And the hunt begins!

WANTED: Football manager with extensive experience, preferably one with the know-how and capabilities of winning the Barclays Premier League and the UEFA Champions League within an unreasonable amount of time. Unbalanced squad with real danger of losing star players. Annual transfer budget of GBP5 million. Manager must also strive towards reducing club debt and possess excellent command of English and Spanish.

The job ad above maybe a work of fiction but Liverpool's board might as well put it up in the classifieds starting this week now that the Anfield outfit has finally parted ways with the seemingly irremovable Rafa Benitez. At a time when signing on new managers has become as expensive as signing footballers, Liverpool's board couldn't have picked a better time to give Benitez the boot.

While the Reds would never have been able to afford the likes of Jose Mourinho, the club's precarious financial state would make it next to impossible to appoint someone like Guus Hiddink, Frank Rijkaard, Roy Hodgson and Martin O'Neill. Compounding the matter is the fact that should either one of these coaches choose to move to Anfield, they face the prospect of trying to restore glory to a club on the verge of losing its stars and with a transfer budget of GBP5 million. In other words, unless things look up on the financial horizon, the odds of any of these gentlemen making the move to Liverpool this summer is as likely as the Reds winning the Champions League next season.

As such, if current conditions continue, only a manager with a deep connection to the club will be willing to take the job. As you might have guessed, the biggest candidate for that job would be "King" Kenny Dalglish. And some fairy tale it would be should Dalglish - the last manager to guide the Reds to a league title - end Liverpool's title drought. But can Dalglish rediscover his winning ways of the 80s considering the fact that he's been absent from the game for almost a decade?

Remember how the Geordies kept fantasizing of the return of Kevin Keegan to Newcastle and when the former Liverpool legend eventually replaced Sam Allardyce at St James Park, it became pretty obvious that his three-year absence from the league before rejoining the Magpies was just too long a hiatus. And if three years could have done that to Keegan, what's to say Dalglish' absence from the game wouldn't turn out the same?

Speaking of Keegan, why hasn't he been considered by the so-called pundits? Keegan has just as much as a bond with club and seeing as to how he's been in the game a little more frequent that Dalglish has over the past 10 years, who's to say Keegan wouldn't be a success at Liverpool? And wouldn't he just "luv it" it if he could snatch title number 19 from right under Sir Alex Ferguson's nose?

Mancini's honeymoon over?

Someday soon, someone's going to have to tell those tycoons controlling Man City that they've got an average side. And that someone needs to be Roberto Mancini. Otherwise he might as well give up on his English classes and book a one-way ticket back to Italy in the summer.

In the early stages, it appeared as though Mancini had breathed new life into the Eastlanders whose campaign for a top four position was on course for yet another season of mid-table mediocrity. But just as Sparky found out, the present bunch of players at Man City (who were selected by Welshman) are a mediocre bunch that at best represent an expensive version of Blackburn or Bolton. Sure, there's the occasional upset against one of the big four but that's no reason to think there's anything more to the team. Heck, Fulham have beaten both Man Utd and Liverpool this season and yet they're no closer to moving out of their mid-table comfort zone.

But the most disappointing aspect of Mancini's stint so far is that there doesn't seem to a big change in tactics. There's the occasional rotation policy and Bellamy training ground bust-up (who hasn't had this problem?) but City under Mancini seem to play very much the same way they did under Hughes.

Italian coaches are renown for their tactical prowess and that's been the case at Stamford Bridge this season. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Mancini isn't all that great of a coach in the first place. After all, didn't he win those Serie A titles with Inter when Milan and Juventus were all demoted for match-fixing?

Maybe I'm wrong and this summer, when Mancini's given Sparky's old cheque book he'll make some decent signings that can deliver what his bosses so dearly crave at the moment.

Top Four for Citeh this season?

Perhaps Roberto Mancini needs to double-up on his English lessons but did he say he’s targeting Citeh to finish in the top four this season? And did he mention that the Blues will be challenging for the Premiership next season? Has Mancini been watching the way City’s been playing all season?

Maybe the Italian’s expecting a large transfer kitty in January and make some major changes to the squad Sparky assembled (maybe he’ll start to get more defenders and fewer strikers). But would City’s billionaire owners agree to another spending spree in the transfer market after the exorbitant amount the club spent some six months ago?

And if they do succumb to some more spending, what guarantees are there that Mancini will adapt to the fast-pace of the Premier League in the remaining six months of the league to ensure City overtake Tottenham and Aston Villa into the fourth place. This is, by the way, on the assumption Rafa Benitez’ Liverpool continues their abysmal form into the new year.

Maybe Mancini was just saying what his new bosses wanted to hear. Unfortunately for him, its going to take a lot more than bold statements to keep his new employers at the Eastlands happy.

Sparky’s out, is Rafa next?

Very few people, except for Harry Redknapp, would've been surprised with City's decision to axe Sparky over the weekend. After spending more than the so-called "Big Four" over the summer, the odds were always stacked against Hughes making it into the new year. Especially when City's acquisitions over the summer, specifically their defensive ones, have proven to be flops.

In Hughes' defense, turning City into one of the Big Four within a season was never going to happen. But then again, Kuwaiti oil barons who offer a club like City a transfer budget in excess of GBP60 million in one summer can be expected to be a little unrealistic.

Still, would have Hughes produced the results had he been given more time? There was very little to suggest, based on City's performance this season, that Sparky had what it took to make the Blues a Big Four club. Harry Redknapp's assertion that Hughes was dealt with unfairly due to the fact that the Blues have only lost fewer games than any of the Big Four this season. But Redknapp failed to point out was the fact that City had drawn more games than they've won, a feat shared by the likes of Stoke City and Hull.
One can only imagine Sheikh Mansor's reaction when he was notified that his billion-dollar club had more in common with a bottom-feeder like Hull than Manchester United.

