England Expectorates

Another chocker weekend of sport and there's so much good stuff you could be talking about.

I could bang on about plucky Brum and their team of attractive and rational individuals like Barry Sneaky V-Sign Ferguson and Lee 'Leave Your Foot In' Bowyer. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of lads.

What do them initials stand for I wonder...

This was one of them finals when I didn't want the outsiders to nick it. Trouble was Birmingham never really looked like outsiders, did they?

They have a lot of big lads. Arsenal have a couple of centre-backs with all the permanence of a sandcastle at high tide. I got a cool fifty quid putting not much on Zigic to score the first (and only, I hoped) goal.

You could stereotype the game as Beauty v The Beast. Except on this occasion you wouldn't have Penelope Cruz playing Arsenal, you'd have Kate Hudson or some other cute dimwit lightweight who's not as good as she thinks she is.

I still think Gooners could back off Wenger. Christ knows they get more entertainment at the Emirates Library in ninety minutes than most of us get in a season. But Arsene needs a bloody solid centre-back or three and, like it or not, a midfielder who treats tippy-tappers like so many kit-kat fingers. A Yaya Toure without the flagrant self-interest.

Still, well done Brum, you ugly buggers, you earned it... and bad luck Sczeszensczennyyyeny or whatever your name is. Twas a howler of such note that your UK passport must be a matter of days away.

One might also want to praise the tie between India and England. It was edge of your toilet seat stuff. And a great fillip for a tournament that has so far resembled a contest between a runaway Eurostar and an IKEA bookshelf.

Good stuff from Steve Davis, too, who has boldly announced his homosexuality to the cricketing world. Stand by for snorts of euphemistic guffawing next time someone catches him in the gully, pulls him over the boundary, or swings it both ways.

Seriously though, it's pretty close to not being much of a big deal which shows you how far we've come. (Steady innuendo-ists).

We might also congratulate European Golf on having the top four players in the world at the mo. Except that golf is not a sport but rather, as my mate Andy Smart insists, a paid holiday in Pringle.

We might also want to praise the continentally unpopular concrete-poured-into-pillow-cases that is the England Rugby Union Team. Apparently they beat France.

I didn't follow much of it. Since they brought in them tight-fitting T-shirts and God-knows what sort of dietary enhancements most of them rugby lads look like the sort of sun-lamped brawny tossers who twenty years back used to waddle into your local bar with muscles like a rockslide and a face like a jar of sultanas.

The rugby players I grew up watching - your Phil Bennetts and Gareth Edwards - well these blokes'd use them as ear-plugs.

But instead we're left to ponder that Regurgitatable Sign Of Our Times, the Errant England Footballer. If they're not elbowing you in the face, they're bringing an air rifle to work and shooting you. Allegedly.

First Rooney. He ran past James McCarthy and elbowed him in the face. The ball was somewhere in the next postal district at the time. God knows why. Has McCarthy been sneaking round to Colleen while Wazza's down the tobacconists?

Even John Hartson says it was indefensible. That's John Hartson, a man who had to go and find Eyal Berkovic's head in the nettles after a training-ground bust-up.

Let's look at what Sir Alex Ferfuckssakuson said about the incident: 'There was nothing in it'. Gaddafi-esque in its neglect of the truth.

'I don't think the boy touched McCarthy. They are all on drugs and working for Al Qaeda if you ask me'

The Govan Beetroot added: 'The press will raise a campaign to get him hung by Tuesday or electrocuted or something like that.' Erm, that's just a twat's thing to say. Maybe the country would've liked to see the recommended dose of three games off for the petulant hairy toddler. At the very least some calpol for the stroppy little bugger.

And this is what stirs up the ABU brigade. Clattenburg's said he's happy about what happened at the DW. Rooney gets clean away with it. No fine. No ban. No nowt. Just carry on as usual. Heck he could be a frigging merchant banker, couldn't he?

Carlo Ancelotti claims there's nowt wrong with discipline at Chelsea either after Ashley Cole SHOT someone. It's been dealt with apparently. Cole has apologised. For SHOOTING someone. Given their goal-shy form of late it's to see someone's bothering to shoot.

But can you believe it?! Really?! Well yes, it's Ashley Cole. Letting of an air-rifle is as pathetically schoolboy an error he could still be defending at Arsenal. What next, Cashley? Flicking gobs of chewed-up paper at John Obi-Mikel?

I expect Cole is the first on the team bus to shout 'The one who denied it supplied it.'

'Keep smiling darlin' I've got an air-rifle pointed at your back...'
What all this leads you to is two conclusions:

1. If you play for United you could rob a train in broad daylight without a mask on and Fergie would say it was nowt and the FA would agree.

2. There's not an England player in this country who has the remotest concept of reality. I mean we could take a fiver a week out of their pockets and build an NHS hospital in every town - and that way we'd have an A&E on standby should Rooney come drop in with a munk on.