Florist Cinema Pond Goal

If Celtic and Rangers make the CL semis next year does it suddenly make the Scottish league better than the English league? England and Spain both have 3 or 4 top quality teams. It's marginal as to whose are better but this year England's best have undoubtedly been strong. What separates the two is that in Spain there lies a bulk of very good teams outside the top 4. You'd only have to watch the UEFA Cup and have a glance at the Spanish league table to recognise that.

Kewell will start you can be sure of that.

If either go down it will be because there are 17 better teams in the Premiership not because Liverpool rotated their squad.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/foo...icle1756205.ece ?If Harry plays well, we will see what happens,? the Liverpool manager said. ?We will have time for testing him. We need to test him because right now you could say physically that he is fit but you need to play, you need to tackle and to sprint, and to come back.?

Thought I imagined that.

Mixed emotions. I'm happy because the weasel must now realise his ego does not match his talent. I'm disappointed because whoever his successor is, Newcastle must surely now improve.

Allardyce in then.

Where's Kewell

Please let this be true.

When a slow 30+ Dutch winger, who arrived on a free transfer, is getting picked for the big games ahead of you, you know there's a problem. One more season to prove he can cut it in the Premiership.

Good side - you'd expect that side to win. The only worry would be that back 4 haven't really played together.

The Guardian seem to have picked up on fact his name's been mentioned before... http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,2072893,00.html "Benítez has opened contract talks with his key pair Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher and is also to offer improved terms to Xabi Alonso, Luis García, José Reina, Daniel Agger and Steve Finnan."

I stand by my belief that we wouldn't have needed penalties on Tuesday if Garcia were fit. Big game player.

Top 3 Pongolle moments 3. That turn against Arsenal at Anfield 2. The goal and assist against Olympiakos 1. Triggering the comeback against Luton which made last year's FA Cup triumph possible

I recorded it at 12 on sky sports extra - was this not on?

