Over on www.kumb.com, I discuss how the start of West Ham's season could be effected by the injury to Craig Bellamy. The injury to the Welsh striker means that Alan Curbishley is left with only two senior strikers avaliable.

First of all, let me just say how disappointed I am for Craig Bellamy. The striker picked up a hamstring injury in a pre-season game against Ipswich Town and is set to miss the start of the Premier League season after being informed that he will be on the sidelines for at least a month.

Such an injury is the story of Bellamy's career really. Just as he is looking good and feeling sharp - there's the niggling injury that keeps him out of action for a few weeks. It's always one step forward, two steps back and that's why I feel sorry for him. He has said himself that he is 'gutted' to be missing the start of the season especially after what he describes as the 'best pre-season ever'.

Continue reading this article at:

http://www.kumb.com/article.php?id=2460

Over on http://spanishfootball.typepad.com I talk about Cristiano Ronaldo's on-off move to Real Madrid and question whether football fans are beyond caring about where his future lies. I also contemplate whether Real Madrid even need him in their recentley team.

Obviously fans of Real Madrid and Manchester United are interested in what is going on, but even they must be getting fed up with the uncertainty. I know I am. The latest on this is that Ronaldo is to tell Alex Ferguson his move to the Spanish giants is 'non negotiable'. Of course, this follows the Manchester United manager's comments that the player will not be leaving Old Trafford.

Whatever next? Well, if I was to place a football bet on it I would say the next phase of this tedious soap opera would be that Manchester United will again deny that Ronaldo is to leave the club. Only for Real Madrid to say he is and the player to make no official comment. That's normally how it works isn't it?

Continue reading this article at:

http://spanishfootball.typepad.com/la_liga_review/2008/07/ronaldo-to-madrid-who-cares.html

Over on www.orlandogolfblogger.com, I discuss whether the British Open missed the presence of the best golfer in the world, Mr Tiger Woods. After winning the US Open by going through the pain barrier, it was announced that he would miss the rest of 2008 because of a knee injury.

A lot of the build up surrounding the tournament was about his absence rather than the players that would be fighting for the title.

That's inevitable I guess - Tiger Woods is one of the biggest names in sport and any tournament that he doesn't appear in will lack 'the Tiger factor'. A phrase which is normally used in reference to the massive following he has around a golf course because of his phenomenal talent.

In the few days leading up to the tournament, there was doubts over defending Champion Padraig Harrington's fitness. The Irishman had a wrist injury and was very close to pulling out. Luckily for him and the tournament as a whole, he pulled through. A Major Championship without the best golfer in the World or the defending champion certainly wouldn't have seemed the same.

Something the absence of Woods and the uncertainty over Harrington's injury did do was open up the field for a new champion, a new hero. Many golf bets were being placed on the highest ranked player competing Phil Mickelson, the man who lost to Harrington in a play-off last year Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood who was in good form after finishing 3^rd in the US Open.

Continue reading this article at:

http://www.orlandogolfblogger.com/2008/07/24/did-the-british-open-miss-tiger-woods/

I discuss England's second test defeat to South Africa and Headingley and the selection issues surrounding Michael Vaughan's team on www.buzzincricket.co.uk.

First of all, let's talk about Darren Pattinson. Why on earth was this man included? Basically, he is a 29-year-old Australian raised swing bowler who has only played 12 first-class matches. The fact that he was picked above Matthew Hoggard on his home ground or the in-form duo of Simon Jones and Steve Harmison is quite bizarre.

The ECB line on Darren Pattinson's call up seems to be that it was a 'horses for courses' selection. They wanted someone to make the most of the Headingley conditions. If that was the case, why on earth wasn't Matthew Hoggard chosen? He is one of the best swing bowlers in the world on his day, has taken 248 test wickets and knows the Headingley pitch better than anyone. I would have put all my cricket betting money on the Yorkshire bowler causing plenty of problems to the South African batting line up.

Continue reading this article at:

http://www.buzzincricket.co.uk/after-england%e2%80%99s-heavy-defeat-to-south-africa-%e2%80%93-who-will-line-up-in-the-third-test/131/

I discuss the future of Chelsea midfielers Michael Ballack and Frank Lampard on http://thechelseablog.wordpress.com, both of whom have one year remaining on their current contract. There is uncertainty surrounding whether Ballack will stay beyond his current deal and whether Lampard will even be at Chelsea when the season starts in August.

