In a surprise move so late in the season, the Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has announced that Manuel Pellegrini has been sacked as the manager of Real Madrid with immediate affect. He will be replaced by the more experienced Colin Mercer.

In an announcement made at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu earlier Señor Perez blamed Pellegrini for Real’s current league position and lack of success in cup competitions, stating:

“…a change of personnel is required if we are going to turn this season around…”

Mercer has had successful Football Manager campaigns at Liverpool, Monaco and Barcelona to mention just a few, most recently taking Liverpool to the Premier League title and Champions League final in his 2nd season in charge.

It is rumoured that he will look to bring players from his previous clubs like Torres, Gerrard and Messi to the Bernabéu.

This news comes as less of a surprise to the panellists on Revista de La Liga who predicted Pellegrini to be on the way out yesterday.

Oh yay its Sunday, the day of rest, the day built for relaxing and doing very little. I don’t know why they have Sundays in Spain, every day seems like a Sunday…

The day started off in a similar way to which the last had finished, with a nice beer. After getting up and stuff we headed to a local Tapas place for food. More details which I can’t remember about, the name of the place we went to and the name for the drink we had. It was basically lager with a load of lemon cordial in it. Very refreshing, perfect for that early drink. The Tapas here was also better than the stuff from the day before (did I mention we had Tapas the day before?), highlight was definitely the croquet style yummyness.

Last week I was asked to write a piece on the Henry handball incident, here is what I came up with…

Most people with a passion for football or sport in general will have heard about the debacle that was the Republic of Ireland’s exit from the World Cup a couple of weeks ago. If you’re Irish I suspect you think this is the biggest injustice ever, if you are French you will probably be thinking this a massive overreaction and entirely inconsequential and the rest of you just won’t really care. Of course, you could be Roy Keane (who I hope is reading this) and be Irish and not give a damn, in fact I think his exact words were ‘get over it’.

News just breaking on BBC news, via Reuters, Chelsea have reported fired manager Luiz Felipe Scolari.

More when it’s official I guess.

Hey sir-rah sir-rah, whatever will be will, we’re going to Wembley, Hey sir-rah sir-rah. I felt like singing this all the way to London on Saturday on my way to Wembley. However I thought better of it as its highly unlikely the rest of the bus wanted to listen to that for 2 hours. Who knows though hey?

Going to the above tomorrow, Zon got some tickets through work and we’re gunna hit the high heights of the Madejski stadium. Good chance to take some pics, and maybe even play with the Qik account mentioned previously.

What’s happened today then, I only have ten mins to write this or “today” will no longer be accurate.

Was up again stupidly early, I blame Visser for the this as he Twittered, which sms alerted me. As the timezones are screwy it woke me up. Started working around 6, got angry at my alarm for going off at 9, suggesting I should be just waking up. Whereas I’d been at it for hours already.

Donut for breakfast, then we popped (Horsy cantered) down to Dunkin again for smoothies and stuff… Busy day working after this, nothing really interesting! Watched the Liverpool game on my TV in my room, great result! Wont say tooo much about it.

Tonight, I went out on my own, walked down to Times Square where I was meeting up with Giggedy and the mate he was travelling with. Quick beer in the ESPNzone bar, then onto Hard Rock Cafe for dinner! Great food, had a Beef Brisket (yes I had to ask the waitress wtf that meant), was very very nice! Popped into a recommended Irish bar after this for a final pint and a rather oversized Tanqueray 10. Wondered back on my own (slightly hesitant) but was fine. Strange that here they collect rubbish in the evening. Meaning that the only vehicles around were taxis and bin men.

Got sent a link to the Liverpool echo forum this morning which suggested that the Champions League draw was leaked and therefore of course rigged. I dismissed it as nonsence. Until the draw came out exactly the same!

This originally seems to come from here.

Only other blog I can find who has picked this up is the Top Of The 18 blog here.

So yes I had this written yesterday morning, but due to the insistence that the girls get to do the nicknames again I had to wait for them. Therefore this is only going out now. For the record, I don’t think the names are as good this week but nothing I can do about that!

The big write up… Exciting changes for this week, instead of sitting on the train to London with “less ginger than Rich”, “Vicky Pollard in Disguise” and “Stolen Donnas desk” I am in fact on the Oxford Tube (Bus) heading to London with “Ginger”. This makes less difference as I trust those who played were adequately sore. I know for a fact that “Bobby Charlton” is having troubles sitting down today due to a freak meeting on a dark and cold night between his arse and some concrete.

Moving swiftly away from talking about “George Best”’s sore arse, and onto the match at hand. Crazy levels of confusion over the teams building up to the game, lots of swapping and changing, players becoming available and players becoming unavailable. Also, I didn’t have time in my busy schedule to send a team sheet email around yesterday, so accept my apologies for this. We almost had everyone there on time to kick off at 6:30 this week, Brendan was running slightly late and “Old Man” was still driving back from the airport. However, the real reason we had to delay the actual kick off wasn’t either of these, someone, during the warm up had put one of the two balls we own onto the roof of the sports centre. So we had to wait for “belly broke the sofa” to beg the Pleasure centre to go out and get it back for us, successfully may I add.

