Football related website

The below is an email link which will be useful for people who are playing the online fantasy football leagues. This link is quite an updated view of players who are currently injured with their expected return date.

http://www.physioroom.com/news/english_premier_league/epl_injury_table.php

Hope it helps people who are playing the leagues available online

ManU early season crucial match with an additional sting in the tail !

As you know, this Sunday is the first big match for Manu against the big four. The opponent is Chelsea. At any time of the season, this would have the billing of a clash of the titan game. However with the latest development at Chelsea, the mutual departure (hmmm.. or sacking) of the special one <>, it makes this match even more high profile. To be honest, the timing of the departure, is a bit of the shock. You do not sack any manager so early in the season and especially not one with the track record of Jose. Guess there could be other reasons behind the season other than a less than satisfactory start to the season.

The latest development is that Grant together with Steve Clarke will manage Chelsea. This is actually quite a surprising development. I would have expected Roman to have got a more high profile/ established manager as the team manager since the team has quite a number of strong character. Furthermore if you are getting rid of such a well-respected manager, the replacement must be at least as capable as the previous one so that the players also have faith in the new manager decision.

This change of manager could turn out to be a double edge sword for Manu. There is one school of thought that the first match under a new regime, the team will play very well as they want to impress the new boss. This will make the Manu game even tougher than usual.

To be honest, Manu has also not been playing that well and they have been grinding out result ( somthing like Chelsea previously). Hecne this game could turn out to be crucial to Manu season, a good win against Chelsea will build up the belief and confidence in the team which will carry Manu through the season.

A bad performance and people will start to question Fergi as they will be playing an under-strength Chelsea without Lampard and Drogba.

This should be a tense game and I believe that a single goal will settle the game.

Hope it will be a win for Manu :)

Visit to Thai Village

The following review is about Thai Village which is quite similar in concept as Rama Thai which was an earlier posting. It specialise in Shark Fin and Abalone.

They have a few outlet. This particular outlet is located near the Goodwood park Hotel.

The below is the picture taken outside the restaurant.

My family went there for lunch a few weeks back. We had ordered a few items to try out. The below are the pictures that was taken during the meal. We had ordered their shark fin to try out. The following pictures are for the shark fin in claypot.

Shark Fin pipping hot from the kitchen without any garnish.

Shark fin with the typical garnish already added.

Close up view of the Shark Fin

The shark fin was excellent. If you are asking my opinion, I find that the soup over at Thai Village is much more tasty. With regard to the amount of shark fin given, I find that it is about the same. Hence in terms of quality the Thai Village slightly edge ahead of Rama Thai.

The next item is the Sea Cucumber cooked with Abalone Mushroom. I wonder why it is called abalone mushroom, guess must be due to its size. Anyway this dish was ok, nothing really outstanding I feel that gives it the extra edge over other places.

The below picture is the Prawns cooked with Tang Hoon. For this dish, it was generally disappointing. I felt the dish was much better prepared over at Rama Thai. The Tang Hoon lack the necessary distinctive taste. Felt a bit disappointed.

The below is chicken dish. Forgot what it was but this dish was good as my mom like this dish. The chicken was very tender and it was tasty.


The last dish was the tofu coated with bread crumb and deep fried. Very filling dish as one block of tofu is very big and filling. I only liked the exterior, the interior was actually normal tofu. It would have been better if the size of the item was more bite size in nature.

In general, I only found the Shark Fin which they are famous for to be excellent. For the majority of the dishes, there was nothing much outstanding. Maybe come here for the soup only . Hmm...

Favourite Chicken Rice stall

The article is previewing my favourite chicken rice from my childhood. It is called Evertop Hainanese Boneless Chicken Rice

During my childhood, it was located at Tanglin Halt. It was in a coffee shop which was next to the open air carpark which had a few other stalls. However whenever I went, almost all the tables were having the chicken rice. They decided to apply for a halal license to cater to more patrons.

Last year, they moved out to a larger floor space at Clementi which is the first photo shown below. Their current location is at Block 354, Clementi Avenue 2.
They are still offering their signature chicken rice but also have included a few more new items into their menu offering.


The below photos show the whole chicken that we ordered as well as the chicken internal organs and a plate of vege respectively.

The food arrived very promptly and the chicken is still s good as ever. The meat is very tender and tasty and it goes well with the fragrance rice and the chilli which accompanies the chicken is excellent.

It is very good and I would recommend people to try it out.

Opinion on Manchester United stuttering start to the season

This season for the first two weeks of the EPL, there has been some shocking and surprising results. For example, Manchester United been held to a draw to Reading at home and the shock loss for Tottenham against Sunderland on the fist game of the reason.

The surprising team so far in the season has to be the performance of Manchester City.