James Lawton: When it mattered most Ronaldo was given a lesson in greatness http://sport.independent.co.uk/football/co...icle2510842.ece Because he elevates, and celebrates, individual greatness maybe more enthusiastically than any manager since his legendary compatriot Bill Shankly, no one hurts more deeply than Sir Alex Ferguson when he feels that his team have suffered a critical shortfall in this most precious football commodity. It is why he was in shock as well as mourning at San Siro this week when Milan, on their cruise into a rematch with Liverpool in the European Cup final in Athens, produced three superb examples of perfectly realised performance within a magnificent team effort. What he craved from his own Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and Ryan Giggs was what the sublime Kaka, Clarence Seedorf and Gennaro Gattuso delivered to their coach, Carlo Ancelotti. In their radically different ways, Kaka, Seedorf and Gattuso defined great performance. They delivered the best of their talent and their competitive character not for one vital phase of the match, one brief eruption of effectiveness, but in every minute of the action. They attacked, they marked back, and never once did their concentration waver. Maybe understandably, with a Premiership and FA Cup Double still to be won in a season of brilliant revival, Ferguson left what he probably considered the unsayable unsaid. He talked of evidence of fatigue near the end of a long and grinding season and, inevitably, he dwelt a little on the misfortune of a makeshift and twice near criminally negligent defence. But what he might also have said was that, in the most important game of United's season, his most lauded, and rewarded, players simply didn't show up. All season we have been told, with Ferguson leading the way, that Cristiano Ronaldo has become more than a young player of bewitching promise. It has been claimed that he has already achieved greatness, that he has moved alongside George Best and, by way of crowning imbecility, Pele - most people's idea of the finest player who ever lived - was recently asked if it was possible that the 22-year-old from Madeira was about to usurp his own unofficial title. But if the mind reeled at that moment, what must it do now after Kaka's 180 minutes of brilliance against United - a vital passage of the season in which Ronaldo looked a significant force for less than a quarter of that time? It must, surely, re-evaluate the term greatness in football, recall what it truly is. It must remember those times when greatness was not suggested but confirmed in performances on huge occasions that would live for ever in the hearts of those who saw them. You knew, beyond a flicker of doubt, that you were watching greatness in the Estadio da Luz in 1966 when Best, three years Ronaldo's junior at the time, ravaged Benfica, double European Cup winners who had appeared in four of the previous five finals and boasted the reigning European player of the year, Eusebio. You knew the same when Roy Keane virtually single-handedly mobilised United in Turin eight years ago after Juventus had surged to a two-goal lead in the opening minutes. Great players, those who prove that their ability will stand the test of time, are not wafted to their status in a gale of hype. That was the David Beckham route to unparalleled celebrity, but not to a set of performances that will linger in the mind as those of Kaka, Seedorf and the hugely driven Gattuso on Wednesday surely will. The essence of Kaka is beautiful movement and a killer instinct when he gets sight of the goal. His performance this week announced that he is unquestionably the natural successor to his countryman Ronaldinho, who last season passed the threshold of greatness with some unforgettable performances before entering decline in the World Cup that some feared, in any ultimate judgment of the world's best players, might prove terminal. At San Siro, Kaka also defied the bleak projection of another Brazilian, the Barcelona midfielder Edmilson, who declared after watching his team's conquerors, Liverpool, reach the final, "At Anfield they don't have the best players in the world but they are a good team. They are very effective, almost perfect tactically, and obedient. Football is changing. It is not so much fancy skills now, it's about playing as a team. Liverpool have shown that." They showed it most persuasively in the Istanbul final two years ago and who is to say that they cannot repeat the extraordinary second-half effort that saw them wipe out Milan's 3-0 half-time lead, an advantage created by vastly superior teamwork and some glistening individual skills, including those of Kaka? But honouring Liverpool's superb work ethic - and the individual potential of such Istanbul heroes as Steven Gerrard and Xabi Alonso - should not involve any diminishing of the gift Ancelotti's team gave to football in a performance that brought about a perfect marriage of tactical coherence and skill - and honesty of effort which United at times found to be searing. In the process, Milan cast another serious question mark against the modern English habit of attributing greatness to mere promise, to a set of performances which have lacked the ultimate litmus test of the highest quality opposition. Here again the Ronaldo case comes sharply into focus. Ronaldo's outstanding efforts this season, his most euphoric fans need to recognise, did not come against the sternest of Premiership opponents. He was virtually anonymous - at least in terms of biting contribution - when Arsenal were claiming six points at United's expense, and nor was he luminous against Chelsea or Liverpool. Of course, there have been times when he has been a beacon lighting up the action, and not least when most of his team-mates were also gorging on the inadequacies of Roma at Old Trafford, but almost invariably this has been against opposition which would have struggled to breathe in the face of the kind of football unleashed by Milan. The key point is that Ronaldo's game can automatically thrive in the Premiership in the way it cannot in Europe and against the toughest of domestic opposition. In the Premiership you can afford to lose the ball easily - as he did with his first flashy flick at San Siro this week when a straightforward pass, the kind that no doubt would have been favoured by Pele in the circumstances, would surely have found its target - because most of the opposition give it straight back. They are not so accommodating in Europe, as Milan reminded Ronaldo when they almost scored directly from one of his mistakes. One experienced professional eye, Johnny Giles, seemed to penetrate the Ronaldo enigma more profoundly than most with the verdict, "Looking at Ronaldo I see him doing things that great players do - but a lot of the time I also see him doing things a great player would never do. I never saw George Best - and I played against him for about nine years - give the ball away as Ronaldo did with his first touch on Wednesday night. I never saw Maradona do it, nor Charlton, nor Cruyff." It isn't, or at least it shouldn't be, scapegoat time. Milan go to Athens because they outplayed their opponents in every department. United's shortcomings even included a sub-par performance from the normally magnificently consistent Paul Scholes. But then no one ever hinted that Scholes might just be the best player we have ever seen. After San Siro, the burden for Ronaldo is not to justify that ridiculous idea. It is to weigh the performance of Kaka and reflect on what it really is to be a great player.

Oh I'm sure he'll be fine. What with squad numbers these days who can tell?

If United lose and Chelsea win this weekend, this could be one of the greatest weeks of football. Ever.

the other team

I would definitely start with Pennant. His semi final performance warrants another CL start. Without him we lost our outlet and our play became so predictable.

His assist for Kuyt in the dying moments should have had the game done and dusted. That would have been beautiful. Not that what actually happened wasn't beautiful.

Barnes, I mean Pennant put in a great shift. We need to find a Pennant for the left.

Zenden? NO-ONE saw that coming.

We've done it a few times, Newcastle and Watford away come to mind.