My gut feeling is that Ballack will be on top form next season. He will have to put the disappointment of losing the Champions League and Euro 2008 finals behind him and start again in August. These final defeats will make him more determined to win trophies with Chelsea and I expect him to be scoring vital goals for Scolari over the next couple of years. I'd like to see the football odds on Ballack scoring 15+ goals next season - he is Scolari's type of player in my view.

So that leaves Lampard. As we all know, there is much doubt over his future. He also only has one year left on his current deal and Jose Mourinho's Inter Milan are supposedly upping their pursuit of the England midfielder despite Scolari saying that he will be staying at Stamford Bridge. Like everyone, I am fed up of Lampard contract talks. He wants a five year deal, Chelsea are offering him four. Considering this contract is set to include a £150,000 a week salary - is the disagreement over an extra year really worth the risk of losing Lampard?

Continue reading this article at: 

http://thechelseablog.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/michael-ballack-v-frank-lampard-who

-would-you-choose

The Wimbledon Championships are quite simply two of the most enjoyable two weeks of the sporting calendar. This is even the case when it rains all the time as it did last year. During the first week of this year's tournament though, the sun has been out and it has been a fantastic few days of tennis, culminating in what I believe could go down as one of the greatest Wimbledon's of all time.

There is one key ingredient for this being the case though - a certain Mr Andy Murray. The Scotsman is looking to progress to his first Grand Slam quarter-final and went one step closer to doing just that after beating Tommy Haas in four sets yesterday. Murray will now face Richard Gasquet in the last 16 as he carries British hopes with him throughout SW19.

Murray has really impressed me during this first week of the tournament. He has looked the real deal. Not only has he played some fantastic tennis, but his overall mentality seems spot on. He is playing with passion without going over the top, getting angry with poor shots without getting too frustrated and using the crowd to his advantage without draining his energy. To me, he seems like a man on a mission.

Before the tournament began, I heard Tim Henman saying that if Murray makes it to the quarter-finals then he would have had a successful tournament. They way Murray spoke yesterday though and the way he has been playing - this is far from the truth. Murray wants to win this tournament and he won't consider a last eight finish a success, much like Mr Henman does.

Criticising someone like Tim Henman isn't something I like doing because as I have always said - it wasn't his fault that no-one else came through while he was British Number One. It wasn't his fault that he was the best player in Britain. However, the recent comments from Murray sum up the key differences between Murray and Henman.

Henman had a decent record at Wimbledon, but I'm not sure anyone truly believed he could win it. Not even himself. Murray though has a different aura about him. He has it in him to beat Rafael Nadal and to beat Roger Federer in a Grand Slam and I'm not convinced that 'Tiger Tim' ever did.

Murray has a controlled aggression about him on the court these days. He is fired up beyond belief and as I mentioned earlier, he is using the crowd well. A fist pump after every important point won is regular and the Wimbledon crowd are starting to fall for him like they did for Henman.

This could, of course, all come to an end in the next round against Gasquet who is seeded eighth for this years Championships. It will be a tough test for Murray but if he continues in the manner he has started then I think he will progress, setting up a quarter-final tie with Nadal. Now that is a match I will be eagerly anticipating should it happen.

With Tim Henman, the crowd always got behind him. Chants of  'Come on Tim!' were deafening around centre court. The encouragement was backed up with a great deal of hope. When the crowd cheer for Murray though, it is backed up with a great deal of expectation. That's the key difference and is why Andy Murray has more chance of winning Wimbledon than Tim Henman ever did. Whether this year is his year though, remains to be seen.

This week has seen the start of the domestic Twenty20 cup. Into its sixth year, the competition is wide open with many teams fancying their chances of success. Kent, Durham and Somerset are the favourites, with the latter likely to be greatly assisted by the presence of Marcus Trescothick.

If there is a player more suited to this form of the game - I'd like to see him. Plus, he isn't going to be called away on international duty either is he? Trescothick is a man that England's one day team misses a great deal and I expect him to be up there in the leading run-scorers. They also have Ian Blackwell in their ranks, who can take a game away from you with some destructive batting. He's a man who deals in boundaries - mainly because running quick singles isn't exactly his forte - but nevertheless, he is dangerous.

Something else in Somerset's favour is their captain - Justin Langer. He has a good cricketing brain and like Trescothick, he no longer represents his country so will be available for the whole tournament. For the Trescothick, Blackwell and Langer factors, if I was to bet on the Twenty20 cup, I would favour the Somerset Sabres.

This kind of talk has played second fiddle though. For it is the confirmation that England will play five winner-takes-all £10m Twenty20 matches in the Caribbean after the ECB signed a deal with Sir Allen Stanford that has dominated all cricket discussion. The first game takes place on the 1^st November, with the winning players receiving £500,000 each for their troubles. A staggering amount of money for playing in 40 overs of cricket isn't it?

