Robbo

Luis Suarez and the Ugly Face of Football

2012-02-12T13:04:00.002Z

The judge in the Harry Redknapp tax evasion case suggested that football had ‘lost its way’ in this country. I couldn’t agree more. This week highlighted it more than most.

First of all, Redknapp is acquitted – rightly, from what one can glean – but none of the intimate details suggest that the words ‘squeaky-clean’ can be ascribed to matters financial at Portsmouth Football Club during Mandaric’s reign. Still, no laws were apparently broken. I myself have now set up a Monaco account under the name of my granddaughter’s guinea-pig. As yet there’s nowt in Fifi64, but give it time.

Next, Fabio Capello hands in his notice cos the FA has told him he can’t have an alleged racist as team captain. Fabio isn’t having it, so he bails out. Of course the Italian insists he didn’t look for an escape exit, it’s just that David Bernstein pulled the lever on a trapdoor that had, since 2010, been mysteriously rusted up.

It’s one of those issues that the ‘sport-and-politics-shouldn’t-mix’ brigade are up in arms about, but you have to be a fuckwitted student of history to believe that. Anyone who thinks that the sports embargo on South Africa had nothing to do with the downfall of apartheid isn’t reading the same books as I have.

The recent death of Basil D’Oliveira served as a reminder that the basic tenet of treating people differently because of the colour of their skin should be resisted at all costs. The fact that Capello saw no political overtones to being the coach of a national team suggests to me that the man shouldn’t have had the job in the first place.

Okay, so the FA, in all its leaden incompetence, managed to make the right decision in the wrong way – it would have been nice to have consulted Fabio before making the announcement – but that’s beside the point.

The manager cannot be immune to the bigger picture. Which brings us to Luis Suarez. I don’t know how comfortable the Liverpool squad were wearing them Suarez 7 t-shirts a while back. I’m pretty sure they’ll be wishing they hadn’t bothered now.

The build-up to this Saturday’s fixture was all about putting events behind you and moving on. The handshake was even touted in some places as an underlining of that.

There’s an acknowledgement among most football fans that Patrice Evra is both a fine left-back and a bit of a knob. (There are many such examples in the modern game. And not all of them play for Man U.)

Nevertheless Evra, urged on no doubt by the wise words of Sepp Blatter on such matters, did dangle a limp mitt in Suarez’s direction and the Uruguayan ignored it, going from bewildered mascot to the slightly more bewildered David De Gea. (To be fair, De Gea might have been disorientated as much by his selection ahead of Lindegaard as the opposition striker’s behaviour.)

Unsurprisingly, Rio Ferdinand – barracked at Chelsea for having the audacity to be the brother of a man who has allegedly been racially abused – refused to shake El Divo’s hand in return, and lo and behold we’re back to square one.

Dalglish, like some antsy doe-eyed parent, has stood four-square behind Suarez before, during and after the eight-game ban. And this is how the bloke repays him. Add to that a Luis special of a performance, neat flicks combined with ludicrous writhing, and it all gets crowned with Evra whipping up the Stretford End into a lather of schadenfraude at Suarez’s defeat.

Ugly isn’t the word. If football had a face at the moment it’d make Andrew Lloyd Webber look like Hayley Atwell.

Not Andrew Lloyd Webber

Fergie’s righteous ire, coupled with a gentle censure of his left-back, was on this occasion forgivable. He’s a pious old rogue sometimes but I agree with him. They need to take that ungrateful little nerk into a small cupboard in Anfield and give him a serious talking-to.

From the moment Liverpool refused to contest the ban, Suarez could forget about being treated as the innocent party. He needs to bloody well shape up or they can send him to, I dunno, Poland where his views might be more sympathetically embraced.

Just as with these utter bankers who are still trousering bollock-twistingly large amounts of money despite their contribution to our blasted economy, so footballers and managers need to understand that part of the quid pro quo of huge salaries and public adoration is a responsibility to at least try to uphold the best standards of society.

Yes, maybe that’s unfair on a bunch of none-too-bright young men whose feet talk better than their gobs, but that’s their reality. Capello can’t stomp off in high dudgeon just cos his employers want to impose a political decision on him. It’s in the nature of his ex-job. Ravel Morrison shouldn’t be tweeting homophobic shite either.

Hopefully Harry understands this. Redknapp’s literacy may well be limited entirely to football, but the England manager has to muddy his mitts in the murky waters of morality too. Of course he’s the obvious choice and not cos he’s English. McClaren, Keegan, Taylor, it’s a roll-call of concrete-shoe-wearers jumping in at the wrong end of the local baths.

But my fear is simply that Redknapp could get swept up by events beyond his control –and if you look at his testimony in the recent court case you’d have to conclude that a lot of his life is beyond his control – and instead of having an upbeat youthful team unburdened by stupid expectation attempting to play the game the right way, you have Avram Redknapp moping along the touchline like a latter-day Eeyore.

I’d have no objection to Guus Hiddink getting the role and Harry carrying on putting a bit of entertainment on to the football parks of England by staying where he is. Whoever it is, at least they don’t have to fret about whether to select Luis Suarez. Or John Terry, actually, if they want my advice.

The Nightmare of Terry Vision

2012-02-06T10:41:00.007Z

Just pretend for a moment that you’re on the board of the Football Association. And that you’re not dipping your nib in the PA’s inkwell. And that you have the future of the national game at heart.

Here's Frank Lampard doing the FA's dirty work for them

To look forward to, you have the latest appearance of the national team in a major international football tournament.

In your wisdom, the man you pay £6 million a year to manage your football team – and who can't even manage a comprehensible sentence in English – retained his post in the wake of the most disappointing World Cup finals campaign England has ever mounted.

That campaign was dogged by many difficulties: Ferdinand’s injury leading to another change of skipper; the fact that England players were ‘tired’ (unlike those Barca and Madrid lads who played a hell of a lot of European games themselves); the players were also shite; and John Terry gave a press conference that involved him standing the manager at one end of a long rug and tugging it bloody hard from the other.

It’s still uncertain as to whether he did this with the approval of his teammates or behind their backs. Wayne Bridge thinks the latter.

'No, FA I-a give-a you da finger!'

Terry’s reward for this blatant brinkmanship? Capello gives him back the armband. Bewildering. But then he is a ‘natural leader’. He’s good at speaking for others. He’s actually good at the press-conf platitudes, and he does it without the nervous wittering of a Gerrard or a Rooney.

So England run a reasonably trouble-free qualification campaign for Euro 2012, although in the last couple of games our best player is Rob Earnshaw. Terry’s credentials as skipper are less in doubt than his actual quality on the pitch. To the non-partisan fan (that’s me) he looks one-paced and indecisive, like a tortoise with the trots. Then again if you played alongside David Luiz every week you might need to call a readily available pack of Immodium. Luiz is to Terry what Sideshow Bob is to Bart Simpson.

And then he appears to call Anton Ferdinand ‘a black cunt’. And times are such that the ‘cunt’ bit is less troublesome than the ‘black’ with its indication – and Luis Suarez will tell you this is all just normal everyday stuff – that the being black bit is contributory to the cuntdom.

So here you are FA board member. Over here! Take your eyes off that cleavage and put down that gin! Here’s the summer we have in store if nothing changes:

Scenario 1: England go to the Euros with Terry as captain. England get knocked out early. Terry gets seen bawling at, say, Theo Walcott for his lack of composure. Racist? Or really simply what WE’RE ALL DOING!

Scenario 2: England go to the Euros and Terry is captain. England do well. Polish and Ukrainian fans boo black players in England shirts throughout. John Terry condemns the Eastern European fuckwits with swastikas tattooed to their scar-tissued foreheads. Three weeks later he’s found guilty of racism.

Scenario 3: England sack Terry – or rather suspend him while investigations are ongoing. England go to Euros without him and are shit. They come back. Terry is found innocent.

Scenario 4: England win the Euros. Terry holds the trophy aloft. Three weeks later he’s found guilty of racism. The first time anyone below 50 years of age has been able to celebrate national football success and the bloke holding up the pot is a certified shithead.

As far as I’m concerned – and yes it’s about as likely as Ian Bell being able to define the word ‘doosra’ – scenario 4 is worth ruling out altogether, and the only way to do that is simply to sack Terry.

Do the FA look stupid if Terry is found innocent? No. Regardless of what Capello says. And frankly Fabio can just strut his barrel-chested bantam way out of English football if he thinks he’s earned the right to make his own decisions on such matters.

Capello sacked Terry for off-the-field activities that maybe broke moral codes, but no actual laws. This is a criminal act. And it’s happened on the field.

Were John Terry in any other walk of life he’d already be suspended on full pay while the case was investigated. Furthermore no one would be pushing the case back cos of ickle John’s pressing workload. I’m guessing that Terry and his legal team thought that the postponement of the case was the best option for Terry. It’s just a shame it’s the worst option for everyone else.

While Terry blathers on about pride and commitment to the cause, it’s clear that his and Ron Gourlay’s actions mean that the most important person involved here is John Terry.

Not long ago, Capello said that the issue of who is captain is not really that important. Now he’s getting ratty about not being able to keep a suspected racist in the role.

Me, I’d go further. I’d tell Terry he can’t play for England til the case is resolved one way or another. If he’s done nowt wrong, he can come back. If he’s guilty, I’d stop him playing for Chelsea for more than a few months too.

Here's proof of John's innocence. A black friend and a nice T-shirt.

The lament footballers’ll give you these days is that they’re not politicians. They just want to go out and give 110%. Well, wake up. You are in a game watched by billions. Your fellow professionals are pushing a noble cause of ‘Kicking Racism Out’. (And the boos for Rio Ferdinand at Stamford Bridge suggest there’s a lot of work to do.) And the fact is the standing of English football is more important than John Terry’s career.

Anything else is ‘back to front’ which I’m sure Terry’ll say are the very words he used towards Anton.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/video/2011/oct/24/john-terry-anton-ferdinand-video

In the meantime give Joe Hart the job. He’ll play every game. I don’t think he’s been caught throwing eggs at immigrants or molesting poultry, and it doesn’t matter who’s skipper – you need 11 leaders on the park, don’t you?

Footy gets the Tennis Elbow

2012-01-30T11:26:00.001Z

After a weekend of FA Cup hoo-hah and a transfer deadline looming you might think a man who bleeds the letters F-O-O-T-Y when he cuts himself shaving would have plenty to talk about.

And speaking as a bloke who couldn't get a hit at our local tennis club cos I never could get that bluey-whiteness in my clothing that them hoity-toity bastards insisted on (I swear they'd have thrown me out cos my snot was the wrong colour) you wouldn't expect a ringing endorsement of the Australian Open tennis tournament.

Nevertheless, I don't think I've ever seen owt like that match. About 2 years ago we were wondering how many titles Nadal was going to rack up.

Federer couldn't beat him - and still can't when it matters - and everyone knew that the old smoothie was the greatest Swiss export since Ricola cough pastilles.

Nadal though was brutal. A terminator. If ever he looked down and out that Mallorcan light would blink on again and the beast would reassemble itself and give his opponent an almighty twatting.

I didn't warm to the bloke at first. He has none of the ease and grace of Federer. And it didn't help that the Mrs watched him with a nascent moistness about her, like Rafa was a sort of swarthy mystical gypsy who might drop off the back of his horse-drawn caravan and muscle her into the undergrowth for some Iberian love-making.

Trouble is, the man is just an utter gent. The way he conducts himself is even more faultless than his tennis. At times it seemed that the only thing that could stop him was a pair of knees that made Michael Owen's look robust.

Djokovic was just one of them also-rans. Talented but unfortunate enough to be playing in an era where the best were way too good.

And suddenly the guy is unbeatable. Again he's not one of them blokes who makes you purr. I don't think I've ever seen any sportsman get into the positions he achieves without summat snapping. In slow-mo it makes you wretch a bit. He's Dr. Octopus to Nadal's Sandman.

There's also his endurance. I note some posh explorer chappy (Olly, inevitably) has announced he wants to be the first man to row round the world. (Its always the toffs who do this, isn't it? Never the people who have to make a living.) Djokovic could do that and still have enough gas left to fend off a late Andy Murray revival.

But Novak's accomplishments seem all the greater when you look at who he's had to beat to get there.

The gluten-free diet seems to have helped him. I've looked into it and frankly you're cutting out a lot of important foodstuffs like bacon sandwiches, Dolmio pasta and possibly even lager. (If you're planning to row round the world then please translate that last sentence into 'proscuitto ciabatta, linguine arrabiata and ermm... lager.)

It'd be easy to major on the Serb's fitness and flexibility but we should remember that beyond that he's hitting the ball better than the others. That's why he's winning. He is the best player out there.

