LISBON - Serie A Genoa have signed Portugal goalkeeper Eduardo from Braga for 4.5 million euros, the Portuguese club said on their website on Thursday.

Eduardo was the first-choice keeper in the Portugal team that reached the second round of the World Cup finals in South Africa last month.

He played in all four of Portugal's matches and conceded only one goal. His performances, especially in the 1-0 loss to Spain during which he made several outstanding saves, earned him widespread praise.

The 27 year-old took over in the Portugal goal after Quim was dropped in early 2009 and went on to concede only two goals in eight qualifiers. He has 19 caps.

Eduardo played a key role in Braga's surprise title challenge last season and had been linked with a move to Portuguese champions Benfica.

Ah the World Cup, this time England are surely going to win, or at least get to the semi-finals in glorious and high-octane fashion. But did anyone really think this was going to happen this time? I’m not so sure. Ok the fans with the newly painted St. George’s houses or the man who covered his living room floor with turf might have thought so, but amongst the general populace the build up to South Africa 2010 seemed the most subdued since I’ve been watching. Even James Corden and Dizzee Rascal’s unofficial theme was sung without much hope. As soon as Robert Green’s calamitous error gifted Clint Dempsey and the United States an equaliser the country seemed to say “Do you we have to watch this?” The country was right, and England not only crashed out miserably but also succeeded in being one of the most boring teams in the tournament. All fans have an opinion on why England failed so badly, the man in Middlesbrough says get rid of the F.A., the man in Liverpool says pick Mikel Arteta, and the man in Doncaster says reform the whole coaching system in England. One man however, had begun reforming coaching in a corner of North London in 1996.

Arsene Wenger’s football philosophy is well known and much debated. What is without doubt is that he demands his players have a good first touch, excellent ball control, superb passing ability and high levels of fitness, although even he seems to have made an exception to this rule with Nicklas Bendtner. Wenger has instituted these demands in Arsenal’s youth coaching system, and the results are beginning to be seen. Fabio Capello has stated that he has his eyes on Arsenal youngsters Jack Wilshere and Kieran Gibbs who may be fast-tracked into the England squad for the friendly against Hungary in August. Wenger himself has stated that “I’m happy to bring them (English players) through, just to convince people that I’m not anti-English. I believe we have never had the kind of quality English players that we have now”. To an England fan hoping for better in the future, this is very pleasing to hear, and Wilshere and Gibbs are just the tip of the iceberg. Youngsters such as Henri Lansbury, Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, Craig Eastmond and Mark Randall amongst others are all set for big futures within football. Along with players such as Everton’s Jack Rodwell, and Man Utd’s Danny Welbeck, perhaps the future does not look as bleak for England as some might suggest.

It is Jack Wilshere though, who provides the greatest cause for optimism amongst the current crop of England’s young guns. If he is comparable to anyone, it would be Spain’s midfield maestro Andres Iniesta. Both are classy on the ball, have an eye for a pass, and are cool finishers. Iniesta also represents what the current England team desperately lack, a playmaker with consummate passing ability. The impact made by Mesut Ozil, Wesley Sneijder and Iniesta in South Africa has shown what England is missing. It is great when Lampard, Gerrard and Rooney can finish with such aplomb, but with no-one to create chances for them to score then England are relying on one of these players to do something special in every game. At club level where they are undeniably effective, they have foreign players to create the chances for them. Hopefully in Brazil 2014, Wilshere can be setting up these chances in the Maracana. England don’t need to copy Germany as some have suggested, the pace and intensity of English teams has proven to be highly effective in the Champions League. In modern football a combination is required, intensity and guile, closing down and passing. If Arsenal can provide footballers who have skill on the ball and players who can create chances, players like Rooney, Gerrard and Lampard can finish them off. If England can achieve this balance, they might just be able to win something within my lifetime, and we will all owe Arsene Wenger a big thank you.

Arsenal have been alerted by Juventus' decision to listen to offers for Brazil international Felipe Melo.

The 26-year-old, who was linked with a transfer to the Emirates Stadium last summer, could move to the Gunners in an exchange deal with Arsenal left-back Gael Clichy going in the opposite direction.

"Melo's situation is the same as other players at the club," Juve's general director Giuseppe Marotta told Gazzetta dello Sport.

"We are therefore carefully evaluating the situation and will listen to any offers that come in."

Melo is under contract at Juve until June 2014 following his switch from Fiorentina to Turin last summer.

