And here I come, crawling back like a puppy with his tail between his legs…

I know it’s been a seriously long time since I last posted.  I can only offer a few pitiful excuses involving moving half-way around the world and taking a new teaching job, but in the end they’re still just excuses.  I’ve missed you all.

Just because I’ve been horribly busy doesn’t mean I’m that far out of the loop though.  I’ve been keeping up as best as I can and there are definitely a few things happening that are worthy of my glorious return to the blog-o-sphere.

First, and in my opinion most exciting, is the return of Andriy Shevchenko to A.C. Milan.  I was not a huge fan of his move to Chelsea in the first place, and mourned his dip in form as the aforementioned London club sucked the soul out of one of the truly skilled and class players of our lifetime.  I don’t know why he made the move in the first place, and I’m not going to go into that kind of speculation, but the Blues were obviously not the place for him.  Was it the club or the English game?  I think it was the club…others might argue otherwise.  I hope that Sheva can return to pre-Chelsea form, and I suspect that if he can the Rossoneri’s other players will follow suit and they will be an extremely dangerous team this campaign.

The other interesting piece of news that I’ve been following the past few days is the LA Galaxy’s swoop on Bruce Arena after having fired Alexi Lalas and Ruud Gullit having left the squad mid-season.  Arena is a coach that I have gone back and forth on over the past 10 years or so as he lead DC United, the USMNT, and the NY Red Bulls.  At times he seems like the strong figure a team, and certain players, have needed to draw the best out of them.  At his worst he has been overly conservative and predictable.  Given the strange composition of the Galaxy squad to start with I think Arena’s tenure will probably get off to a bit of a rocky start until he’s able to get more of the defensive players he wants.  He made, in my opinion, a great move getting rid of Carlos Ruiz for more defensive help.  If Arena can’t get that squad into some form of defensive discipline, maybe it’s time to think about ditching some of the stars and re-building from the ground.