So we are in a quite exceptional time for men's tennis. As opposed to the women's game which continues to turn out Aryan Amazons from eastern Europe who play a form of tennis that would be entirely monotonous were it not for the variety of their ejaculations.

I'd like to gag the lot of them. Not cos it's unladylike - it's nowt compared to the eardrum-wrecking caterwauling you get in Stockton High Street of a Friday night - but cos it's unnecessary - and it's used to put your opponent off. You're hitting a tennis ball, love, not auditioning for Kill Bill 3.

Mercifully Azarenka made short work of Shriekapova and Melbourne's earplug vendors were left to rue the fact that women can't last 5 hrs 56 minutes.

And what of our lad? Andy Murray. Part of the Fab Four I'm told, but still playing Ringo. Occasionally allowed the lead vocal ('will you still need me, will you still seed me, when I'm 64?'... 'I get beat with a little help from my friend').

Well, let's face it he got close. Much closer. If Djokovic is the mountain-top then the boy's going to need some shit-hot crampons. But unless one of these heavyweights gets crocked for a Slam then you can't see him beating two of them to get to a title. He just can't sustain the level of brilliance that the top two achieved on Sunday. And it's probably unreasonable to expect it.

In the meantime, we will still get the odd bleat from a big time Charlie manager that his poorickle footballers are a bit tired out from playing 3 hours of football in a week! Pah! I think I used to think tennis was a game for refined genteel woofters. Not anymore. Given that you're not allowed to tackle anyone these days I think the jessies are very much the petulant, sulky ones in the pink and orange boots.

Nowt for North London

2012-01-23T12:35:00.005Z

So that’s it, North Londoners. Neither of you are going to win owt this year, and speaking as an ardent Northerner I really wanted both of you to bag the big games yesterday.

"Nah mate I said I'm a dodgy geezer, not a tax-dodgy geezer"

Spurs were desperately unlucky at the Etihad. I confess to being one of them soft-headed fools who’s fallen for the hype when it comes to ‘Arry’s ‘Eroes. First off, don’t they play nice footy? Fast, slick, and with two speedy wingers. It’s like the good old days innit? Matthews and Finney. Vava and Garrincha. David Armstrong and whoever we had on the right-hand side at Ayresome Park.

They’ve got that cast-iron Cockney geezer in charge too. He’s lovely ain’t he? He’s like El Tel meets Mike Reid meets Walker out of Dad’s Army. He’s like Del Boy with a bit of savvy.

And of course they haven’t spent a fortune acquiring this outfit. (They have.)

And they’re up against that blinking Eye-talian and his crudely assembled mercenary millionaires. Yeah. It’s not been a good week for your Italian manager. If it’s not one of ‘em waving imaginary cards like a petulant tour guide, it’s Paolo Di Canio insisting he will keep doing the hokey-cokey on the touchline no matter what they tell him! http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/16670824.stm

Oh and there’s the skipper of the Costa Concordia. Nuff said.

But the true Italian villain of the piece is the tyre-track-headed nutter Mario Balotelli. Crikey has there ever been a bigger bag of contradictions? He makes Gazza look like a high-achieving actuary.

Here's Mario in Mad March training.

I’m slightly bewildered by them that think his stamp on Scott Parker’s head was accidental. Although I must admit when I’m off balance I tend to look for the nearest head to stamp on to get me right again.

People have suggested only Mario knows what he was thinking at the time. On previous evidence Mario doesn’t have a fucking clue what he’s thinking which is why he finds it so easy to stroke home a penalty with the last kick of the game.

Lescott’s assault on Kaboul was more clear-cut but every time I watch that ref I wish he was wearing a Webbcam. The world must look lovely through Howard’s eyes: he sees friends shaking hands, saying ‘How do you do?’ They’re really saying ‘I love you’.

Nevertheless Defoe should've got more than a faint metatarsal on that sitter and Ledley should've stayed on his feet (maybe them old knees just gave way again?). It all meant that the bad guys got by again.

I hear Spurs have put a £150 million price tag on Gareth Bale’s head. (Well I imagine they’ll just dangle it off one of his lugs – I mean you could hang a weighty duffle-coat off ‘em couldn’t you?) Well I hope they keep hold of the lad. When he pins his ears back – and just imagine how fleet he’d be if he had that particular operation – he’s terrifying, and yet he can stroke a cracker like that over a keeper like Hart from a standing position too. If he could only rewrite history and get himself born in Shrewsbury he’d be blinking perfect.

Meanwhile Arsenal continue to prove that in Arsene Wenger they have a manager whose powers are on the wane. The substitution of Oxlade-Chamberlain – a footballer not a village in the Chilterns – for Andrei Arsewipe was dubious enough even before Antonio Valencia went through him like a Ferrari passing through a slum.

Arshavin is getting a whole heap of flak from Gooners this season, presumably on the basis that if they keep giving him lots of shit he might find he has a shit to give. Putting him on at the expense of the only threat Arsenal possessed all afternoon was akin to recasting Die Hard with Alan Carr in the lead role.

But then Arsenal owe their entire season to Robin Van Persie. It’s ironic that in the one season in which the guy stays fit he plays with a bunch of players who aren’t fit to lace his boots.

I kept thinking of Despicable Me. RVP is the criminal genius and everyone else is a furry one-eyed yellow numbskull assistant.

RVP and a myriad Rosickys

How Wenger can continue to select Johann Djourou is beyond me. He’s like a door-knob that keeps coming off in your hand – it looks okay but it doesn’t work and is really bloody annoying.

Time to groom Wenger's successor methinks and get him a comfy chair upstairs.

Capello was at the Emirates. I’m guessing that Walcott might just be overlooked given that at present he can’t pass, shoot or cross and Oxo-Chamberpot was twenty-three times better. But then Fabio still picks Glen Johnson – the English Djourou – ahead of Micah Richards, so Gawd knows who he’ll be picking.

But Spurs apart, those that trail in the Mancs’ wake all look several woggles short of a cub pack. Dalglish’s Liverpool features a breathtakingly expensive assembly of ordinariness. Kenny slated them for the defeat at Bolton but it’s not come as a surprise to the rest of us.

Here's Andy watching another game go by.

Chelsea’s stumbling seem to be focussed ever more on Pretty-Boy Nando. You might say that Dalglish got a fantastic deal on Torres were it not for the fact he spent that 50 million and another ten and a bit on Henderson and Carroll.

And at least Torres is brighter around the park. Only the yawning of the most open of goals makes him panic like a child at the top of a big dipper.

And Newcastle? Well they got beat 5-2 at Fulham. Which is a bit like a baby stealing candy of a codger.

So a two-horse race it is. And despite their position you just can’t see United, shorn of defenders and more often than not downright ropy, hanging on to the coat-tails of Citeh. It could start to be a breeze if the Sky Blues keep getting away with forearm smashes and river-dancing on the temples of others. It’s not like they need the help.

Two Feet Bad

2012-01-12T12:42:00.005Z

Ah the two-footed lunge. The much-loved staple of Inspector Clouseau has become the talking point of British football.

Here's righteous Stevie G mistaking an Evertonian for a big puddle

Messrs Hansen, Dixon, and another chavvily-togged appearance by Shearer saw them berate the referees in this country for their lack of consistency. Clearly Glen Johnson’s Scholesian torpedo challenge was at least the equal of the Kompany effort at the weekend and Lee Mason did nowt.

Neither of them was as bad as Lampard’s effort the other week, but at least English football’s next couch potato (Christine will be training him up as we speak) had the good grace to admit that he thought he was off.

So what to do?

I’ve looked through the FIFA Laws of the Game thingammy I can’t find owt that says a two-footed tackle is a definite red card. Mind you, I can’t say I’ve read it in detail as, oh I dunno, I had some pins to stick in my eyes and that seemed preferable.

There’s lot of stuff on violent conduct but of course this is all down to interpretation and FIFA directives don’t help the officials whatsoever. What’s the difference between ‘careless’ and ‘reckless’? Surely it depends on the player, and I’m sure Mario Balotelli couldn’t distinguish between the two.

How many players and managers have insisted that there was no evil intent behind a challenge, and berated the poor old man in black for his inability to see into the mind of the guilty party. It seems that officials might have to be sent on a course in Criminal Psychology in order to enhance their credentials.

In the wet and slippery months, and I remember them well in the early days of my marriage, there was a delight in the sudden availability of the sliding tackle: the aniticipation of setting off into a challenge some thirty feet away from their nippy scuzzbucket winger; the satisfaction at the lack of friction as you ploughed new furrows into the cloddy earth; and the pleasure as you took out one or more of the following – the ball, the man, or the pitchside parents who were hollering like mad dogs from under their McClarenesque brollies.

Top slidey work

The criterion of success or failure in a tackle used to be ‘did you get the ball?’ That was it. (In both Kompany and Johnson’s cases, they did just that, very cleanly.) Wise creative types would leap nimbly out of the way of the speeding sideboard that was travelling towards him rather than take the hit (and again, Nani and Lescott did just that.)

These days, the balance has been lopsided in the favour of the attacker. Too many of them exploit this and spend way too much time behaving less like footballers and more like tumbleweed, but then FIFA shouldn’t be indulging the thespian fraternity of modern footy either and post-match bans based on desperate simulation should be just as punitive as any other censure.

But just as you can no longer get your hands on a decent plumber or chippy these days without having a nodding acquaintance with the Cyrillic alphabet (so I’m told by the odd racist barfly), it seems this country and the sport as a whole has lost the art of tackling. And I don’t mean clogging.

You look at the United team that crumbled at the Sports Direct Arena (that phrase rolls off the tongue like peanut butter) and not one of their midfield would know a block or tackle if dropped down from a pulley system and smacked ‘em on the head. Michael Carrick is supposed to be a holding midfielder but the only thing I saw him holding was Demba Ba’s coat while the centre-forward waltzed off towards the increasingly creaky Rio Ferdinand.

Getting the ball back off an opponent is one of the most important parts of football. Just ask Barcelona’s opponents. It’s no coincidence that Spurs’s fine season has coincided with the arrival of Scott Parker, one of the few players in the country who knows how to do it.

Give it a couple of years and I can see Scotty running workshops in the ancient art in some backwoods studio alongside some woodturners and whittlers.

But if we really want consistency from our refs then maybe they should just make it a clear-cut rule. Two feet off the ground means a red card. No questions asked. Forget the notional difference between careless and reckless.

That might seem bloody stupid – and it’s no more dumb than the laws around players whipping off shirts in celebration - but if we leave it to some sort of interpretation then we’re going to have more schoolboy spats between fellow professionals as happened in the tunnel at the Etihad.

Clearly Mancini’s Mummy didn’t give him what he wanted for Christmas. Blaming Rooney for Kompany’s dismissal was blinking feeble, and his needle about Johnson’s challenge had as much to do with the fact that his team were poor as the not unreasonable sense of injustice.

Indeed Citeh have ground to a bit of a halt just now and when Silva and Yaya aren’t about they lack both drive and invention. They worked bloody hard against Liverpool in the second half but the English contingent of Johnson, Barry and Milner are just plucky little plodders when compared with the Spaniard. It just reminds you that getting your hopes up for Euro 2012 is pure folly.

And of course this all means that Tottenham loom ever larger in the wing-mirrors. Adebayor’s finishing still has the cold calmness of a Charlie Sheen tweet, but you’ve got to fancy their chances if the Mancs keep on having to chug about Europe for the rest of the season in the hope of winning European football’s version of the Kinder Egg.

Manu indicates how far he missed with his latest effort

If they can just get their defenders to not challenge for the ball in the horizontal, it might just happen...

Fergie Feels The Pinch

2012-01-05T12:11:00.005Z

People across the world, and one or two in Manchester, are in despair. The greatest football manager in history has lost it. Two defeats in a row can pretty much tell you that. That’s right. Two. They’re three whole points behind the leaders. Shocking.

Man United are in meltdown. That’s according to the fair-weather fatheads who don’t really have a Red Devil running through their veins, they’ve just overdosed on a little bit too much vicarious glory.

There’s no doubt that Fergie has problems, but these have been bubbling under for a while. His main problem – as with a lot of managers – is that he’s in charge of a club whose fans have come to treat victory as a divine right.

They’ll tell you that the Govan Beetroot needs to invest urgently in some top-class players, as if just the name of Manchester United means the man can peel a world-class midfielder from off the soles of his hushpuppies. It’s garbage. Not even the thrill of a Europa League campaign will be enough for the likes of Wesley Sneijder.

