There Is Only One Sinnacle

Palermo Sack Walter Zenga

Palermo have sacked coach Walter Zenga, the club have announced. And reports suggest former Lazio coach Delio Rossi will take over.

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Don’t imagine many Catania fans wound up sad to hear this news as Walter Zenga famously shipped jump to Sicilian rivals Palermo this summer only to find himself out of a job before the halfway mark of the Serie A season. The again Catania fans have bigger issues to deal with as they only have nine points from 13 matches with only one of those being wins.

It’s hard to build any sort of football club when Palermo is famous for sacking coaches. Only since Francesco Guidolin lasted through the 2004-05 season as Palermo gone throughout a season with only one coach. A trend which will obviously continue for this season as well.

Manchester City defender Kolo Toure has admitted that a falling out with a team-mate forced his summer transfer from Arsenal to City. “I had problems with certain players at Arsenal, especially one, whose name I will not say because I don’t want to feed the controversy,” Toure told Eurogoals One to One.

Considering Toure all but admitted the one teammate was William Gallas don’t understand why he didn’t come right out and say it.

Chelsea are hoping to win the race with Real Madrid for Bayern Munich’s £45m-rated French midfielder Franck Ribery in January. The Sun

The Blues’ pursuit of Ribery has been given a boost by Bayern general manager Uli Hoeness conceding the player will leave the German club if he does not believe they are ambitious enough. Daily Mail

Forget ambitious enough as Bayern Munich did spend quite a bit of money this summer. Good enough should be the main point. This Bayern Munich team has looked lost for most of this season.

Liverpool face an injury crisis ahead of their must-win Champions League match with Hungarian side Debrecen on Tuesday, with major doubts over the fitness of Glen Johnson, Daniel Agger, Ryan Babel, Jamie Carragher, Steven Gerrard and Javier Mascherano. The Reds are already without striker Fernando Torres. Daily Mirror

Liverpool will face an even bigger crisis if Fiorentina knock Liverpool out of the Champions League on Tuesday.

Tottenham striker Jermain Defoe has revealed that a change of boots before the game with Wigan on Sunday helped him to score five in Spurs’ 9-1 win. Daily Mirror

Wigan’s awful defense didn’t hurt matters either.

Manchester United defender Gary Neville has joined his manager Alex Ferguson in blasting players who rely entirely on their agents and said: “A player doesn’t need to pay between five and 15% of his wages to a guy to set up a bank account or buy him a new fridge.” (Various)

A player could use an agent to set up an 90 million pound move to a Spanish club.

In a game typically of most MLS matches the MLS Cup was full of honest effort and grit but less on any moments of brilliance aside from Landon Donvan’s cross to set up Mike Magee goal. A fitting way to end this back and forth contest was to decide it on penalties where Andy Williams had a chance to win the cup for Real Salt Lake only to have it saved by Galaxy backup keeper Josh Saunders. Once Edson Buddle missed for the Galaxy, Robbie Russell then stepped up with a chance to be a hero and he made no mistake coolly sliding it inside the post.

Thanks to penalty misses by the likes of Landon Donovan it was in the stars for Real Salt Lake to end their Cinderella run by winning the MLS Cup after making it as an 8th seed on the final day of the season. Along the way they took out Cuauhtémoc Blanco and the Chicago Fire then prevented David Beckham from lifting the MLS Cup.

Congrats to Real Salt Lake who have gone from MLS expansion team to MLS Champions in five years.

First off let me give Athletic Bilbao credit. Considering they are fighting for a Europa League mix and those home fans were fantastic in cheering on their team. Now we got that out of the way it’s time for Pep Guardiola to wake up his Barcelona side. Maybe once they seem themselves in second place, a point behind Real Madrid they will kick it in gear. Last year’s Barcelona club would maul the likes Athletic Bilbao and Osasuna each of whom have taken points from Barcelona recently.

Speaking of Osasuna, tough luck against Valencia who scored three goals of the highest quality. Including two beautiful chip shots.

What’s Atletico Madrid excuse now? They got rid of misfits like Maniche, then fired the head coach and they still suck. This team is rotten to the core. After scoring within five minutes Atletico Madrid forgot about the rest of the game and ended up losing 2-1 to Deportivo La Coruna on a contested last minute penalty by Andrés Guardado.

Speaking of teams I hate we have Bayern Munich who scored within 10 minutes but couldn’t build on it as they drew 1-1 with league leaders Bayer Leverkusen.

