The Malaysian Insider

AUG 21 — I thought I should wait till the mid-week fixtures were out of the way before sharing my opinion on what has been an outstanding start to the season. The English Premier League (EPL) kicked off with six away wins and in midweek Wolverhampton Wanderers continued that with another away win over Wigan.

It is not the results that I would like to talk about but rather the reactions from fans and scribes that have quite shocked me. The hatred and vitriol directed at teams has been quite something I have never experienced before. I hate to imagine if these people were to be running professional football clubs.

Alex Ferguson has come under the most criticism after “only” winning one-nil against Birmingham City and losing away to Burnley.

AUG 13 — It’s off topic a little as I share my exploits during two recent weekends. On July 25, I was at Uniten to witness the Malakoff Universities Duathlon Series (MUDS).

For the just-initiated, namely yours truly, this is a 3km run-13km bike ride-3km run multi-sport event. Why was I there?

Well, since last August, I have taken to road cycling and have been doing it twice a week and, naturally, I wanted to see if I could perhaps get into some competition in the future. I somehow ended up emceeing the whole event and the next as well.

AUG 4 — The new European football season will be upon us soon and for argument’s sake, Spain’s La Liga will be grabbing the limelight for obvious reasons. The battle royale between Barcelona and Real Madrid could well make them the two most-watched teams in the world in season 2009/2010.

It will be a case of a settled team, such as Barcelona, having been together now for a couple of seasons, against a rebuilding Real Madrid that will have pressure heaped upon them after the signings of Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo.

These top two players in the world will delight no doubt but can the likes of Raul Albiol and Alvaro Arbeloa become superstar defenders to provide the platform for a very attack-minded Real Madrid.

JULY 13 — This is my take on a few of the highlights in the world of football over the past couple of weeks.

Malaysia Boleh

My first comment is actually an extension of an idea suggested by a very close and dear mate of mine while I was involved in the coverage of the Confederations Cup at Astro last month.

JUNE 2 — “Good teams retain possession of the ball for long periods.”

“Great teams retain possession of the ball for long periods in the opponents half.”

You may not have heard those two expressions before. But on the chance that you have, and still recall who said it, I think you surely must be a big Shebby Singh fan.