If you see a troll, please do not feed that troll, no matter how tempting it is. Notify one of the four of us and we'll take care of it.

If you are a troll, please take your trolling elsewhere. We don't come to your house and take a dump on your carpet, and we request the same courtesy from you. Friendly banter is fine, but dropping by solely for the purpose of pissing people off is not.

If you are a member here and feel the need to troll someone else's blog, please don't. It reflects badly on TSF as a whole.

One of the cardinal rules of this site is, to paraphrase, "don't be an ass". That applies to guests as well as regulars.

Thank you.

Hey look everyone! The Champions League is back this week! Arsenal play Milan in the away leg of this Round of 16 tie, and while I can't admit to being all that knowledgeable about Milan, because I don't pay attention to Italian soccer, Amy Lawrence at The Guardian seems to think that this might just be the best possible time to be facing them.

Here's Arsene Wenger, being modest on the official site.

Lukas Podolski has said he wants to leave Cologne this summer. London is lovely! North London is the best part of London!

Hey look, it's happening again. Let the sports world's most annoying dance begin!

Per Mertesacker tweeted a pic of his banged-up ankle. I have a whole photo gallery of this type of picture of my own ankles over the years - I was expecting Mertesacker's to be a lot worse, to be honest.

Emmanuel Frimpong is done for the year after shredding his knee at Wolves.

So long again, Thierry.

And finally, another, less negative look at Andrei Arshavin's Arsenal career so far.

Have a splendiferous day.

Our little red-and-white corner of these here internets is growing a bit, and with that growth comes an acknowledgement that things might need a little structure, in order to grow the site in a way that works for the vast majority of people. So, we thought it would be time to lay out the heretofore-unwritten rules of participation and commenting on The Short Fuse.

I promise they won't be onerous, and in most cases they won't be any different from the way the site currently operates and self-polices. It seemed like it would be useful to have them all in one place, so when someone new comes along, we can point them rules-ward if they have questions.

So, with that said, let's dive in, shall we?

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The old OT was making my ancient work browser asplode in terror, so here's a new one. I gave the topic away in the title, though. I don't like winter. Or, to be precise, I don't like never seeing the sun from October until April (or so it seems). So I cope by going away on trips - Hawaii last year, a cruise to Mexico leaving Saturday. Normally my trips aren't that extravagant, but I have to have at least one stretch of winter time where I can see some sun and feel some warmth on my skin.

What is your strategy for coping with winter? Do you just hunker down and drink your way through it, only re-emerging on July 4th, or do you not mind the short days and rain? If you live where "winter" means 70 degree instead of 90-100 degree days, do you miss the extra heat or do you like the break?

Sad beer news: My local Fred Meyer is out of Jubelale. BOOOOOOO

I don't know if you heard or not, but Arsenal lost yesterday. I know! Third loss in a row! Crazy, right? Anyway, there were a number of things that came out of that game, and are coming out now that Arsenal have lost three games in a row, that are interesting and warrant further discussion, and here I am to tackle one of them. Sorry, boys and girls - detailed discussion of Wenger's substitution patterns will have to wait for another post. Today, I want to talk about booing.

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We all saw it. We talk about it in the upcoming podcast (SPOILER ALERT: Not happily!). I have no need to recap it. It was ugly. This is a known fact. There have been many Arsenal losses in my time as an Arsenal fan that I could just shrug off, say "eh, they had a bad day", and think that the next game would bring a turnaround, and that Arsenal would play like Arsenal again. This one, though, felt different.

Those of you who know me - or even those of you who only internet-know me - know that there are two things about sports that I hate. One is the whole "WE HAVE TO SPEND MONEY TO WIN" canard (you don't! You really don't! Just ask the Tampa Bay Rays!), and the other is rosterbation. I absolutely loathe the whole "let's get X player and do this with him" discussion that is rampant in American sports, because almost none of the floated trades/roster construction conversations ever has any basis in reality, and it's supremely uninteresting to me. I realize that makes me a minority in the sports-fan world, but there we are.

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After Arsenal's loss to Fulham earlier in the week, the wolves came out. These particular wolves had CLUB IN CRISIS written all over them (note to the good folks at PETA: this is a metaphor. A very bad one, too), and if you listened to certain quarters of the internet and the wider soccer media, Arsenal are on the verge of imploding and will become a chess club next season because they obviously can't compete at soccer any more.

Then something I read today caught my eye.

