It's 2007, and the blogging goes on. It's been a good weekend of football, and Arsenal beat Liverpool at Anfield 3-1 with two absolute corkers from Tomas Rosicky. Henrik Larsson scored his first goal for Man United, and Kiraly did his first blunder for Villa, as the reds won 2-1, and Tottenham embarassed themselves a bit with a goalless draw against Cardiff at Ninian Park. Charlton and the lovely Alan Pardew went one step further and lost 2-0 to Nottingham Forest.

There are some interesting blogs kicking around the site, with a distinctly Arsenal flavour. There's one on Freddie Ljungberg, Arjun's done a great bit on Flamini and tackling, Mauricio brings us the latest news on Alexandre Pato, and you can enjoy Footie Girl's excellent FA Cup Preview with a good dose of hindsight. Teo gives us the latest on the Melbourne Victory, and our Chinese correspondent Zhixiang gives us some info on Charlton's new signing - China captain Zheng Zhi.

Enjoy! And please get in touch with your feedback, or if you would like to write.

Hello readers,

As you may have noticed (or may not have, obviously), we've now got a little User Contributed News section going on the site, and i'd like to encourage you to play around with it, and obviously send us the football news that you think people should know about.

We've also added a handy little login feature on the right hand side, and we hope that our live scores, fixtures and tables will be ready for you quite soon as well.

So keep checking in, and if you have a minute, then register.

We're busy here at OleOle, but we're going to enjoy a few days off for the festive period, and we'd like to give our best wishes to all our readers and contributers as well.

After I stupidly drank the water I was supposed to rinse my mouth and wash my hands with at the Meiji shrine in Harajuku yesterday, oddness ensued sometime later. This is the same water that everyone else washes their hands with, and in my ongoingly poor attempts at sign language in Tokyo, this was just the latest in a series of interesting misunderstandings.

So then, a few hours later as my stomach rumbled and my paranoia rumbled even more, I began contemplating a bit of death, and thought... "You know... it's OK as long as it happens after Sunday, because I really don't want to miss the football". And so now that brings us to today. My stomach feels fine (last night's drinks and thus-induced visit to McDonald's excepted). The sun unfortunately is not shining as it should be, but that's alright because they have lights in stadiums these days.

So the schedule goes a little something like this:

4.20 PM - Al-Ahly vs Club America
7.20 PM - Barcelona vs Internacional

Obviously, I have probably got the home and away teams mixed up there, but really since it's an Egyptian, a Mexican, a Spanish and a Brazilian team playing in Yokohama, Japan, I don't think it matters too much.

Well stay tuned for our coverage as always, blogging on the spot (this would be a nice time for a "blogspot" pun, but then... would we be sued?).

Al-Ahly will be the more motivated of the two teams in their contest, and there should be some good football on show. Claudio Lopez and Blanco will probably be rested, but Ahly's 3 centrebacks shouldn't breathe too easily because Nelson Cuevas can kill any defence when he's up for it. Islam Al-Shater will continue to bomb down the right flank for the Egyptians, and we have to see what frame of mind Flavio will be in today before making any kind of prediction or judgment. Still, there will be some attractive football on show.

As for Barca and Inter, it will be a tough contest. The Brazilians will be fighting hard in this game, taking a more Argentine or Uruguayan approach some might say. But they will try to play their football whenever they can. This might be a cracking match, maybe not as free-flowing and attacking as the Barca-America or Inter-Ahly games, but definitely an intense, exciting contest.

So stay tuned, and find a TV to watch the games if you can, because you'll miss out on some good football otherwise. Don't believe the people who say "It's a joke cup", and "no one really cares", they're full of shit.

Well there were two exciting David vs Goliath games in the Carling Cup over the last few days.

First, on Tuesday, Alan Pardew's West Ham went down 2-1 away to Chesterfield, and then today at Gresty Road, Crewe Alexandra lost to an agonisingly late winner from Manchester United in the last minute of extra-time, 2-1 to the Red Devils.

Pardew's situation now becomes more precarious than ever before. Not only have his side just lost to a team two divisions below them, but by all accounts they played very very poorly. Marlon Harewood grabbed his early goal against the run of play, and Chesterfield were in control for large parts of the match and deserved their win. Pardew has very few excuses to fall back on at the moment, and even though he said after the loss to Tottenham that the Carling Cup game was a bit too soon for them, he has more than enough quality in his squad in players like Benayoun, Reo-Coker, Zamora, Harewood and even the aged Sheringham. There was speculation after the Hammers' recent wonderful form in the Premiership, that the addition of Tevez and Mascherano had disrupted the team, but neither was included in the squad against Chesterfield, and one would be hard pressed to find a way of explaining the loss. But well done to the Spireites!

As for Pardew, he's a good character, and really took West Ham far beyond people's expectations last season. Perhaps they are suffering somewhat from the burden of increased expectations this term, but with the murky signings of Tevez and Mascherano, and Kia Joorabchian's continued takeover attempts, there is probably a lot more going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. I would hope that he doesn't get sacked - West Ham are a good side, have a great fan base, and he's done very well for them. They play some good football, and managed to get results against some of the big teams last season, which is what a lot of teams aren't willing to try and do these days, dampening the whole competition of the Premiership. West Ham have previously had a very stable managerial history - just 6 managers in the last 42 years (and Glenn Roeder's time was cut short by illness), but the Premiership has turned into such a media circus of late, that I wouldn't be surprised to see Alan Pardew's position in some real jeopardy. They have a tough test facing them on Sunday against Blackburn, a team which they might have considered themselves to be equal to by the end of last season, and then an even tougher match against Arsene Wenger's Arsenal the following weekend, where I think a drubbing at the hands of the Gunners might truly signal the midst of a "crisis".

As for Crewe, well done to them, and condolences for a heartbreaking loss. United had some experienced players out there, and despite the results, I think the fans at Gresty Road will have enjoyed the contest and seeing their team do so well. A upset would have been a great reward for Dario Gradi and his commitment to the Alex and their youth program, but it was not to be - United youngster Kieran Lee scored his first senior goal in the 119th minute to give the longest serving manager in the Premiership, Alex Ferguson, a victory over the longest serving manager in the Football League. 20 years and 23 years respectively.

That's all for now! The site should officially be launching this Friday, the 27th of October (which is the same birthday as me, some coincidence that!), and as you can imagine we at OleOle are all very excited about the start of something that could be very, very big.