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All 'Good' Things...

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Created: Monday, 25 May 2009 13:35

Written by Darren Douglas

Many papers and news outlets will be picking over the remains of Newcastle United's end to a 16 year tenure in the top flight today. Whilst relegation has looked like an increasing possibility in recent weeks, there is still a lot of shock and glee over the demise of the black and white Geordies. They say that all good things must come to an end, but really Newcastle United have been a miserable team for a few seasons now. As silly as it may sound, a season or more in the Championship might actually help to revitalise this ongoing 'sleeping giant'.

As is the norm when any team, particularly an established one gets relegated, there are masses of recriminations and questions. With Newcastle Utd it really isn't that difficult to see what has gone wrong, the club has increasingly become a walking soap opera- almost a self -parody. The mistakes of Mike Ashley have been frequent, ranging from bad PR to strange managerial choices, and he will naturally be the major scapegoat.

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Money to burn

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Created: Saturday, 23 May 2009 21:45

Written by David Moftakhar

Manchester United, Inter Milan and Barcelona all scooped their domestic league titles last weekend. To achieve the feat the three clubs spent in the region of €200m between them on new players in 2008-2009. Little wonder then that they emerged victorious. But, in fact, the vast majority of that money was wasted on poor and ineffective signings. That they still emerged victorious after such large financial blunders tells of the pre-eminent clubs’ dominance.     

Barcelona get more than their fair share of plaudits, but amid all the talk of their home-grown talents – Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Lionel Messi (sort of) – they were second only to Manchester City in terms of money spent last year.

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Uefa Cup bites the dust

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Created: Friday, 22 May 2009 02:18

Written by Darren Douglas

So it came to pass that Wednesday night was the final, final of the Uefa Cup. Europe's second major competition had been in this guise since 1971, when it replaced the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. From next season it will be in it's third generation and will be known as the Europa League, which when analysed doesn't seem to be any less convoluted than the Uefa Cup is now. Let's hope it's not a revamp that flatters to deceive as its name suggests it might.

Anyway, as for last nights send off for the Uefa Cup, it was keenly contested by two of the less glamorous or at least well known teams in this years competition: Werder Bremen and Shakhtar Donetsk. Both teams had to negotiate some considerable opposition to get to the final and should be commended for surmounting the large number of games it can take to do so.

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Luis Figo and some other stuff

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Created: Thursday, 21 May 2009 23:51

Written by Ian Shine

If I said the words “Luis Figo”, “non-alcoholic beer”, “street” and “drinkers”, how would you pin the four together?

Has the former world player of the year got himself into a sticky street fight after a gaggle of English hoodlums mocked him for drinking alcohol-free booze? Has he started a campaign to push the zero percent stuff onto trampy bastards out on the piss all night?

No, he’s actually decided to gang together with a group of non-alcoholic beer drinkers to take on a team of “football stars” headed by Rui Costa in a game of street football.

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