All the same, Hughes' has every right to feel short-changed when other managers who have performed far poorer than he has this season have not been accorded the same treatment. And I'm not referring to Phil Brown but Rafa Benitez. If City's owners were too quick to hit the panic button when the Blues began to draw a little to frequent, they could take a lesson in patience from Liverpool's American owners who seem to have shown next to no concern over the Reds abysmal form this season. Or maybe its indifference. Or fear of a pretty sizeable compensation package should they sack the Spaniard.

But whatever the reasons, and it could be a combination of all three factors mentioned above, Liverpool's want-away American owners should well realise that the value of their investments (ie: the English football club they own) will depreciate immensely should the Reds continue their mediocre performances this season and chalk up several more defeats and slip into mid-table territory. And should that be the case, Liverpool's two American owners will find it even harder to sell the club at a price that would settle their debts.

Should this be the case, transfer funds at the club would be become a luxury of sorts and we all know the sort of consequences that could have on Liverpool’s chances of ever winning that elusive league title number 19.

But apart from financial ruin, a bigger question that should be directed at Benitez is whether providing him more time at Anfield will generate the results. It’s unfortunate but when a club like Liverpool has lost as frequently as it has this season, there is very little to suggest that the manager has it in him to get the club out of the rot. If he did, they’d have ended their losing streak sometime ago. But when a team that comprises Steven Gerrard, Fernando Torres, Dirk Kuyt, Glen Johnson are made to look like amateurs against a perennial bottom-feeder like Porthsmouth, there is a sense that maybe Benitez’ time at the club is up. Should the Reds defeat to Porthsmouth been a one-off thing, it would be easy to mistake the loss as just another off day. But when the club that nearly won the league last season has had as many off days as Stoke, you begin to wonder.

Make no mistake, the writing on the wall has never been clearer. Benitez had five years to make Liverpool a Premiership winning team and six months after guiding them to within six points of the title, the Reds seem extremely unlikely to repeat that feat this season or the next. Benitez often asks for patience and more time yet how many more years does he need before the league title comes back to Anfield? At Liverpool, winning the Premiership has always been a priority, more so now Man Utd is level with Reds on league titles. Are Liverpool fans willing to risk a few more years with Benitez only to see the Devils land title number 19?

Ali G interviews the Beckhams!

This is an old video clip of Ali G interviewing David and Victoria Beckham but it's absolutely hilarious. Do check it out!

Maybe Malaysia will finally get to beat Thailand now

Thailand unfortunately has been in the news the past few years for all the wrong reasons. Coup de tat's, frequent change of governments and the closure of its main airport due to the higher number of protesters there in comparison to passengers. But all of that pales in comparison when up against today's headlines that read: Bryan Robson appointed Thailand national team coach.

It's no secret that in Asia, specifically Southeast Asia, people who speak with English accents are held in high regard, more so when the subject they're talking about is football. You can call it post-colonial mental syndrome or something else but there's no doubt we sometimes feel as though these individuals who can speak with an English accent must know something about football. Perhaps it has to with the dumb logic that all Englishmen are experts on English football.

As such, we find yet again another Southeast Asian nation appointing an Englishman who knows nuts about coaching to the top coaching position of its national team. This time the country is Thailand and the Englishman is Bryan Robson.

To be fair, unlike some of the other English duds who've managed our teams, Robson comes with a very impressive playing career on his resume. His coaching CV however is almost as bad as Mick McCarthey. The fact that Robson hasn't coached a premiership side in years should have been enough for the Thais. Sure, former coach Peter Reid didn't have a brilliant CV either but that shouldn't have been justification in keeping the bar low and hiring Robson.

Worse yet is that the Thais, unlike Malaysia, actually have a pretty decent football team and if there's any Southeast Asian country that's going to be featuring in the World Cup sometime in the next decade, the odds are on Thailand.

Oh well, at least now we know for sure Malaysia will have a chance at beating Thailand the next time we play them.

What was Adebayor thinking?

Emanuel Adebayor could use a class in the art of lying. You don't classify running down the length of a football field just to celebrate your goal against thousands of fans whose misery you've just contributed to as an act in the heat of the moment.

The fact that Adebayor couldn't even come up with a decent answer as to why he would want to celebrate in front of the small section of Arsenal fans instead of the City fans that occupied the remaining 65% of the seating capacity in the stadium adds further proof that the City forward seems to have later on realised that his actions were perhaps not the brightest.

I mean, he could've said he wanted to stick it to the Gunners fans and left it at that. Sure, the hate mail would've instantly tripled and North London would be out of bounds for the Togolese international for at least two years. Three to be safe.

From the FA's point of view, Adebayor's actions threaded on the fine line between being an asshole and complete stupidity. It's one thing to take the piss at people you despise but another thing altogether when you've nearly incited a riot. Perhaps he needs to view footage of the chaos that ensued at the Millwall-West Ham match to refresh his memory on just what English football fans are still capable of.

As for his alleged stamp on Robin Van Persie's face, some replays online (especially ones edited by Arsenal fans) clearly show the Togolese international's boot making contact with the Dutch striker's face in a somewhat deliberate manner. I'm not too sure only because I don't think Adebayor would've been dumb enough to have done something that against his former club and expect to get away with it. Then again, people say I'm a little too optimistic at times. Check out the video below to judge for yourself.