Grant is Gone

Who would be a football manager? It seems that coming second in the Premier League and making the final of the Champions League (something Mourinho didn't manage for Chelsea) isn't good enough if you're a manager for a club that's owned by a billionaire.

Sadly, it looks like the top clubs in the EPL are going to start suffering the same fate as Real Madrid and Barcelona, with a constantly revolving door ushering in a new Manager each season. It pains me to say it being a Liverpool supporter, but you've got to admire Manchester United. Alex Ferguson achieved tremendous success in the 90's but in the last few years when Man Utd played second fiddle to Chelsea and Arsenal the board at Man Utd kept faith with their manager. It makes you wonder how many more seasons Wenger could last in the current climate if he doesn't deliver the Premiership trophy for Arsenal again.

I'd be embarrassed to be a Chelsea fan right now. Where is the heart and soul of the club? How can you support a club whose formula for success is to pour hundreds of millions of pounds into the club and then sack the Manager if he doesn't achieve miracles within months of joining?

It's a sad state of affairs.

End of Recorded Programme

As the Champions League Final was on in the middle of the night our time I recorded it on Foxtel IQ (same as Sky+ in the UK) to watch when I got home from work tonight. What a game. The first 20 minutes were cagey but the rest of the game was gripping. When it entered extra time I new this game was set on for a penalty shoot-out - it was just too close to call. I was on the edge of my seat in extra time - both teams had a number of chances and you could see they were giving it all they had even though cramp was setting in and they were all struggling with the awful pitch, made worse by the weather conditions. Then in the 114th minute it all kicked off, a big fracas erupted but there was so much going on you couldn't really see who was doing what. And then... 'End of recorded programme'. God, Foxtel pisses me off!

It kind of took the excitement out of the penalty shoot-out when I had to turn to the Internet to find out what happened.

I Was Wrong - It's Riise's Payslip

According to this BBC report, Liverpool FC have launched an investigation into how John Arne Riise's payslip has appeared on the Internet.

So, if Riise is on 120 grand a week base salary, what is Gerrard on?

Is This Steven Gerrard's Pay Slip?

This has been doing the rounds on some of the football websites. Apparently this is the payslip of one of the Liverpool players but no one's quite sure which one. By the salary amount, I reckon it must be Gerrard - there's only a handful of players in the country who are on over 100k per week.

Click on the image below to enlarge.

I complained to FIFA, you should too!

I've just read this news story on BBC Sport about comments made by FIFA Vice-President Jack Warner. I was so incensed it drove me to writing a strongly worded complaint to FIFA calling for his immediate resignation.

What do you think, should we finance a 'hit' on him?

Complain here

Torres is a Red!

Finally, a signing that might help us challenge for the title.

Liverpool has completed the signing of Fernando Torres from Atletico Madrid. He's taking up the number 9 shirt left vacant by Robbie Fowler. If Torres turns out to be half the striker that 'God' was in his prime then we're in for a really exciting season ahead. Although it was brief, from what I saw of him playing in the World Cup I predict he could become world-class.

3G rubbish

I've just given up trying to watch the Liverpool v PSV Eindhoven match online via skysports.com using my T-Mobile 3G data card. When I tried the demo earlier to see if my connection speeds would cope it seemed ok, but when I've tried to watch the live match it just keeps stuttering - I reckon I've only managed to watch about 5 minutes from the first 45!

T-Mobile UMTS is supposedly quicker than standard 3G - up to 1.8mbps if their website is to be believed. In reality I'm lucky to get 600k at it's peak, and most of the time hovering around 60kbps and every now and again even dropping to 0 - even when I have a strong signal being in the centre of Manchester. It's fair to say that the service is no good for watching streaming video.

If it was constantly at 600kbps then with buffering, I could probably get decent quality, but the speed just keeps going up and down all the time. It's not like I'm on a train - I'm completely stationary in a hotel room!

I new I should have made the effort to go out to the pub to watch it. However, having to get up at 5:30am this morning to get my train, and with me not being a morning person, I'm cream crackered this evening.

I suppose I better get used to not being able to watch live games. I just hope they've got decent broadband connections in Oz.