The amount of money that passes hands in football between clubs in this country is usually huge but this year has not been the case. With clubs such as Portsmouth and Crystal Palace facing financial uncertainties, the red half of manchester revealing huge debt and clubs as big as Liverpool being told they have to sell before they can buy it’s no wonder this January’s transfer window showed the smallest amount of transfer revenue spent by English clubs for 7 years in this window. Less than £30m was spent between the English clubs this window compared to last season’s £170m, but we have to remember that £90m of that was spent by man City alone, but the year before that saw sales of £150m.

These are quite surprising stats when you consider that we have manchester city and Chelsea who are two of the richest clubs in the world and manchester united, who despite their huge debt, did rake in £80m just a few months ago from the sale of Cristiano Ronaldo. City fans were probably looking forward to a big name or two but their major purchase was the £7m purchase of Adam Johnson from Boro. This last minute purchase proved to be the biggest in the transfer window. A lot of clubs instead decided to go with loans. Clubs can no longer afford to take financial risk in signing players mid season and some clubs could really benefit from not having the wage bill to pay for their fringe players. These two attributes has meant that the market for loaning boomed last month. I cannot remember the loan system being used so much (unless you count Norwich Citys over use of it last year anyway). Big loan movers included mido to West Ham, Nicky Shorey to Fulham and Jack Wilshire to Bolton. We also saw a few noticable free transfers in the form or Sol Campbell to Arsenal and maxi Rodriguez to Liverpool.

The recession, which we are gradually getting out of, might not be solely to blame on the lack of transfer activity this January, after all it’s very difficult to sign players mid season. Just ask Arsene Wenger who claimed he tried to sign David Villa, which had he been successful would have doubled the amount the spent by clubs in the window. I am not a fan of the transfer window and neither are a lot of managers but I feel this trend of using the Janurary transfer window mainly for loans could be a trend, especially in world cup years where first team football is more important to the players than their wages. Phillipe Senderos is a prime example of this with his move to Everton. Clubs will now have to make do with the players they have for the next few months and some may have seen this window as a success and others may rue not being able to sign those extra players their clubs need.

This is my first ever review of a computer game. I am not a massive gamer but a couple of months ago I caved in and bought an XBOX 360. I only have a handful of games, the most recent being Brutal Legend. The game has plenty of good points and bad points so I thought it would make for an interesting review. What made me decide to get the game in the first place was it’s rock and roll links. The game is based around classic metal and features characters based on and voiced by Ozzy Osbourne and Lemmy to name a couple, the main character is voiced by Jack Black who also appears in the intro video. The main character is Eddie, one of the best roadies in the business, who gets crushed by falling stage scenery and is sent to another land where demons walk the earth and rock and roll influences are all around. All the human characters in this world look like rock stars or rock fans and some of the terrain features include a cliff face made from amps. In this world Eddie meets Ophelia, Lita and Lars who are fighting to free the rest of the human race who have become slaves to General Lionwhite. All the men, save for Lars in this world are headbangers who are made to mine with their heads. All the women are held caption in Lionwhites ‘pleasure tower’. Once the slaves have been freed and Lionwhite has been killed, the game unfolds further.

You have two main weapons which are a giant axe and your guitar, which in this world can shoot lightning when played. The game has a very old school feel about it. Running around slicing demons reminds me of the old playstation game, Medieval. The world map is very open and there are plenty of hidden secrets and side missions although the side missions are very repetitive and finding all the hidden secrets is tedious to say the least. This is similar but not as extreme as Oblivion, where the main story is just a small part of the game. I must also mention the music on this game. If you are into classic metal bands such as Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Judas Priest etc. then you wont be disappointed. The music on this game is simply great and fitting for the game.

The multiplayer mode is a mix between the main gameplay and a sort of command and conquer style gameplay. During the story of the single player you play various stage battles where you have a stage and merch booths and from these you can build units and lead them into battles against the enemies stage. This is essentially what the multiplayer is although you are not just limited to being Eddie and building his units.

Verdict: I would recommend this game to anyone who is into classic metal music and just want a casual fun game to play on. Be prepared to be driving about all over the world map, there are a few tedious moments and once you’ve done the story and side missions there isn’t much left apart from trying to find all the hidden secrets and the multiplayer which can get boring after a game or two.

Jonathan Ross has announced he is to leave the BBC after 13 years when his contract is up in July. Ross is one of BBCs highest paid presenters and is best known for his Friday night chat show, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and his Radio 2 show on Saturday mornings. I am a huge fan of Ross who has always striked me as someone people either love or hate, especially since the whole Andrew Sachs ‘incident’. It will be a shame to see Ross leave. It’s hard to imagine a TV schedule without him in it somewhere but I predict he will move onto even bigger things. There have been rumours that he may present in the US where I think he would be a huge success. If he does stay on UK soil and continues to present entertainment shows I reckon he will most likely go to channel 4 although it seems more likely he will go freelance and pop up from time to time. Of course there is also his wife who is a hollywood script writer so Ross might even dip his toe into those waters. The world really is his oyster but I wouldn’t be at all suprised if he has a break first. He is a family man who deserves a couple of years out to spend as much time with his family as he can. Either way leaving the BBC wont be the end of Jonathan Ross. Just a new start into another successful career.

