SoccerTools Note: We're starting a series of English Premier League blogs written by a fan of each club.  Here's the first in the series, Manchester City:

This year for the first time in my 35 years of holding a season ticket I finally got a special Christmas present from Santa and his Chief Elf aka Sheik Mansour (and Roberto Mancini of course).  

Thanks to a more than comfortable win against a less than interested Stoke City the Blues ensured they would be proudly sat at the top of the tree on Christmas day. To be fair Stoke were dammed if they did and dammed if the didn`t. Having been swept aside in their two previous meetings and with City's` impressive home record Stoke probably felt they had more winnable games over Christmas and rested a few players.  With Stoke not managing a single shot on target or otherwise I did expect more fight from a traditionally robust team.  I must admit it was amusing to hear the chant directed at Stoke “you’ve had your throw in now “go away” home” or words to that effect.

Whilst it was nice to look at a Christmas day table with City on top we all know that it is where you end up in May that counts.  In my mind City's` run of fixtures in December and January looked tough especially with 3 difficult cup games throw in.  Going in to the Christmas matches I genuinely believed if we were within three to four points of United come the start of February we could win the league.

The congested run of 3 games in 10 days, two of the games coming in a 48 hour period was always going to be tough.  I can here you all shout “City can cope they have a huge squad” but as far as I am aware all squads are the same size. Ours just has a little more quality, however its not as deep as some people like to think and is certainly missing a 4th striker thanks to our friend Carlito.

Historically City have always suffered at the Hawthorns and West Brom have a tactically astute manager who has been around the block.  Roy Hodgson has a great record against City with Fulham and he proved his worth on Boxing Day. Whilst City did not play badly it was just one of those days. West Brom parked the proverbial bus and with City looking a little leggy they managed to keep us out. Fair play to West Brom they stood firm and overall I was not too disappointed with the draw.

A month ago Sunderland would have been there for the taking and in many ways they still were.   Again a bus was parked and City, while not playing badly, had another of those days spurning numerous opportunities. With United having lost to lowly Blackburn on New Years Eve this was a great chance to extend our lead and even a point would have not have been a bad outcome.  However the Martin O’Neil factor has kicked in at the Stadium of Light and Sunderland didn’t buckle.  Their goal was frustratingly offside but that’s football I suppose.   As Mancini has since stated some games you dominate and you should win however in these games you definitely should not lose.  So lessons learned we move on and thanks to Blackburn no real harm done.

The Liverpool game was a must win match as I expected United not to lose at Newcastle and we needed to bounce back. I always expected to win this game comfortably. Our home record is impeccable at present and quite frankly I don’t rate Liverpool's team with or without Suarez.  And so it proved, a relatively straight forward win regardless of another inept referee.  The final Christmas bonus came on Wednesday night when Newcastle swept a poorly performing United team aside.  

So coming out of Christmas we are a point better off on United than before Christmas so that cant be bad although Spurs have edged closer to us.  On reflection a happy Christmas which has given me hope that come the start of February we will still be top, hopefully in a cup final and still in the FA Cup .  The Spurs game at home will be a biggie.

-GH.

That’s it. The World Cup is over for four more years. The young Spanish side finally brought home the bacon and for the third time the Dutch left a World Cup finals game the dejected losers.

But this year’s Dutch team is a very different one from the 1974 side who introduced Total Football to the world only to lose a heartbreaker to Germany. This side did not play Total Football, they played (in the finals at least) Total Thuggery.

English ref Howard Webb is being touted as an Enemy of State in Holland – the majority of the yellow cards he gave out went to the Dutch – but one Netherlands legend has actually criticized Webb for being too soft.

Johan Cruyff – a soccer legend, the man who invented that turn – is apparently somewhat disgusted by the way the new generation of Dutch players tried to win their first World Cup, a feat he and his team failed to achieve in 1974.

"Sadly, they played very dirty," Cruyff told Spanish newspaper El Periodico. "This ugly, vulgar, hard, hermetic, hardly eye-catching, hardly football style... If with this they got satisfaction, fine, but they lost."

Apparently the Orange Legend himself – along with many others – believes that Nigel De Jong’s audition for the remake of Shaolin Soccer disguised as a challenge on Xabi Alonso was a red, not yellow card offence, as well as Van Bommel’s tackle from behind on Iniesta "They should have been down to nine immediately, then they made two [such] ugly and hard tackles that even I felt the damage. It hurts me that Holland chose an ugly path to aim for the title."

Ugliness aside it was a strange Final, but a gripping one, right up until Iniesta’s last gasp winner hit the back of the net. A strange final that ended an improbable World Cup which saw superstars become super squibs (Rooney, Ronaldo, Kaka, even to some extent Messi) and a group of men who really apparently just love playing the beautiful game – the Spanish – rightfully take home the ultimate prize. It may not have all been beautiful soccer on Sunday but the ending was a sight to remember (Iker Casillas seemingly unstoppable tears of joy, Iniesta’s tribute to his dead friend, Cesc Faberga’s Joker grin to name but a few memorable moments)

As the FIFA World Cup heads into its last week the teams left are not really the sides that anyone expected to be there together. Spain, yes, Germany perhaps. But Uruguay and the Netherlands? Quite the surprise.

What happens to teams after they exit the World Cup depends largely on the expectations that were upon them. Ghana’s Black Stars, who made it all the way to the quarter finals as the last African team standing, losing only when the game went to a penalty shootout, arrived home to a frenzied heroes welcome while the England team, who as everyone now knows failed to live up to their Golden generation hype and never made it out of the last 16 snuck in the back door when they arrived back in London, afraid of the reception they might get.

