Entries from July 2005 ↓

Thanks to new boy Alexander Hleb, and 18 year old Arturo Lupoli, Arsenal ran out 1-0 winners over hosts Ajax at their opening match of the Amsterdam Tournament today.

It took 87 minutes of waiting before the goal, but it was worth it just to see Hleb juke the Ajax defense and send a pin-point through ball to Lupoli who drove it home.

A nice win, as it puts the Gunners in a postion to win the tournament when they face Porto on Sunday. Porto beat Boca Juniors 2-0 in the early match tonight.

GolTV will most likely be showing the Ajax v Arsenal match again at 9PM ET tonight, as it currently leads the Viewers Choice voting. However, regardless of whether they show it at 9PM, it willl definitely be aired again at 2 AM ET.

If you don’t have GolTV, make sure you at the very least catch the highlights somewhere, if only to see Hleb’s setup.

While everyone waits quite impatiently for the Gunners to announce their next new signing, some good news did come out of Austria yesterday. Freddie Ljungberg, who really paced the team for long stretches last season, was awarded a new four year contract extension, keeping him with Arsenal until 2009.

This is great news, as Freddie is a Gunner through and through, and that passion translates onto the pitch.

It was announced during Baseball Tonight that the Yankees had completed a trade with the Colorado Rockies tonight. The Yanks send two minor-leaguers to Denver in exchange for 27-year old right-handed starting pitcher, Shawn Chacon.

Chacon’s record this season is horrible, but the caveat is that he’s been playing in Denver. The guys on Baseball Tonight loved this trade, and I’ll leave the jury out until after his start on Saturday against the Angels at The Stadium.

This sign was posted in a Tube station in London yesterday in the wake of the spate of bombings in the past few weeks. If you recall, a “foreign-looking” man with a rucksack was shot five times and killed by armed police last week as he was running away from them. It later turns out that the man was in no way involved with any terrorism.

Terrorism of all kinds must be stopped at it’s source, but I must ask you, is this sign really helping any?

Big news leaked today on Ain’t It Cool. The fifth season of Alias kicks off on Thursday September 29. No word yet on whether it will be airing at 9 PM like last year, or bumped up to 8 PM.

There was also a mild spoiler on Ain’t It Cool…. (highlight to read)

We got word today that, because Jennifer Garner’s movie-star pregnancy is being written into the series (it’s supposed to be Vaughn’s!), Rachel Nichols, formerly of “The Inside,” will be doing most of the kung-fu on “Alias” This season.

So…reports are coming in from multiple sources (probably all regurgitating the same original source) that the NBA’s version of Kane is coming to New York, that tumbleweed-ridden hollow of playoff basketball and teach a little defensive kung fu to the woebegotten citizens of Knickerbocker Gulch.

To be clear, I am very skeptical of the NBA’a most well traveled coach benefiting the Knicks. A great coach, to be sure, but Larry Brown (by his own admission) has both health and age concerns. Aside from those concerns, Larry Brown has never stayed in one place very long, usually getting out when he realizes that he can take the team no farther toward success than he has already. So, my question is, how far can Larry Brown take the Knicks? In my opinion, he could get them back to respectability and perhaps deep into the playoffs. However, can he do it in only the 2-3 years he is likely to be there before he leaves to walk the earth again. The Knicks are mostly a young, athletic team with some veterans with soon to be expired contracts. Larry Brown has shown a reluctance to play young players. These players need to be developed for the long-term health of the team. So, what happens when Kane gets the Knicks to Eastern Conference Final in 2-3 yrs out of a weak Atlantic Division that couldn’t outmuscle Stephen Hawking for a copy of Naughty Nurses. If they win, they will mostly likely get bounced by a Western Conference team in the Finals. Then, he leaves and the Knicks are looking for another coach to maintain or surpass what Brown accomplished in his short time at the Garden. Most Knick fans, it seems, are excited by this move and it will certainly help the team win now which is always the immediate end in NY. However, what happens when Larry Brown leaves to go God knows where. I suppose the Knicks can hire another series of interim stiffs until another coaching great becomes available and the team and its players can flounder until then.