Blaine Tulley

Gutted: n. 1) A feeling of intense desolation, akin to the feeling of having one's insides ripped out. 2) A sweet colloquialism that should be adopted into American parlance along with the words "wanker", "bullocks" and "knackered". Example: Ethan Armstrong will be gutted if Liverpool FC sell Xabi Alonso to Real Madrid. Here it is: […]

King Kenny is back! After a 18 year hiatus, the man many hail as Liverpool's greatest ever player, Kenny Dalglish, will rejoin Liverpool Football Club. From the club's official site: "Dalglish will assume a senior role at the Liverpool Academy and will also act as a Club ambassador working with the commercial side of the […]

Barcelona winning everything last season could have deeper repercussions for the Premier League beyond felling Manchester United in the Champions League. They've awoken the sleeping spending giant that is Real Madrid. Desperate to overtake the unstoppable Barça, Real Madrid have obliterated all transfer records and don't look anywhere near stopping. The super nova has exploded […]

Every year, once the season ends, the rumors really start buzzing around our heads like a dark swarm of thirsty mosquitoes. And where we should wisely swat the nasty beasts away, the depth of our summer football boredom makes us strip off our shirts, hold out our arms, and beg them to land. Give us […]

I'm still shocked at Glen Johnson's £17.5m price tag. Bumping up Liverpool's record defensive transfer fee by some £10m is a lot to take. It's only a year since they paid around £7m for Andreas Dossena. It's only 18 months since they paid £6m for Martin Skrtel, the Liverpool defensive record before Dossena's move. More […]

Q: Why did he mention Dempsey and Howard in the title? A: It's a sneaky writer's trick. He name-dropped Americans who play in the Premier League to justify writing about USA v Brazil for EPLTalk.com. Q: Is that why he posted that hastily sketched drawing of Dempsey's mug as well? A: Yes indeed. Is there […]

Yesterday, I looked at the expectations we often place on international football. This got me thinking about the Dutch and their legendary Total Football era in the 70s. What does this mean to us today? Does Cruyff's legacy still influence world football? What do we want from our football? The Spain/South Africa match was on […]

Yesterday, I asked the question of implementing live video review in football. Today's question is: are our expectations too high for international football? I enjoyed your responses to yesterday's article. Please weigh in with your feelings on international football in the comment section below. It is easy to hold one's international side to an unfair […]

Yesterday, I considered the question of the name of our sport, football vs soccer. Today I jump on another question regarding the purity of the beautiful game: should we implement live video review? Please use the comment section to weigh in on this issue. If I ever got dragged to a birthday party for FIFA […]

After the 2006 World Cup I launched a one-man campaign to change the name of American Football to All-American Pig-Pile. It was time this country embraced the sport's true name, I thought. I received many chuckles but few converts. One who went along with it was my friend George from Manchester, England. George is a […]

After Clint Dempsey moved to Fulham in 2007, his leap in quality was beyond remarkable. This was evidenced in his subsequent call-ups to the US national team. Stronger, defter, more confident. He was a new player. He'd already been a stand-out in Germany 2006, scoring the only non-own-goal for the US, but after his move […]

Oh, the Premier League off-season. So brief yet so cruel. One struggles to find ways to survive the addict's withdrawal that comes with having no league matches every week. The FIFA Federations Cup and World Cup qualifiers have done their part to fill the gap. Thankfully, the remaining months contain a some mouthwatering friendlies to […]

The buzz coming through the ever-dubious transfer wires claims that Liverpool are close to signing Glen Johnson from Portsmouth. Rumors are homing in on a £17m move which includes the £7m Pompey still owe the Reds for Peter Crouch. Johnson is a fine player, full of skill, energy and guile, and his addition to the […]

Since Real Madrid's £80m swoop on Cristiano Ronaldo, I've read plenty of responses by United supporters insisting this was a positive move for the team. Man U is not one player. We've got 80m to spend. We're fine. No, really. While the Ronaldo move was inevitable and £80m is a handsome bundle of cash to […]

Few would have expected New Zealand to pull an upset over a Spain who entered the fray of the FIFA Confederations Cup boasting a 32 match unbeaten streak. But no one could have predicted that Liverpool's Fernando Torres would score a hat trick within the first seventeen minutes of play. Torres rapidly erases any doubt […]