It’s not 9-1 but Werder Bremen 6-0 win over Freiburg is still impressive. The win let’s Werder Bremen keep pace with Bayer Leverkusen at the top of the Bundesliga.

Roma reminds me of Liverpool as both teams are night and day different without leaders Steven Gerrard and Francesco Totti. Bari had given up a Serie A low 7 goals this season and Totti rips them apart with a hat trick inside 30 minutes. Look for rumours of Totti to the national team this week after his performance.

Ibra who? As Inter Milan rolled right along with a 3-1 victory over Bologna. Mourinho might not of been happy with Bologna levelling the game right after Milito opened the scoring but once Balotelli gave Inter the lead they controlled the match.

Game of strikers coming back to score against their former clubs between Parma and Fiorentina. Gilardino scores two against his former team and Valeri Bojinov said mid week he’d celebrate if he scored against his former club and he did just that chipping in a goal in Parma 3-2 victory.

Sure the defence was awful but still positive points can be made out of A.C Milan 4-3 win over Cagliari. Considering people were starting to shovel dirt on Leonardo, he has rebounded quite nicely taking his team within an ear shot of Juventus for second place.

- We start off the review with two teams with an identity crisis. Liverpool is trying to regain their identity and Manchester City is trying to find one. Despite the spin Mark Hughes and Rafa Benitez put on after the game, neither can be happy with their team’s performances. After going up 1-0 there is no way Liverpool should then drop the lead and this is the second game in a row Liverpool have pulled off this feat as Birmingham also turned around a 1-0 hole into a 2-1 lead. Manchester City need to start putting teams away. It seems time and time again Manchester City is turning leads into draws and draws in losses.

- Great week for Martin Škrtel. First helping Slovakia reach the World Cup then scoring a goal for Liverpool on the weekend. Skrtel could have done better on Emmanuel Adebayor mind you.

- Lucas Leiva how do you miss that header right at the death? All alone right outside the six yard box and he heads hit wide.

- One of the reasons I like Chelsea this season. No excuses. Liverpool falls apart without Gerrard and Torres. Chelsea without Lampard and Drogba still put the boots to a game Wolves team. Credit to Wolves as they tried to gave Chelsea a game but were just over matched yesterday.

- If Sylvan Ebanks-Blake didn’t realize the difference between Premiership football and Championship football he sure did on Saturday. No goalie in the Championship would push his header off the line like Petr Cech managed too.

- At Manchester City Daniel Sturridge rode the bench and so far at Chelsea not much has changed.

- Everton can’t be fans of playing the late match on Saturday. They opened the season losing to Arsenal 6-2 and were second best against Manchester United 3-0 this past weekend.

- Darren Fletcher goal against Everton pretty much summed that game up. Everton were not able to recover after Fletcher’s wonder goal.

- I’m not ready to sell on Arsenal. Sunderland is a tough go. Last year Arsenal was only able to escape with a 1-1 draw against a very difference Sunderland team on a last minute Cesc Fabregas goal.

- No red beach ball needed to Darren Bent to take out another top four team. Nice rebound for Bent who misfired while on England duty against Brazil.

- Quite a turnaround for Lee Bowyer. Last year at this time he was unwanted at West Ham. A loan move then transfer to Birmingham later Bowyer is proving some quality not seen since his Leeds days. Nice little chip to give Birmingham a 1-0 win over Fulham and continue their good run of form.

- So Emile Heskey can score? Who knew? If you asked Burnley’s Owen Coyle before the game if he’d take a draw against Aston Villa the answer would most lately be yes but you’d hate dropping points on such a late goal.

- The West Ham-Hull match reminded me of the Liverpool-Manchester City match as both teams had their chances to take all the points and neither was able too. A 2-0 lead on the road should not be coughed up, much less going down 3-2 at half time. Hull on the flip side can’t be happy letting West Ham tie the game when the points were there for the taking. Points are points but neither team can be happy at the result.

- Nice to see Portuguese defender (by way of France, don’t ask.) Manuel da Costa score to split the points between West Ham and Hull. Not bad considering he was swapped for 10 million pound bust striker Savio Nsereko who was unable to score while wearing a West Ham jersey.

- Sad to hear the news that Sam Allardyce needs heart surgery to widen his coronary arteries. Despite leading his Newcastle side to a win at the Reebok previously you must have known Allardyce had this match with Bolton cycled on his calendar.

