On the same day that Chelsea had reportedly finally managed to wrap up a £7 million deal for defender Gary Cahill, it had emerged that Andre Villas Boas was beginning to run out of patience for the lack of fertility from his academy and was planning to split the staff and players involved in the reserves from the first team.
Martin Jol’s return to the Premier League as manager of Fulham hasn’t been the easiest of rides, knocked out of the Europa League in the first round after a dramatic late capitulation to Odense, they have suffered domestically too, 3-1 home defeats to Everton and Tottenham, comfortable 2-0 defeats to Swansea and Wolves threatened a season that may have been metaphorically as long for Jol as it actually had been, with the campaign beginning as far back as June 30th.
In some ways, this season for Inter Milan has been an exact re-run of last year.
It was the chorus of boos that resonated around the Reebok, once after Stiliyan Petrov drove home for 2-0 five minutes
After all the cultural homages and the drawn out affair had passed over in Kiev, England were the last to discover their fate as they were plucked last out of the pots in the draw process for next year’s European Championships.
When Barcelona travelled over to Madrid on Saturday night to play Getafe, nobody was expecting the 90 minutes that followed. Getafe were languishing in 16th position going into the game with La Liga’s all-conquering juggernauts who were eighteen points ahead in 2nd position.
Back in 2007, having just won the Spanish League with Real Madrid to end his four year stint with the Spanish giants, David Beckham headed to America to play for LA Galaxy at the age of 32.
Things haven’t exactly gone according to plan for Stockport County since the festive period of 2008, situated in a play-off place in League One under the guise of former player Jim Gannon who had overseen a dramatic rise from the foot of League Two on a meagre budget since taking over at the turn of 2006.