Its Champions League week again and tonight United played AaB Aalborg. They won 3-0 with an overall decent performance. They created lots of chances and really should have scored more. Rooney got the first and Berbatov got the other two. It was good for Berbatov to score and gain some confidence. However, his overall play was a slow and lazy. It did get better after he scored the goals but still could have put a bit more effect. He did seem to be suffering from lack of confidence in the first half when he should have scored with a very good chance.

The ref was overall “OK”. Some strange decisions though like giving their goalkeeper a yellow card for taking goal kick in slightly the wrong position and their defender Pedersen not even getting a card and all of his fouls!!
Frustrating

There were some excellent performances on the pitch but some poor ones. I have already mentioned Berbatov but also Nani. This season he is even more frustrating with his ending shooting attempts when he should be passing. Hes even more selfish than Ronaldo was when he joined! He needs to improve quickly!!! (He still has a place in my heart after the crucial penalty he took in the Champions League final in May). The players who played well in particular were Rooney, Rio, Evra and Rafael. Ronaldo did pretty well too but isnt quite 100% yet. (When Tevez came on for Rooney he did well as usual for another all action performance).

Injuries

United now lead the table with 4 points and a 3-0 win away from home is a good result. However, United got some injuries. Scholes has some sort of knee ligament damage and it could be a few weeks out. Also Rooney went off injured but didnt look as serious and was apparently a pre-caution. Rafael went off injured but I dont think its that serious.

This weekend is the first ever night time F1 grand prix and its in Singapore. Looking at the photos online it looks amazing!! The actual race will be at 1pm UK time which is 8pm local time. The F1 drivers have been sticking to a European time so it means sleeping at 4am and waking up about 12pm. It also means having breakfast at lunch time and dinner at past midnight.

Its going to effect some drivers differently. Mark Webber is an early morning person it will properly effect him a lot. However Kimi Raikonnen, who has a reputation for sleeping in till late and being up late may have less problems!!

Also the body itself will automatically adjust to the local time. The Toyota doctor Riccardo Ceccarelli said that “The human body has evolved so that we’re active during daylight and asleep at night. He also said “It will be very hard to keep European time because the production of hormones such as cortisone and melatonin is related to daylight, so their bodies will start to adapt to local time”. No matter what it should be an interesting race and hopefully lots of overtaking. If it rains it will be even better for action and to see how the rain effects the drivers with the spray and possible glare.

Qualifying is tomorrow but in the final practice Alonso was the fastest with Hamilton 2nd. Jenson Button was 8th fastest. Hopefully he can improve in qualifying.

United played Chelsea today at Stamford Bridge. The game ended 1-1. Before the game I would have taken a draw as United havent been playing very well at all this season and Chelsea are flying. United took the lead after good play from Evra and Rooney with Park finishing. Chelsea, who were without Deco (and Calvalho for most of the game), equalised with about 10 minutes to go. It all came from a freekick they would after Rooney dived in abit as he sometimes does. It was poor defending though when keeper Kuszczak (Van Der Sar went off injured) should have done better. It was also poor marking by United too as Kalou had a free header. I think it was Berbatov who was supposed to be marking him.

United played well for most of the first half but in the 2nd half Chelsea were the better team. Rio Ferdinand was brilliant. Park and Hargreaves worked hard provided protection for the defence against the full backs. Scholes was rubbish though (looked like he wanted to get himself sent off) and the way its going this could well be his last season for United. Neville tried his best but seems to have lost some pace after all his injuries.

In the second half Ronaldo came on and Park came on (for O’Shea). This meant that Ashley Cole on the Chelsea left had more freedom to attack as no Park to provide cover and Ronaldo isnt the type of player to track back. I think it was a mistake really. I know Park has only recently come back from injury back he looked like he still could have continued running. I would have put Ronaldo on and taken Berbatov off who was very very poor. He didnt do anything really. Its only 2 games and they have been against 2 of the big 4 (Liverpool and Chelsea) but hes done nothing to justify the £30m. Before we signed him I thought he was a good player BUT was lazy and had an attitude problem. I hope I am wrong!!!

Ronaldo played his first premier league game of the season and had a couple good runs but lost the ball and still not quite match fit I think.

As with all Chelsea v United games there was some “controversy”. First there was the no. of yellow cards issued. United had 7, Chelsea just the 1. Park said he thought maybe a couple were yellow but not the rest. It wasnt that type of game at all and Mike Riley really was card happy!! A poor poor performance by the ref. Also there was a penalty claim from Chelsea but even Scolari didnt think it was a penalty.

