Ykkönen 2011

There are a few dramatic changes in the system next season. The number of teams have been reduced from 14 to 12, and it will be further reduced to 10 after season 2011 which means that out of 12 teams 5! will get relegated and 0 teams will win direct promotion.

Must be the toughest series ever, there is no room for losing matches, or drawing too many of them either and most likely apart from one or two top teams the rest will face relegation battle until the end of the season. Interesting but extremely harsh.

The table for 2010 looked like this; for 2011 RoPS will be replaced by FC Lahti and the bottom three by HIFK.

RoPS	26	54
Viikingit	26	52
FC PoPa	26	50
KPV	26	47
OPS-jp	26	40
FC Espoo	26	37
KooTeePee	26	35
PK-35 Vantaa	26	34
PS Kemi	26	31
FC Hämeenlinna	26	31
JIPPO	26	30
TPV	26	27
Klubi 04	26	17
MP	26	17

Baltic league 2010 - 2011

This is no more than a reminder to self;

The League continues with quarter-finals  April 5th when Flora host Ventspils at A le Coq.

http://www.balticleague.com/schedules/Season2010-11/31229483.html

The second leg of Levadia - Siualiai will be played at April 20th at Maarjamäe stadium in Pirita.

Veikkausliiga transfers

Started with a nice table with color coding and stuff but can it is a bit too complicated really to bring any added value. Anyway, early days for any big transfer analysis. Honka will change quite a lot with  7 players leaving, also MIFK are cleaning up a lot. The biggest winners at the market so far are Inter Turku with Kalle Parviainen (if ever fit) and gk Magnus Bahne. Haka does not seem to be too attractive this season either. In the north it is still surprisingly quiet. JJK made a couple of quality signings just today.

Plenty of time to discuss this later on, there will be new african players coming during the winter.

Rest of the week 10th Feb 2010 onwards

It is hard to keep track of the matches as there is no real schedule for anything. This week there is yet more action in all fronts, and despite the pile of one meter of snow outside my doorstep I do believe that the summer also comes and more importantly, the seasons will start!

Today I am off to see another friendly international at Eerikkilä when Finland U17 meet Estonia. It is actually in offer at the betting market as well, but I like to keep my eye on the possible future talent and that is far more important than placing a low-limit bet. Traditionally Finland wins this match by one or two goals, but in my understanding there are some replacements made for today´s game.


EDIT : FT 3-0 with two late goals. I would love to see Estonian pair  Richard Leht & Hannes Anier in a proper team some day. Jusu Karvonen showed his footballing brain in the second half.

Thursday´s friendly is Klubi04 vs Viikingit at Tali indoor arena 16.00 CET, neither of the teams is ready yet, but in the middle of rough training session, and there will be some tired feet.

Edit: FT 0-2. Boys played well against men.

Friday PK-35 welcome KooTeePee to Myyrmäki indoor arena, PK have had a lot of injury problems but it is good to see what Kotka can do. They might be one of the promotion candidates this season.

Edit: FT 1-0. No finesses offered.

On Saturday Viikingit play again, this time they host Estonian newly promoted club Lootus Kohtlajärve. Atlantis meet TPV from Tampere, and the league cup also goes on with the following matches which will probably be discussed more in detail later.

12.2.2010	TPS	- FC Inter	15:00	Yläkenttä / Kupittaa  FT 2-0.
13.2.2010	JJK	- AC Oulu	14:00	Vehkalampi tn
	VPS	- KuPS	19:00	Botniahalli
14.2.2010	IFK Mariehamn	- FC Lahti	16:30	Eckeröhallen

At Seinäjoki there are AIK, Örebro, HJK and Tampere United who will play a couple of friendlies. An interesting occasion, but my schedule does not allow me to travel, and they play only 1 or 2 matches a day.