Vince Grella is the latest victim of aggressive burglary

In light of the antics of the Liverpool FC cat burglar, the ram-raid attack on Jermaine Pennant’s mansion and the assault on Darren Fletcher’s home, the prospect of being a rich Premiership footballer living in Cheshire, Manchester or Merseyside is becoming less attractive.

Blackburn’s Vince Grella is the latest victim of a burglarisation in the north-west, thanks to a knife-wielding gang who made off with his jewellery and gaz guzzling car.

Incredibly, the Aussie midfielder has become the seventeenth Premier League armed robbery victim in less than three years. The Sun reports:

Four masked thugs burst through the door of his £1million house, threatened him with a blade and demanded jewellery and watches.Stunned Grella, 29, then saw the mob swipe his car keys and speed away in his BMW 4×4.

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Porto/Man Utd, Champions Lge QF 2nd leg, 7.45pm, Sky Sports 2

With only Owen Hargreaves, Wes Brown and Darren Fletcher certain to miss out through injury, Sir Alex Ferguson isn’t short of options for tonight’s second leg at Estadio do Dragao. The Manchester United boss often favours a 4-3-3 for European games but here’s how The Spoiler would line the holders up:

We’ve chosen 4-4-2 and have opted for the tireless grafting of Park Ji-Sung and Carlos Tevez over the experience of Ryan Giggs and Dimitar Berbatov’s calmness and occasional brilliance. Do you agree with our selections? Let us know with a comment below.

Footballer’s mansion raided despite living nowhere near Liverpool

At around 9pm last night, Darren Fletcher’s gigantic house in Bowdon, Greater Manchester was burglarised by a gang of naughty thieves.

The intruders threatened a women at the house - who may or may not have been Fletcher’s girlfriend Helen Grice - but had left by the time police arrived. It is currently unknown what, if anything, was stolen, or if weapons were used during the incident. The robbers struck just a few hours after Fletcher headed out to Italy to prepare for tonight’s Champions League bout with Internazionale.

The midfielder of course isn’t the first Premier League star to suffer a home invasion while playing away - Steven Gerrard, Dirk Kuyt, Pepe Reina, Jerzy Dudek, Daniel Agger, Lucas Leiva and Peter Crouch have all suffered a similar fate while playing with Liverpool. Shola Ameobi also called police when to report several items missing from his bedraggled home, but realised he was just a messy bastard.

[The Telegraph]

As ever, there was no time last night to revel in the joy of a Paul Scholes stonker, because while football is being played, behind the scenes people in dark suits are having business meetings, and those meetings are very important - they include “guesstimates” and “sushi”. Here’s what may or may not have been talked about in some of those sweaty deep-into-the-night think tanks:

Kamel Ghilas to Arsenal
Arsene Wenger’s team of dehydrated football forragers have once again resurfaced in their mining helmets with soil on their faces muttering like crazy people about an Algerian man called Kamel. At the moment he plays casual football for Portuguese side Vitoria Guimaraes, but next season he looks set to be entertaining Arsenal crowds, who love sexual football and Cesc Fabregas.

Antonio Valencia and Wilson Palacios to Manchester United
Yes, Ferguson will be on the hunt for bright young talents, currently dominating other first teams, to strengthen his reserves, and these two might be just the ticket. They do it week in, week out for Wigan, but can they do it perhaps once every three/four months for United when Nani, Anderson, Carrick, Hargreaves, Scholes, Ronaldo, Giggs, O’Shea, and Fletcher are all injured? Or it’s the Carling Cup?