It is set to become the richest team prize for a sporting event, with the winning players set to earn £7.5m more between them than the Manchester United players did after winning the Champions League last month. That's a statistic which has resulted in many people referring back to the old adage - 'it's just not cricket'.

There is no doubt that this agreement isn't cricket as we know it and will certainly have many worried about the future of the game. Watching the press conference which explained the situation left me with mixed feelings. Seeing the likes of Ian Botham, Viv Richards and Garfield Sobers promote it made me think that it must be good for the game. These are cricketing legends who presumably value the state of the sport as a whole.

So, mid-way through the conference - I was on board. It will be exciting, it puts money into the game and it's only once a year I thought....but then came a moment which left me feeling extremely concerned.

What was it? Well, Sir Allen Stanford, the man behind the idea, the man that could help shape the future of cricket, said that he found test cricket 'boring'. Oh dear. Just in case he hadn't upset all the purists already - he went and stuck the knife in. He believes the future of cricket is Twenty20.

I personally hope that this is not the case. It is all about test cricket for me. I love it. Everything that is good about cricket is based around the five-day game. Everyone that starts playing cricket does so with the ambition of one day playing a test match for England. In the future I would be saddened if a young cricket talent said that his dream was to 'smack a quick 50 for England in a Twenty20 game and earn lots of money doing so'.

These Stanford Twenty20 games are not even given official status by the ICC, so they are all about the money. The players must be licking their lips at the prospect of, but I would hope that scoring a test century for their country should feel as good as earning £500,000 in a meaningless slog-fest once a year. Maybe I'm just being naive - I don't know.

For now though, it is time to focus on the domestic Twenty20 game that will be taking place over the next few weeks. I get the feeling that quite a few more players will be keen on performing well during this period. Can't think why though.

Cast your minds back to the 1998 World Cup in France and try and recall how much it meant to you for England to do well. Tears were shed across the country as Paul Ince and David Batty missed their penalties to condemn England to a penalty shoot out defeat against the old enemy Argentina. Now think about how you felt when England didn't qualify for the 2008 European Championships - hardly a whimper? You wouldn't have been alone. The face of football in this country has changed such a great deal in the last ten years meaning that club football is consistently overshadowing the international game.

So why has the significance of the national team's fortunes diminished at such an alarming right? The answer could lie with the linkage of two contributing factors. The first of which being that England, as a football team, have been dramatically underperforming. The latest failure being their inability to qualify for the 2008 European Championships in Austria. The second being that wages amongst the England players are higher than ever, with stars such as Jon Terry and Frank Lampard earning in excess of £100,000 every single week.

So let's get this straight. The England team are putting in their worst performances for years while being paid more money than ever. No wonder people find it hard to relate to the players when they say 'we tried out best out there' after crushing to another defeat. Even the new manager has failed to create much optimism because let's face it if the recent friendly against France is anything to go by, fans won't exactly be flocking back to watch Fabio Capello's England.

The main reason for international football's decline is out of Mr Capello's hands though. It is the rise of the Champions League and the importance of club football that has had a huge effect on football fans' priorities. Many fans of larger clubs now have links with the other national teams which may serve to diminish the intensity of identification with one team only.

This is worth further discussion. Are there really fans out there who support other national teams as well as England? Are there Liverpool fans who support Spain because of Fernando Torres? 
                                                                             
Something like this is healthy to an extent. If English fans support another national team during this summer's tournament then fine.

England aren't competing and they may as well follow somebody. The problem for the national team starts when the dominance of club football becomes so overwhelming that Liverpool fans want 'their' Torres to score against 'Portsmouth's' David James when Spain play England. Would that really be healthy for the game of football?

The scary thing is that these fans do already exist. Many Manchester United supporters for example, are openly advocators of the expression 'I support United. Not England.'

They have even been heard chanting 'Argentina!' at some of their games, in support of their former left back Gabriel Heinze. So that's English football fans cheering for Argentina - imagine that back in 1998.

Admittedly a lot has changed in football since then, with a look at the first names of the Premier League top scorers from that year compared to this year, telling its own story. Jimmy, Michael, Nicolas and Andrew of 1998 compares to - Cristiano, Emmanuel, Fernando and Dimitar of 2008. This echoes Jon Williams' sentiments that the best football isn't necessarily played in international football anymore. For leagues such as that in England are filled with international superstars of their own. Meaning you'd have to be a brave man to predict that England would emerge victorious against any of the top four club teams in this country at the moment.

