Hi and hello football fans, it's your old pal Roko the Football Guy, whats going down? I hope all is well wherever you are! Things are going good this morning in the broom closet here at Football Guy Towers, I feel great and the world is my oyster, but don't be scared, I have no plans to eat the home of humanity like some sort of Godzilla-like beast!

Home-Grown Quota

The BBC has reported this morning (or maybe it was last night, I'm not sure) that the Premier League has agreed (in principle) to support a home-grown quota system for all top flight clubs starting in the 2010/11 season.

From what I understand it's not going to be Sepp Blatter's 6+5 rule which will never come in as it breaks EU law.

So what is it?

Football League clubs will have to name at least four home-grown players in their match-day squad.

In this system any player who has been registered domestically for at least three years before their 21st birthday is classed as home grown, so for example Cesc Fabregas would be a 'home-grown' Arsenal player.

Who will this affect the most?

Well from what I can gather it does not look like the Big four will be hurt by this as Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester United all usually have enough Englishmen in their first team squads to account for the need and Arsenal especially if Wenger is still around will more than likely have enough foreign players who count as home grown too.

As for the rest of the league, I can't think off a team of the top of my head that would have a problem fielding a team that would satisfy the quota so it does not look as though much is going to change by implementing it........... So whats the point?

I would also like to know if a Scottish player lets say for example, who has played for say Celtic as a youth and is now 24 would count as home-grown if someone south of the border bought him? As surly this is the English Premier League and not the British Premier League........... Maybe this could help Celtic and Rangers chances of moving south?

Anyway, I'm sure we will hear more about this in the coming days.

Wigan v Manchester United

Captain Merk is a doubt once again for the Champions, although this time it has nothing to do with his spasmatic back (he suffers from back spasms). His calf is playing up.

To be fair, I don't really think Rio will be needed tonight and maybe United could even roll old Fergie out to play at the heart of the defense and they would still be alright.

Tonight I feel is United's penultimate step to the title, as win or draw, they will most certainly pick up the points they need at the weekend against the team formally know as Arsenal at Old Trafford.

Wigan it seems are already on their summer holidays as they have not won in their last six games, would be quite a big upset for them to change that trend now.

Football Guy's verdict 0-2

Steven Gerrard wins Writers Award

Another top season for the Captain has landed him his first ever Football Writers player of the year award........ Was quite surprised to find that out!

After the whole Ryan Giggs fiasco in the Footballer of the Year award it's good to see at least one decistion was correct this season.

Having said that, grandpa Giggs still managed to come in second place and was not that far away from winning it, which makes me think that Football Writers on the whole are olny slighty smarter than their playing counterparts........ Not sure if slightly smarter is the right turn of phrase........ Maybe less dumber is better even though that does not make grammatical sense......

Anyway, well done to Stevie G for becoming the first Liverpool player since John Barnes to win the award (was shocked to hear that too).

Take care

Football Guy

Hi and hello Football fans, it's your old pal Roko the Football Guy, whats going down? I hope all's well wherever you are. Things a Grey here in the broom closet at Football Guy towers, it looks damp and windy outside and I have my little electric heater on full blast to keep me bones warm, but yet when I think about it, my bones are under my skin, so they are in my body and therefore should be about 36/37c and so not cold at all..........

Anyway, I've noticed over the last couple of days a lot of different sites giving their shortlists for Player of the Year award and on my the shortlist is 10 players long........ Now, I understand giving a lot of players honorable mention, but for me the inclusion of players like Brede Hangeland, Xabi Alonso, Phil Jagielka or Stephen Ireland is just a nice way of saying "you have had a good season".

For me there is no point in such a big shortlist as there are only two players who can win it and therefore no need to talk about the rest in such detail.

The two players are - 

Steven Gerrard

Nemanja Vidic

And here are the Football Guy's thought on both players chances of winning.

