Renault

Fucking Renault, fucking Briatore, fucking FIA. done.

England Squad.

As you may know England have a 'friendly' international against the Netherlands this wednesday, allthough the squad is a little suspect to say the least. Now im not saying that Fabio isn't a capable manager by any means but how Carlton Cole gets into the team is anyone's guess. Not only am i outstanded that Cole (Carlton that is, not Andy) retains his place in the squad. Not only is he not a brilliant striker to start with but, this a guess, but i suspect he's scored none in pre-season, which is what the squad must be picked on, current form. This is why Beckham is included as he is the only player to be currently playing in the league and the only one to have recently scored a free-kick against Barca i might add. Now if Carlton Cole hasn't produced the quality Capello thinks he does i have to beg the question...why isn't Micheal Owen in the squad? Having recently made his debut for Fergie's men he's scored a good 3 or 4 goals in as many matches, which is approximatley 3 or 4 goals more than Carlton Cole, even the least goal scoring striker ever Emile Heskey has shone in pre-season, rant over. The rest of the squad is pretty much as expected, with the addition of Ben Foster due to James' injury earlier in the week, the rest of the squad is as follows:
Goalkeepers: Foster, Green, Robinson.

Defenders : Johnson, Terry, Ferdinand, Cole, Upson, Bridge, Lescott.

Midfielders : Beckham, Gerrard, Lampard, Walcott, Wright-phillips, Milner, Young,
Carrick, Barry.
Forwards : Cole, Heskey, Rooney, Defoe.

Micheal Owen

Some say, he's over the hill, and that his playing days are over, all we know is that he's still that little lad from Chester, with the skill and ability to revive the Manchester United attack. Now he might be 29, pushing towards the end of his career but the grand price of £0.00 paid to Newcastle and around £20k a week is a small risk for Sir Al to take. However the nice man of football might just be the signature to get this summer, with a strike rate of 1 goal every 1-2 games for each of his respective teams you can't really go wrong. And the ex-European footballer of the year is sure to prove himself after passing a medical yesturday and insisting he is in no danger of any of his previous injuries re-kindleing. Many people will definetley be sceptical about him move, but personally, as a football fan i think its great to see that this international should spend his last years of top level football with a top club hopefully reproducing the talent he's known worlwide for.

Alex.

Relegation

Oh by the way, just thaught i'd mention the misfortunes of Newcastle's relelgation, every thaught it was going to happen but nobody actually believed it would until it did, unlucky Shearer only had a couple of games to return a seasons worth of poor performances, but supprisingly Sunderland are the pride of North England (God help us) but to be fair they only have £70m debt and got a massive 36 points :

F1 row.

Currently the FIA and FOTA are arguing about the proposed £40m budget cap to be imposed on the teams next season, but with the FIA refusing to budge and FOTA threatening to start a spin-off race series with up to 8 leading current F1 teams, and Renault... Now the £40m cap does seem reasonable, however it does not make sense to impose the limit straight away as teams such as Mclaren and Ferrari would have to lower their budget by around £300m in about 6 months. This would mean great losses of jobs for people involved in and around F1. The cap is meant to be implemented as a way of cutting costs due to the credit crunch but it is clearly making the situation worse if people lose their jobs because of it. One suggestion made was that instead of the teams forming a break-out group and start their own tournement it would be so much easier to just turn F1 into a two-tier system where teams with the cap implemented competing against one another and the teams not under control by the cap also competing, meaning smaller teams such as Force India get a chance of glory and theres two titles to be had come the end of the year.

Thats all for now, more when the FIA try suing Ferrari at some point.
Alex.

RELEGATION

The dreaded word just rings in some fans ears as soon as promotion is secured, however is it all just a pointless worry or does your team have a real chance of demotion. (see the bold there, thats for effect you see) Well i'm going to do my best to tell you if your team has a chance of having the dreaded word stamped straight across it's face with an estimated £50,000,000 out of it's pocket. Most pundits, naming no names *cough* Shearer, agree that five, six or seven teams could still get relegated with the safety net of 40 points slowely going down the swanny each season as the battle gets tougher, but i've decided to go straight into the thick of things and give you My top four to go down- West Brom- ahhhh, the Baggies, promoted last season with a great chance of survival, had a promising situation, but look at the placement now. West Brom are now 8 points adrift of safety and to see them winning 3 games when they have Pompey, Liverpool and Tottenham left would just be naive. They also have to rely on all the teams about them losing the next 7 games which is unlikely as most teams in the bottom half still have each other to play. My verdict-most likely to get relegated.

Check back soon to see my other three teams most likely to be relelgated, oops, said it...

Carnegie Challenge Cup round 4 results.

So here's my first post on two numbers sport. I had a birthday recently, as commented by Alex and I'm gonna start doing a, hopefully, weekly round up of the rugby league action.

This past week's challenge cup action has had it's upsets and it's almosts.

