football focus - THE BIG GAME

Hi there,

Plenty of excitement in north london where Chelski will be visiting the Emirates Stadium,this Sunday for the first ever time. Chelsea cannot cannot afford to not win or else they'll surrender their title on that very day. Man Utd will face a tricky task against city rivals Man City. Man City has always been a nemesis for Man Utd.
So it's 2 very significant derbies over the weekend.

I've got special guests in today's "The Big Game".


fabby: Glad to have u guys on the show tonight.

fabby: Chelsea got to overcome their ChampsLeague heartache quickly to get a result against Arsenal. Or they'll just give the title to Man Utd..
Anyway, lets just digress and talk about the game this morning. Chelsea won't really themselves and Mascherano was having a game of his night.

des: Mascherano's all along a good player. he was linked to arsenal at one time..

boon: Garcia, benitez, arbeloa, xabi, they all speak spanish, communicates well with mascherano.. he got friends there..

fabby: yeah...he screwed himself when he went to westham. and he made a mockery over his transfer. But, he was simply outstanding throughout the whole night. Des would be slightly disappointed that pool went through. U were rooting for Chelsea wasn't it?

des: yeah..wad to do? when the penalty shootout came..i knew pool were gonna win it..

fabby: yeah..excellent penalty record... now its 10 shootout wins out of 11.

boon: liverpool is a cup team... but i rather man utd to face chelsea in the final than liverpool.

fabby: man utd in a strong position to go thru, but it is still anybody's game. Des and I of course would be supporting milan. But now, lets just get back to the big game on sunday. Boon, from the display, do u think Chelsea was trying to hold back against liverpool to get a result against Arsenal on Sunday?

boon: i would say no..look at the lineup against bolton.6 regulars rested against bolton..if they wanted the league..why rest? they want the CL...more than anything else

fabby: yeah... roman's dying for the CL trophy..

boon: if this weekend lose arsenal...den the decision to rest against bolton for liverpool will prove to be mourinho's worst ever...

des: if arsenal beats chelsea this sunday, its as good as arsenal helping man utd to lift the premiership trophy.

boon: i'll be cheering for arsenal...for the first time!! Go Ade!!!!

fabby: Man Utd won't be having it easy as well against city rivals... Man City

boon: Man City's purpose in the premiership is just to perform well in 2 games in a season. Perform well at Old Trafford and perform well at home against Man Utd.

fabby: With the performances lately from Chelsea, its hard to see Chelsea getting points at the Emirates... However, being Chelsea, they are a force to be reckoned with.
here's why:




fabby: I still miss the good old days where times were just much simpler. When the EPL had no mourinho...good ol' houllier and ranieri...
Thanks Des, Boon for being on the show..we'll meet again next week to provide more coverage on the latest events... before we end the show... let's reminiscence the good old days when arsenal had real centrebacks...The Arsenal vs Man Utd game... battle of 2 defenders

Other than the legendary back four 90s.. gunners had the alternative back five in the 00's..
Of course Cashley Cole..i mean Ashley chole has left the Gunners crossing over to stamford bridge.

fabby: Despite all the cash support from the Sugar 'Roman' Daddy, Jose failed to deliver Roman's greatest thirst... the Champions League Trophy... Out of the big four in the EPL.. chelsea has never made it into the final.... and after this morning's knockout.. The 'Special One' may find himself alone in Stamford Bridge and may soon be heading towards the exit.
Come'on u gunners.... its time to wipe that smug grin off Mr. Moan-rinho's face.

northen monkey? southern fairy?

I was at the bar on saturday watch arsenal playing against tottenham scums. Well, as most of u would have known, the result was 2-2. A very disappointing result. We could have won it if those 3 shots that hit the post could have gone in the net. Arsenal has been so unlucky in front of goal this season. Against liverpool was the same story, hitting the post 3 times as well. Anyway the essence of this isn't gonna be the review of how the scums can be proud of their performance despite not winning, and draw against under-strength gunners is a magnificent achievement. Scums fans, listen, you have not beaten arsenal, not since nov 1999 when arsenal lost 2-1 away.. Try harder next season, but your efforts will just be as futile, cos the game on saturday showed the gulf between your team and the gunners.. despite the result. Ok, back to what i wanna say, i'm digressing again.