Everyone is doing these ‘of the decade’ lists and as I’m a massive Gooner I thought I would share with you my Arsenal Team of the Decade.

GK – Jens Lehmann
Despite being a little bit crazy, Jens was a very consistent goalkeeper and his first season was the invicibles year. To not be on the losing side in a league game for your first seasons is very impressive indeed.

RB – Bacary Sagna
One of only two current players in my first XI, Sagna was a bit of a shock buy from a fans point of view. We had never heard of him, nor did we think we needed a new right back, but Sagna came in and has barely put a foot wrong since. The best right back to wear the shirt since Lee Dixon in my opinion.

LB – Ashley Cole
Despite hating him, there is no doubt that Cole has been the best left back Arsenal have had over the last 10 years. He is a local lad who came up from the youth ranks and straight into the first team which is a rare thing at the club. It was a shame he turned his back on the club.

CB – Sol Campbell
The best bit of Wenger business in the last 10 years. Sol Campbell arrived from local rivals Spurs on a free transfer and was a solid centre back during his time at the club, just as he was for Spurs. The highlight of his Arsenal career was scoring in the champions league final.

CB – Martin Keown
Keown was reaching the end of his career towards the early noughties but he still had a big part to play for the club. His experience was passed down to a lot of the younger players at the club. His reaction to Ruud Van Nistlerooys penalty miss will always stick in the memory.

RM – Freddie Ljungberg
Freddie was the only player to have red hair! If that’s not a good enough excuse to include him then maybe his impressive record of 48 goals from midfield for the club will. If not there is always his record of being the first player to score in two FA Cup finals in two years.

LM – Robert Pires
He started his Arsenal career slowly but ended up being the best winger at the club since Marc Overmars. Pires really was world class. His crossing was excellent and he could also score crackers from range.

CM – Patrick Vieira
Patrick really is an Arsenal legend. He replaced Tony Adams as captain of the club and he didn’t disappoint with the role. He was a solid player, a natural born leader and he could even score goals too. Any team with him in the middle would prove tough indeed.

CM – Cesc Fabregas
The second player from the current crop in this team. Cesc really is a little magician. He broke into the Arsenal team at just 16 and became the youngest captain under Arsene Wenger. One of the most gifted players in the world at the moment. His vision movement and goal scoring has been superb. The teams works around him and when he plays he offers a new dimension to the play. He is world class, and he is still only 22.

ST – Theirry Henry
Arsenals all time top goalscorer. Henry is easily the best out and out striker Arsenal have ever had. He had pace, vision and his finishing was the best. Before he left for Barcelona Henry had scored 174 goals in just 254 matches.

ST – Dennis Bergkamp
Dennis Bergkamp was the master. Most of the greatest Arsenal goals are credited to him. He really could make something out of nothing and his ball control, vision and finishing was of a different class.

Merry Christmas everyone. Have a good one.

After last years close attempt to get Jeff Buckley at number one instead of Alexandrea Burke it seems that there will be a yearly trend to try and stop the X Factor getting to Christmas number 1 and this year the song that the public are trying to get to number is Rage Against The Machine with Killing in The Name. I have purchased the song myself as I think it would be as hilarious as it would be fantastic to see the X Factor song not reach top spot. I have nothing against the guy who won the show but I have plenty against the Christmas number 1 being ruined by the X Factor. The christmas number one used to be a massive deal. It was a highlight of the chart year. Now it goes to whatever moron wins the X Factor regardless of singing talent or song. They could have got Jedward singing Ghostbusters and the morons who watch and vote for that awful show would buy it. The midweek charts showed that Rage were winning the race but I have a feeling when it comes to Sunday we will be disappointed. But lets not give up!

Buy it here

So after a long wait, Mozilla have finally released version 3 of it’s email client, Thunderbird. I use thunderbird for all my business emails and have never had a problem with it. It’s very simple to use and very quick. So what improvements have been made to an almost flawless program? Well Mozilla claim it is now even faster. Personally I have not really noticed much difference here but even if it loads a second faster that is still an improvement so I wont grumble. The first change the user will notice however are the tabs. Thunderbird now has Firefox style tabs however I don’t see much need for these, especially as when you write a new email it still brings it up in a new window.

One massive improvement is the simple creation of email accounts. For a regular computer user such as myself it has never been difficult setting up new emails but for more novice users it has been more challenging as they are not expected to know what their STMP settings are. Well now Thunderbird will look them up for you. All you need to know now is your email address and password and Thunderbird does the rest. It also asks for your password on initial setup of the account which is something i’ve always thought it lacked.