We kicked off with numbers even, the usual suspects on each side, STUDio were missing “Impressive How You Get Your Name Mentioned When You Don’t Play”, Topvile had picked up Brendan and were temporarily missing “Getting older”. “silent but deadly” was also missing due to holiday, not to mention “Aslan”’s absence, but who wouldn’t rather go on a date with Jack’s Mum than play football with your mates? “Roll with it”, “going to be saying roll with it soon” and “G” were also absent for Topville.

STUDio took a 2 goal lead, totally against the run of play, the first was a swift break by “my brother is hot” , after intercepting the ball just inside his own half he travelled the remainder of the pitch before putting it past new goalkeeper “Jussi Jaaskelainen vs Liverpool”. Admittedly I have done the same as a few weeks ago, my memory on the scoring order is a little bit flaky Strangely though I remember that I got the 2nd, a ball across from “my new housemate likes to watch people sleeping”, terrible first touch from me seemed to take the keeper by surprise (not sure why) and I mishit it into the corner. What a great goal, lolocopter oclock!

At this point “Knows what a Combine Harvester is” jogged up (in the wrong kit!), yikes even Brendan managed to wear the right colour shirt. Giving Topville the extra man for the last ten mins of the first half. This didn’t stop STUDio, who lead by their illustrious captain scored a 3rd, flick down the wing from “love rat” to me, who volleyed into the far corner from distance (EGO EGO EGO). Topville got 2 back before the end of the half to take us in at halftime with scores at 3-2 to STUDio.

A predetermined initiative, decided upon by the remaining football council (we missss youuu Witthhheerrss) was announced at half time, this was to try and counter the advantage given by having extra men on one team. Basically, in this example “Paul Robinson vs Croatia” swapped sides 10 mins into the second half. This meant that both teams had a man advantage for about 20 mins of the game. GENIUS no? Well in hind sight maybe not, this man advantage meant that STUDio flew away with the lead. From being 4-2 up at the swap, it finished 9-4. On the way to this score line there were some class goals scored. Quick ball out from the keeper to “Chimeo” on the right, who slid the ball inside to me, a cheeky back heel flick from me onto “Knows what to do with a screwdriver” on the left, left him open to plant the ball in the far corner. Also mention “cheese” blasted finish into the near top corner for another one of the goals and “Not fussy”s well placed strike into the far bottom corner.

The shame wall this week only has one booking on it, and that’s for “facial hair” for his sliding tackle on “hot stuff”.

So as promised, I’m on the train on the way to London and I’m tapping away at the long (?) awaited match report.

Tiniest of turn around in the teams, at the last minute “Detention” had to stick around at work to finish “Budgie Smuggler”‘s report. This wasn’t a too bigger problem as “Pick Up An Oar” showed up at the last minute to fill the numbers.

After waiting around for a while for all players (and kit) to show up we got underway. I was told I should include the warm up game as part of the match, which STUDio won about 7-0 but I guess I cant 🙁

As per the kit, they were defo worth the wait. We all looked so sexy in them it has to be said. Was great to see “Roll With It” managed to wear the right colour for once.

A HORRIBLE start for STUDio, going 5 nil down within the first 10 or so minutes. Some desperately bad goal keeping from the award winning keeper “Hot Brother” let 3 in, then a shocking OWN GOAL from a certain someone who does not deserve to have his name in the same sentence as goal. So he will remain nameless, sort of, ***** “I like Women’s underwear” *****. “EEK, spider” took full advantage of the bad goalkeeping and put the first few of his 6 away, one of which was a nutmeg on the weak keeper.

STUDio FC fought hard to come back into it, finishing the game at 10-7 to Topville. I “Under The Hat Is A Comb Over” wont go into too much detail about my wonder goal, picking the ball up and taking on 3 Topville players before slotting it in the corner. The Topville 10 was made up from 6 for “Battery-powered Toy car”, 2 for “Daz White Dentistry” and 1 for “I’ll See You On The Court”. Confusion over the STUDio scorers, 4 of us think we scored 2, so as “captain” I don’t mind taking the moral high ground and mark it down as 1. Even though we all know “Jelly Belly” only scored 1, the rest of his shots went over the fence. So that’s 2 each for “Pencil Sharpener”, “Catwalk Roadkill” and “Doesn’t Know What He’s Getting Himself Into”.

I might make a shame wall and keep a list of who deserved to be sent off in each game. I know for sure I’ll be at the top of the list for this week! I still think “Tweedle Frank” deserved it, but kids its always bad to lash out. I wont be the only person on the list who for this week…

For next week, can we please be on time! It’s due to the 45 minute game instead of an hour game that STUDio lost… Honest!

For the record… all nicknames were supplied by “Wanna be ginger hottie” and “Fatty wants a COOKIE”.