Well thankfully the pointless international friendly is out of the way and we can get back to concentrating on real football. Don't get me wrong I love watching England when there is a point to the games but there really wasn't for this one. This point is underlined by the multitude of withdrawals before hand. Liverpool are not happy that Gerrard played 84 minutes and got injured when they had an agreement for him to only play 60 minutes.

I have mixed feelings towards this, firstly its England they should have the right to choose how long someone plays to best prepare for the next game but then it was a pointless friendly which wasn't at all needed and from which we learned nothing. Well I say nothing, we learned that any England manager who wears something they don't normally such as Mclaren with the brolly (when it was P&^%$*g it down and Capello with a cap will suddenly become the big issue. Surely something can be done to reduce the point less number of breaks for international football.

Manchester United have apparently signed a new keeper for January onwards, Danish international, Anders Lindegaard from Norwegian side Aalesunds with mixed reports of whether he's any good or not. City have apparently transfer listed several of their players, which lets be fair was always going to happen sooner or later, one of which Jo was bought for around 20 million and is for sale allegedly for just £4million.

FIFA has acted and banned the 2 officials and also complained at the paper who broke the story. Now surely if they were corrupt they should be thanking them for bringing it to their attention. I half wonder if they are only banning them because it was made public and its somewhat of an embarrassment that some of the Allegedly wide spread corruption in Football's highest authority has been brought to life. That being said I wish the BBC would wait till after the decision is made who gets the 2018 world cup before bringing the matter back up again. I also wonder if the BBC actually does want the world cup in this country or whether they would actually prefer Spain/Portugal to get it so they can get an expenses charged jolly.

Anyway onto this weeks predictions:

Saturday 20th November
Arsenal 3 - 1 Tottenham
Birmingham 1 - 0 Chelsea
Blackpool 1 - 0 Wolves
Bolton 2 - 1 Newcastle
Man Utd 3 - 1 Wigan
WBA 1 - 0 Stoke City
Liverpool 1 - 0 West Ham

Sunday 21st November
Blackburn 1 - 0 Aston Villa
Fulham 1 - 1 Man City

Monday 22nd November
Sunderland 2 - 1 Everton