firstly my understanding of the Mascherano deal.
The reason it took so long to get premier league clearance with him was because of the sh*t at west ham. They would probably avoided all the sh*t they have had since if we hadnt signed him as the premier league were blissfully ignorant of his status, i believe. As far as i understand we have had to pay a pretty large fee to joorabchian (sp?) so that we are the outright owners of him, although it is agreed that if we want to keep him after the end of next season we have to pay more, and if we dont want to keep him we get our money back, so it is a loan of sorts, but he is wholly owned by one team.
as for playing in 2 european competitions, after the january window you can make changes to your champions league squad and you can, if you choose to, name one player who has played in the uefa cup that season, but none who have already played in the CL. So nothing mysterious there.
as for playing for 3 clubs, we challenged that because the brazilian season had ended prior to january, so although it was 3 i a calendar year it was not 3 in a season and he was being restricted from playing, thats why we needed Fifa to give us the go ahead. there are many other players whove played for 3 clubs, just not so high profile. Jon Stead for example has done this.
and getting into the competition (last year, not this one) was in my opinion the right decision. The champions should always be allowed to defend their trophy in any competition in my opinion. Also that was the FA sh*tting out because they didnt want to upset our poor whinging neighbours who have blamed us for every one of their failings anyhow. The season prior when you played arsenal in the semi the FA said that the winner would get preference if one of you went on to win it.
Also, we played in Blue originally, but only because Everton used to play at anfield and then got told to f**k off and John Houlding used the blue shirts he already had when he created his new team.
anything else i can help you with?