Daryn Macrae

Opta’s stat boffins have uncovered some gems from this season. Some of which will make you go hmm. For example, did you know that West Bromwich Albion set a new Premier League record of 34 consecutive matches without keeping a clean sheet? Or that Manchester United were the most clinical side from the 60th minute […]

Fortune and poor Portsmouth finishing rather contributed to Everton’s three point haul. With one genuine shot at goal and nothing much else to discuss on the long drive home, I wonder why Moyes chooses to restrain the plethora of attacking options now available to him. http://www.evertonfc.com/match/report/0910/portsmouth-v-everton.html?t=2 On a side issue for Everton, it was interesting […]

It wasn’t the strongest or most organised of European opposition but that wasn’t the fault of Everton. The rather convoluted route to a Europa League final derided with an experimental overpopulation of match officials has sometimes brought the validity of the event into question. I’m not sure if the shambolic way that AEK Athens defended […]

Nine months till the final. The lure of European football transcends merely the million dollar incentives; rather the Champions League represents a team’s arrival at the highest echelon of world football. Or at least it did when it was called the European Cup. Marketing men have milked football for every penny that’s available, and milked […]

After a ninety yard sprint, fuelled by hatred and loathing, Adebayor slid on his knees all the way into a double charge of violent conduct and improper conduct soon to be arbitrated at the mercy of the Football Association. An epic encounter of two contrasting football values was swept aside as legal wrangling; blame shifting […]

After yet another under acceptable performance from an Everton team devoid of genuine guile the news from the physio was worse than hoped but exactly as expected. The writhing on the floor of Phil Neville following a brutal scything from Dickson Etuhu suggested a debilitating ailment against the current climate of forgeries and feigners. Neville […]

Wales 1 – 3 Russia World Cup Qualifier 2010, Group #4 Millennium Stadium, Wednesday, 9 September 2009, 7.45pm The build up to Wales’s most recent and irrelevant World Cup qualifying group game was punctuated by the rather petulant and juvenile civil war of criticism levied by legend Welsh players towards the ineptitude of the current national […]

The Chelsea transfer embargo detonated by Fifa this week will have massive and perturbing repercussions. Even with Chelsea delaying proceeding and stagnating the affect of the transfer prohibition by deploying a stalling bureaucracy the outcome appears inevitable. And if the Mexès Roma policy is to be referenced, in addition to the FC Sion case, then […]

After a turbulent encounter at Old Trafford on Sunday the pressure was on a Chelsea team to reciprocate their own winning result and keep alive the Premiership title race at least until Thursday. The reverse scenario was prevalent last week as Chelsea won away from home at Man City on the Saturday afternoon and Man […]

In a week of tragedy for Manchester Utd’s European and Premiership title hopes Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic both suffer injuries that threaten to jeopardize everything. Vidic was assisted off the field during the midweek Champions League game in Rome and then Rio gimped out of the Middlesbrough fiasco after a degree of culpability for […]

Roma 0 – 2 Man Utd Tuesday 1st April 2008: Stadio Olimpico The Next Generation of Forward – Cristiano Ronaldo When Ronaldo cannoned that header past a leisurely Roma defence he looked nothing like the flamboyant flair player, Ronaldo had no veneer of the tentative school child, he illustrated no semblance of the theatre that […]

Why doesn’t Steven Gerrard just leave Liverpool? After watching yet another abysmal exhibition from Liverpool I continue to ask exactly why Steven Gerrard continues to plunder his reputation with his current crop of woeful colleagues. Liverpool looked anything but potential champions during a drab and error riddled Merseyside derby on Sunday. Yet throughout the first […]