STEVEN GERRARD

What a crazy last two weeks it's been for Stevie-G! He banged two past Real Madrid, put another past United and then scored a hat-trick against Aston Villa. In fact I would go as far as to say I don't remember Gerrard ever having played much better than he is at the moment for his club (we shall see about England).

What I find most amazing about Gerrard is, when he puts on the famous Red shirt for Liverpool he really does most of the time play like a man possessed, always wanting the ball, happy to carry the weight of expectation on his shoulders and break the deadlock when needed, take that crucial penalty or score that vital equalizer (I know it's just for this season, but can you name me another player who has bailed his team out more times the Stevie-G?).

I think Gerrard's importance has stood out even more this season as Fernanado Torres has speant considerable time on the sidelines so Liverpool have needed him more than ever to keep them in the title race and if Liverpool do overturn United and win their first title in 19 years then no player will have been more vital the Gerrard and that for me would be the best player this season.

NEMANJA VIDIC

I wrote quite a few months ago the Vidic was my favourtie at the time for the player of the year awards, I think it was right in the middle of United run of clean sheets.

When you think that Vidic was the only defender ever present during that run it really does add kudos to his chances.

I know his form may have dipped ever so slightly at this crucial stage of the season, but lets not forget that United are where they are this season because of their defence and not because of C-Ron and Co. So having said that thier the best defender should be acknowledged for what he has done this season.

Not only has Vidic stopped goals going in, he has also helped out United's attack this season scoring some vital goals...... The last minutes winner against Sunderland and the breakthrough goal at Old Trafford against Chelsea.

Vidic's biggest obstacle for the awards will probably be the position he plays as since the start of the Premier League only two defenders have won the PFA Player of the Year Award and none have won the Football writer Player of the year award, in fact for the latter you have to go back all the way to 1981 when Steve Perryman won it for Spurs. Having said that Vidic has been on another level this season and only a collapse in United's title bid will stop him from claiming the individual honours.

Untill tomorrow,

Take care

Football Guy

Hi all, due to yesterday being the last day of the transfer window and all the SNOW we've had in London, I decided to postpone the Monday Hangover 24 hours or so, kind of like the FA postponed the transfer window shut time, but before we get to the meat and drink of the hangover, let me fill you in on my weekend.

What a busy weekend I ended up having. First off I got rather drunk on Friday night on 99p IPA (Can't get enough of the Green King), which lead to me quite groggy Saturday morning and me calling in work to cancel a shift I had planned for Saturday afternoon (told them I had a migraine which was not a million miles from the truth). So I decided to meet up with one of The Sport Boys (the one who hardly ever write for them) and watch the Arsenal v West Ham game on Irish Setanta...... Boy was I bored, West Ham had no ambition and Arsenal had no creativity or fan support by the sound of it which reminds me - WHATS WRONG WITH YOU BLOODY ARSENAL FANS? MAKE SOME NOISE! - I go to Arsenal games as often as I can get tickets/afford them and when I'm at the game I try to make some noise yet very few people there seem to care, they look at you as if you have just told them you have some highly contagious flesh-eating virus that will be caught by anyone within ear-shot, I've heard baby farts louder than the crowd at the Emirates on Saturday, poor.... So anyway, to get over that I went to a house party on Saturday night, got pissed, stayed over, slept in a sofa bed, broken the said sofa bed (was not alone), woke up, had pancakes made for me, then had them ruined by having nasty whipped cream put on them, tried Fanta Zero (tastes like baboon piss), went home.

- Football Guy, full of class.....

Anyway, on to Sunday night, was off to watch the Super Bowl (I do every year) and this year I was watching it in the LSE (London School of Economics) halls which a bunch of... students and took full advantage of the student bar they had there. I also had a rather large bet on the Arizona Cardinals+6.5. By halftime the student bar was shut and the nearest shop was a five minute walk away, no problem right? WRONG... Little did I know that there was a blizzard coming down outside! It took me a good 15 minutes to walk what would have been five and to make matters worse, the bag I was carrying my booze in split and I had no gloves on so I had to carry some ice cold beers with my bare hands in a blizzard.... I'm thankful I can still type. So to cut a long story short I continued to drink, won my bet and played in the snow all Monday like a hungover child.... Good Times!