I was at the bar, and there were English-Gooners among the crowd. When Jenas scored the injury time equaliser, the bar erupted. (Due to the fact there were more neutral fans who wanted to see goals and drama) So, there was this jackass at the end of the bar who decided to tease the english-gooner.

jackass: "F*** Off Arsenal!"
So one gooner wasn't too particular happy about the comments made by that jackass.

angry-gooner: "Oh Yeah? How long did u all need to score?"

jackass: "At least an englishman scored! I don't even support spurs,i'm from middlesbrough"

angry-gooner: "Northen Monkey!"

jackass: "Southern Fairy!" (and the jackass left the bar)

Hahaha.. people often say football unites the world, mm yeah... but now it seems to me it can divide a country too.. English fans (I mean real english-english fans), they seem to be blaming their international woes on clubs like arsenal, whose first eleven including the bench can be made up of non-englishmen.

I wonder if blame is a natural reaction of an englishmen..

Poor World Cup showing?... Blame the heat in Germany!
Poor World Cup showing?... Blame Becks!
English managers struggling with first team?... Blame the 'major club' s' managers
Rooney's broken metatarsal?... Blame on the boots!
England's exit in world cup against portugal? Blame C.Ronaldo!
Problems with english football?... Blame the foreigners!
blame the arsenal's lack of trust in english talent, blame lampard's penalty miss, blame sven's poor management, blame becks poor showing, blame ronaldo's invisible card flash, blame portugal dirty play, blame this, blame that.

Seems that the blame culture runs in the country's footballing setup.
But let's just face a simple fact.. England is just as good as Holland or Spain can be.. No doubt, england has the best football league in the world (my opinion). Just like Spain, they have a tough league, but the spaniards hasn't delivered in the international stage. I really wonder why England think's they'll win the world cup every time? They can't beat Sweden for nearly 40 years, and sweden doesn't have a strong league like the EPL.. Swedish players are making it big outside sweden. Who have England got who succeed outside the EPL? Hargreaves maybe, but he'll most likely come to the premiership next season in a red outfit. France, Brazil, they're all recent worldcup winners who has done well without a strong domestic league. (with exception for italy) But even italians has made it big out of the EPL..e.g. Zola. But who (English) has really made it out of England?


In my opinion, England's woes are simple. LACK OF TALENT. Can anyone tell me other than 1966, has England ever really dominated the international scene? In 1986, Maradona single handedly danced through the english midfield,defence, and rounded Shilton to score... In 1994, England wasn't even in the World Cup. Euro 96 was one of the better performance from England but still not good enough to beat the would be champions Germany...southgate was the poor scapegoat then.. Before 1996, the EPL was dominated by english players wasn't it? And foreign players was scarce.. Who did they blame for their non-international dominance then? The standard between 10, 20 years ago and now hasn't much changed.. the standard has always been the same. England are a strong team..but not a super power like Brazil or Argentina..
You can blame Arsenal for not giving local youths or local players enough chance. Would u prefer a 300k Fabregas or a 18million Carrick? Arsenal do not have the financial might like Man Utd or Chelsea.. We can just splurge on an unknown talent for 20million. Even Arsenal's up and coming young english star, Walcott, may end up with a total transfer of not less than 15million.
English players are too over-priced and most certainly, England are over-rated.

So why are english football players so expensive? Maybe its a supply and demand thing.. many fans seem to want successful english players in their teams, complaining too many non-english players in the EPL.. and they're only limited decent ones out there.. Therefore, when a club comes sniffing around, they jack up the price up to an obscene amount because they know they can get away with it just because the player's english.