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(NB: Thanks to a somewhat hectic holiday schedule, I am writing this preview early - like December 26 early - so if anything seems out of date because I forgot to update it prior to posting, please let me know and I will happily fix it and provide a prompt, prorated refund of your subscription price. That's the kind of customer service that sets The Short Fuse apart, people.)

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It's getting close to Christmas, which means only one thing. Christmas plans. Or lack of same. Which I guess is two things, but there we are. Anyway. What are your Christmas plans? Staying close to home, or going over the river and through the woods?

What about Christmas traditions? There's all the common ones, but what are some of your family's strange/awesome/funny Christmas traditions?

Last but not least, it's winter, which is my least favorite season but my favorite time of year for beers. Any favorite winter beers you've had yet this year?

If you've been to the Emirates, no doubt the first thing you said when you got there is "Man, this place is great, but it just doesn't have enough statues out in front of it". Which is understandable, I guess, but what other club helpfully tells you, in case you weren't sure, what team you're about to see before you go into the stadium? How much more could you want?

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Arsenal have, as we all know by now, drawn Leeds United in the third round of my favorite competition, the FA Cup. More recent Arsenal fans might not know this, but Leeds United are the embodiment of all that is ugly and wrong with soccer and parents should steer their kids away from being Leeds fans just like they steer their kids away from talking to balding old men who lurk at the edge of the playground in a windowless white van. Why? I'm glad you asked!

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Hot lineup goodness:

Arsenal: Fabianski, Djourou, Squillaci, Koscielny, Miquel, Frimpong, Coquelin, Benayoun, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Park, Chamakh.

Subs: Mannone, Yennaris, Vermaelen, Eastmond, Ozyakup, Gervinho, Arshavin

Manchester City: Pantilimon (who?), Onuoha, Savic, Kolo Toure, Zabaleta, Johnson, de Jong, Twat, Hargreaves, Kolarov, Dzeko.
Subs to follow: Richards, Bridge, Taylor, Aguero, Suarez, Rekik, Razak

Turns out this match is happening.  Who knew?  They should put out a schedule or something.

So as we all know by now, Arsenal, club in crisis, beat West Brom and didn't really break too much of a sweat doing so.  Think about that for a minute, and try to remember - when was the last time Arsenal won a game that they were expected to win, and won it comfortably? 

One of the things about recent Arsenal is that they don't really follow a map.  If they need to get from point A to point G, they'll generally go A, C, F, socks, vacuum cleaner, toothpaste, D, B, E, G.  Sure, they get there, but it's a trip fraught with unnecessary nerves and tension and detours that make Billy from the Family Circus look like the most focused person in the world.  At this point, I would like to apologize to everyone for making a Family Circus reference, and promise that I will not now start talking about Garfield.  I DON'T KNOW WHO I AM ANY MORE

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(warning: settle in, this is long)

I think we can all agree that MLS refereeing, on a good day, can best be described as "mediocre".  On a bad day, well, this is a family blog and most families don't swear like mine do so I'll refrain.  The thing about this particular rant about referees, though, is that it's not just a "the refs hate my favorite team!  There's a bias!" rant - MLS refs are awful, across the board and against all teams.

The big question is, what to do about it?

To answer that question, you first need to know one fact:  MLS does not control the referees that work MLS games.  The league's referees are supplied by the US Soccer Federation, who are responsible for training, evaluating, and ensuring referees in the US are fit (in all senses of the word) to be referees.  So, as it stands right now, MLS doesn't have a whole lot of power or control over its refereeing corps - USSF says this ref and crew is in charge of that game this week, and this game next week, and that's how it is.

This model worked great when MLS was a nascent league that nobody really watched where nothing much was at stake.  MLS needed to focus its resources (both time and money) on growing the league itself, making sure people watched it and stayed interested, and making sure the league would remain viable for the long term and wouldn't flame out the way the NASL did.  So the last thing they needed to worry about was overseeing a referee corps.  USSF is charged with growing soccer as a whole in the country, not just MLS, so you'd think they'd want to ensure that their referees are as good as any in the world.

But here we are, 16 years later, and MLS is on the cusp of an NHL-style success; MLS won't ever get to the same popularity level as the NFL, but they're carving out a really nice niche for themselves and have gone away from their birth strategy, and are now trying to expand awareness and appreciation of MLS beyond the hard-core fan out to the broader American sports landscape.  The problem is, the referees are still inadequate.

