Weekend Round Up - 9th August

Before I begin I just wanted to say RIP Dani Jarque the Espanyol captain and central defender died of a Heart Attack on Saturday/Sunday morning, Dani was 27 years old, thoughts are with his family and his Espanyol teammates.
　
　
It's been a very busy footballing week, kicking off Friday night in Germany and England and concluding on Sunday night in France, with action from China, Holland, and elsewhere all over Europe.


Here in the UK there has been alot of change to the TV rights, the BBC will be showing 10 live games from the Coca-Cola Championship along with the highlights after the normal Match of the Day program, and now ESPN has started taking the mantal from the now defunct Setanta UK channels.


ESPN will show football from the Barclays Premiership, SPL, RPL, German Bundesliga, Dutch Eredivisie and the MLS.




On Friday night I managed to catch the 2nd half of the Middlesbrough v Sheffield United match, Boro playing their first game in England 2nd tier since their relegation, and the Blades who got so close to the Premiership losing the playoff final to Burnley, my girlfriend is a Sheff Utd fan so they are always a team that I watch, it was a decent game from what I saw, not much between the team, no clear cut chances, and an inevitable 0-0 draw it finished.


Both teams will be in the running for either promotion or the playoff places, both teams posses the skills each other need, Boro lack the physical presence in midfield and upfront that Sheffield have with Montgomery and Henderson, and Boro have the skill and passing ability from Yeates, Williams and Adam Johnson that Sheffield really lack, Boro it seems are more financially capable of filling those gaps.


Elsewhere in the Championship, Cardiff started off well with a 4-0 win over Scunthorpe, the newly promoted side doing down to another promotion candidate, fairing better in their first game was Leicester City beating last years new side Swansea 2-1 at the Walkers Stadium, the other big story came late Saturday night.


Newcastle travelled to fellow relegated side West Brom for the Saturday night match on the BBC, I managed to see about an hour of this while getting ready to go out.


First half Newcastle had the majority of the ball but just couldn't do much with it, everytime Newcastle would mount an attack it would break down and West Brom would counter attack with a bit more danger and cause Newcastle some trouble mostly down the right with Chris Brunt and Gianni Zuiverloon, Newcastle's front pair of Ameobi and Carroll didn't work for me, Carroll doesn't seem to want to get in the box as a predator striker would, he's really good in the air, I think he might lack the killer instinct, Jonas Gutierrez played well down the left but seems to have the inability to find a pass into the box, and newly choosen Captain Alan Smith for me, is just not a central midfielder, if the rumours are true and David O'Leary takes over as Newcastle boss, maybe he can move Smithy back to being a forward again and he could provide the goals that fire Newcastle back to the Premiership cause right now the team just doesn't look good enough.




Also on Saturday the Italian Supercup was played, but to promote the Serie A more globally it was played in the Birds Nest Stadium in Beijing, Inter Milan took on Lazio, Mourinho versus Ballardini, This was a decent match, started off pretty slowly but got interesting before the end, The Nerazzuri were showing off new signings Samuel Eto'o, Lucio and Diego Milito, The Biancocelesti had former Inter striker Julio Cruz on the bench, before Lazio opened the scoring Dejan Stankovic had the best chances for Inter twice shooting wide, and it was against the run of play Lazio went 1-0 up, after a scamble the ball was played back into the box, took a deflection off an Inter defender and midfielder Matuzalem ran in hit a shot which was saved by Cesar but deflected again off Matuzalem into the goal, Matuzalem had said this was his most important match, so he would have been happy making it 1-0, soon it was 2-0 Rocchi found his way between 2 Inter defenders and lifted the ball over Cesar's head a fantastic finish.


Samuel Eto'o scored a fantastic volley to bring Inter back into it, and on the 81st minute they thought they were level Milito putting the ball into the net, but he was deemed correctly to be offside. Even though Inter were the better team it was the men from Rome that lifted the Super Coppa.

Mourinho said after the game the performance solidifed the fact that he needs a playmaker, no names were mentioned but surely he was thinking of Deco, who incidently came on for Chelsea as they won the Charity Shield at Wembley against Manchester United, with fellow Inter target Ricardo Carvalho scoring the first goal.


Whether Jose has anyone else in mind will have to wait and see, David Silva from Valencia is still available, Van der Vaart and Sniejder from Real also could be good signings.




Ligue 1 in France kicked off this weekend with 8 games on Saturday and 2 on Sunday, biggest news from Saturday was Lyon failing to beat Le Mans, needing a debut goal from Lisandro Lopez to save a point for OL, fellow favourites Marseille had less trouble a 2-1 win over Grenoble, Rennes had an impressive 3-0 win over Boulonge, it was the Sunday games I was more interested in.


Lille kicked off their season in poor fashion, playing host to Lorient, the Lille fans turned up to see Les Dogues start the season better than last year, hopefully with a win, I was able to watch this game on the internet through a feed from Foot+ I always find it hard to fully concentrate when watching online as the screen is small and picture never fantastic, but it's better than not seeing, since no UK channel has snapped up the Ligue 1 coverage, back to the match and despite Lille haveing 59% of the ball in the first half and winning 7 corners they went into the dressing room 1-0 behind, Monterrubio's free kick was swung in and Kevin Gameiro flicked the header past Butelle's near post, I think that was their 2nd shot on target, the 2nd half wasn't much better a mistake from Rami left the ball at Monterrubio's left foot and he squared it to Vahirua and he placed the ball past Butelle for Lorient's second.


Lille managed to pull one back, of all people it was Olivier Monterrubio that scored, putting the ball into his own net following a cross from the left. Lille then through everything at the Lorient defence and even the introduction of De Melo and Aubameyang wasn't enough to win a point, and again Lille start the campaign at home with a defreat over what should have been a weaker team.


Sunday night saw Bordeaux take on Ligue 1 returnees RC Lens, I have not watched his game yet, hoping to get to watch it tomorrow or Tuesday so I'm avoiding the score.




There are some Internationals this week, hopefully combined with some replays on ESPN of Bundesliga and Eredivisie games, not been able to watch any Dutch football yet, but should have time this week.




Last point today is on the Champions League draw, Celtic having to play Arsenal to win a place in the group stages, to the outside world and the Arsenal fans at work, I'm going all guns blazing for a Celtic win, but in my head, I do think we will go out, I don't think it'll be a whitewash, it will be a close result but Arsenal have more quality than we do, but if we adopt the styles that Bolton have always used so well in pressing Arsenal and not letting them settle, we may have a chance.



In a new feature every week will end with a Good Week/Bad Week section, bascially a summary of players/teams that have had a good or bad week.



GOOD WEEK

• Notts County - Sven insprired 5-0 win


• Carlo Ancelotti - First Game First Trophy


• Lazio - Win the Super Coppa


• Wolfsburg - answer sceptics with win on Day 1


• Luis Suarez - Hat-trick in Ajax win v RKC Waalwijk

BAD WEEK

• Espanyol - RIP Dani Jarque


• Nani - Scores the opener then gets injured.


• Claude Puel - Question marks after Lyon's start.


• Celtic - Arsenal stand in the way of the Champions League.


• Norwich City - 4-0 down after 22mins, lose 7-1