So, hopefully it is going to be a bit of a crappity old season for United. The signs are promising. Vidic’s absence has left a back four looking as sturdy as a newborn foal. With Fletcher out for the foreseeable the midfield looks as frail as Gillian Anderson’s Miss Haversham (and how that woman can still look bleeding gorgeous whilst dressed as a rotting ghost is beyond me), and upfront His Knightship can’t decide who to pair up with the Boozy Scouser.

For the rest of us, this is a happier time. Chances are that the title this year will be between Man City and Gawd ‘elp us, Spurs. The usual suspects have been relegated to the back of the queue.

Citeh will win it, even allowing for Dzeko’s reversion to the gambolling giraffe of last year. Given they’ve got a decent left-back doing fuck-all for £90K a week it’s the blinking least they should manage, to be frank. Bridge should quit whining. I’d very happily have his job.

The loss at Sunderland will be seen as a blip. Martin O’Neill has transformed the team and enhanced his semi-Messianic reputation. If you listen to Robbie Savage, which I appreciate is almost as painful as Jools Holland’s tedious Hootenanny tripe, he’ll tell you that O’Neill keeps it simple. And given that he's talking to footballers that's just as well.

The Black Cats have pressed high up the pitch, and got a couple of sneaky last-minute winners and Wearside is aglow. It also underlines summat I’ve always thought –that Steve Bruce couldn’t manage a tea bar, let alone a football club.

The Christmas period was delightfully topsy-turvy. Barely a result went the way you might have expected, and it was reassuring to have Wenger back in full bleat after the defeat at Fulham.

Liverpool will be hoping that the dust has settled on the case of Luis Suarez, but frankly the club have handled the whole thing with the sort of crassness that you wouldn’t even find at a Republican primary. The T-shirts supporting the bugsy Uruguayan were insane. The indignation has been absurd. The scramble to climb up the highest of horses has done the club no favours whatsoever.

If we want to kick racism out of football, an eight-week ban for someone racially abusing a fellow pro seems to be a good place to start. Anfield has been in denial. The fact that Evra can be a needly little bleeder is unfortunate, but irrelevant.

You do wonder if the player concerned was, say, Martin Skrtel, whether the club would have been quite so fervent in its ignorance. Suarez is a cracking little player and Skrtel would only appear on a piece of merchandise if it were a parody of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

I mean I appreciate that the team ethic is important, and that managers, in public at least, tend towards tight-lipped support rather than damning the player outright. But that’s just not good enough in this case. I actually think Chelsea have handled the Terry case with a little more subtlety. At least their support has been guarded.

Suarez’s apology might just draw a line under things but the lament that the word ‘negro’ is commonplace in South America is disingenuous. The Black and White Minstrels were very popular in the 60s too, but now it makes us all feel a tad uneasy, Luis. If I snarl the word ‘black’ at someone seven times over in a couple of minutes (he says once but I think that’s almost certainly cack) then I think the bloke concerned might just think I’m accusing him of more than just possessing darker skin than mine.

The fact that Liverpool FC have a great tradition of community involvement, and have been at the wrong end of serious injustices in the not too distant past, makes the handling of all this even more difficult to fathom.

There are still the odd shit-headed knob-end who thinks that a player’s skin colour has owt to do with his contribution on a football field but one of the greatest advances in our national game is the fact that by and large a footballer is judged on whether he’s any good or not. Full stop.

There are more dimly lit corners of the continent where racism is rife – and I don’t doubt that Euro 2012 will unveil some shaven-headed tattooed pillocks, newly clambered out of the primordial soup, who treat football matches as an excuse to promote their illiteracy.

We can hardly condemn that sort of malice if we don’t clean the shit of our own doorstep.

Robbo's Christmas Carols

2011-12-24T13:07:00.003Z

Ho-ho-ho!

No, it’s not 50 cent describing some ladeez on his latest vidjo, it's Father Christmas Robbo-style. I’ve got me Yuletide head on and I’m wishing you all a very merry sherry-filled Christmas.

In between sticking a fork into an underdone turkey, performing the Heimlich manoeuvre on whichever of me young relations has choked on the 10p coin from the Christmas pudding, rushing out for last minute M&S gift tokens and playing ref to a couple of warring piss-headed uncles, I’ve cobbled together a festive blog.

This year, carols to suit all clubs!

ARSENAL

At the Emirates we have a sweet rendition of:

Silent Night, Holy Night,
Pass and move, get it right,
Everything is not quite what it seems
Try not to think of the Theatre of Dreams
Robin Van Persie is fi-it!
Robin van Persie is fit.

ASTON VILLA (to the tune of 'O Little Town of Bethlehem')

O little town of Birmingham
Take back our manager
His jowly face
A puce disgrace
He's worse than Houlli-er
We may have lots of po-oh-te-eh-eh-ential
But still we lag behind
Goodbye McLeish
You piece of peesh
Hurray the plank’s resigned!

BLACKBURN ROVERS

We Two Kings of Orient Are
Selling chucks from the back of a car
Fucking over
Blackburn Rovers
Doing it from afar, O oh.....

BOLTON WANDERERS (To the tune of 'Stop the Cavalry')

Hey Mr Gartside comes over here to say we’re doing splendidly
Owen’s positive, we are scared stiff, cos we're lying in the bottom three
Gartside’s hanging tough, Cahill’s had enough,
He’s buggered off to Chelsea.

CHELSEA (To the tune of Slade's 'Merry Christmas')

So here it is Terry Christmas
Everybody’s staying mum
Yes he’s the skipper but
That don’t mean he’s not scu-uh-ummmm!

EVERTON (to the tune of 'Good King Wenceslas')

Good King David Moyes looked out
On the Feast of Stephen
Asked Bill Kenwright ‘is it true
We are breaking even?’
‘There’s no chance of that’ said Bill
‘We are flaming brassic.’
‘Please don’t sell that Jack Rodwell.’
‘We have, mate!’
‘That’s just classic!’

FULHAM (to the tune of 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen')

God rest you merry cottagers, let nothing you dismay
Remember that you hardly ever win when you’re away
You’re getting poorer and Zamora doesn’t want to stay
No-oh tidings of Comfort and Jol, Comfort and Jol
No-oh tidings of Comfort and Jol.

LIVERPOOL (to the tune of 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing')

Hark a Horrid Racist Sings
But not to Kenny the King
T-shirts on, an act of hubris
We all love to back our Luis
So he might have said a word
It’s not one we’ve never heard
Sepp Blatter would just shake hands
Not just give out eight-week bans
Hark the Horrid Racist Sings
But we didn’t Hear a Goddam thing.

MAN CITY (to the tune of 'Away in a Manger')

Away from Manchester
No penny is spared
To bring to the city
Some new millionaire
In all of their pockets
The finances stench
Not enough for the Gaucho
Who sits on the bench.

The Poznan is jumping
They score when they like
The boss smiles so happy
(Looks a bit like a dike?)
The league title beckons
It’ll be on the shelf
If young Balotelli
Doesn’t blow up himself.

MAN UTD (to the tune of 'Deck the Halls')

Of all coaches Fergie’s cleverer
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Not as smart as Patrice Evra
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

It will be so very pleasin’
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
If they win fuck-all this season
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

NEWCASTLE UTD (to the the tune of 'Winter Wonderland')

Mike Ashley is gettin’ meaner
At the Sports Direct Arena
All that they can pretend
At the Gallowgate End
Is that they end higher than Sunderland.

NORWICH CITY (To the tune of 'Ding Dong Merrily on High')

Ding dong we are flying high
The tractor boys are crappy
Ding dong we have lovely pie
Canaries all are happy
Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelia in excelsis.

QPR (To the tune of 'The Holly and the Ivy')

The Joey and the Warnock
When they have had their moan
The Warnock gets on the pundit’s coach
But the Barton tweets alone.

STOKE CITY (to the tune of 'The First Nowell')

The first go-al
It came from a throw
Hurled up from our Rory
It came down with snow
Shawcross or The Crouch
Kenwynne or the Huth
One of them’s going get it
And that is the truth

O Hell, O hell, O hell, O hell,
Stoke City do love a set piece Go-al.

SUNDERLAND (To the tune of 'I Saw Three Ships')

I saw two shits come flailing by
On Sat-day night, on Sat-day night!
They trashed a car and then took flight
On Sat-day night Sunday morning

The policemen took em to the cell
On Sat-day night on Sat-day night
Titus Bramble was there as well
On Sat-day night Sunday morning.

SWANSEA CITY (to the tune of 'Once in Royal David's City')

Once in Royal St. David’s City
Cardiff reached the play-off stage
Still they couldn’t win the big one
Dave Jones got the sack in rage.
Saw some Swans go floating by
Felt a tear come from his eye

No one knows who plays for Swansea
Apart from that Scott Sinclair
Bluebirds fans just sit and simmer
Disbelieving that they’re there
Soon they think they’ll take that crown
Cos the Swans will come straight back down

TOTTENHAM (Or rather Yuletide with 'Arry, to the tune of Nat King Cole's 'Merry Christmas')

My nuts roasting on an open fire
Taxman rifling through my clothes
Though I’ve heard it said, many times, many ways,
Harry’s Christmas, subject closed.

I’ll just settle watching Gareth Bale
Flames just flicking off his toes
And I’ll hope that whatever the courtroom decides
I’ll be free when Capello goes.

WEST BROM (to the tune of 'The Sussex Carol')

On Hodgson's watch all Baggies sing
To see Odemwingie on the wing
Sometimes he's soft as Christmas pud
but sometimes he is weally good.

WOLVES (To the tune of 'In the Bleak Midwinter')

In the bleak midwinter
Mick will slowly freeze
As another ref turns
Down two penalties

The first one was nailed-on
The second one stonewall
Mick just throws his head back
How he hates football.

WIGAN (To the tune of 'While Shepherds Watch')

While others watch their box at night
Martinez trawls the earth
To find an obscure midfielder
That might just prove his worth

And though they may be playing to
A crowd of twenty-five
Roberto fills his men with cheer
And keeps the dream alive.

LANCASHIRE HOTCH-POTCH

2011-12-18T13:41:00.004Z

First of all apologies for the chasm of time it’s taken to get a new blog out. There are reasons for this. First, the computer got a virus. Second it passed it on to me. To be honest I haven’t quite got rid of the damn vyyv£"""£%^&&&*$E^E£&I *R yet

Of course, football has been idling along without me, not least in terms of two draws for European competition which seemed to be a response to a Cameron veto. Take that you smooth-browed quasi-Christian right-wing toff!

Cameron doing a sly 'wanker' gesture in the direction of France

Chelsea and Arsenal get the toughest fixtures possible. And Stoke, United and City pretty much match that in the Europa League. After the next rounds of both we could have no interest in what Europe does whatsoever and turn into a strange nation of hermits gathering on street-corners and buffing up our last pound coins while William Hague pads about in that baseball cap saying ‘I told you so!’

Of course fans of the Manchester clubs are managing to make upbeat noises about the Europa League now there in that particular kettle of fish. You’re not kidding anyone. Harry Redknapp may not have enjoyed the Shamrocking he got in Dublin but I dare say he doesn’t give a dry shit about not having to pop onto a plane every other Thursday morning.

Such is City’s strength in depth that they won’t mind having a little sideline to give their millionaire third-teamers a little run-out. United won’t last long given that injuries and illnesses have left Fergie’s cupboard looking barer than Carlos Tevez’s bookshelves.

To Stoke City, revived under Tony Pulis, the Valencia double-header will be immense fun. AS a Boro fan who watched awestruck as we marched to the final a while back, I have to say that the Europa League’s only raison d’etre is to give fans of the smaller clubs a little bit of the limelight. (Nevertheless it’s such a bloated, lifeless crock of crap for most of its duration that metaphorically it’s hard not to think of Robert Maxwell floating on the briny.)

I know scientists at CERN think they’ve found proof that the the so-called “God particle” exists, despite Jose Mourinho’s insistence that he is the Higgs Boson. But they’ve also isolated the gene for “no-nonsenseness” and it turns out Tony Pulis has no other genetic matter in his system.

Here's Pulis dressed like a twat - it's the only such picture ever taken.

Wenger and the increasingly fractious Andre Villas-Boas have trips to Milan and Naples. This means the Blue Bell will be running its ITV sweepstake for how many times Peter Drury uses the phrase ‘Italian Job’. Yawn. Personally I can’t see either of ‘em getting through. And I’m not bothered either.

There seems no doubt that if the draw keeps them apart then the final will be Real v Barca. And yeah, I’m sure they’ll be some nice stuff played n that, especially now Jose has let his team express itself a bit more, it is becoming a little too bleedin’ predictable for my liking. I mean I’m sure Sebastian Vettel’s a lovely man and an excellent driver but I don’t want to see him win every bloody race.

