Season 29 Week 9 processing...

Welcome to week 9 of what is already an exciting season.

We're close to the halfway stage already and the season seems to be flying past. We have the second round of the domestic cups to look forward to this week and we may also have some big transfers to verify this week and this is the last turn before my extended christmas break where the deadline for week 10 will be January 6th.

No orders from Barcelona yet.

Postman has just delivered Barcelona so everybody is in...

Friendly games have kicked off...

Domestic Cup Second Round games have kicked off...results to follow later...

League games will kickoff Wednesday morning at 1000 hours...

FA Vase Second Round results

Competition consists of clubs eliminated during Round One of their respective domestic cup, trial system for England only this season.

Sheff Utd 3 Colchester 0
Swindon 1 Oxford 2
Westham 5 Chesterfield 0
Wolves 2 Bradford 0
Brentford 0 Darlington 3
Orient 1 Bournemouth 3
Stockport 0 Leeds 3
Cambridge 0 Forest 2
Barnet 0 Wigan 3
Portsmouth 3 Shrewsbury 1
Brighton 5 Palace 1
Stoke 1 Wednesday 2
Newport 0 Sunderland 2
Bristol Rovers 1 Bury 2
Chester City 1 Derby 3
Wednesday 3 Wrexham 0

FA Cup Second Round results

Tranmere 3 Bristol City 0
Newcastle 2 Chelsea 3
Wimbledon 2 QPR 0
Charlton 4 Wycombe 0
Burnley 1 Arsenal 2
Carlisle 1 Fulham 5
Watford 4 Blackpool 0
Plymouth 4 Liverpool 0
Soton 4 Man City 4 aet pens 1-2
Coventry 1 Birmingham 3
Southend 2 Walsall 1
Man United 3 Everton 4
Villa 3 Banstead 1
Blackburn 0 Spurs 3
Norwich 4 Hartlepool 2
West Brom 1 Barnsley 0

Copa Brasileiro Second Round results ( partial )

Santos 5 Cristovao 0
Sao Paulo 4 Vitoria 0
Botafogo 2 Palmeiras 1
Vasco 4 Criciuma 1
Flamengo 4 Mineiro 1
Fluminense 1 Recife 0

Copa Italia Second Round results ( partial )

Cesena 0 AC Milan 3
Napoli 4 Piacenza 0
Ascoli 0 Inter Milan 3
Roma 4 Pescara 2
Parma 4 Palermo 0
Juventus 3 Cosenza 0
Lazio 3 Ancona 0

Scotland

St Johnstone 2 Celtic 2 aet pens 2-3
Hibs 3 Aberdeen 2
Inverness 4 Berwick 0
Motherwell 1 Rangers 2

Germany

Dortmund 3 Hannover 0
Leverkusen 0 Stuttgart 2
Schalke 3 Kickers 0
Augsburg 0 Berlin 3
Aachen 0 Hamburg 6
Frankfurt 0 Gladbach 3
Wolfsburg 0 Bayern 5
Jena 8 Cottbus 0

FA Youth Cup Second Round

Man City 4 Leicester 3
Newcastle 3 Chelsea 5
Charlton 3 QPR 0
Watford 3 Millwall 0
Arsenal 2 Oldham 0
Villa 2 Blackburn 0
Wolves 4 Birmingham 1
Liverpool 2 Burnley 0

Third Round draw is week 10.

Delighted! Both teams win in the league with high amount of changes for the cup games to keep the players fresh legged for the league!! 

Good luck lads!

We have several interesting games to look forward to this week with the big game taking place at Vicarage Road where the current Premiership leaders entertain last season's Champions Plymouth Argyle and with Plymouth seemingly in a state of flux it could be a good chance for the leaders to effectively remove the Champions from the title race by taking all three points. Looks like there may be some big deals happening on the south coast this week with rumours circulating that Raheem Sterling will be leaving for a world record fee as Ben shuffles his squad. Jorginho is injured for Watford but when you have De Bruyne to help fill the gap Phil wont be too worried and Watford will start as strong favorites, although our pressman did notice several players wandering around the training ground who wont get a game this week and that does need to be addressed.

Moving our focus to France we sent our Johnny on the Spot to have a look at the clash between Monaco and Nantes where Tom's league leaders have a narrow lead over second placed Paris making this game super important for both sides. Monaco are unlikely to challenge this year but could upset the Champions because they are unbeaten in six games having scored eighteen goals and conceded just four during that run. Both sides are at full strength and i'm expecting a glut of goals. Paris look like the only side who are maybe capable of preventing Nantes from lifting yet another league title and they have a tough trip to fast improving Bordeaux but seem to be having trouble racking up the goals having scored just a single goal in each of their last two league games, both one nil away wins although they did go to AC Milan and win last week in the Champions Cup. The only other team in the title hunt are the rejuvenated Lille and although they are some way short of both Nantes and Paris in terms of squad quality the new manager has certainly got them fired up but loses at Nantes and Paris on their away trips has cost them dearly, but it'll be interesting to see how they go from here.

Germany has two hugely important games this week with Gladbach's trip to Bayern being top of the pile. These two clubs have been going head to head at or near the top of the table for more years than I care to remember and Bayern will be hoping home advantage will help them overcome their arch rivals but Gladbach are in the better form and the result could go either way, definitely one to watch. The other big game sees the league leaders Schalke travelling to Dortmund who have yet to click into top gear having suffered three narrow defeats already this season. Schalke on the other hand are bang in form and will be out to grab another three points.

Barcelona lead the way in Spain with Rob's new side already opening out a considerable lead on the second placed side Real Madrid and this week's trip to Atletico Madrid shouldn't give them too many problems although they will be without the injured Isco, but even that isn't too much of an inconvenience when you have Asensio waiting in the wings and I would expect this one to be another three points in the bag for the leaders, but I've been wrong before.

The big game in Scotland sees Inverness travel to Ibrox to play an in form Rangers side who, for the first time in quite a few seasons, look capable of mounting a serious title challenge. Following a return to his native Highlands the Rangers boss decided to "Go all Scottish" on his team and discarded a lot of the overseas players he had been relying on over the last few seasons and started signing home grown players who wanted to "fight for the badge", as he put it. Well it seems to be working so far and despite the reduction in the quality of the squad the team is playing much better having beaten Celtic last week they will be looking to claim another top club scalp this week.

An hour to go before the big kickoff so I'll wish everybody good luck this week.

And we're off..

Toulouse 0 Etienne 1 Ganso freekick on 4 minutes.

Sao Paulo 1 Santos 0 Jean Chera on 6 minutes.

Cruzeiro 0 Botafogo 1 Hulk on 9 minutes.

A fairly quiet opening ten minutes...

Danubio 0 Nacional 1 Lucas Torreira on 11 minutes.

Fluminense 1 Corinthians 0 Silva Walace on 12 minutes.
Torino 0 Lazio 1 Pandev header.