Torres set for Spain friendly

The last 3 times Torres has gone international duty he has come back injured. Will it be 4 on a row? Let's hope not.

The surprise return of Fernando Torres yesterday has led to reports in Spain that the Liverpool striker will be included in Vicente del Bosque's squad for an upcoming friendly.

LiverpoolFC.TV

- Blogging on the move

Woods set to make public statement - The Irish Times - Fri, Feb 19, 2010

Is the press conference being held by Tiger Woods an exercise to try and save face? Maybe John Terry & Ashley Cole should watch to try and get a few tips.

Woods set to make public statement - The Irish Times - Fri, Feb 19, 2010: "Golf: World number one Tiger Woods, whose stunning fall from grace late last year captivated the sports world, is set to make a public apology at PGA Tour headquarters in Florida and speak about his playing future from 4pm Irish time today.

Woods has been in hiding since November after admitting he cheated on his wife after his private life unravelled following a bizarre early morning car crash outside his Florida home in November.

The 34-year-old took an indefinite break from the game in a bid to repair his marriage, and speculation has heightened in recent weeks about the timetable for his likely return to competition.

The American will addresses a select gathering of people in Ponte Vedra Beach but will not be taking any questions.

'Tiger plans to discuss his past and his future and he plans to apologise for his behaviour,' said his manager Mark Steinberg.

'While Tiger feels that what happened is fundamentally a matter between he and his wife, he also recognises that he has hurt and let down a lot of other people who were close to him."

Rafa's view on the Europa League - Liverpool FC

I thought Liverpool fans would be interested in our managers views.

Enjoy

Digby

Rafa's pre-Unirea chat - Liverpool FC: "On the strength of the Europa League...

To be fair, if you analyse the teams that are in the competition they are very strong. The problem we have is that we are playing a club people maybe don't know, but Unirea did well in the Champions League. We have Juventus, Valencia and Atletico Madrid and a lot of teams who are strong in Europe in the Europa League. It will be a difficult competition, but it is the only one we can win this season, so we will try to do our best from the beginning.

On the gap between the Europa League and the Champions League...

If you look at this round, you will see a difference, but if you analyse the quarter finals or semi finals, any club who are at that stage in the Europa League will be good enough to be in the Champions League too."

The race for fourth spot.

As is stands there are a number of teams fighting for the fourth spot in the premier league, more importantly fighting for the final Champions League qualifying spot. Liverpool, Man City, Spurs & Villa are all within touching distance of that fourth spot and the plethora of money that come with getting into the Champions League.

As I Liverpool fan I must admit it is adding a bit more excitement to the season this year, although I preferred the excitement of last season when we were chasing first place but ended up finishing second. Is this race for fourth place a result of vast improvements in the ability and performances of the chasing teams? I think not. In my opinion this scramble for fourth is down to the fact that Liverpool have been playing well below their best this season, and have failed to put the final qualifying spot in the bag.

The chasing pack have been playing well this season, Man City started off the season with all guns blazing and were leading the league at some points, but then fell out of form. Similar things can be said about Spurs, they have played some great football this season but as of late they seem to be struggling to put a consistent run of form together. Villa I think are the most improved team, I like their manager, and he is a no nonsense man who knows his stuff and loves the game but I can’t see them getting that fourth place.

I honestly think that Liverpool will finish the season in fourth, if they can get their top players like Gerrard, Torres and Johnson back to match fitness and on the pitch at the same time then it should be Liverpool’s to lose.

The Blogging Learning Curve

Claim Token For Technorati: 2U875N8FV4YM.
If you have read my first post you will know that this is my first attempt at a blog site. Now that I have a few post up on my blog I am now trying to get it out there and to be honest am finding it all a bit confusing with lists of sites you should set up accounts with to get your blog known etc, setting up a RSS feed, Digg accounts and as you can tell from the code up top a Technorati account.


Any comments or advice would be gratefully accepted. So stick with me hopefully the post will get more frequent, the writing (and typing) will improve.
Don't forget please comment any tips.


Thanks
Digby

Premier League Play-offs.

I see that The Guardian newspaper ran a story on Sunday 14^th Feb stating that the Premier league is considering introducing a play-off system for the fourth Champions League qualifying spot. The play-offs would be between the teams who finished 4^th, 5^th, 6^th & 7^th in the league. The current format is the at the end of a season the top 2 teams automatically qualify for the champions league whilst 3^rd & 4^th place have to play a 2-leg qualification game against teams from other countries.  The full article can be found here in The Guardian 

I have mixed feelings about this proposal.  As a Liverpool FC fan, I don’t want my team to risk its place in Europe’s elite club competition, especially since we have finished in fourth spot a few times over the last 5-6 seasons. Plus I believe that if a team is good enough to play in the Champions League then they should be good enough to finish in the top 4 of the premier league.

If they do implement the play-off system, why do it for fourth spot only? They should also include the third spot, since the teams finishing in 3^rd has also to go into a play-off to qualify for the Champions League group stage.

The Guardian pointed out that if a vote is taken the premier league needs a 14-6 majority in favour to introduce such a measure, so is this play-off system inevitable?   Well let’s look at it like this, the four qualification spots have gone to the same 4 teams for the majority of the last 8 seasons, so the 4 teams will obviously vote against the proposal, while the other 16 teams in the premier league will vote in favour of the play-offs. So yes it would seem inevitable.