(Actually that’s a bad analogy cos I don’t want to watch F1 full stop and anyone who does should be taken out and shot in front of Jeremy Clarkson’s family.)

The gloryseekers abroad are as nothing compared to the burgeoning relegation dogfight that is already cranked up to breaking point this season.

Tuesday night is the must-see Lancashire Hotch-Potch derby: Blackburn Rovers v Bolton Wanderers. The two clubs have many things in common – geography, ineptitude... but more than that a couple of Scottish managers who are, regardless of circumstances, relentlessly positive.

If Steve Kean’s house caught fire he’d be happy that for at least one night the neighbours had saved on their heating bills. If Owen Coyle fell off a cliff he’d still be hoping to pick himself up and go again when he was halfway down.

I mean I’m no psychiatrist (and if you’re thinking you need one then I advise you to watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYLMTvxOaeE ) but surely there comes a point when positivity in word but not in deed becomes a hollow joke.

Coyle at least has started to spread the blame amongst his players, but truth be told I’ve seen more creativity in an actuaries’ brainstorming session. No Holden, no Korean lad, no Elmander If Chris Eagles, worthy though he is, is your main spark then your matchbox is a bit on the damp side.

Steve Kean, meanwhile, has become pathologically upbeat, as if to admit for more than a second that second from bottom is pretty shit would mean the Lancastrian skies would come crashing down on top of him.

Hoillett apart there’s not much going for ‘em up front and Ryan Nelsen has been a huge miss. Scott Dann may have appeared a perfect match for Samba, but maybe he’s more ballroom and less Latin. Above all else you’d have thought that Formica would be good on the counter.

In the teeth of another gale of abuse from the Rovers faithless, it’s hard not to be impressed by the Kean’s fortitude. Blackburn have had a fair bit of misfortune and conceded a lot of late goals. I seem to remember that Boro would’ve stayed up not so long ago if football matches were 80 minutes long.

"Och we've just let in another but it only meks me more positive!"

Nevertheless you do get the impression that Kean’s position is secure only cos it would cost the Venky’s owners too much to sack him. And while he’s a focus for the fans’ ire, the poultry pedlars can hide behind him and use him, in a phrase once uttered by Lord Brown to describe his role as head of BP, as a ‘shit umbrella’.

Personally I think a shit umbrella is one with loads of holes in it. Which is a good way to describe the defences of both Bolton and Blackburn. One of em’s doomed. And the other’s not safe. It’ll be a superb, terrible football match. A reet old classico.

Out With the Dead Wood, AVB!

2011-12-07T12:03:00.002Z

Andre Villas-Boas didn’t waste any time getting his retaliation in after Chelsea’s 3-0 tonking of Valencia. And you can’t blame him. Journos (and me) have been forming an orderly queue to gently push him off Roman’s slippery pedestal, and then his team came up trumps.

"3-0! Nyah-nyah-nee-ner-ner!"

There is a fair bit of spine in the Portuguese lad, isn’t there? This week Alex and, more predictably, Anelka have been put in the show-room window. Nicolas got a sign round his neck saying ‘Many previous owners, but very few smiles on the clock.’ Anelka has never been more than a sub’s bench away from a teenage strop his whole career. Enigma? Nightmare, more like.

Frank Lampard has the face of a man watching some joyriders take his Ferrari for a spin. ‘Course Frank has come back strong before but you can’t help feeling he ought to take a leaf out of his missus’s book and take a short vacation.

The escudo’s dropped for AVB. Having not wielded the new broom soon enough, there’s a sense that the axe is being primed for the greatest clear-out of dead wood since Pinocchio became a real boy. What gives him renewed confidence is the way certain players have flourished, Sturridge being the obvious example.

Some of his finishing at the Sports Clobber Going Cheap Stadium on Saturday was a little Heskeyian (hard and true and straight at the keeper) but Heskey would never have managed create such situations in the first place. Add to that a great eye for a pass and you’re looking at the best English forward in our league on current form.

Juan Mata has settled well, even if you suspect that there ought to be some sort of Hans Blix-led FIFA delegation sent into Spanish training camps to see whether they’re simply cloning Xavis and Iniestas in a topnotch laboratory somewhere.

Didier Drogba, who’s been trying to thumb a taxi out of the Bridge for three years, seems to have at the very least told the cabbie to leave the meter running while he pops inside to tidy things up. In fact getting him on side is a bit like getting the bull to hold the red cloak while you straighten your side-parting.

AVB bleated about the unfair scrutiny of the press in the post-match conference and while you can understand his yah-boo attitude, I don’t quite know what he was expecting. Chelsea managers don’t get the benefit of the doubt, not least cos it’s hard not to think of Roman Abramovich without picturing his index finger being drawn across his throat.

But surely there’s no point in employing a 34-year-old if you’re not thinking long-term. And long-term means that the old boys’ network needs ripping up sooner rather than later.

Of course, AVB suggested that Man City have not been subject to the same pressures but then maybe he wasn’t here when people were smirking about Mancini’s stuttering squad not that long ago. But old Roberto has been wielding his own weaponry in recent months.

His squad is as deep as the Marianas Trench which always means there’s someone with his own axe to grind. Kolo Toure is the latest Grinch, and given the amount of time he’s spent with nowt to do it’s hardly surprising that he’s been sitting around with his chopper in his hand.

Back in your usual seat, Kolo!

Toure’s latest lament can be best summarised as ‘Is it cos I is African?’ To which the answer is ‘No, you pillock, it’s cos you failed a drugs test.’ He argues that playing in the African Nations Cup puts him and his fellow Africans at a disadvantage. I just don’t see that. Kompany and Lescott are playing well and neither of them have bloodstreams with a suspicious composition.

Frankly young Kolo is still in work and that’s a bonus for anyone these days. I mean I haven’t seen such a misguided response since Rio came back from his absent-minded absence of 8 months and asked for a pay rise.

Every manager these days will tell you of the importance of having at least two teams to pick from. Mancini’s got getting on for seven as a far as I can tell. The price you pay for going to a club that’s got money dripping from its portals like sweat from Mike Ashley’s sauna is that you may find yourself having to be patient.

Lamps may seethe, Kolo may cavil, but if the team does better without you then wait your fucking turn and stop whingeing.

In the meantime we can still hope that financial might not win the day this season. Take that with a Siberian excavation of salt as I’m talking about Spurs. Gooners aside, Arry’s lot are certainly the neutral’s favourite this season. It’s not just Neil Warnock giving them warm applause.

Modric still weeps when he thinks that he could be playing midfield with John Obi Mikel

Modric is player of the season, if you ask me (Van Persie’s coming up on the rails). He controls the reins of that team like a tiny jockey in charge of a mighty stallion. Its galloping flanks are Bale and Lennon, its thumping heart is Scott Parker and if you want the odd award for presentation you’ve got Van der Vaart and Adebayor.

Redknapp’s said they can win it this season. Most of us wouldn’t be quite so bold, but it’s good to hear an Englishman speaking about a football team with a bit of conviction. And if the gaffer can steer clear of other convictions into the New Year, then you just never know.

The Need For Speed

2011-11-28T14:45:00.002Z

I’ve got nowt funny to say today. Not one word humorous comment. Some of you’ll reckon there’s no change there, then.

If you think of Gary Speed you think of a chest-out midfielder with a great left peg; you think of the classic football cliché of a lad who had a great leap for a small man; you think of a Leeds team that somehow won the Premier League; you think of a committed international footballer and a manager who recognised that Wales have a generation of young footballers headed by Bale and Ramsey who are capable of doing special things.

And even the most heterosexual of men can acknowledge that the man was as easy on the eye as sun sparkling off a Spanish sea.

You’d have thought that with all that going for him the man would have every right to be the sort of cocky wanker that sometimes appears to blight the modern game.
I know in such circumstances you’re not going to hear a bad word said about someone, but even then some wiseacre’ll say summat out the corner of his mouth if there was anything that you needed reminding of. To be fair that’d usually be me.

But no, Gary Speed was adored. What makes this tragedy deeper is the fact that he was so deeply loved by all who played with him and watched him.

That’s a pretty hard ask when he played for a fair few clubs. Club loyalty is not what it was and football fans don’t have much time for the modern mercenary who tears around from club to club in his latest playing-card-thin Italian sports car, his agent trailing behind him with an open suitcase to collect the £50 notes that are streaming out of the boot.

Speed played for Leeds, Everton, Newcastle... not clubs where temporary residence is welcomed. And still he commanded respect and adulation.

There’s nothing about this story that leaves you with anything other than a sense of sadness and even despair. Second only to his friends and family will be the players he was managing at international level.

Welsh football has had a fickle old relationship with its gaffers for many years, with John Toshack popping up like an unwelcome uncle at a family wedding. Speed, after a not-too-successful stint at Bramall Lane, took over and the change has been really something.

He leaves a team brimming with belief, immensely capable, and as pleasant to look at as the manager himself. Lord knows who’s going to keep that going, but I hope that that legacy is not lost along with the way.

As a side-issue, one of my least favourite pundits has come out of this with renewed respect. I heard Robbie Savage on the 5Live phone-in and what came across was a genuine friend in a state of utter grief. And given what folks say about Speed it’s unlikely that he’d form such a firm friendship with a pillock. Savage has been honourable, sincere and his bewilderment at this loss just compounds our collective sense of shock.

It’s impossible to even speculate as to what might be the reason for his suicide – and that’s not for the likes of me to consider any road. His death has, however, come at a time when the Leveson enquiry has unveiled case after case of immoral pillaging of people’s private lives in search of a scoop.

And once the shock has faded, the questions will be asked, and let’s just hope and pray that the phones will remain untapped, the bins untroubled, the kids unpestered. Let’s face it there’s been some devastating tragedies in recent years that have had your average reptilian hack salivating like a komodo dragon with a poisoned buffalo in its vicinity.

RIP. Let him rest in peace. Let the family grieve in peace. They will want to know why he took his own life, but the rest of us don’t need to.

Like I say, I’ll remember Speed as a footballer. Those that know him remember him as a great colleague. Football isn’t that important, but it’s good, even in those tragic of circumstances, that it can be populated by some dedicated, gifted and thoroughly decent human beings. Though whether there are any better than Speed is highly unlikely.

AVB - A Vapid Beginning

2011-11-21T13:29:00.005Z

Andre Villas-Boas. It doesn’t trip off the tongue any more easily than Roman Abramovic. Or Abram-O-vitch, depending on whether the person talking is a pedantic knob-end or not.

"Look! Here comes Guus! I told you he'd return!"

It cost €15 million for the Russian billionaire to buy off Porto for the 33-year-old and as yet there’s nowt to show for his money. Three months is a long time when you’re a clown-faced oligarch who changes managers more often than a teenager’s Mum changes his sheets. Villas-Boas must be ruefully stroking his bum-fluff this morning.

What’s most confusing about the young Portuguese gaffer’s reign thus far is how nowt’s changed. Having promised a new broom, AVB has lumped himself with precisely the same backsliding squad that dogged Ancelotti last season.

As we know, John Terry’s always open to trying out a new partner but maybe not at the centre of defence, particularly if the man in question is the human spaniel David Luiz. Off he bounds up the park chasing some imaginary stick, getting himself into deep water and dragging the whole team down with him.

Not that Terry’s lumbering efforts do much to reassure either. Perhaps the fact that people are beginning to recognise that for all his faults Ashley Cole’s as good a left-back as England has ever produced is leaving the poor lad bewildered, cos stick him in a blue shirt and he defends like Cheryl.

‘Course it doesn’t help Chelsea that they’ve tried very hard in recent months to stop getting beat by Liverpool, namely by nicking their matchwinners Torres and Meireles. Given that pedigree, it seems weird that Villas-Boas brought them both on with six minutes to go so they could get a closer look at what they’ve been missing.

Torres is of course AVB’s biggest liability.

"You remember what a football is, Nando, right?"

£50 million’s worth of talent bought, £49 million of which was lost in transit. Little bits of pace, power, anticipation and precise finishing are sitting in a LOSt Property office somewhere at Euston station. Unless Luis Suarez picked it up on the journey back up to the North-West (and you wouldn’t put it past the talented little sneak).

For 84 minutes Chelsea had the big strapping enforcer that is Didier Drogba, and right now that lad looks like he couldn’t give a fig, a toss or a shit. Anelka drifts from pitch to bench in an aimless approximation of a career. In fact the only poor sod looked miffed to be a sub. He wasn’t exactly smothered in brotherly love after he scored the goal either.