There are too many incidents to list here, and it is a damning list - the two that jump out to me from Timbers home games alone are the time the referee blew the whistle to end the first half when the Timbers had the ball on the ground right outside the six-yard box and were poised to score (I can't remember whether it was against Colorado or the Wiz), which while it may be within the letter of the law would never be done anywhere else in the world, and the now-infamous Thierry Henry red card, for a little tiny slap on the back of the head that at best should have been a caution, not even a card.

Every team in MLS has similar stories, as well - this is a league-wide problem.  The question is, what to do about it?

First off, MLS should take control of its own refereeing corps.  It should hire and evaluate referees, and institute quality standards for those referees so that they are held to the highest possible standards by the league.  MLS should have a refereeing "department", for lack of a better word, that is solely responsible for hiring, training, and evaluating referees, and ensuring those refs continue to meet FIFA standards and evolve with the game.

MLS should also professionalize its referees if they aren't already (I can't tell on the USSF site whether MLS-level referees are professional or not).  Making refereeing its own job, as opposed to having part time referees who have to hold down day jobs, allows for better development of a referee corps and more consistent training and development, as referees don't have to fit in training seminars or classes around another job.

In most major soccer-playing countries, the referees' association also has a review board of some sort.  In England, that board consists of the FA's head of refereeing, the chief executives of both the Premier League and the Football League, and the refereeing chiefs from both leagues.  This board is the body responsible for week-to-week evaluation of referees as well as the general world of refereeing - members of the board attend games every week, and each referee meets with the board every two weeks to evaluate their performance and educate/train as necessary.  I see no reason that MLS could not do the same thing, especially since there's only one league here (as opposed to most European countries, where the top league is usually a separate professional entity from the second division on down).

Once all that infrastructure is in place, MLS should then institute some sort of Monday review panel for controversial decisions from the last week.  There is currently no right of appeal for red cards, for instance, and with an institutional review panel that could change.  The panel could also go the other direction - retroactively applying discipline where it was missed by the referee.  Working in tandem with the referees, this board would be able to make for a more consistent disciplinary force in the league - it could say "hey referees this thing you miss all the time needs to be called" and would have both video evidence and the power to enforce what it decides.

So that's my ridiculously long look at what the state of MLS refereeing could be.  What do you think?  Are you content with MLS refereeing as it is, or would you like to see changes?

First of all I would like to apologize for bumping the Golden Corral off the top of the page.

If you know me, or even if you only online-know me, you'll probably know that I really, really hate internationals.  I like the World Cup just fine, it's a lot of fun to watch, but I really don't care about the European Championships at all.  A World Cup?  For just Europe?  WHEEEEEEzzzzzzzzzz.  Not only that, but the endless, interminable qualifiers for each of those tournaments just drive me insane.  But why, you ask?  A couple reasons.

The first reason I don't like them is the way it can drive players to exhaustion.  Top players on top teams play in multiple cup competitions, a league competition, and then they're also expected to play in international competitions on top of that.  For a player that is a regular in the starting lineup of a national team, they are faced with the task of playing soccer for almost two straight years, with only about six weeks total off - the 2011/12 season goes from July through May, then a couple weeks off, then that player joins the national team, plays a tournament that goes from mid-June to mid-July, takes three weeks off, then plays again from July 2012 to May 2013.  

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A rather unremarkable day, Sept 30th of 1996.  According to Wikipedia, who ought to know, nothing happened that day. Wikipedia, however, is stupid, because a very, very big thing happened that day.  

George Graham was an Arsenal legend.  227 appearances and 60 goals for Arsenal, and some other stuff for some other teams but whatever (he ended his playing career with the California Surf!).  After retiring as a player, Graham coached at Crystal Palace and QPR before getting the managerial gig at Millwall in 1982.  After several successful years there, Arsenal took notice - they had fired Don Howe in March of 1986, and Graham was made manager at that point.

The accomplishments of George Graham's Arsenal were immense.  Two First Division titles, including one you may have heard of; An FA Cup, two League Cups, and a European Cup Winners' Cup.  So it's fair to say that when Graham was fired, in February of 1995, for accepting bribes in the signing of players, there were some big, big shoes to fill.  Stewart Houston saw out 1995, and then Arsenal appointed Bruce Rioch.

Rioch was unremarkable - he lasted a season, and didn't accomplish a whole lot.  He did, however, manage to make a mark as the guy who signed Dennis Bergkamp to an Arsenal contract.  He left after a season due to disagreements with the board, and for the next 10 games of 1996, Arsenal were managed by Houston and Pat Rice.

Then, September 30 arrived, and Arsenal's new manager took control (so young!).

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