In other games in the premier league, Manchester City beat Portsmouth 6-0!!! It was both an excellent perfomance by City, and a poor one of Portsmouth. With all the Brazilian players in the City team they now play with abit of flair especially Robinho. Lots of stepovers, backheels and flicks. Will be interesting to see how they do this season.

Newcastle and Spurs season continues to worsen with Newcastle losing and Spurs drew against Wigan. Spurs are firmly at the bottom of the Premier League table with Newcastle a couple points above them. Newcastle’s game was against West Ham. It was the first game managed by new manager Gianfranco Zola and they played really well. I hope West Ham do well because I think Zola. A great player.

If you didnt know Joomla is a content management system (CMS). Its the most popular CMS with its roots going back to the year 2000. There are over 200,000 community users and contributors.

So far for the web sites I have developed the CMS I have used have pretty much all been hand-coded using PHP and MySQL. (I have also used Dreamweaver templates and the actual software Adobe Contribute).

I have decided to look into it and create a site using Joomla and this will be an extra service I provide.

Travis Barker, who if you didnt know was the drummer in Blink 182 (one of my favourite bands), was involved in a plane crash yesterday. 4 people died and 2 survived included Travis. The other person was his friend DJ AM. His assistant and also his security guard were among the people to unfortunately die.

The latest is that they suffered second and third degree burns but are expected to make a full recovery. Theire condition is described as “critical but stable”. The doctor said that Travis was burned on his torso and lower body. DJ AM (whos real name is Adam Goldstein) was burned on his hands and part of his head. He also said that their injuries could take up to a year to heal.

My thoughts go out to all the family and friends involved in this and hope Travis and DJ AM get better soon.

The Paralympics in Beijing finished recently but I only watched little bits of it. Unlike the Olympics the coverage wasnt on all the time. Team GB did really well, better than in the Olympics. Team GB came 2nd (42 golds, 29 silvers, 31 bronzes) with China coming in 1st. Well done!!! Heres the final medal table:

Pos | Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total
1 | China | 89 | 70 | 52 | 211
2 | Great Britain | 42 | 29 | 31 | 102
3 | USA | 36 | 35 | 28 | 99
4 | Ukraine | 24 | 18 | 32 | 74
5 | Australia 23 | 29 | 27 | 79

With the Labour Party soon to arrive for the conference – more than 17,000 delegates will be flooding into the city from late tonight – I am now living in the middle of the cordon area which has been setup. Since I live pretty much next door to the venue for the conference all sorts of barriers and fences have been put up.

With all these delegates I am not sure where they are all staying but I think it may be Radisson next to Manchester Central as lots of police are around it including a police tent thing at the entrance. Some will properly be staying at the Midland hotel which is nearby.

I have already mentioned in an earlier post about loads of police about but today there is even more and even more roads blocked and closed. I have read in the Manchester Evening News that about 1,100 police officiers will be policing the area each day.

I took a walk at lunch time to check it out and even more barriers have sprung up!! When I walk out the main entrance of the building there is a fence right infront and I have to walk ALL the way around it. I took a few photos while I was out and these are on my Flickr account. (I may upload to FB).

It seems that someone has hacked into Sarah Palin’s personal email address and posted images of her inbox. This has happened around the same time as questions have been asked about Sarah Palin using her personal email to conduct state business.

US law states that all emails relating to official government business must be archived and not destroyed. Since its her personal email (Yahoo Mail) they can of course be deleted.

The RAC Foundation has wasted time and properly money testing some people to see how texting influenced their driving!!! I could have told them that when texting (i.e. not looking at the road) you are more likely to crash.

It apparently slowed reaction time by 35% and impairs driver more than if some was over drinking limit or on drugs.

I hate it when people waste time and money researching things like this!!! The RAC Foundation also said that “Nearly 50% of drivers aged between 18 and 24 texted while driving”. If thats right, thats a shocking statistic! I wonder if its when actually driving or does it include if I traffic lights or in a traffic jam??

John Terry has had his red card he received at the weekend rescinded after an appeal to the FA. The referee, Mark Halsey, gave Terry a red card for “serious foul play” and NOT a “professional foul”. Chelsea were complaining about the fact that Terry should not have got a red card because he was not the last defender. However, the position of other placement was irrelevent because the red card was for “serious foul play”.

Under FA regulations, a “serious foul play” can’t be downgraded from red to yellow on appeal and a red card can only be rescinded if the referee, upon reviewing the incident, admits that he made an error. However, the ref rightly stood by his decision.

This means Terry has got away with cynically bringing down a player without even a yellow card!! OK, it wasnt really a “rugby tackle” like some people are saying but he certainly used his arm to try and grab part of the City player.

It now also means Terry will be able to play Chelsea’s next game – against United!!!

As you would expect Sir Alex Ferguson is not too happy!