Of course the least able footballer in blue is still John/Mikel/Obi*. His worth is finally being recognised. Zilch. His meek surrendering of the ball after it’d been played to him by Peter Cech (currently doubling as a World War II pilot judging by the facial get-up) was utterly typical. I guess the only reason Chelski haven’t replaced him is that Man City currently have so many holding midfielders the FA should seriously think about contacting the Monopolies Commission.

In short it doesn’t how much Villas-Boas squats on the touchline like a dysentery victim in a Turkish loo, until he gets shot of this job-lot of these old boys who still secretly worship at the altar of the Special One then he’s pretty much done for.

Guus Hiddink, the only other man capable of wrestling these egos into summat resembling a football team, is idle now Turkey have no Euro 2012 to attend and it must be tempting for Abramovich to get straight on the blower this morning and sort it out.

In the meantime AVB resembles a shell-shocked casualty from an ad for Calvin Klein's Obsession. He seems a decent enough bloke, but you wouldn’t be surprised to see him back in the Algarve for Christmas – and he can take the Thunderbirds side-parting with him.

The winner came from a Chelsea old boy, of course, and once again Glen Johnson has made himself look good going forward. Defensively he still looks like he’d fit very well into Chelsea’s current back four. Which does beg the question ‘So what did Micah Richards do that means he’ll never get picked to play for England again?’

Certainly, Richards has had a couple of years when he’s ‘lost his way’ (translation: ‘getting shedloads of cash and spending it on booze, birds, brum-brums and bling). But with the generous exception ofKyle Walker, Richards is to every other right-back in the country what Mark Cavendish is to a kid whose just had his stabilisers taken off.

So what did he do to upset Fabio? Wear a tie incorrectly? Use his PS2 during a team talk? Happen to remark that he hadn’t understood a word of that last piece of advice, even though it had come from Stuart Pearce?

I don’t know either. But it has to be something. I mean there’s not been so mysterious an absence since Lord Lucan rode off on Shergar.

Praise however is due to @Rioferdy5. While I can’t say his is not a somewhat chequered past - Christmas parties and missed drugs test through jumper-shopping spring to mind, the way he stepped up as the Twitter-Blatter-Twatter was top-notch.

Of course some of us still remember that it wasn’t more than a few months back that the triumvirate of Wills, Backs and Dave went forelock-tugging to Switzerland and returned with a bad dose of Sepp-ticaemia.

But since they rooked us good and proper and we’re not bidding for the World Cup for the foreseeable, we can slag off the man who put the swizz into Switzerland good n proper. Unlike the strangely quiet Rest Of The Bleeding World!

Blatter won’t go. He’s apologised. He’s hugged black men in his time so that puts an end to any talk of homophobia and racism, doesn't it? So who will start the FIFA spring? Perhaps Rio, now that his England duties are over. Not sure he’s going to want partner JT in defence again anyway. He’s more likely to be working with his brother - for the prosecution.

I'm at the front of the queue, mind. With a scowl on my face and a giant fuck-off Toblerone in my hand.

Great Scott!

2011-11-14T13:35:00.005Z

England beat Spain and all I can think is that Creaseless Cameron will have been nodding his head gravely and calling it ‘a victory for common sense’. It was a win cast in the Age of Austerity: no risks, bank what you’ve got, sit tight and pray to God that no one breaks your door down and makes off with the flatscreen.

Not that your Spaniards are the most belligerent of bailiffs. Fact is they’re more likely to ease open a tiny gap in the front window frame and slip one of their tiny magicians in while you’re minding the back door.

It was a weird one. Spain seem to be treating the word ‘friendly’ all too literally recently, what with getting thumped by Argentina and Portugal. (Apart from Sergio Ramos of course – a Red Hot Chilli Pepper looky-likey who plays footy with the same clunky swagger. They haven’t forgotten how to be dirty, have they?)

Just in case you don't hate Ramos as much as me, here's a picture of his girlfriend

Even at half-cock they mustered 21 chances versus England’s 3. There was nowt wrong with how Capello set up his team. Despite the fact that our plucky boys couldn’t keep the ball - I’ve not seen so many misplaced passes since our third-year lads tried to chat up some sixth-form lasses – defensively they were rock-solid.

Jagielka underlined the fact that John Terry’s tediously troubled times are coming to a close. Lescott was a bit of a revelation even if every time he cleared the ball it went unerringly to a Spanish foot, as if Joleon was saying ‘Again! Is that all you’ve got, you pussies!? Again!!!’

Of course the star of such a dogged show is always going to be your tireless holding midfielder and I think we can say the Owen Hargreaves Award for Relentless Effort goes to Scott Parker. There’s summat very reassuring about Parker. He’s old-fashioned somehow: the work-rate, the upright gait, the 1950’s Brylcreemed side-parting... it’s like he’s been drafted in from a simpler time when a rattle, a cup of Bovril and a stripy scarf was all a man needed to take to a football ground.

Parker would have been the footballer of choice for every character in an Ealing Comedy. Even the affectionate moniker ‘Scotty’ suggests a big man-sized tissue mopping up the messy dribbles and cruddy scuffs left by his less capable comrades.

Wind him up and watch him go!

It’s impossible to imagine a return to Gareth Two-Paced Barry (slow and stationary). Or Michael Carrick, a man who makes neatness a crime.

Capello was eager to praise the new boys who have stepped up, not least Jack Rodwell. Fabio claimed he ‘never thought a player so young could be so ready on his first exhibition’ thereby making the lad sound less like an attacking midfielder and more like an aspiring water-colourist. Ah, the English language, eh?

Rodwell does look the business, mind. Phil Jones did a decent job, too, though you can already see his playing career being dogged by his versatility. You just wait til the poor sod gets slotted in at left-book for a crocked Cashley and wait for the doom-mongers to rain down on him. The lad’s a centre-back. Let him play there.

As for Welbeck, well he was a direct substitution for Darren Bent, who played as the football equivalent of a look-out. Capello must’ve said ‘Darren, sneak up near the front and tell us if you can see any trouble coming.’ To Bent’s credit it was his header that led to the goal. At the moment the alternatives to Rooney up top are pretty interchangeable. But I’d rather have a lad with a decent touch up there, like Sturridge or Zamora, rather than the earnest galloper that Capello favours.

As for Spain, well they’re kilometres better than us. Or indeed anyone else. Fabregas’s post-match bleat stank of a Wengered past. What team, in their right mind, is going to keep it nice and open against the best passers the game has seen? It’d be like saying to Usain Bolt ‘race you to the next lamp-post’ without having made sure your mates had lined the pavement with boxes of distracting KFC. Madness.

And sometimes Spain have only themselves to blame. Fabregas will know that there’s a new tavern opened up by the Emirates stadium called The Extra Pass (there isn’t really, but there should be), and aside from the lady-pleasered chin of David Villa, the team lack a bit of ruthlessness at times. Even if you have 70% of possession, you’ve still got to do summat with it.

Even so, anyone thinking that this was anything more than a freakish one-off is living in the land where Audley Harrison can dance, there is a point to Michele Bachmann, and Louis Walsh has penetrating insight.

What it proved, new boys or not, is that English footballers can still be worthy and diligent if given a limited gameplan to follow but when it comes to what your Alan Hansens would call ‘touch and technique’ – well they’re the footballing equivalent of the artwork them painting elephants come up with, and they are similarly overpriced.

Of course the strange thing is that an England victory always makes you a tad perkier than you should be, and I find meself looking forward to the next Euros in a spirit of having zero expectation. There’ll be no Rooney to worry about losing in a fit of twatty temper. Chances are the creaking partnership of Terry and Ferdinand (Rio, not Anton) will be unavailable.

As long as we long-sufferers aren’t reintroduced to the Gerpard Conundrum where Fat Frank and Sulkin’ Stevie fight over the same square of turf, there might be a little bit of light, unpressured enjoyment for the even the most steadfast pessimist. Which is, paradoxically, optimistic.

Fear not, fellow miseries, there’s another friendly tomorrow night. The victory has given the lads ‘something to build on’ so we look forward to the Swedes digging up the foundations like a bunch of Scotsmen with armfuls of turf-cutting equipment.

"'As 'e finished his bleedin' blog yet?"

In the meantime we've got 'Arry's trial to look forward to in January. I think all this talk of secret Bung Bung parties in Portsmouth is just newspaper waffle. Don't you?

Stand For Fergie (If We Must)

2011-11-07T13:08:00.005Z

Regular readers will know that I’m not given to outlandish statements, foolhardy predictions or irrational outbursts. But I say this to you: Democracy is dead.

The Greeks invented democracy, right? They exported it around the world to other nations who set about doing it way better. Like England and football, really. And cricket. And rugby.... tennis... *sigh* And now our Hellenic friends are holding a gun to the head of Europe and cobbling together a coalition to try and answer the continental concern.

In democracies everyone gets to vote – which is nice but quite often leads to stupidity winning the day. (See Frankie Cocozza).

I'm just bein' a knob and gettin' away wiv it. Eat your heart out Robbie Savage.

Me, I’ve always thought that the best system of rule is a dictatorship. You just have to get the right dictator.

Take Manchester United. When I was growing up they were English football’s glamorous afterthought. Post-Busby they slipped into the second division as easily as George Best slipped into a nightclub. O’Farrell was replaced by Tommy Docherty and the little gargoyle kept us entertained with the likes of Coppell and Gordon Hill (a kind of prototype Manc Cockney for Beckham) but had only an FA Cup to show for his efforts.

The Doc was a ‘character’ – a phrase that I think meant ‘pisshead’ – and United replaced the slurring bon viveur with Dave Sexton, a man with all the charisma of a woodlouse. Sensing that the crowd at the Theatre of Dreams were dreaming all too often while Sexton’s team were on the park, United turned to a Black Country version of Docherty, the Bling Magnet and Casual Racist Big Ron Atkinson.

Again, United copped a couple of FA Cups but were never able to muster a really significant assault on the League.

And to be honest, apart from the genetically encoded Scouse spite, no one really minded Man U. There was a bit of glamour sentiment attached to them, but essentially when The One True Dictator arrived Manchester United were a side overly reliant on Bryan Robson and Worthington’s Best Bitter.

What’s interesting about United managers prior to Fergie is that they lasted 3 or 4 years. In Sexton’s case, whilst doing f-all. The Govan Beetroot himself managed 4 years of diddly before they stumbled past Crystal Palace in an FA Cup Final.

What I mean to say is, they let the bloke be a bit shit for a while. How likely is that nowadays? (Apart from at Middlesbrough, where we wait for them to prove that they always were a bit shit before we move ‘em on). Ferguson had to change the culture of the club, which meant them getting used to such novelties as hairdryers, shallow frying and a drink called Water.

Slowly the dictator ossified into place and if we must all take it in turns to kiss old Taggart’s ring, then it’s fair to say that his greatest triumph has been his ability to recognise when players are past their use-by-date and when they’re ready to be thrown into the big time.

Me, I’d love to dwell on the things that didn’t work. And that basically means Eric Djemba Djemba, Kleberson and Taibi. It’s just that in 25 years that’s not bad going. Benitez managed to buy twice as many duffers during his somewhat shorter stay at the western end of the M62.

There should be many other instances where his faith hasn’t been justified. His interest in horses clearly extends to Portuguese show-ponies, but the mincing strut of Ronaldo and Nani has paid huge dividends in the end.

Giving gainful employment to a French background artist with a potty line in poetry shouldn’t have worked either but Cantona continues to be his masterstroke. That Kung Fu kick led some wags to suggest that this was the first bona fide cast of the shit actually hitting the fan.

Then there’s his sudden deployment of the cornerstones of England’s ‘golden generation’ – your Neville, your Butt, your Becks, your Scholes, your – shit, I’ve come over all Lawrenson – who were way too young to win the title. Of course, put that lot in England shirts and they became a less precious metal – the leaden, tinpot generation, I think you could call it.

My point is, if Ferguson’s tenure had been subject to the forces of democracy then none of this would’ve happened. If the season ticket holders of the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand (and frankly I wish he’d stop standing and just sit the fuck down in a comfy armchair somewhere) had been given their say as to whether, say, Roy Keane should spend more time with his wife’s puppies, or even if Carlos Tevez should haul his greedy ass across Manchester, they’d still be sitting in the North Stand today.

And if it was one fan one vote, Fergie would’ve been winding his way back up to his favourite Glasgow chewing-gum vending machine with his tail between his legs after a couple of years. The fans didn’t much care for 11th in the First Division in 1987 (which as the name suggests, teenagers, used to be the best division in the country).

I’m telling you, dictators are the best bet. If only you could rely on them not being too malevolent. And only opposition managers, former players, referees and BBC executives could ever accuse Ferguson of owt like that. Could they?