However this post is more looking at the poor start made by Manchester United. ManU first three games are two draws against Reading and Portsmouth and a derby away defeat. The common theme in all three matches is that Manu dominated the control of the game but there were not that many good shooting chances. A lot of the time the shots had to be made outside the penalty box. There were also a number of occasions that the final pass made in the opposition penalty box is wayward or easily intercepted. A lot of fans are blaming the lack of a proper striker ever since Ronney was injured in the first game and the problem was further compounded by the loss of Ronaldo for 3 games after his red card in the second game.

This reason I feel is quite valid. Ever since the loss of Ruud, Manu has been playing without a targetman upfront. It was able to work last reason due to the great scoring success of Ronaldo from midfield. However with the teams in the EPL getting more used to the style of play of Manu they know that Manu is highly unlikely to hit 50/50 balls into the penalty box which mean that whoever manu play upfront there is no real need to mark very tightly on him as Manu is more likely than not to try to pass their way to goal. Currently the only striker that seem to be able to play the so called target man would be either saha or ronney but neither of them is prolific.

I feel another reason for the poor start is due to the poor pre-season preparation. Firstly they came to Asia for their pre-season which meant that they were playing games against not so strong opposition and there is also a lot of wasted time wasted flying from country to country which could have been better used for training. In addition, the new signings except Nani did not join these training games due to injuries which made the integration of the new players into the team more difficult.

After they returned to England, they had two friendlies which were against stronger team which are Intermilan and Chelsea( Charity shield is just a high profile friendly) which Manu did not do so well. After which during the one week before the EPL, they arranged friendlies against weak opposition from the lower divisions where they had the team split into half to play two friendlies at the same time. This did not help in building teamwork among the team in a match situation as they would have only played as a team during training but not in match situation. This could explain the number of misplaced passes in the first few games that have been played.

In summary, the poor start could be blamed on the injuries suffer upfront as well as the poor pre-season training. Hopefully the team will improve in the next few games else the title chase will be over by September.

Photos taken during Hong Kong trip

This article will be different format. It will be only photos of food I tried during my visit with a short description.

Photo taken at coffeeshop. Noticed the cut of the roast pork is so thick unlike in S'pore.

Crab porridge in a restaurant specialising in noodles and porridge. Very yummy and rich in flavour.

Side dishes ordered at the restaurant mentioned above.
Packet food from nearby roast meat and Zhi Char shop. Excellent as usual and there is both quantity and quality for the items ordered.

Seafood claypot. Full of ingredient

Garlic prawns

Suckling Pig. The taste was totally out of this world!

Other dishes ordered at local restaurant

Breakfast item in a local eatery.

First visit to Crystal Jade Dining in at Vivocity

In VivoCity , there has been a lot of restaurants that have opened along the side of the building that is facing the waterfront. One of which is opened by the Crystal Jade Group of restaurants.

It is known as Crystal Jade Dine in. Strange name I feel as Dine in just means eat in but in any case. The entrance to the dining area looks grand and striking as the dominant colour is red quite similar to the entrance at the crystal jade at Paragon except for the colouring.

The view from the dining area is very refreshing as Sentosa with the Wharf and the bridge proving a nice backdrop during the evening.

When we were looking at the menu, we were pleasantly surprised with the dishes on offer. There were some usual stuff like your roast meat but other than that a lot of the dishes are quite unique to this outlet as I have not seen a number of items elsewhere.

We decided to try the Peking Duck as well as a few of the more interesting items.

The below is just a picture of the table setup. Thought of taking a photo as the utensils look unique.

The below item is the prawn and scallop cooked with chilli and something crispy. Cannot remember as this was about three months back.

This was my family favourite dish. The prawns and scallops were big and juicy and the flacks you see on top go absolutely well with rice very shiok. It was crispy and spicy. ( Just recalling really make me hungry)

The next dish was the fish cooked in two styles as can be clearly seen in the photo below. In the background, if I recalled correctly was cooked with salted egg and deep fried. You may have seen this style used on prawns. The salted egg complemented well with the flavour of the fish.

The other style of cooking the fish fillet was stirred fried with vegetable. The meat was firm and when you have a bite the meat is fantastic.

The below is the vegetable. It was ok nothing outstanding.

The below is the Peking duck after it has been de-skin from the duck and wrapped in the rice flavour pancake. The duck was very tasty and the skin was crispy. However I did not enjoy it as much as I personally prefer to have the duck skin wrapped in the yellow coloured wrapping. (Off hand cannot rem what it is called: Eggskin is it ? Hmm..)

The duck meat was then used to prepare the last dish which was the duck mee with crispy noodle. This in itself is unusual as usually the duck meat is usually used to cook Ee- mee which is a flat type of noodle.

Anyway, the noodles were excellent as the flavour of the duck was in the gravy and it went well with the crispy noodle.

In general, the dishes were of a very high standard and the setting is also very good. It is a place that I would like to visit again in the future.