World Junior Thoughts and Views

In a couple of hours, the World Junior Championships will be kicking off in Western Canada. During the last couple of years, the tournament has been a must watching at the OTWT home offices, almost becoming a holiday tradition.

After hours of reviewing the rosters, here are the three teams that I think that will medal during the tournament.

Gold: Sweden. Last year the yellow and blue clad gang gave a really good Canada team all that they could handle in the final. This year they take their charge one step further and win the gold and stop Canada's dream of a sixth straight title.

Silver: Canada: Last years team was anchored on defense by Myers and many other that are not back. This year team is not as good as last years.

Bronze: USA. Last year the United States came in thinking that they might be walking out with gold medals. That did not happen and the United States left Ottawa with egg on their face. Last years team featured a bunch of superstars, this years team is a lot different and that will show on the ice. Cam Fowler is going to lead this year. I think that they could be surprise team overall.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all from our family. While everyone is enjoying the presents and food don't forget the great week of sports that are on offer from the bowl games to the World Junior Championships to the great list of Boxing Day fixtures in the Barclays Premier League. So enjoy all.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

They are everywhere

First they sold themselves to people coming over the Delaware Memorial Bridge, now Rutgers is selling themselves to high school students. While I was covering a event at Southern Regional, the home of former Scarlet Knight Clark Harris, I noticed a Rutgers poster on the wall of the gym. The poster said "R You Next" and featured photos of former knights in the league. Its good to see Rutgers getting out in promoting themselves.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Why Manchester City will never win

There is something to be said about having the same people in charge for a while. This gives the leader of the team a chance to develop a team over a couple of years. Look at Andy Reid in Philly and Sir Alex at Manchester United, both have been at the job for a while and had great success.

But at Manchester City, having a leadership structure in place for a while is something that they want no part of. After City thrilling 4-3 win over Sunderland, the City leadership decided to sack Mark Hughes in favor of Italian Roberto Mancini. This makes no sense for several reasons, I would not say that Hughes has been super but Hughes is still in the process of building a team and it seems to be working.

If the City leadership had allowed Sparky to say they might have been closer to being part of the Champions League then they are now that they have shown Sparky the door. Mancini will now come and try to overhaul the team, so the building process will again start over.

The thing with City is that over the last decade no youth team setup has produced the number of players that they have. While they have the money to spend on players they also have an outstanding academy. With the money and academy that they have there is no reason that they should not be part of the Champions League in the next couple of years.

The main reason that will not happen is because of the leadership of the Manchester City playing musical chairs with their managers. Stick with one guy and let him develop the type of team that he needs to be successful, just like Hughes was doing, but that was not good enough.