Football Guy v Mark Lawrenson

Neither myself nor Mark had a particularly good week... In fact we were both poor, but unfortunately I was slightly worse.

This Week

Football Guy - PS 1 CR 3 WR 7

Lawro           - PS 1 CR 4 WR 6

Fantasy Football

 

Players you wish you had not made captain

1. Frank Lampard          - -2pts 
2. Robin Van Persie       - 1pt
3. Emmanuel Adebayor - 2pts
4. Steven Gerrard         - 2pts

 

Players you should have made captain

1. Fernando Torres   - 13pts
2. Cristiano Ronaldo - 8pts

 

 

Players you wish you had made captain but never would

1. Kevin Davis      - 13pts
2. Bernard Mendy - 12pts
3. Erik Nevland     - 12pts
4. Darren Bent     - 11pts
5. Simon Davies   - 10pts

 

 

The Cristiano Ronaldo award for fantasy excellence

1. Fernando Torres/Kevin Davies - 13pts

 

One of the more lower points totals to actually win the award, both Kevin Davies and El Nino were crucial to their teams big three points this weekend, although I do feel sorry fot Torres.... Having to share anything with Kevin Davies would rank up there in my top three things I'd rather eat dog eyeballs than do.

 

 

 

 

 

Quote of the week

This week sees the return of "Quote of the week" to the hangover lineup and we have a real gem for you curtisy of Emmanuel Adebayor -

 

"I did not walk for the first four years of my life, my mum took me to Nigeria, Lagos, Ghana and all the villages in Africa but nothing happened.

 

It got to the stage where they took me to a church and told my mum they’d pray for me for a week. They said that, if I did not walk by the end of that week, it meant I would never walk. They started praying at midnight on the Sunday.

 

All the week, I’m not walking. By Saturday midnight my mum was all over the place, crying. For her, it was all over. She had taken me everywhere in Africa and nothing had worked.

 

Anyway, I was in the church laying down and, around nine or ten o’clock on the Sunday morning, I could hear children playing outside. Suddenly somebody kicked a ball into the church. And the first person to stand up and run was me, because I wanted to get that ball.

 

My mum was afraid because she had never even seen me walking and suddenly I was running after a ball. And all the people in the church who had been praying for me told my mum, your son is walking because of football.

 

It must mean the boy has football in his blood. It’s an amazing story. But it is true. My mum has told me about it all my life"

 

Adebayor....... If only your finishing was as good as your storytelling... If only...

 

 

 

Winners and Losers

Winners

Steven Gerrard/Liverpool

It's funny how Football can change ever so fast, just last week Stevie G and his chums were in the loser section after failing to beat Wigan and here they are just a few daylater in the winner enclosure. Whilst were on the ponit of things changing fast in football, Mike Rileys opinion changed rather fast on Sunday, about 2-3 minutes before Riley deemed Farank Lampard's challange was a red card he let Gerrard get away with what in my opinion was a far worse challange.... Not sure what happened in those next couple of minutes but obviously something drastic to old Mike's sense.

Would just like to say that Liverpool were by far the better team in my opinion before the sending off, just wanted to point out that in Lampards was a red so was gerrards.

Tony Stephens - Robbie Keane's agent

It's not as if the guy was hard up for cash before, afterall this is the same guy you aranged for Captain Beck to go from United to Real Madrid, but I think we can allsafely say that Mr Stephens must be pretty pleased with the £32.3m that have been spent on Keane in the last 6 months. I'm Guessing he's on 10% commision? Sounds about right? So by that calculation he's made £3.2m...... I think that's more than Robbie Keane's made in the same time frame!