Eurosport iPhone Application

As a big fan of the iPhone and sports I thought it would be appropriate to do my first review on a sports application for the iPhone. The application I have chosen is called Eurosport.

Let’s start with the technical bit. The seller is Eurosport SA. At the time of writing this review the latest version was 1.3 which was updated on the 09 Feb 2010. The application is compatible with the iPhone & iPod Touch. It requires you have OS 2.2 or later, with the current version having been tested for OS 3.0. It is available in 10 different languages and is offered as a free download.

This app is very well laid out and has an amazing amount of information to deliver. Most sport applications that I have come across are sport specific, i.e. you get and application for Soccer news, then another one for Formula 1 racing etc. However the Eurosport application covers 13 different sports including Football, Basketball, Motor sports, Tennis, Rugby, Ice Hockey to name a few.

Like all applications it has the standard button bar at the bottom of the screen with 5 buttons. Its initial default setting includes the “All Sports” button, 3 other sports buttons and finally the “More...” button. This more button works identically to the one in the iPod application, click it and a screen appears with a list of alternative buttons to use for the customisation of your button bar for quick access to your favourite sports. 

      

At the top of the screen there are 4 different options for viewing information on your preferred sport. Firstly there is Headlines. This is really self explanatory; it gives you all the main headline news for your selected sport. The next option is In Brief, this gives you all the news stories available for your chosen sport.  They are listed with just the story headline with the newest story on top. The next option for you viewing pleasure is the Live option, and it is here that you can view live scores, the scores of games that have finished and a list of upcoming live games. The final category is Results and again this is self explanatory.

This application does fall short in certain areas the main one being the absence of some popular sports such as Golf, which I believe is available on the application in Spain but not in the UK or Ireland. There is also no link to forums that a lot of other sports application have. With all that in mind if you are a sports fan then this is one application you should have on you apple device.

Twitter: Are people addicted or just committed posters?

I started wondering recently about the popularity of twitter and why some people seem to spend what appears to be the majority of their day posting on it. Yes I am a fan of twitter, I have a twitter account that I would check multiple times during the day, it gives me something to do for a few minutes while I am standing outside getting my nicotine fix. I would take advantage of this time to tweet my daily ramblings or join in with whatever topic is being discussed at that time. I would catch up with friends I follow, arrange pub outings or organise that weeks soccer match and that’s the extent of my twitter usage.  I would class myself as a casual user.

I like twitter; I get the concept of being able to get your views to millions of people instantly. A master stroke on behalf of Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stones. I don’t think I’m being too dramatic if I say it has revolutionised the way people communicate. It gives a voice to everyone.

I do have one problem with twitter that I can’t really understand, and that is the perpetual tweeter. I follow a few people who would post messages a lot during their day, I am talking about people with 40-50,000 tweets in just over 2 years, and in a way you have to acknowledge the effort the put in and I suppose they are the ones who keep the whole thing going. These are the people whom I consider to be committed to the twitter experience.

My gripe is with the people who seem to post ad nauseam about every little detail of their lives. You know the kind of thing I mean “leaving the house now to get the bus”, then they follow up with “Arriving at the bus stop now”, who gives a crap, and they go on like this all day. Is it really that important that we know every little detail of their lives? Personally I don’t think so. It’s not the fact that they tweet so often,  but it’s the, and this is just my opinion, the mindless drivel that gets posted every couple of minutes, and they seem to post the same thing every day “Leaving the house for work, must walk to the bus” yes thank you we know, you post the same damn thing every single morning and this is the crux of my gripe with these tweeters, the fact that they feel the need to tweet something no matter how banal  or random every few minutes. Why? Will they develop a nervous twitch if they don’t post something every couple of minutes?  Are these people addicted? In my opinion if they tweet about everything, all the time, then the answer is yes.

I followed a few of these people on twitter  just to observe, see if I was missing something, was there some other level to twitter that had passed me by. The conclusion I came to was no. What led me to this conclusion was the recent snow falls we had here in Ireland. I had tweets every morning telling me that it was cold outside, of course it’s cold outside there is 5 inches of snow everywhere, bloody hell tell me something new, it was at this stage I decided to unfollow these people and claim my sanity back, I would never understand the need to post these pointless tweets. Maybe there is some aspect of twitter I am missing but if that’s it then I am glad to miss out.

Well this is it.

As the title says This is it, my first post on my new blog. New blog may be the wrong phrase first blog may be more appropriate. In this post I suppose I will tell you a little about myself and what hopes I have for my new blog.


Who am I? Well I am husband to my wife and father to my son Digby Jnr. I am an avid footballer and Liverpool FC supporter, so expect some rants and views on that topic. I am a lover of gadgets and technology and a keen gamer.


The aim of this blog is to share with you my general day to day ramblings, views and thoughts. I also plan to do some reviews of any new gadgets that I can lay my hands on , also I will be making some recommendations on fellow bloggers, music that I hope you will check out and let me know what you think.


Anyway thats enough for my first post, I hope you come back and check out my blog.


Cheers
Slip Digby