Me, I’ve always blamed his Mrs. There was a time, after a trophyless season (ah happy days!) when if it wasn’t for her elbowing him back to work we’d all be chuckling behind our hands as the Glazers or whoever went through managers like the lad Cocozza gets through Bacardi-breezered totty.

But he’s still there, dammit. It looks like he’s mellowing. We can but hope.

So well done, your Knightship but please, enough is enough. Martin O’Neill’s tired of waiting. Time for a new dictator.

And that George Papandreou’ll need a job.

Man U? Compare to the bleedin' Greek economy is a piece of piss, innit?

The Case For The Defence

2011-10-31T14:17:00.004Z

Ooh the crotch seams of football statisticians are splitting under the strain. The Premier League has thus far mustered an average of 2.97 goals per game. (The 0.97 of a goal is presumably the one Messrs Bent and Adebayor keep just missing – and there’s nowt more satisfying that your mercenary goalscorer failing to do the one bit of his job he’s really paid for.)

More like Smack 'im Like a Mackem

This surprising stat is supposed to indicate a sad decline in the art of defending. But are defenders really getting worse? Well yes. They’re fucking shite.

I’d like to start by blaming it on Rio. Not Ferdinand, who more and more he resembles an old dodderer from an Ibuleve advert, but Rio the city – in fact Brazil as a whole. Full-backs these days are duty bound to be auxiliary wingers. They get forward so frequently that they even have their own verb ‘bombing on’ to describe the phenomenon.

Not only does every full-back think he’s Cafu, he defends like them n all. A full-back gets notice d these days for pace and crossing ability and pace. Who gives a toss if he’s got the positional sense of a bat in ear-muffs (that’s you that is, Glen Johnson).

Jose Bosingwa, Chelsea’s mono-browed raider, needs a guide-dog to get him back into the right-hand side of defence. Kyle Walker is a tip-top lad going forward but I’m not convinced that he doesn’t need his hand-holding when he’s fending off an attacking left-winger. Leighton Baines is Everton’s biggest goal threat but he’s so impressed with Chicharito’s finishing he pulls up a deckchair and tokes on a ciggie from his front-row seat.

Of course Brazil’s compensation to this policy of outflanking the opponents was the two holding midfielders - two cloggers to shield your centre backs and guard your penalty box with your life. In a perfect world these players would be Claude Makelele and Claude Makalele. (Incidentally, the translation of ‘Makalele’ is ‘Scouse banjo’)

Now, apart from Fulham, and Man City, whose squad is the football equivalent of my wife’s frigging wardrobe (there’s something for every occasion with Adam Johnson being Mancini’s emergency all-purpose accessory and Carlos Tevez the big ugly back-of-the-drawer knickers) most teams seem to eschew this safety mechanism in favour of a headlong rush toward the opposition.

Chelsea v Arsenal featured those sturdy central operators Alex Song and John Obi Mikel. I still can’t quite believe Mikel inspired such a tug-of-war between Man U and Chelsea a while back. At the time I believe he was an attacking midfielder – he certainly defends like one. Song makes more sense in the role but even he was powerless to prevent wave after wave of Blue Meanies stomping through the Thin Red Line. I say thin – when a roof leaks at Arsenal’s training ground they send Sczesny up a ladder with a box of one-ply fragranced tissues.

While you’re never surprised to see Koscielny and Djourou behaving like men who’ve woking up with their heads down the wrong end of their sleeping-bags, it was weird to see the likes of Cashley and Terry looking similarly deranged.

‘Course the seeing John Terry fall over is a joy forever. Moscow memories came flooding back as the grim-faced plodder’s mug smacked into the Stamford Bridge turf and Robin Van Persie galloped off to confirm his status as a member of Wenger’s Irreplaceables. (Team-mates include Fabregas, Nasri, Henry, Vieira – Arsene makes ‘em skipper, they can’t wait to go).

Villas-Boas claimed the League Cup win at Goodison in midweek was for the skipper as he seeks to fight off accusations of racially abusing Anton Ferdinand. If it’s true it would show just how dense Terry is – all them weaknesses in Anton Ferdinand’s game and he chooses to pick up on an irrelevance of the colour of his skin? Better surely just to point how what a crap footballer he is.

Terry doing his best Yosemite Sam impression: "Oh, You Robin!!"

As for Ashley Cole, well he got a good roasting by Theo Walcott (unfortunate turn of phrase but you know what I mean) and spent much of the time playing three or four yards behind the rest of the defence. It’s the first time someone has played the sweeper role at left back.

The thing is these blokes aren’t bad players – or at least they haven’t been. Terry lacks pace, but he’s managed to get around that until recently. It doesn’t help when David Luiz – the result of a hideous cloning experiment between Brian May and a headless chicken – is his partner in crime .

There’s some merit in saying that footballers don’t defend well these days cos the rules don’t really permit it. Good tackles get punished way too often. One of the greatest arts of the modern forward is the well-timed tumble. I’ve seen newborn foals make a better effort to stay on their feet. I honestly don’t think a lot of players know how to tackle these days, so they (a) don’t bother – (the Taarabt Option) or (b) tackle anyway and get sent off (the Cattermolean School).

There are exceptions: Scott Parker and errr... well that’s it really.

The upshot of all this suicidal defending is loads of goals and top players strutting their stuff. As well as RVP, there’s RVdV, Silva to Aguero’s Lone Ranger, and Grant Holt. The Premier League should always have space for an English centre-forward who looks like he spent the morning with one hand on the slot machine and the other on a pint of Badger’s Best.

Who Ate All The [Delia's] Pies?

Nevertheless I sometimes wonder whether the Flash Harrys might not be doing their bit at the toher end. Watch Barca. Never mind all the Billy Smart’s Circus stuff around the opposition’s box, the way they chase the ball when they lose it like a pack of Duracell-packed Jack Russells is an object lesson to all footballers.

PS I see El Hadj Diouf has signed for Doncaster for three months. Apparently it’ll get cut to 6 weeks for good behaviour.

Theatre of Dirhams

2011-10-24T13:23:00.004+01:00

In ten years time, in the North Didsbury Sunshine Home for the Bewildered, a tottering Arsene Wenger will nudge his zimmer frame over to the grumpy bastard in the armchair.

“You’re Alex Ferguson”, he will say.

“Yes. And you’re Arsene Wenger!”

“Mais oui!”

“Aye” says the purple Scot, “I remember names – I just cannae remember how tae defend!”

After Arsenal’s 8-2 mauling at Old Trafford, you’d have been forgiven for thinking that the Premier League’s arse-spanking event of the year had been seen and done. There was something about City’s demolition derby victory that may even have left United botties rawer still.

First of all, Fergie managed to suggest his team had met all the big sides in the League last weekend. City were absent from the list. He’s the master of the tactical omission. Secondly, there’s that ‘noisy neighbours’ tag – which is Fergie’s bit of football snobbery, as if Citeh are some chav family with nothing more than a Euromillions win to go with their string of ASBOs. Well they’re not so much noisy now as so downright ear-splitting it makes your hairdryer sound like little more than a housefly’s fart.

From Cornwall to Kuala Lumpur, there’ll be wanting answers from Fergie. Citeh, five points clear and with a squad with more depth than the Marianas Trench, look pretty unbeatable. There is still one ugly blot on the Eastlands landscape but the greedy little Argie will be whisked off to a new address in January – I hear it’s called Joorabchian’s Cut – and Mancini’s grip will have tightened considerably.

And it’s Roberto who’s looking like the bee’s knees at the mo. I thought Citeh would lose patience with the bloke, assuming as I did that billionaires have attention span of a three-year-old toddler. But then not all billionaires are Russian oligarchs. Mancini’s had 100 games in charge now and finally the stroppy buggers are being weeded out and a team is emerging.

Of course Balotelli, possibly forced into service by the couch potato-faced Carlos, has been a revelation. He’s managed to combine exquisite finishing with tremendous eccentricity. Ken Loach is currently making a film called Looking for Mario, in which a United fan gets kept awake day and night by a bloke playing Italian hiphop and setting off fireworks in his bathroom.

Who said Balotelli was a bit of a cock?

That T-shirt with the slogan ‘Why Always Me?’ showed a fine line in self-awareness. I know the lad’s got a couple of rashers short of the full English but I’m starting to like the lad.

Whether this is a changing of guard in Manchester remains to be seen, say all but the most reckless of pundits. Me, I know it is. Sure, Ferguson has this magic touch, can turn average Englishness into a force to be reckoned with, but frankly he doesn’t have anything like the same weapons at his disposal. Citeh’s tanks rolled into the Theatre of Dreams and United had nowt but cotton-buds with which to protect themselves.

At times Ferdinand appeared to wave them through with grim-faced resignation like a bystander at Royal Wootton Basset.

Fergie can compete against naked wealth when it’s a band of self-interested mercenaries – not that I’m suggesting that United are poor; compared to Shane McGowan, Shaun Ryder is coherent. But if that wealth is organised into a team culture by a suave greying Mediterranean smoothie with a potty streak then Fergie has to stand aside and let that money talk, be it in roubles or dirhams.

Chelsea have yet to recover the pomp of the Mourinho years. I think the phrase is ‘in transition’. Which is football-speak for ‘some good young-uns, some good old-uns who are getting past it and some rich middle-uns who don’t quite know what they’re supposed to be doing yet.’

The defeat at QPR led to Villas-Boas’s first resort to ref-bashing. Unfairly, I reckon. The red cards were right. The penalty was right. Drogba looked like he was jumping into a puddle rather than Adel Taarabt. (Even so, I can imagine a bit of Neil Warnock wishing that he could attack Adel in the same way. Tarrabt makes Mario Balotelli look like he’s walked out of an ashram.

Rangers spent the second half doing their best All Black impression and choking like a thirteen-year-old after his first toke but in the end Anelka and co couldn’t get back into it. And Chelsea sit six points behind this season’s Premier League Champions. Or do I mean leaders? No I mean Champions.

Citeh’ll still struggle in Europe but that’ll only strengthen their hold in England.

Meanwhile the rest of the North-West are looking a bit grim. Well Wigan, Bolton and Blackburn always look a bit grim but so do their football clubs now. (Yep, I know, this coming from a citizen of Middlesbrough – but I think that qualifies me to pass judgement).

Blackburn fans seem to be the readiest to roast their manager. Not quite sure why the chicken-vendors are hesitating. Kean looks oven-ready. Not that his team have played that bad, they just haven’t had the luck. Not that Blackburn fans will forgive the manager or owners.

Steve Kean prowls the touchline.

It’s a footballing paradox that you could almost hear rolling out of the slightly slurred lips of Alan Hansen: ‘In football, luck doesn’t change by accident’.

And whichever way you look at it, you’ve got to sell a lot of flaming chickens before you can start competing against the oil and gas magnates of this world.

A final word on the Rugby World Cup. Thank God that’s over. Were it not for the romance of a nation plagued by adversity claiming the trophy it would go down as one of the grimmest tournaments in living memory.

The final was one for the connoisseurs I’m told. Which basically means it was like a food flight in an abattoir. There are better ways to spend a Sunday and Man City and QPR proved that later in the day. Football is quite simply a much much better game.

England Expects... Nowt!

2011-10-10T14:37:00.003+01:00

A tale of two Englands with a lot in common this weekend.

Friday night saw the footballers coast into the finals following a comfortable 2-2 draw with Montenegro. Except that the match was foreshadowed by the arrest of Wayne Rooney Senior, a man who looks like a rough-shaven bollock placed on top of a badly-dressed jelly. Or, if you like, Phil Mitchell off EastEnders.

(Wayne Jr can have all the hair-dos he wants, the future’s not looking bright, Colleen.)

Still the younger Wayne was over all that sort of shady shenanigans and besides, once he crosses that white line he’s a still point of control and finesse. Til he kicks someone.

Maybe that hair transplant has confirmed he’s just one more nut-job in an England shirt. Rooney will miss England’s opening two fixtures at Euro 2012 and so all the creativity will be coming from Gareth Barry and Scott Parker. Not so much your Van Gogh and Picasso, more your two coats of honest gloss on your skirting-boards.

Or, God forbid, Lamps and Gerrard will be clumsily fitted together again and England’s Warsaw adventure will begin with two identical poles in the middle of the park.

Whatever happens this is Capello’s last hurrah and no one’s banking on us doing owt. I’ve lost count of the number of folk who say they’re not bothered about England right now. At a time when they are at least getting a job done, that’s pretty sad news. It’s probably because only the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust has seen more lame ducks over the past couple of years.