The Leeds and Saints game was a sell out, yours truely was in attendance and well, the Rhinos just didn't look up to it. Brian "Bluey" McClennan claimed that the score didn't reflect the game, and that if it did it would have been an absolute hammering. The Leeds outfit just seemed to have trouble clicking at times and it seemed like their main issue was actually fitness. When Danny Buderus came on 30 minutes into the gamer he showed that he could add real pace to the acting half position, although some Leeds fans are doubting Buderus' abilities and think that he is over rated. I have to disagree with those fans, and i can promise them that if Buderus stays fit, he will definately show what he's capable of, especially if those fans take into account his work rate in a game, and the amount of defensive work he does aswell as the attacking. Although it wasn't just down to the Rhinos' poor performance for why Saints came out victorious, a drastic change due to Sean Long's injury saw Jon Wilkin really step up to the plate filling in at stand off, whilst Leon Pryce moved to Scrum Half. Wilkin deserved the man of the match achievement, with 2 40/20s and an overall great kicking game, he's definately showed that he is more than just a second rower. It also seems that Wilkin had the same effect on the game as Lee Smith had in last years grand final. With a complete change in position, the under rated saints talent showed his capabilities. The game had it's moments, but for a Leeds and Saints game it wasn't exactly a thriller, however the final play would've been a great moment if Leeds would've scored from it with Leeds making around 70 metres from their own tryline.
Result

Saints 22 - 18 Leeds


Up next is another nearly, but an extreme shock as far as the rugby world is concerned. The Barrow and Wigan game produced a real nailbiting contest with the score being close at the end of both halves. Although missed conversations almost proved to be costly for wigan, with Riddell and Amos Roberts having to take over the duties of Pat Richards, with Wigan scoring 7 tries compared to Barrow's 3. Although Noone was able to convert all of Barrow's tries and kick a penalty goal. However, this game showed that anything is capable in the cup, and that no team has safe games. As the Queens and Doncaster game showed in the previous round, both metophorically, and for the spectators, literally.

Result
Barrow 20 - 32 Wigan

The 4th round saw possibly THE greatest comeback in challenge cup history. The Bradford and Catalans game proved to be a real thriller. Bradford got off to a flying start and went into the sheds at half time 20-0 up, it looked as if Bradford were going to coast through to the next round and get their season fully started. However, the battling French had fought back with a comeback that Napoleon would have been proud of, with a 40 point blitz past the Bulls outfit, with the Bulls only being able to respond a few times. The Bulls completely took their foot off of the gas and made some silly errors deep in their own half. They also look like they need to get rid of some players, who are seriously underperforming and are not meeting the standard of super league. One of these being Michael Platt, to say he's a fullback he has serious difficulties under the high bomb, has a poor kick return and his defense is absolutely shocking, everything a fullback is supposed to be good at, he's terrible at, McNamara needs to drop Platt for the next game against Leeds and play the very much in-form Dave Halley in the fullback position, Halley showed tremendous form whilst playing for Wakefield, however he was seriously underused in the game against Catalans. I hope that Wakefield do offer him a contract and that he accepts because he is not getting the game time he truely deserves at Bradford. Although, the French's remarkable comeback also takes some pressure off of Mr Walters' shoulders, who has been under the cosh recently regarding criticisms. The game saw the Catalans show signs of them being the team the were yesteryear.
Result
Catalans Dragons 40 - 38 Bradford Bulls

Other results
Batley 28 - 24 Hunslet
Doncaster 18 - 32 Gateshead Thunder
Featherstone Rovers 54 - 16 Wath Brow
Hull FC 18 - Salford City Reds 22 (another cracking upset)
Keighley Coughars 20 - 64 Castleford Tigers
Oldham 60 - 30 FC Lezignan-Corbieres
Harlequins RL 16 - 42 Huddersfield Giants
Wakefield 54 - 0 Leigh
Swinton 22 - 28 Rochdale
Sheffield Eagles 28 - 18 Dewsbury
Hull KR 32 - 6 Celtic Crusaders
Halifax 20 - 16 Widnes Vikings
Warrington Wolves 56 - 10 York City Knights

HAPPY 56th BIRTHDAY SEAN !!!

So, here i am writing Two Numbers' second first post, if that makes sense. For my first post i thaught i'd comment on the England match versus Slovakia that happened a matter of hours ago. I thaught that i'd comment now because i will have forgotten what happened by tomorrow. So Capellos 10th 9th or whatever game it was in charge and England look pretty strong, a 2-0 loss to Spain had been forgotten as it often is and we were ready for Slovakio, errr i mean Slovakia. Allready short of strikers England fans were dissapointed when goalscorer Heskey had to go off inured, and his replacement Carlton Cole... who? Well that didn't matter anyway because he went off for Crouchy who missed the chance for the robot as JT stole his goal and was deemed offside for it.
After half time, in which England went into 1-0 up in David Beckham came on for his record breaking 109th cap for England as he came on for Aaron Lennon. He later marked the occasion with an assist headed in by the 'crazed' Wayne Rooney. The game later tailed off with Slovakia becomming less and less like the bunny on the commercials and more and more like Rick Waller running a marathon. So the game eventually finished 4-0 to England with late goals from Rooney and Lapard adding to the Slavs woes. Tantalising result for England but those injuries won't do us any favours in four days time.
Player ratings (first team only, plus Becks of course)
David James- 6-didn't have much to do, but played well.
Matthew Upson- 6-not the best i've seen him.
John Terry- 6-decent clearing up as expected, stole Crouchys goal though.
Glen Johnson- 7-decent in defense, provided an overlap for Becks.
Ashley Cole- 5-almost set up that Slavs, didn't provide much support for Downing.
Aaron Lennon- 6-looked special at times, but wasn't used to full potential.
Frank Lampard-7-provided a needed link between attack and defence, and scored
Steven Gerrard-5-noihn special, average performance from the Liverpool man.
Gareth Barry- 5-didn't know he was playing at first.
Wayne Rooey- 9-scored twice which is always helpful, ran like a nutter too.
Emile Heskey- 6-Scored the first goal, unfortunate to have to come off.
David Beckham- 6-sen the fans wild, provided a well placed cross for Rooney's first

Man of the match-Wayne Rooney