Another new feature is the improved search. Again, it is not something that I use much and when I do I usually do a basic search of subject titles or message content of recent emails. But if you’re looking for a certain email from a certain someone that contains a certain phrase then you can easily find the exact email you are looking for. Thunderbird lists the senders of the emails down the left hand pane and also displays a graph showing the months the emails were sent in. All this information of course, is stored in it’s own tab.

A more detailed list of the new features can be found here.

I think Thunderbird has taken a step backwards graphically. All the graphics and even the logo itself look more outdated than in the previous version. To me they give the whole program a feel of Windows 2000 and considering the program itself doesn’t use very many graphics anyway, I would have expected more effort to have been put into the few it does contain, or at least keeping the same would have been enough. Of course this doesn’t alter the performance of the program in any way and for me Thunderbird still remains the number 1 free email client in the world.

Once again the media have gone way over the top about a wrong decision by a referee and blaming a player for it. The player in question this time is Thierry Henry. If you play for Arsenal or used to, then if you do anythign wrong the media will blow it out of proportion and want your head on a spike. I’ve seen the incident, yes Henry handballed in the build up to France’s extra time goal but I don’t think it was that deliberate. Even if it was, some of the comments I have read are just embarassing for those who wrote them. Theirry Henry is one of the greatest players the English Premiership has ever seen and now people are calling him one of the biggest cheats in the game. I have even read someone calling Thierry ‘Scum of the earth’. That’s just pathetic. What if Henry had scored a goal that was offside? Would he be classed a cheat then? Of course not. Yet it’s the same principle, the referee and the officials got it wrong and they should be the ones to blame. How many more witch hunts will the media create just to sell their stupid tabliods now that they can’t actually sell newspapers for the news content anymore? The calls for a replay of the match are a bit silly really and it’s another international game that we can do without. Not letting Thierry Henry go to the world cup would be pathetic.

The referees are always in the spot light in football. What other sport do you see the officials getting things wrong in almost every game? Rugby have the benefits of a replay, tennis has introduced the challenge system so why can’t football just combine these two things so if a referee gets something wrong then it can be put right in seconds. Giving each team a number of challenges stop the game form having too many breaks in it but also allows teams contest poor refereeing. I’m sure more questions will be asked of FIFA from this incident.

It seems a bit weird to review an album that was first released 20 years ago but the new release of Bleach is different to the original and is worth a review. The album comes in a really nice digipack case with a booklet full of rare photos of the band in their early days. The album also contains a bonus live show which I expected would be on a bonus disc but it is added on to the end of the disc instead. The live show is from February 9th 1990 and was recorded at Pine Street Theatre in Portland. This show was available on a bootleg but it is not as good quality as it is on this disc. The only bad thing about this show is there is nothing special about it. It is just live performances of songs with no mid song banter and average crowd reaction. I would like to have seen a show such as the Vienna show from November 1989 which is widely known as THE best Bleach era Nirvana gig. The main highlight from the live show is that it contains the song Sappy, which is the best Nirvana song that was never released officially.

The first 13 tracks on the disc were the original release of Bleach plus the song Downer that was added in later releases of the album. Bleach is a favourite among many Nirvana fans because it is Nirvana at their rawest and punkiest sound. Apart from About A Girl all the tracks have destorted guitar, heavy bass and tinny drums. It really makes you realise just how polished their later albums were in comparison and this is the only album where you’ll really hear Nirvana sounding the way they always wanted to. For me personally there are not really any tracks on this album that stand above the rest. I really could not pick out the top 5 but songs such as School, Floyd The Barber and About A Girl really stood the test of time and were performed by Nirvana the most in their career.

Verdict: If you like Nirvana and don’t have Bleach then buy this album. If you love Nirvana and already have Bleach, buy this album anyway. If you want to get into Nirvana I suggest Nevermind or In Utero first.

If you are a fan of the Flight of the Conchords TV show then you will no doubt love this CD. The album contains songs from the second series of the cult musical comedy, and these songs definatly top those form the first series, and the first series had some very funny songs.

For those of you who are not familiar with the TV series you may find this CD a little odd but still enjoyable. There are many different varieties of musical genres throughout this album from the bands attempted rapping in the opening track Hurt Feelings to a dark 80’s sound in Fashion is Danger, with vocals that sound slightly like Marilyn Manson and a cheesey reference to Thatcher and Reagan. You are also treated to an odd Russian styled track called Petrov, Yelyena And Me which in the TV show has an odd video to match.

The lyrics in all of the songs are not just amusing but also on the verge of genius. Rambling Through The Avenues of Time and Carol Brown are prime examples of the skillful and clever song writing the band frequently produce, although that could easily be said about the other tracks too.

Verdict: These guys may not be to everyone’s liking but they are certainly to mine. You have to get the humour to really appreciate them and I highly recommend watching the TV show first. If you enjoy the second series of the show you will find it hard not to buy this.