We presume Fabio’s still there cos the FA can’t afford to sack him. You might think that’d make him a bit more cavalier about team selections but when push comes to shove he goes for a lot tried – or should be tired – and tested. I mean why’s the Charm Vacuum JT still skipper?

Rooney’s absence will only fan the flames of pessimism, but frankly the majority of English club football fans live in a world where hope is as fleeting as a tear in the eye of Simon Cowell, so we’ll all feel well at home with an expectation of nowt.

Of course all the rugby union boys are on their way back home as I write – that’s if Manu Tuilagi hasn’t decided to try his hand at wing-walking. (Personally I don’t think Manu was pissed – I think he was stone cold sober and jumped off the ferry in order to swim back to Samoa as fast as he could.)

I’m not that bothered, me. I know the press go sniffing for the scent of any old shit during a big sports tournament but Martin Johnson’s men seemed to have delighted in serving big dollops of scandalous turd on a silver salver to anyone who cares to inhale.

You wouldn’t mind if, like Gazza’s dentist’s chair celebration in ’96, the players were able to stuff it back down your throats. But the concrete-filled pillow-cases that took to the field for England were steroid-enhanced Nice-But-Dims.

Johnson hasn’t done his reputation any good by sticking with Wilkinson when he was clearly out of form. Moody didn’t seem a great choice for skipper given he was coming back from injury. I know he’s fearless but having a face tattooed with stitches doesn’t make you a leader any more than getting shot nine times makes 50 Cent a great musician.

Johnson also brought on some weird old substitutions when England needed what the pundits call ‘some go-forward’ – which is another of them obvious turns of phrase that means eff-all. I mean, what else could they need? Some go-backward?

The main reason for my indifference, apart from the fact that England’s squad seems to have a disproportionate number of knobheads in it, is that I’ve tried to give rugby union a fair crack of the whip this year. I’ve tried to put aside me tribal prejudices and see the game in the round. And I’m still left with the same conclusion: it’s dull.

A lot of rugby union seems to involve huge men running into huge men and falling over. Some more huge men then join the other huge men and a lot of them fall on top of each other. Then the referee blows a whistle and tells someone they fell over in the wrong place or didn’t let go of something when they fell over.

There’s also the poorly-organised shoving contest, or scrum, during which time itself stands still. There’s about three hours of my life I’ll never get back, watching props pitch face down in the stuff that Anchor cows love so much. I don’t give a toss if it’s supposed to be an integral part of the game – it’s a frigging mess and the penalties that are conceded bewilder the pug-faced bruisers that give ‘em just as much as they do me.

The only delight in rugby union is when, all too occasionally, the ball goes through the hands. Contempomi’s little pat-ball pass during the Argies’ try against NZ is a prime example. And here’s the thing rugger-lovers – that happens ALL THE TIME in rugby league! That’s right! League is like Union minus all the shit bits.

Maybe we Northerners are too dense to understand the intricacies of the public school game of choice. And maybe we just like to play a game where men don’t feel the need to climb all over each other in a way that invites the sort of ‘insinuations’ that surround a cabinet minister when he goes abroad with a ‘close personal friend’.

Ah, the beautiful game!

Of course, Johnson has to go. But then so does Capello. It’s just nobody at either Twickers or the FA has a bastard clue who is supposed to make such a decision. How we got the Olympics is beyond me.

Any road, I’ll be doing the patronising English thing of cheering on little old Wales. At least they chuck the ball around nicely. And if NZ choke, you never know my Cymru friends.

Taxi for Tevez

2011-10-04T10:47:00.003+01:00

Carlos Tevez was meeting Man City officials yesterday – that’s assuming he turned up of course. Now I’ve not had my official take on this yet, so here goes:

You workshy, shiftless, arrogant, money-grabbing, mercenary cock!

That’s about that. Except to say that at a time when nurses are balloting members for strike action (they’d quite like to still have a 7 grand a year pension to fall back on when they retire, selfish little tenders of the sick and old that they are) it might be nice to see someone like Tevez lift his head out of his arse and have a little look around. Not that he doesn’t look better with his head there.

I can’t say I’m one Frank Lumplard’s biggest fans, but he’s not been throwing his rusks out of his state-of-the-art baby buggy, has he? Nah, he just goes on the pitch and scores a few goals and says ‘write me off if you dare’.

There’s a bit of me – and almost everyone else I know – that feels like Citeh brought this upon themselves. The gaucho’s arrival in England didn’t exactly smack of an earnest and loyal representative keen to do his duty by the players and fans around him. Neil Warnock’s dismissive ‘the sooner he goes home the better’ comments may have been partly influenced by the fact that Tevez’s appearances for West Ham were (a) suspect and (b) saw Warnock’s Sheffield United get relegated.

Of course, much of the trouble with Tevez appears to revolve around the fact that he is the property of a top-of-the-range 4x4, the Kia Joorabchian. Joorabhcian appears happy to hawk his client about the place as if Tevez is less a footballer and more a bit of lucky heather. Why Tevez is happy to be treated like a bit of fluff on Kia’s arm is beyond me. Except for the money, of course.

But not even a salary that would make a pinstriped City swanker blush can make up for the slight of being replaced in the Citeh starting XI by Aguero (8 goals) and Dzeko (6 goals). Any right-thinking individual might think them blokes had made a good start to the season. Not Carlos.

It’s that poster that your mind drifts back to now. I’ve no problem with thumbing your nose at United, God knows. But to hang your new beginnings on the back of such an opportunistic little scrote seemed a tad odd.

Tevez may have felt slighted by his treatment at United, but clearly Ferguson had decided the lad was either not that good, or not worth the bother and in both cases, he’s probably right.

Now of course Tevez can point to his large contribution to Man City’s success last season as proof positive of his dedication to the club. His work-rate is undeniably good. But he’s not put anything like that amount of legwork into a few other basics – in particular learning the language. Four years he’s been here, working with British managers at English clubs and still not even a ‘Good morning’ from the pillock.

All right, maybe he’s thick. Maybe his Spanish isn’t much better. But this lack of effort means he’s either (a) supremely conceited or (b) thick as pig-shit or (c) both. (Ian Rush’s inability to settle at Juve was put down to being linguistically-challenged – in his case I’d go for (b))

So what do Man City do with the reprobate? Were it left to the simple common sense of the average English football fan, it’d be simply a case of giant jiffy bag, air-mail sticker and an eight-hour flight back to Argentina. I’d be tempted to throw in the Falklands too just so long as they just keep him.

Other options include: hire him out as an extra for spaghetti Westerns;

'Are you sure you won't go on for the last 20 minutes, apache?'

chuck him on a celebrity show shouty chefs so he can cook for himself instead of complaining about the restaurants; send him on a rugby tour with England to see how crap the team environment can really be.

It’s amazingly that our footballers can still be dismissed as a bunch of ignorant numpties when they do summat a bit laddish but for our rugger buggers it’s a bit of team-bonding high-jinks, don’t you know...

In the meantime, Arsenal continue to court a lot of press attention, mainly cos they’re a bit shit at the mo. The team is so fresh-faced at present I keep picturing Wenger sat next to Gary Barlow as he says to a weeping young Carl Jenkinson ‘I’m sorry you didn’t make the final 11.’

Of course, Spurs have bitten back following Citeh’s early season demolition and ‘Arry’s got that perky look back – you know the one where he looks like a sunburnt cock bantam.

Spurs look a good bet for the top four if Redknapp can rid himself of the Europa League commitment (and given he’s sending out sides that Fagin would look upon as a little bit naive, there’s every chance).

It was still a lively Norf London derby, but the game was overshadowed by some terrace chanting that really beggars belief. Adebayor is unlikely to be flavour of the month at any of his former clubs, but hilarious quips about the lad hiding under bus seats while he and his team-mates get showered with bullets is so low I’d be tempted to find the perpetrators and put ‘em through a similar experience.

The Merseyside derby saw Jack Rodwell get sent off for the heinous crime of winning the ball fairly. Suarez’s writhing didn’t help. Neither does Dalglish’s insistence is not acknowledging that the red card was undeserved, particularly when (as far as I can understand him) he’s got a moan about the refs every bloody week.

Terrible challenge! It's an early bath for someone!

Hopefully those Man City players giving evidence this week won’t be similarly tight-lipped on their former club captain’s ridiculous strop in the Allianz arena.
Twat! I just wish me mam could get hold of Tevez. He’d be training 24 hours a day just so he didn’t have to go back home.

Fergie's Having It Both Ways

2011-09-27T09:59:00.005+01:00

So Sir Alex Ferguson is complaining about the overweaning power of Television on the Beautiful Game. That, much like the game itself, is a bit rich.

'I tell yer, television is God and it's crucifying me'

The only reason that the top footballers wade into work through a sea of bank notes these days is television. I’m sure Ferguson himself is that little bit wealthier since the advent of Sky Sports.

Those that run the Premier League will point to its enormous operating profits and pronounce it a success. It’s not so much television that rules the roost, it’s money. And television, in the form of walnut-faced mogul Murdoch and his butter-wouldn’t-melt boy James – the result of what would have happened if Steptoe and Son had made it big – pays better than owt else.

But then cos telly gets your ‘brand’ seen across five continents it doesn’t half help your merchandising n all. In fact, the Box is so instrumental in keeping your club afloat that you’d think that Ferguson might be a less grumpy about the whole thing, even if he doesn’t have to resort to the average chief executive’s role of bending over forwards while the EPL stuff in as many fivers as his arse can carry.

Ferguson says ‘Television is God’ (and you were beginning to think it was you, eh, Alex?) If he’s right, then presumably he thinks football is the Virgin Mary, but the only people getting truly fucked by the situation at the moment are those clubs without the emissaries necessary to hook a billionaire with too much time on his hands.

I just picture Bill Kenwright slapping on the lippy, hitching up the stockings and walking the wealthier thoroughfares of major financial centres waiting for someone to wind-down the dark-glassed window of his Rolls-Royce and buy some business.

When Man City played Everton this weekend, you had the two extremes in opposition and you couldn’t help rooting for the poverty-stricken honest Johns against the moneybagses. Unsurprisingly, the Toffees, outmuscled by sheer wealth, opted for the Alamo approach and held out for as long as possible while Mancini chopped and changed his state-of-the-art armouries until a fluky deflection saw the royal blue walls crumble.

'I have this many millionaires on my bench!'

This is the reality of modern-day football. Money will win out. And money comes from two directions – telly and the deep, deep pockets of rich men with nowt much to do.

And there’s no doubt that football’s thirst for cash shows no signs of fading. The whole idea of the Europa League, a great sprawling fat beggar on European football’s landscape, is designed to accrue more bits of change for the football hierarchy.

Ferguson complains about fixture lists being twisted to accommodate the whims of the television companies; surely it’s the whims of the greedy graspers running football that conceived of the Europa League, a competition that distorts your regular Saturday afternoon domestic footy programme more than any other.

Of course Fergie has only just patched things up with the Beeb after some 2004 programme implicated his boy in some sort of brown envelope conspiracy. It took Mark Thompson to go bowing and scraping at his door to get His Puceness back on side. Perhaps the Beeb’s not part of the television godhead. Perhaps Fergie’s an atheist. Or perhaps Fergie’s idea of a divine creator is one that comes and begs you to help Him out.

Add to this the fact that you can go a week without the latest endeavours of Manchester United being emblazoned across our screens, and you have to think SAF is guilty of biting the admittedly unpleasant hand that feeds him. I mean I can’t see that United have suffered in any way, shape or form from its relationship with telly.

All right, sometimes (very rarely) clubs have to play Wednesday night and Saturday lunchtime. But what with all that cash the telly’s bringing in, a club like United can afford to have two pretty decent teams in its squad, with a third one just for show for the Carling Cup. I’m still not sure where you’re losing out.

To his credit, Fergie’s push for football clubs to get more revenue from any renegotiation of the League’s international TV rights deal isn’t wholly self-interested. That money gets split 20 ways equally, so United benefit and so does everyone else. The old leftie in him sees that as ‘fair’. So do I.

Meanwhile, Michael Owen continues to bewilder the average football fan with his career choices. Apparently he’s rather play once every three months with top players than every week with cack ones. I think maybe he’s rather turn up in the League Cup where, given the poorer quality of opposition available, he’ll get more opportunities to tuck away the odd brace.

Certainly the old predatory skills have not deserted him, and he can still scuff one in off a left foot that, after 14 years at the top level, still can’t kick straight.

Owen gets a lot more joy out of his horses, as those who saw his celebrations after his nag Brown Panther won the King George V Stakes at Ascot can testify. You do wonder quite what he’s doing warming benches for a day-job.

