Just a small note to West Ham fans

If your new manager, who has a reputation for long ball play openly claims that your club will look to grind out results away and play 'Wenger' football at home, then you have a real problem.

If you play "long ball" football, then you are falling into the championship trap, they will be more used to defending hoofs than Premier League clubs are, and for West Ham playing "attractive" football at home, don't get me started, they don't have the players and after Parker, the only single person that was desperately dragging them anywhere close to safety leaves, then you have no chance.

Good luck to the Hammers, I'm sure the Olympic Stadium will be wonderful when they are blessed with teams like Doncaster and Scunthorpe.

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Villas-Boas - the double barrelled surname on everyone’s lips

Well, it’s become more of an anniversary than anything, because the start of the season normally means another manager arriving through the revolving doors at Stamford Bridge, they usually end up back the other way by May. But do we have someone different in Mr. Villas-Boas? Is this a new tactic employed by Abramovich? Well on the face of it, no. Many expect the inexperienced ex-Porto man to be fired before the end of his 3 year contract, mainly because that is the trend that Abramovich follows, but trends are there to be broken, I’m sure Arsene will be hoping that will be the case this season.

For us to understand whether this is a good appointment or not we need to go further than, “Abramovich sacks everyone”. It’s a different kind of selection on Roman’s part, whereas previous seasons he has looked for experience to try and bring him that all elusive Champions League glory. But as you may have gathered Andres is younger than Chelsea’s reserve keeper Hilario. Whether that means he won’t have any authority within the camp is a different question.

In Villas-Boas we have a young upcoming manager that already has proven himself in the Portuguese League, of course we know that the heady heights of the Premier League are completely different to Portuguese football. I believe that he can adapt, the man seems very intelligent and has already worked at Chelsea as the head scout and that didn’t do enough to put him off returning so we know he has the drive.

It all comes down to whether Abramovich has got it through into his head yet that sacking managers year after year just doesn’t work, if he gives Villas-Boas time then we could see trophies returning to Stamford Bridge, but the pessimist in me think that we have seen this all before and the inevitable “Villas-Go-as” headlines will be appearing in several poor tabloid newspapers.

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Roll on 50 years of hurt

Well I’m getting tired of saying it, but that was a disappointment, the performance of the England under 21 team in Denmark was just a little short of a disgrace and they will know it. I thought Pearce got his tactics all wrong, the fact that we set out to emulate Spain and not play to our strengths says it all. The need for us to continually pass the ball back to Frankie Fielding was a mystery. There was no movement from the players and our best attacker was Phil Jones.

Surprisingly Jones looked very good going forward and I wonder whether playing him in a centre defensive midfield position would have suited him better. I was also quite surprised that Jack Rodwell didn’t get more of an opportunity, fair enough, he didn’t have the greatest of seasons at Goodison but his appearance in the Ukraine game showed that he was performing better than Muamba and Mancienne.

I just think that some of these players will never be good enough to make the move into the first team, they just didn’t show enough quality or desire and just didn’t look like they were vaguely interested in playing together.

One final point I’d like to pick up on was Pearce’s tactic to play two holding central midfielders in all 3 matches, especially in the final match where we had to win in order to progress. The combination of Mancienne and Henderson showed no ambition and created a gulf between the midfield and the strikers, meaning Welbeck was isolated and Sturridge had to keep coming deep to receive the ball.

To be honest with you the future looks bleak for England, but don’t let me bring you down, just watch them for yourself.

Twitter: @andyelement

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There is no news!

Well as all you keen readers will have seen, I haven't wrote anything in a while, mainly down to exams and lack of ideas. But the Blog will be back to usual when the new season begins, there may be a few transfer related posts and others, but don't get upset without your weekly hearsay.

Normal service shall resume in August.

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Crisis? What Crisis?

The words of our good friend Mr Blatter there who tonight was rewarded for his corrupt antics with another 4 years in office. Yes that’s right, he’s like the George Bush of the footballing world, nobody wanted him but the other option was, well nobody.

And here I go again with my radical ideas again, we don’t need FIFA, we can become self-sufficient in our own footballing federation and make England great again. Sound like any fascist dictator of the 1930’s? No? Well without taking any more ideas from Nazi ideology I continue…

We obviously aren’t the most popular footballing nation going at the moment, the Argies don’t like us because they think handballing is fine, the Germans don’t like us because “ze ball did not crozz ze line!” and let’s not go back to the Nazis again… I promise no more of ze impressions....

And of course FIFA doesn’t like us because we like to do things fairly (sort of), well fairer than them anyway. As with any institution if you give someone at the top all the power they will change things to benefit them, I can't blame FIFA for the bribes they take, they are only human and greed will always be a factor in anyone's life but it shouldn't have been allowed to have gone this far, there needs to be reform and we shall start with the head of the corrupt organisation and work our way down.

I don't normally agree with anything The Sun writes, but they want to give Blatter the boot and so do I and although it pains me to say, I agree with The Sun, im just not as radically racist.

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