Losers

Chelsea

Worrying form for the Blues from Fulham (yes, thats right). I can't remember the last time Chelsea looked good and it's now just one point from five "big four" clashes.

I wonder what odd's you can get on Aston Villa coming ahead of them?

I wonder how Bosingwa escaped FA action?

I wonder why Lampards red card won't get overturned?

I wonder in Quaresma will do good for them?

Arsenal

I mentioned in Firday's preview how important it was for Arsenal to beat West Ham as they knew for certain that at leaset one of Liverpool and Chelsea would be dropping points this weekend. Well With Villa doing them a favour and dropping points it made the draw all the more frustraitng as they now could have been just three points behind Chelsea and Villa.

Insted they remain five points adrift which, tho not yet a mountain, is certainly not a mole hill either.

Final Thoughts

As you may have noticed, I've not mentioned the closing of the transfer window and all the subsequent transfers a great dea. That's because later on this week I will be doing February's Power Rankings and will talk about who's bought who then, so until then...

Take Care

Football Guy 

So did you hear the big news this week? I'm sure you know by now, unless you live in a cave that Barak Obama has become the first black, first non-white, born in Hawaii, 44th man to be President of America. With that I've been reading a lot about how this is going to bring change or how the world will never be the same again and that got me thinking. What would I change to make FOOTBALL a better place for future generations? I'd like to think of myself as the white Cro-English Barak Obama and with that I'm going to outline for you all my 10 step program for change in Football, YES WE CAN!

But before we get on to that I would like to take a couple of moments to discuss the horrible scenes we saw Tuesday night at Anfield. Steven Gerrard diving to win a penalty! Shock horror! Englishmen don't dive I hear you cry. Well let's take a look shall we at Mr Gerrard's dive. Now, why are we all shocked? One of the most vocal anti-divers dived and we are shocked? Well I'm sure even those of such moral high ground like Stevie G are allowed to make a mistake once right? It's not like he does it all the time? It's not the act that annoys me, it's the fact that Stevie has condemned others in the past for something he seems to do quite often. Maybe he should take a leaf out of one of his fellow scousers books, that being Robbie Fowler. Unfortunately I can seem to find a video of it but it was back in the 96/97 season and Robbie Fowler burst into the box at Highbury, knocks it past Seamen and jumps over him drawing no contact. The ref immediately points to the spots but Robbie Folwer is protesting, for the penalty NOT TO BE GIVEN! Only time I have ever seen that and fiar play to Robbie who knew there was no contact and tried to stop the penalty being given. Anyway he lets Seaman know which way he is going to take it, Seaman saves it and...... Jason McAteer scores on the rebound. So please Stevie G, don't be a prick!

Right so back to the point at hand. Here is my 10 point plan to make Football a better place.

1. No limit on number of subs named.

By that I mean you can still only use three subs during the game but can choose from anyone in your squad. So for example, instead of naming seven subs(which I'm glad they increased this year) on the bench, you have the choice of anyone you wish to bring who is registered to play. I think it would be great as teams then could give youngster a game much more often. Even with seven subs teams are reluctant to put to many youth players on the bench as they feel more confident with their more experienced players. This way if lets say Chelsea are 5-0 up after 50 odd mins against Sunderland like they were at the weekend, they could bring on players they would normally not play and give them a chance in a real first team game. More freedom is always a good thing.

2. Video Replays.

Look, we are in the 21st century. Technology is everywhere. It's used in pretty much most sports. Why not Football? I'm not saying use it for every decision, but come on, there are way too many controversial decisions that could be solve instantly without slowing the game down. How quickly do Sky Sports have a replay up of a offside or goal line clearance or a handball? Thing would be  a lot more fair. Please don't say "but controversy is part of the game" or "what would we talk about?"I would much rathertalk about how good the game was or how good a goal was or how poorly a team played then wherever or not a team was robbed. Wouldn't you?