- Great win by Blackburn to lift them five points off the drop zone. Alarm bells are bound to go off for Bolton with only 11 points this season and currently in 18th place.

- Have to give it to Wigan, when they lose, they lose in style. 9-1 to Tottenham is an embarrassment. How do you come off a two week break with that performance? Sadly not able to watch a second of this game but thankfully I get to watch Portsmouth and Stoke in HD too.

Catersport’s does a mock version of the Ballon d’Or award with their own Golden Bin award for the biggest flop in Italian football. Ricardo Quaresma won it last year and is now going for two in a row. Below are the list of contenders for this years “award.”

Ricardo Quaresma (Inter)
Christian Poulsen (Juventus)
Amantino Mancini (Inter)
Nelson Dida (Milan)
Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (Milan) might as well just hand it to Huntelaar now.
Julio Baptista (Roma)
Juan Pablo Carrizo (Lazio)
Felipe Melo (Fiorentina/Juventus)
Tiago (Juventus)
Ronaldinho (Milan)

I’ll still remember the good times. Go back on loan to Sporting, Quaresma. Just get out of Milan.

With Alessandro Del Piero coming back from a lengthy injury guess it was Trezeguet’s turn to spend some time on the shelf. A calf injury has rendered Trezeguet to the sidelines for a month. After a season where it look liked he was about to the Bianconeri, Trezeguet has been a useful piece to the puzzle with six goals during this Serie A campaign.

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich has doubts as to whether to sign Atletico Madrid striker Sergio Aguero as he weighs up if the Argentine is worth £40m. Daily Mirror

I believe Abramovich is still in a haze after Russian failed to make the World Cup. Poor Big Boss.

Chelsea are willing to sign Middlesbrough winger Adam Johnson for £4m and loan him back to the Teesside outfit.
Full story: Daily Mirror

Middlesbrough are in a tight spot with Adam Johnson who is out of contact at the end of the season. It’s unlikely Johnson will resign with Boro unless they are promoted but then they risk the chance of losing him for nothing.

Bolton are lining up a £7m January transfer window bid for Celtic midfielder Scott Brown. : Daily Mirror

Scott Brown is another one of those players who are often rumoured to be leaving but never does. Could easily see why Bolton along with a host of other teams would take an interest.

France striker Thierry Henry was told by his former manager Arsene Wenger that he should have owned up to his handball against the Republic of Ireland. : Daily Mirror

A part of me feel sorry for Thierry Henry. Don’t get me wrong I’m not going to cry myself to sleep at night over his plight but this is on the linesman not Henry. On that stage with Henry knowing this is it, if France don’t make it he’ll never get another chance, don’t see what else he could of done in that spot. Still think it’s big on him to own up to the handball and even today said a replay would be fair. Wonder who it feels to be a Irish Arsenal fan today? What a wide range of emotions there.

Hull trio Kevin Kilbane, Paul McShane and Stephen Hunt – all in the Republic of Ireland squad for the controversial game in France – have been urged to see a sports psychologist by club manager Phil Brown. (Daily Express)

Was watching a youtube clip of the Irish broadcast the other day. First thing which came to mind was how professional and calm the pundits where. I’d be raging in the studio, trying to look for a pitchfork, a wooden spoon and a sandal which should be enough to take over France. Back to the point they mentioned how McShane was an accident waiting to happen for Ireland. Richard Dunne was clearing crosses out of the box all game long. The one time he misses it, McShane is out of position and we all know how the story ended up.

Must admit I’m in a great mood. Like a dark cloud that has been hovering over me for the last six months as disappeared with Portugal making the World Cup. As I’m killing time came across this great little old school Jose Mourinho clip back in his Porto days.

Even more good news for Portugal as they again have a top seed for European qualifying.

Pot One: Spain, Germany, Holland, Italy, England, Croatia, Portugal, France, Russia.

Pot Two: Greece, Czech Republic, Sweden, Switzerland, Serbia, Turkey, Denmark, Slovakia, Romania.

Pot Three: Israel, Bulgaria, Finland, Norway, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Pot Four: Slovenia, Latvia, Hungary, Lithuania, Belarus, Belgium, Wales, FYR Macedonia, Cyprus.

Pot Five: Montenegro, Albania, Estonia, Georgia, Moldova, Iceland, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein.

Pot Six: Azerbaijan, Luxembourg, Malta, Faroe Islands, Andorra, San Marino.