Despite all of this, don't be surprised to see England fans flocking back as the 2010 World Cup draws closer. If there is one thing the English football team does well it's unite a nation, even if it is usually in despair. Winning the World Cup would still mean everything to the majority of English football fans.

The build up to the next World Cup could be different though. England have let down its fans far too frequently and finally it seems there won't be a the usual sense of unrealistic optimism regarding the team's fortunes. Maybe England fans have realised that they don't have a divine right to win every trophy they go for. This lower expectation could actually work in the teams favour, but we will have to wait a couple of years to find that one out unfortunately.  It won't be as long a wait for football fans in England to witness some of the best players in the World unite for the same occasion though, as they have the Premier League to soak up all their football priorities.

It's one of the biggest debates surrounding the preview to the up coming test series against New Zealand and is certainly a difficult decision for the England cricket selectors. Should Andrew Flintoff be recalled?

The biggest character in English cricket is fit again and has been playing for Lancashire in the last few weeks after a number of ankle operations that have hampered his England career.

There is an argument that he should be held back. After all, New Zealand are hardly likely to cause England too many problems - with or without Freddie. The likes of Sidebottom, Panesar and Broad should be able to handle the likes of McCullum, How and Taylor. The only shining lights in what is a much depleted Kiwi batting line up.

Freddie has had too many injury setbacks in his career to throw him in just yet. If it was against Australia, then he would be recalled. Against the team ranked 7th in the world - is there really any point? If he came back and got himself injured during a convincing victory for England in which he played little part in, people would question the selectors. If they pick him, it's a calculated risk of which the England selectors are not exactly famous for.

Something else that should be holding him back from a return to the England fold is his batting form. Freddie is supposed to be one of the best all-rounders in the world and at the moment, he can't hold a bat.


He recorded two ducks in Lancashire's recent County Championship fixture and hasn't found runs easy to come by in recent weeks.

Which leads onto the next dilemma for the selectors. Is Freddie good enough for England as just a bowler? Could he bat down at 7 or 8 if it meant he was one of the front line seamers? I think he could. The England bowling attack always looks stronger with Flintoff as part of it. Justin Langer recently said that he was the best pace bowler in world cricket right now. A high accolade indeed and one which highlights the problems Flintoff causes for batsmen.

However, for now let him continue his journey back to fitness with his county during the New Zealand series. This will allow him time to continue his excellent bowling form and time to rediscover some sort of batting form. Bring him back, raring to go, against South Africa in the second part of the summer. It's  a much tougher series and one which a fit Andrew Flintoff will revel in.

The fact that Manchester City are even thinking of sacking Sven-Goran Eriksson is completely absurd. The former England boss has done a fantastic job under the circumstances and is guaranteed a top ten finish during his first season of club management in the Premier League.

Man City should take a leaf out of their nearest rival's book. Keeping faith with the same manager does pay off. Alex Ferguson didn't have the best start to his career at United, but look at him now. Not that it helped him against Sven this season though. The blue side of Manchester have emerged victorious both times the sides have met this season and what does Sven get in return - a sacking?

City's problems are probably based around their fantastic start to the season. They were in the top four and heading for a Champions League place before Christmas and it now seems that their 'dramatic' slide to a very respectable 9th in the table could cost the Swede his job. That I guess is one of the down sides to having a foreign owner - they expect far too much, far too quickly.

What did he expect City to do this season? No-one is going to break the the top four up and then it's the ever improving teams of Everton and Aston Villa - who have, by the way, taken time to produce the consistency that is seeing them head for Europe this season. With David Moyes another excellent example that faith in your manager does pay off.

I guess you could argue that City could be finishing above Portsmouth and Blackburn, but two places in the league can't be enough to cost someone their job. Maybe it was a cup that Shinawatra wanted this season, who knows. One thing that does seem clear is that there will be a lot of disapproval amongst the Manchester City fans if Sven is asked to move on. They were uncertain of his appointment to begin with, but after playing some fantastic football in the first few months of the season and defeating their local rivals twice - he has won them over.

Sacking him now would be like going back to square one. Under Keegan and Pearce, Man City were constantly fighting relegation from the Premier League. Now they have someone who can help them push for Europe every year and help attract some quality players to the Eastlands.

The way of the Premier League now, seems to be that unless you are Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger - your job is under threat. Mr Benitez, Mr Grant and Mr Curbishley will vouch for that. I think it was Harry Redknapp that said recently - "anyone outside the 'big four' that finishes in the top ten has had a fantastic season." Maybe for the sake of Manchester City's future, the Portsmouth boss should have a word in Mr Shinawatra's ear.