on the streets of Marseille until the age of 14, meaning no-one had the chance to coach skill and improvisation out of him. "That is what futsal is all about," Dell says. "It's a platform to allow a player to use invention and game understanding to not only develop themselves but get out of trouble. "Whatever drill or exercise you develop, you have to make the player think for themselves." Dell says that a lot of English coaches have a "blinkered vision and are "doing the same thing year after year". And he adds ominously: "Unless we start bringing the futsal concepts to the way in which we train young players we could be having this conversation again in 15 to 20 years' time."

Technique gap: "Unless you change your whole approach to football, nothing will get better." Carlos Alberto, a man who once scored a goal so exquisitely-crafted it could have been made in heaven, is not in the habit of mincing his words. His finest moment - the sublime last goal in Brazil's 4-1 thumping of Italy in the 1970 World Cup final - means he knows how to succeed at the highest level and what it takes to get there. Such a damning verdict on the English game gives the World Cup-winning captain no pleasure at all, but he, like many others, fears that unless things change, England will get left further behind. The shambolic, failed attempt to reach Euro 2008 that ended with the humiliation of a 3-2 defeat by Croatia at Wembley was followed by the oft-repeated criticisms directed at the English game - namely a lack of technique. It comes as no surprise then, that it takes Carlos Alberto only 19 seconds into our interview to mention the word that seems to be casting a shadow over the English game once more. "The most important thing that can happen to English players is that they improve their technique," the 63-year-old tells BBC Sport. "Technical skills like dribbling, good movement, the ability to pick a pass are key to breaking teams down, but you just don't see it when England play, their style is always the same "They never changed, they never improvised and they never improved. They put the high ball into the area and try to head it in, but they need to focus on more technical skills. "I also have the feeling that the England players need to change their mentality, the spirit with which they play football. "Sometimes they play as if they do not feel the game. I hope they understand these things and try to change because every other country changed a long time ago." Fabio Capello has admitted that one of his biggest challenges as England coach will be to overcome the "up and at 'em" philosophy that is so prevalent in the Premiership. At his first news conference as England manager, he was asked how he might change a style based primarily on pace and intensity. "This is something he says he is going to have to work on," Capello's interpreter said. Sir Trevor Brooking, the director of development at the Football Association, believes England lags behind because the players are not learning these technical skills early enough. "We need to start earlier," Brooking told BBC Sport. "Anybody emerging from the 5-11 age group has to be comfortable on the ball. "Can you get this ball under control? Can you kill it instantly? Have you got the know-how to make decisions? Do you know how to use it and select the right pass? "Now if you can't do all that when you get to 11-a-side situations in the 11-16s, you're going to struggle desperately. You won't be able to cope if that basic stuff isn't there." What is becoming increasingly evident is that if the technique of English players is going to match that of the best countries in the world, the FA must get its coaching structure right. Carlos Alberto, who also managed the Nigeria, Oman and Azerbaijan national sides, fears that by the time kids join academies, the skills they need later on in their careers have already been lost. "It must start with the very young children and they must get the best coaches coaching these kids," he added. "When the kids are so young, it is not time to think about winning, to think only about winning as you do. "You have to develop them, teach them how to pass a ball, how to control a ball, how to control a game, how to cross, head and shoot. "It is not important to tell the kids to win - you must instead teach them the skills that will help them to become winners. "Most of the time when you are young, you should be playing with a football. Give a ball to each kid, tell them to go home and look after the ball and sleep with it even!" Brooking says important changes are already underway at grassroots level to help improve the development of core technical skills. "We want to take the intensity out of it, especially in the younger age groups," said Brooking. "So we do more individual ball work and concentrate on technique. "With the younger groups the philosophy is about fun and just letting youngsters play, we have to take away the pressure of results. "There are one or two pilot schemes where we've scrapped the leagues for under-nines - why are we putting them under the pressure of getting results? "We're not allowing them to express themselves and it takes the fun out of it because of all the pressure from the sidelines. "So the adults have to sign a code of conduct and are roped off in the corner. There is no hollering at their children, just someone in charge who supports them and makes a few little comments. "We're trying to give them a lot of small-sided playing time, getting them playing so they get as much contact time as possible." Brooking argues that one of the major problems in England is a lack of defenders who can start attacks in the manner that right-back Carlos Alberto did so successfully in his 53 games for Brazil. "I don't think we have enough defenders who are comfortable on the ball in attacking areas - creativity is a worry," continued Brooking. "A lot of international sides see that now as a way of getting width and getting in behind defences but we don't have the depth, that is our challenge. "Full-back is a clear problem - we have had one or two jumping three age groups in the development teams because of a lack of depth and that could be worrying in a few years' time." Carlos Alberto also believes that England's big clubs must give more opportunity to homegrown players in order for the national team to benefit. "They must change the rules of football in England to give chances to English players, not only bring foreigners into the Premier League," said the World Cup-winning skipper. "The big teams like Arsenal and Chelsea must allow English kids to play so they can improve their skills at the highest level and concentrate on their improvisation. "Unless all these changes are made, it is clear that the England national team will not improve."