Three things: Chelsea may regret Lukaku absence

Three things we noticed from the EPL this week:



Chelsea might regret loaning out
Romelu Lukaku



Romelu Lukaku arrived at Stamford
Bridge before last season at a significant cost: a reported 18
million pounds from Belgian club Anderlecht. Barely eighteen when he
arrived, the boy-mountain spent
most of last season on the bench and hated it. Despite
impressing on the Blues' pre-season US

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Short pitch: World T20 offers more than entertainment

I make it a practice never to feel that sorry for professional athletes: they earn spectacular coin for doing what they love.  There are attendant sacrifices, but that's inherent in any achievement.  Perhaps the most obvious of these is a limited career length: even the best only sustain elite standards for ten, fifteen years at best.

Twenty/20 cricket is one of those sports which doesn't seem

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Vale, Matthew Scarlett

Matthew Scarlett has retired from AFL football.  By doing so, we must farewell a brilliant - if genuinely odd - champion of the sport.  He is joined in retirement by Premiership teammates Joel Corey and David Wojcinski.  The trio - Scarlett especially - leave behind many fond memories of the wonderful Cats era of 2007-2012.

And as Scarlett ambles into the Torquay half-light, the accompanying

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Sixteen Is in one post make you seem rather egotistical...

Hi.

For much of the past two-plus years, I've been unemployed.  Hardly revelatory news, I know, but there it is.  This time next week, that status officially changes as I begin graduate school and re-training as a Physical Therapist (or Physiotherapist).  It'll be nearly three years at a world-class school in a completely new education system, a challenge I'm very much looking forward to and

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Three things: Handshakes are still important

Three things we noticed from the Premier League this weekend:



Handshakes are still important



Queens
Park Rangers fronted up against Chelsea – and John Terry – in the
West London derby. In the pre-match handshake line, Anton Ferdinand,
who accused Terry of racially abusing him on the pitch last season,
refused
the proffered hands of the former England captain and left-back
Ashley Cole.

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Financial Fair Play: why it had to happen

No-one said that Financial
Fair Play (FFP) was perfect. Even Michel Platini, the UEFA
President behind the long-touted new standards, accepts his
brainchild has some serious flaws. But in these days of the
paradoxical austerity boom, European football clubs are going to have
to take responsibility for
their collective bottom lines.  FFP had to happen.



A slight shift towards prudence by some

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Change the Father-Son rule

There great red sandy plains are rumbling.  It appears Melbourne Football Club will have to use the 3rd overall selection in this year's AFL draft to select Jack Viney, the son of former captain Todd.



Viney, courtesy: The Age

Before 2007, the promising sons of former club greats were available pre-draft to their father's club at the cost of that club's third-round selection.  That system

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Follow the money - and talent - back to MLS

In the August 27th issue of
Sports Illustrated, senior
writer Grant Wahl compiled a
team of American soccer players playing abroad. Such a
mainstream publication – find any dentist in the States who doesn't
subscribe – publishing a full-page “lightweight” feature on US
soccer is relatively rare and Wahl takes the opportunity to pull the
usual names from the regular hats. It's the basic,

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Andre Villas-Boas' Tottenham challenge

André Villas-Boas has a problem. His freshly remodelled Tottenham Hotspur squad isn't performing as they should, and Spurs enter this weekend's international break with two points from three matches.



 The team he now helms is very different from the last iteration of the White Hart Lane empire that Harry Redknapp and his SUV presided over. Gone are Modric, Corluka, Kranjcar and van der Vaart,

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Three things: Andy Carroll, Liverpool saviour?

Three talking points from the English Premier League this weekend:



Maybe
Andy Carroll wasn't that bad after all




It's not
Andy Carroll's fault that Liverpool paid ₤35
million for his services. Really, it's not. The kid made
a great start to life in the Premier League at Newcastle, yet has
been unable to convince on Merseyside, yet has to wear his massive
sticker tag ever since. Amidst a

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