So how about blaming english fans (like the jackass mentioned above) for england's international woes? ;P

P.S. came across an interesting pic

so now who's really to blame?

qian li zhi wai in melbourne

Title: Qian Li Zhi Wai
Artiste: Fabby and Lixian
Venue:KBox, La Trobe St, Melbourne

enjoy...

post easter withdrawal symptoms

argh... been suffering from the after holidays withdrawal symptoms. How i wish i could have the super ability like Hiro, to able to freeze time. (Hiro from Heroes) Time always sprints pass so quickly whenever u don't want him to. And when u want Time to pass quickly, it seems that Mr.Time seems to be taking his own sweet time.
Anyway, i really had a great time during the easter break. I can only complain it being too short...

After being detached from assignments and school work for the whole week, its back to reality once more..sigh..
Mr. Time, if u're reading this post, please slow time down yea? I wanna have more time for my assignments.

fabby & mohammed goes to monee pond

*Think Harold and Kumar goes to whitecastle*
Yeah... just like the movie, we went looking for some place in monee pond, kipling street to be exact. We were hungry, we were cold, we were quite lost. We were looking for a place without a map. But somehow we found our way there after half an hour.. We went into a small street, a followed a scent of bbq smell..... yeah..the scent... led us to the place..
I was still contemplating at first whether or not to go, cos it was the first time i tried to cook my fried rice and i've already cooked. In the end, wat the heck, i just kept my fried rice in a container and headed out with mo after the lecture.

That's mo..

The lovely hosts Steve and Anna

Steve and Anna are from the Tyneside, Newcastle and i had to ask them whehter it was alright if i was in the gooner shirt..haha..yeah..they were cool with it.

The food was good and really gotta thank Anna for that and being such a lovely host!


I really got to put the next pic up... u don't really get to see this all the time. I bet those guys hired to stick the labels on the bottle were drinking at work.. it was obvious they were drunk at work. Fun working environment?

yeah... all the walk to anna's house was worth every single bit...

moomba water fest 2007

Met up with my mates on monday night. it was a public holiday anyway, labour day..had a long weekend. So we made our way to the Yarra River to watch the fireworks. Yesterday was cancelled due to strong winds so we had our fingers crossed while sitting down waiting for the the fireworks to start.

Took some photos to kill time.

Oops.. how on earth did it happen? It was really unintentional..

We sat on the riverbank and it was the first time ever being so near to a firing area(not including mortar and the gigantic guns during my army days). The firing area was floating on platforms on the yarra river.
Right, so the first shot was exactly at 9.30pm. The firedisplay in the night sky was absolutely brilliant!!

4 happy lads...

first march weekend

I know its kinda late with this entry. This entry was supposed to be last week's (3rd march to 4th march) but i've been so lazy to blog.. haha.. so the entry today is for last week... Well, today's been quite happening..however today's entry have totally nothing to do with what happened this weekend. Its just solely on last week.

3rd of March, Mabel had to work, so poor thing, birthday still had to work, but hahaha...was she in for a surprise on that day... went walking around in chapel street and went Crown Casino... Julius wore a "Fu" shirt, he thinks that it can bring him luck.


The outcome? Nah...dun wanna talk about it..so embarrassing... haha
Saw the "Fu"? Its upside down somemore...Fierce...

Thats Aloysius and me on the bridge overseeing Yarra River... We were on our way to Crown.


Crown Casino happened to have this Ferrari Annivarsary Exhibition going on..So took the chance to take with a vintage Ferrari..There were plenty more, but this was my fav.. old school, like the ones u see in the good ol' western movies travelling on the highway..


SummerFest 07

I wonder why its called summerfest in the first place cos its the end of summer and autumn's coming really really soon.. Its organised by the Singapre Student Association. So students from all over melbourne (Monash, Rmit, Melbourne Uni) came down to RMIT university (host for the event). So here's a chance to show u the exterior of my school.. Tadah..


There's plenty of free food..hahaha... so settled my dinner there.. and socialised around.. played games..The game was like a quiz lar.. There was this question..

"Can anyone tell me who was the 2007 ASEAN CUP Top scorer?"
I looked around, everyone looked stunned.. (I wonder why) .. so i just raised up my hand..
"Noh Alam Shah"
"Correct!!"

Hahaha... so i got miself a $10 voucher from Borders.. Well done Fabby..