Some interesting news of note:

The Sun newspaper has the exclusive story and pictures of Chelsea dumping sand on their Stamford Bridge pitch 12 days before their important home leg against Barcelona in the Champions League. The move is bound to cause controversy and will add to the tense nature of the Barca-Chelsea matches of previous seasons.

Amazingly, The Daily Telegraph is reporting that the Premier League bung inquiry may result in zero illegal payments have been made to club officials, according to Premier League insiders.

Thanks to a tip-off from The Tokyo Toffeeman, BBC Sport has announced that they’re shutting down their sport message boards. One of the main reasons for the change is the online wars and abuse thrown at fans on the boards. We saw a glimpse of that recently on the EPL Talk Blog when irate Villa and Chelsea fans responded with adult language against the EPL Talk correspondent. Let’s hope the forthcoming EPL Talk message boards will be devoid of this type of abuse and language.

The Soccer Mad In America blog includes a clip of a forthcoming documentary about the German World Cup team. Although it’s in German, the trailer gives a fascinating insight into the German World Cup team.