He featured in four of Brazil's five games at the World Cup, but was sent off in the quarter-final defeat to the Netherlands after stamping on Arjen Robben.

Liverpool FC hasn’t been out the news for much of last season for both financial and on-field reasons. It’s probably best to forget the drudgery that was served up on the pitch this last season, as the accounts contain more than enough bad news for the scousers.

Core business and operating profit

As with Manchester United, Liverpool’s core business is profitable, with an operating profit of £25million in 07-08 rising to over £27million. That has much to do with Liverpool’s enormous £67.7million of commercial revenues, only £2million pounds less than the marketing machine that is Manchester United while match day and TV revenues also show strong growth.

Debt

Unfortunately, operating profit doesn’t take into consideration interest charges and the like, which accounted for £38million and £40million in the last two years, and helped debt balloon from £244million (06-07) to £351million in 08-09.

As you can quite clearly see, like United the interest more than accounts for the operating profit, and amortisation, depreciation and tax are all not taken into consideration by an operating profit figure either.

Constant net spends on player transfers won’t have helped, with Benitez’s rotating-door transfer policy (in one season, out the next and generally at a loss). Unfortunately I can’t cite any player trading or amortisation figures, as in their wisdom the club bundled player trading and amortisation together in the accounts, making it totally useless in comparing to other teams’ financials. It’s a shame, as the player trading figures would have done nicely to undermine the whole “Rafa had nothing to spend” myth that seems to be quite commonplace.

Interest payments

Either way, you don’t need to be a an accountant to look at the growth in the debt figure and conclude that it is not all as a result of interest payments. The interest payments are roughly £26million more than the operating profit over the two years cited, yet debt grew by nearly £100million leaving £76million to have come from elsewhere. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions there.

The wages of sin

The problems get worse when you consider that wages grew by over 10% between 07-08 and 08-09 to £102million. These figures should only serve a a rough guideline for comparing with other clubs, as they include backroom staff and directors’ wages in the wage figure. However 10% wage growth can’t be ignored and they are one of only four clubs (no prizes for guessing which four) that have a wage bill of more than £100million a year.

That said, wages are only 55% of turnover, or 10% below the Premier League average and comfortably within the maximum recommended level of 60% (but a higher percentage than our Arsenal). Still, the wage level isn’t worrying if they can maintain the revenue levels of the 08-09 season (stop laughing).

TV Revenue

In 08-09 season they came second to United and performed admirably in reaching the Champions League quarter finals. A seventh place finish this time around will cost them £3.75million in terms of the performance related component of the TV money, while simply participating in the group stages of the Champions League is lucrative, even when they are not making the knock-out rounds.  The Europa league pays a lot, lot less than the Champions League.

In 08-09, TV revenues contributed over 40% of Liverpool’s total turnover. Clearly they’ll still get a substantial sum of money courtesy of playing in the Premier League, but with a greater percentage of their revenue coming from TV than Arsenal or United, they are the side who would be expected to struggle the most with the loss of the Champions League money. My prediction for the 09-10 accounts: operating profit to roughly halve.

So the big shortfall will be in the 2010-11 accounts, when they don’t have any Champions League revenue whatsoever. Whether their fall from grace on the pitch affects how much they are featured on TV remains to be seen but with 25% of the TV money dished out on a by TV appearances basis, they’ll hope they haven’t lost too much appeal in the eyes of the broadcasters.

Unless the owners can sell up and shift the debt on/reduce it substantially, I’d expect them to turn an operating loss during this season, and when you tack on the interest bill, an overall loss of around £70million would not surprise me in the slightest.

The bank

For me, the biggest issue with Liverpool is that they are existing courtesy of the goodwill of a bank, RBS which has now got cold feet and wants it’s money back.  Liverpool have consistently missed deadlines to pay back part of the debt they hold, and such a failure can only be taken as a sign of severe financial weakness. The fact that the only possible way for them to pay off a substantial part of the debt is through selling to a third party speaks volumes.

If you are unfamiliar with the politics of Britain, RBS are majority owned by the British Government, meaning they are subject to all manner of political meddling. You’ve only got to look at America to see how politicians do untold damage for political gain (every time Barack Obama slates BP and forces the share price down, he’s hurting American investors who hold around 20% of BP shares). With government debt and deficit cutting right at the top of the agenda, it is not unreasonable for RBS’s goodwill to be cut short by political pressure.