3. Wage Cap.

People are constantly moaning about how money is ruining the game and how people like Abramovich and these new guys at Manchester City with there super deep pockets are only winning because of money. Well there is a simple answer to that. Wage Cap. How it would work is that a team can only spend a certain percentage of its profits on wages. Benefits of that.

a) Teams are less likely to get into financial trouble as they are not speanding money they don't have.

b) It stops people like Abramovich who have bottomless pockets bank rolling teams as his money has nothing to do with how much money the "TEAM" make (not him)

c) Hopefully make the game a little bit more competitive. Yes there are always going to be teams that have a bigger turnover and therefore more money to spend on wages. But atleast then then no matter how much you could pay to buy a player, if you could not fit him in to your wage cap it would not matter.

My point is even the bigger teams could not get a "Galacticos" situation because their would not be able to pay their wages with in the margin of their net profit and thus making the game less top heavy and predictable.

4. If teams finish the season level on points then they must have a play off.

I would only use this for places that matter I.E. Title, relegation and European spots. Not for who come 10th or 11th. Why does goal difference decide? Because Chelsea beat Sunderland 5-0 and let's say Liverpool beat them 4-0 does that make them better? If after 38 games you finish on the same points then in my book you were equal. Just think how great it would be if this season Liverpool and Chelsea finished on the same amount of points and then had to play another game to decide who wins the league. Even if you hated both teams you would still be interested. Which bring me to why dosent Sky push for this? Imagine how much extra money they could make from a 1 game play-off to decide who wins the Premiership? I'd love it.

5. Offside is Offside.

I'm fed up with the debate "is he interfering with play". Brian Clough once said "If he is not interfering with play, what is he doing on the pitch" and they are my thought exactly. The thing is, the people who moan about this the most (The pundits - Alan Hansen) are the very ones who wanted it in the first place. I remember Hansen moaning on about it years ago and now that they have created this monster they want to blame someone else. Offside is offside. If it was looked at like that it would be much easier to enforce.

6. Handball is Handball.

Why is it if the ball hits you hand in the middle of the field it's handball and no one blinks an eye. Then when it's in the box all of a sudden there is this big debate over whether or not the player meant it? Keep you hands by your sides and you will be ok. If you run around with your ares flying about you are asking for trouble.

7. Referees should have to give interviews

Why do referees get so much protection from the FA when they make a wrong decision? As a manager you can't say jack against them, why? I hate it when the FA says "It's a tough job" tough job? really? I could name you a 1000 other jobs which are much tougher. Let the ref come out after the game and explain his decisions. Make them accountable!

8. Scrap the transfer window.

Imagine in real life you as a business were only allowed to hire people for 3 1/2 moths a year, stupid right? well why is it like that in Football? Scrap it I say. It hurts the teams at the bottom more than the top and I think if you asked managers what they would like 98% would probably say get rid of it.

Side note - If you have a window for players, why not for manager? Why should a manager be able to be sacked or leave ( Harry Redknapp) when players can't?

9. Like the players, the national team manager should be from the same country.

Why is this not a rule? Why for all these year England didn't have a great left winger couldn't they go and get a Brazilian or an Italian to play there? Just because you don't have a good English manager does not mean you should be able to get a foreign one. Otherwise as I just said, why can't you do that with players?

10. Make teams once a season play in a retro kit.

OK, this one is not very important. But how cool would it be to watch Liverpool v Arsenal when both are wearing their kits from the 1971 cup final? I for one think fans would love it and I think it would be a great way of celebrating the past. Lets face it, most kits today pale in comparison to kits of yesteryear. If this was the only change made on this list I'd be a happy man.

Well their you have it. In this time of change hopefully some of these might come to pass and make the game we all love that little bit better. I know they are not all perfect but I feel they are a step in the right direction... YES WE CAN

Football Guy