The premiers of both France and Nigeria wanted to get involved with the affairs of their national teams. Disappointed by his nation’s performance Nigeria’s Jonathan Goodluck threatened to bar the team from international competition for two years. France’s Nicolas Sarkozy wanted to launch a full scale investigation into the antics of French team. FIFA threatened sanctions against both countries – FIFA forbids government involvement in a national team – but the whole affair illustrates just how seriously fans everywhere take their soccer.

The fate of others? The USA’s Landon Donovan made the rounds of the popular chat shows on his return to US soil and Cristiano Ronaldo silenced criticism of his lackluster performance by announcing the birth of a son (mother unnamed).  Brazil’s Dunga lost his job and Diego Maradona is still not sure if he still wants his. Italy’s Marcello Lippi also stepped down but another Italian, Fabio Capello will keep his post even though his tactics have been criticized by practically everyone in England  (except Roy Keane, who’s actually Irish) And the North Korean team? No one knows but coal mines have been mentioned…

To the non-soccer fan all this drama may seem a little extreme, it’s only a game after all. But as any soccer fan can tell you, it’s the not just a game, it’s the World Cup.

 

After Sunday’s matches in the FIFA World Cup, soccer purist or not, I have to admit that like it or not technology has to find its way into soccer in one form or another. One goal disallowed, another that never should have been and two decisions that may have changed the World Cup fate of two of soccer’s biggest names (although in England’s case it may not have made a difference given the dreadful lack of enthusiasm and actual soccer style they displayed).

So if I can change my mind, and any sane and rational soccer fan who watched either the Argentina/Mexico game or the England/Germany massacre would, why can’t FIFA see it? The FIFA website’s official match reports covering the incidents in both games read like something out of a Grimm’s fairytale. Lamp’s disallowed goal? This is what FIFA saw “Meetings between these two sides often provide talking points and this one's came 60 seconds later when Lampard's shot from the edge of the box struck the underside of the crossbar and bounced down, with the referee ruling the ball had not crossed the goal line.” Funny, that is not quite what the rest of us, including those people sitting in the stadium way up in the cheap seats saw.

The Tevez tale as written by FIFA was even more poetic and elegant. “Tevez might have thought his chance had gone when Perez raced out to block bravely at his feet, but Messi was quick-witted enough to return the ball toward goal, where the Manchester City striker was waiting to head home. Breaking the deadlock enabled Argentina to take a firm grip on proceedings, and within seven minutes that hold was strengthened as Mexico reached for the self-destruct button.” Tevez was indeed waiting to head home, standing in a blatantly offside position, as the entire crowd could see on the stadium's Jumbotron screens.

Sepp Blatter was in the stands for the first game of the day and should have felt embarrassed to be there after such a ridiculous decision was allowed to stand. He wasn’t though. The 2010 FIFA World Cup is being ruined by poor referring ( the USA suffered greatly too) but he simply won’t admit it and his position on the issue will never change.

Sepp did make one decisive move in reaction to Argentina game though. FIFA plans “to stop controversial incidents being shown on big screens inside stadiums in future”. Well done Sepp! Decisive, positive action but in the same direction as ever. To ensure that FIFA events remain as profitable as possible, even if it means ruining the game.

 

So far some of the biggest headlines associated with the FIFA 2010 World Cup have involved the referees rather than the players. Although a referee’s decisions are often unpopular with somebody, many of the decisions made over the last 10 days have had far more of an impact on the tournament than they should have done.

Take for instance the mystery call during Friday’s USA vs. Slovenia match that robbed Maurice Edu of a goal and prevented the US from claiming one the greatest World Cup comeback victories of all time.  Watching the play live it was hard to see why the goal was disallowed and upon video review it is apparent that there was no reason. No offside, no foul, just a referee making a very bad call.

On Sunday it was Brazil’s, or more specifically Kaka’s turn to suffer at the hands of bad officiating. Brazil was already winning comfortably against the Ivory Coast and headed for the last sixteen. With three minutes to go Kaka ran into the Coast’s Keita. It should have been a nothing challenge, but thanks apparently to a bit of play acting on Keita’s part Kaka found himself with a second yellow card and a place on the bench for his country's final group game against Portugal in Durban on Friday.

These calls (and many others) bring back the same old question – should instant replay become a part of professional soccer? If so, how and for what fouls, offsides or just for disputed goals?

The problem with instant replay in soccer is the pace of the game. Unlike baseball, basketball and football (of the American variety) there are no natural breaks in play for 45 minutes. Use instant replay on foul calls and the game will take four or five hours to complete if it is a rough and tumble one like Sunday’s Brazil & Ivory Coast game. Using instant replay to determine whether or not a goal is valid is not a bad idea. The offside rule is pretty clear and if a ref is following the letter of the law there is not too much wiggle room.

All of this said, instant replay will not stop calls like the one against Edu causing controversy and heartache. There was no reason for that call but if instant replay was in place you would be asking a referee to undermine his own judgment, which they will rarely do.

A professional soccer referee’s job is a hard one, especially at the FIFA World Cup. In a split second he has to decide if a certain player really was fouled or if he is exaggerating as so many players do. C. Ronaldo, for instance, whose diving displays at the World Cup so far have been excellent and easy to spot on the YouTube video later but not so obvious during the match.

Is there a place for instant replay in soccer? It’s hard to see how, but the fourth official might be a better solution. In the end though let’s face it soccer fans, human error is a part of soccer and has always been a part of soccer. It is one thing that makes our sport different from every other sport and why it is so unpredictable and we love it so much.