Such action won’t hurt the bank: they’d get their money back during liquidation of the clubs assets (i.e. selling players and the training ground at the very least) so they wouldn’t be writing off substantial percentages of the debt. Yes, it wouldn’t be politically popular with half of Liverpool, but that would be a drop in the ocean compared to what would happen if a government-owned bank lost a fortune propping up a football club.

Where can they go from here?

I thought throughout the 09-10 season that Hodgson would do a better job, but he now inherits a hell of a mess. If the Americans can sell the club, the size of the debt will fall when RBS get their £100millionm, and with it the interest bill. This should bring the interest bill down to a level where it can be covered by the operating profit and this would make the debt stop growing. Such action will have to coincide with restraint in the transfer market, given how much of the recent debt growth is likely to be attributable to spending on players.

If they can’t sell the club quickly, Hodgson is likely going to have to cut the wage budget in order to reduce the club’s costs so they can at least cover the interest and stop the debt growing further. I’d expect them to sell one of Torres, Mascherano or Gerrard to provide Hodgson with some capital to strengthen the glaring holes in the squad and to pay down the debt, but nothing is certain. He’d be a miracle worker if he could get them into the Champions League next season even with those three still part of the squad but I just don’t see it happening with City strengthening.

Arsenal are closing in on Fulham ‘keeper Mark Schwarzer after the Cottagers opened talks with Hull over bringing in Boaz Myhill as a replacement.

Gunners boss Arsene Wenger wants a new first-choice goalkeeper and sees the 37-year-old former Middlesbrough shot-stopper as the ideal replacement for the shaky Manuel Almunia.

Added to that, Arsenal scouts attended Fulham matches at the end of the Premier League season and Wenger has personally attended several of his games in South Africa.

Fulham have already accepted a £3.5 million offer from Arsenal after rejecting a previous £3 million bid, with The Goon Blog suggesting that the Aussie has already thrashed out personal terms and a medical at London Colney.

It is believed that the final chance to play Champions League football is seen as too great an opportunity to turn down for the experienced stopper.

So after yesterdays shenanigans you could say it has calmed down a tiny bit.

I think the only thing we know for certain is that Koscielny will not be the only defensive arrival of the summer, the boss saying today (yes, really, properly saying):

“We identified Koscielny as a very, very strong centre half, he can be an outstanding addition to our team. But it is not over, we are still open to buy.

“We are still on the market for another defensive player because we have the need for one more.”

Which is good news for all of us. I do admit that the thought of Koscielny or Johann Djourou partnering Thomas Vermaelen had me a bit worried, so hopefully the arrival will be a big, strong experienced defender – the sort we have been lacking since the year 50BC.

On the topic of our new arrival, Laurent has been giving interviews with the clubs official website in which he does come across as a very confident guy. He seems to be a very good prospect – and a very expensive one – its very rare the boss coughs up 10 million quid for a player so hopefully he will prove him right in the seasons to come. I’m guessing he is 3rd choice for the center back role, behind the new arrival Arsene has been talking about so all in all, the center back situation is getting solved and not before time.

The unveiling of Laurent Koscielny yesterday is probably going to be followed by the signing of Mark Schwarzer – though it will definitely not happen this week. The club are still looking at other alternative options after the knee problem flagged in his first medical, he did though pass the second that was undertaken by an independent doctor.

All of a sudden I am starting to get optimistic about the upcoming season, the Emirates Cup is just over three weeks away, the curtain raiser against Barnet is also just a matter of days away now. Pre-season is in full swing and you can see the pictures on Arsenal.com of the players sweating spinal fluid and regretting not doing much over the few weeks holiday they have had. The World Cup participants are yet to join in training but that is an issue that will probably be addressed at another time.

Have you noticed the strange friendlies we have this pre-season? Is it just me or is there more than usual…

Arsenal were strongly linked with Felipe Melo last summer, and with the Gunners in desperate need of a strong holding midfielder, the rumours are still in place.

Wenger admitted in March that he was still keen on the Brazilian, who was on the wrong end of two red cards in South Africa. Wenger said: “We were interested in Melo during the summer.”

“We watched him in Brazil’s international at the Emirates, against Italy in February 2009, when he had an outstanding game. Then he went to Juventus and that team has struggled and certainly he has not had the season that everyone predicted he would.

“We still think he is a very talented player and with Gilberto Silva, Brazil have a very useful pair in midfield. We are still looking at Melo.”

Well today the Juventus general director Giuseppe Marotta said that the club will listen to offers for the Brazil international.

“Melo’s situation is the same as other players at the club,” Marotta said. “Hence, we are on guard to evaluate all eventual offers.”