Of course he’ll have to make sure his jockeys keep their whips trousered from now on. There are strict rules for whip usage coming up. No more than eight lashes allowed in the final furlong for National Hunt jockeys. Which is a tad muddled. If hitting them is bad, why tell the riders to do it less often? It’s like telling a thief he can only turn over three security vans a month. After that, we get serious.

You should've seen the mess it made of Max Mosley's behind. Allegedly.

Of course if horses enjoy a good thrashing then who’s to tell the likes of Dettori and McGuire what to do in the privacy of their own horse-race. I dunno but me, I suspect the gee-gees might rather watch telly with Sir Alex Ferguson than have an anorexic midget smack em about for a mile and a half. But what do I know?

Tormented Torres

2011-09-19T11:24:00.004+01:00

Fernando Torres, eh? Three years ago he had the world at his feet. If that were still the case, he’d only shank the world into Row Z.

That miss, that glorious Rosenthalian miss, capped off a performance that sums the lad up at the moment. Clearly, he’s got a bit of the old swagger back. Villas Boas made him the lone striker and the way he ran off the shoulder of the United’s back two was very reminiscent of his better Liverpool days.

His finish for Chelsea’s goal was pretty smart too. And suddenly you were thinking that the lad that made Nemanja Vidic look like he was on board the starship Enterprise during a prolonged meteor shower was back.

But the false dawns continue. Put him in front of a net and it’s like Chelsea have paid £50 million for Norman Wisdom.

"Mr. Villas Boas! Mr Villas Boas! I think I'm going to score, Mr Villas Boas!"

I just picture Nando at home, haplessly going about his business. Looking for his pants and finding them slipping out of his trouser leg an hour after he gets to work. Dunking his biccie in his tea and losing the whole blinking digestive. Bending over to wipe his arse only for his I-Phone to fall out his shirt pocket and into the lav (all right, that last one’s happened to me – except it was a cranky old Nokia summat).

You could cry for the lad were it not for the fact that he’s paid an effing fortune and it’s Chelsea’s look-out of they want to keep rewarding failure. (As opposed to say the Royal Bank of Scotland where we’ve all got an interest, not that you’d know it).

Not that Torres’s team-mates helped out a lot. Ramires looks a decent player until he gets inside the box when he betrays all the confidence of a hydrophobic climbing into a punt. And defensively they were alluerthpless (Hansen speak for ‘crap’).

Of course, as any Arsenal fan’ll tell you, a pathetic defence makes for highly entertaining football, and despite your average neutral wishing ill on both United and Chelsea, the game was a joy to behold.

On the BBC Fergie (I’m missing Mike Phelan already aren’t you?) described the game at Old Trafford as being like basketball - well given the number of sitters missed it was like basketball played blindfolded elves.

As we know only too well, Rooney isn’t immune to the odd desperate muff, and the scuff on to the post was probably even worse than the John Terry impersonation for the penalty kick. (Although the latter wasn’t nearly as enjoyable: I think the new dictionary definition of schadenfraude is: ‘Watching John Terry fall on his arse while trying to score a match-winning penalty for Chelsea’.)

Of course Fergie’s main concern post-match was the atrocious tackle by Ashley Cole on the Cheapdorito. Cole was probably at the end of his tether after Nani spent the whole match ripping him to shreds like so much damp newspaper. Say what you like about Ferguson but he’s stuck with this bloke even though for much of his career he’s had the National Society of Show Ponies (chairman one D. Bentley) hiding their heads in shame.

You can't help wanted the cocky git to fall on his head, mind

Nowadays Nani eyes up a full-back like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall eyes up a rabbit carcass. (Although I’ve noticed the old Etonian broiler has announced he know mostly eats vegetables – a fact that coincides serendipitously with his new vegetarian cookbook.)

Another pleasing development was the loss of points by Manchester City, despite the continued ruthlessness of Sergio Aguero. Mancini says he’s short of midfielders of the holding variety. What planet is he on? I’m guessing that Mancini doesn’t step out of the house on a cold day unless he’s got at least three coats on.

Arsenal’s continued inability to tackle is another delight. According to the Daily Mirror the Arsenal squad are right behind the manager but would like a defensive coach brought in, which is ironic given that Wenger’s about the most defensive person working in football.

It was also a weekend for patting the Premier League new boys on the head. When pressed Alan Shearer managed to positively spike himself on the fence regarding the prospects of Norwich, QPR and Swansea staying up. Not sure that lad ever utters an opinion one way or t’other. Me, I don’t see the Canaries or the Swans escaping the bird-catchers.

The R’s though have one Joey Barton in their ranks and if he can stay out of trouble he might just keep the Loftus Road lot laughing. And if Shane McGowan could stay out of the pub he just might make another record.

Despite my better judgment I watched a recording of England’s rugby players’ victory over the might of Georgia. The upside was that fast-forwarding a rugby match is the best way to watch it. Just press play during the ten minutes of each half when summat is actually happening and the experience is greatly enhanced.

A lot of fuss was made of some of the England blokes – one of them married to a royal personage as if that makes a blind bit of bloody difference – having a few beers in a boozer after the Argentina game. I mean so the hell what? There was a whole week before the next game, it didn’t look like they were totally hammered, and while there’s plenty of things to do in Queenstown, most of it involves doing summat really stupid like bungee jumping... ahem.

The fact that the people involved included one Chris Ashton, a man who continually confuses extreme self-confidence with being an utter tosser (c.f. Cristiano Ronaldo, Floyd Mayweather, Robbie Savage) hardly helps their cause.

Ronan O'Gara mind-melds with a New Zealand supporter

But it was the Irish who actually brought the tournament to life. There’s nowt like beating the Aussies in the Kiwi’s backyard for endearing yourself to people. Marvellous.

Huzzah! It's Rugger!

2011-09-12T17:09:00.005+01:00

The rugger buggers are back, then, spreading their maxi-muscled frames across our screens like a bunch of cauliflower-eared Chippendales in nadger-nipping lycra.

Course ‘rugger bugger’ is a term we tend to aim at the chinless horse-toothed pricks who slaver into your local Pitcher & Piano in their workaday pinstripes and bray like donkeys while dropping rohipnol into each other’s pints. You can tell from a lot of what passes for banter that this is pretty much a bunch of oiks in toffs’ clothing. Thick, moneyed but not remotely vain.

'Yah he like tried to gouge out my beautiful eyes, the fucking cunt!'

‘Course that’s very much an English take on union. Your average Welshman or Kiwi sees rugby as the preserve of the working man. As indeed it is. It might also be said that of the teams that I’ve watched so far those two did the most to entertain. Having said that the All Blacks only managed it for 40 minutes – but then again that was a pretty decent 40 minutes (especially according to my missus who has decided that Dan Carter can pop it between her posts any time.)

I’m particularly impressed with Sonny Bill Williams. Not least cos he’s got over the fact that his parents obviously wanted him to be a harmonica player. His handling and ‘offloading’ (that’s knobspeak for ‘short passing’) are pretty fantastic, although any seasoned Rugby League watcher will tell you that every man is taught to fling around with that sort of dash in the 13-man code.

Wales of course did their impression of Tom Cruise at his wife’s side and came up short. Again. Defeat was followed by the habitual verbal pats on the back (‘ooh well done, Taffy old chap – good show what with you being poor and English not really being your first language, wot, wot!’) They should’ve won. They were much the better team. Hook’s kick might’ve been in (can’t they use Hawkeye? I mean it’s not like India are in the tournament is it?)

And you know what, forget Invictus – and forget how transparently pleasant Francois Pienaar is - the South Africans are still the baddies. For one, they are the holders’; for another, when they open their gobs the English language has to scurry off to a refuge home for battered vowels.

Didn’t see the Wallabies or the French – I find seven o’clock starts as agreeable as Jessie Wallace wedding day – but the most irritating bleeding aspects of the whole shebang thus far are:

1) The Scrums. Has there yet been a scrum that hasn’t had to be reset? They cave in like an elephant’s deckchair every time they engage. Play doesn’t move for ten minutes while some end-of-his-tether ref tries to get the six auditionees for Captain Caveman to just stay up long enough for the game to continue.

‘Hold! Touch! Fall On Your Faces!

Hilariously if a team finds itself unable to field a prop forward cos of injuries the scrums go uncontested. Which makes you wonder what the point of it is in the first place.

2) Running down the clock is easy. If you’re a point or two ahead with 5 minutes to go you just keep hold of the ball and flop to the floor a few dozen times and you’ve won. There’s nowt the opposition can do about it. It’s a really boring version of running the ball into the corner flag in footy. Can’t they just lose the ball if they haven’t gone forward for a couple of minutes – or summat like that?

3) The pundits. I know they’re all World Cup winners and great players in their own right but every one of ‘em looks like he’s being operated by a run-of-the-mill puppeteer. I put on my 3D glasses to watch one half-time briefing cos I was so sure I was missing at least one dimension. They make Alan Shearer look like Martin Luther King.

Oh and I might add that I hope that’s the last time we see and England rugby team wearing all black shirts. Just a shoddy, arrogant decision by a bunch of people who couldn’t give a toss about tradition. And England played like a bunch of blindfolded Sumos in it any road , so get rid.

Why so much rugby talk anyway? I hear you cry.

Well, the footy has left us with nowt to yap about. It’s business as usual in Manchester – apart from Stoke and Arsenal there’s not much about the table that’s going to change by the end of the season. And the Evertonians can protest all they like about lack of ambition and progress at the club but really all them lovely banners are saying is ‘For Chrissakes, Kenwright, you’ve been there for 7 years and you still haven’t laid your hands can on one bastard tycoon.’

'If I were you, Bill, I'd be looking at the young Iranian Ahmedinajad and failing that yer man Gadaffi must be lookin' to squirrel away a few thousand.'

I can see old Bill whoring his way around the oligarchs of the world kowtowing to anyone with a few spare dirhams like... like... well, like a Prime Minister. Or Garry Cook. Of course that chippy Manc has been relieved of his position by the FandAbuDhabi brigade. It could’ve happened to any one Garry. I’m just pleased it happened to you.

The national side may be worth a quick mention, although at the mo I’m showing as much enthusiasm for the England team as the players themselves are. I certainly don’t think that point in Montenegro is a gimme. And even Capello has finally conceded that managing this set of players has left him scratching his walnut face in utter confusion.

Poor old Rob Earnshaw (‘ooh well done, Taffy old chap – good show what with you being poor and English not really being your first language, wot, wot!’) That chance was so much easier than a sitter it was damn well prostrate.

As for who will win the Rugby World Cup – listen to the upcoming podcast!

Left Sky and Dry

2011-09-05T13:03:00.007+01:00

One of them strange weekends when your average non-Sky subscriber feels like a cave-bound hermit in the sporting wilderness. I was settled in to baby-sit the grandson on Friday night – I do my bit y’know but the sooner they get the young lad down a boxing gym the better. If you can’t jab with the left at six years old there’s little hope for you.

Any road, no Sky at this place so I’m scooting through the TV guide for the highlights package. Nowt. Nada. Murdoch hasn’t even seen fit to relinquish a glimpse of The Thatched One bagging his brace. And now it turns out that Tony Blair is godfather to Grace Murdoch. I tell you some days I’d happily feed the contents of my arse into the inner workings of every Skybox in the sodding country.

You tight-fisted misery!

Nevertheless I hear, via 5Live and the easily nettled Alan Green that it was a good victory for England, punctuated by the dropping of one Frank Lampard, halle-fuckin-lujah. There’s a phrase in football – let your feet do the talking – and I’ve noticed with Lamps in an England shirt that his feet are positively garrulous. He takes more touches to complete one pass than the number of passes Xavi Hernandez completes in an entire game.

Refreshing then, but a bit bewildering, that Capello, his job clearly up in a year’s time, finally finds the bollocks to pick the right team. Not sure what they’re doing with that new kit, mind you. There’s summat about the phrase ‘black shirts’ that makes me uneasy.

I’d like to think that Andy Carroll might be a top international striker, but he needs to start treating his body more like a temple and less like a back-alley rock venue.

So in the Murdoch-induced absence I shared the pain of Scotland’s draw with the dodgy Czechs. A blatant dive wins a match-saving penalty. Berra’s riposte – a poor enough performance to earn a walk-on part in Taggart - earned him a yellow card. Cue spurious arguments about the fact that the ref – a Dutchman called Kevin – gave one spot-kick when it wasn’t and so should make the same mistake twice in the interests of balance.

Hmm... that way madness lies. I reckon if they’d had another ten minutes of that game left, each team would have had all its outfield players rolling around in the opposition penalty box with tears in their lying eyes.

And this is where football gets it so bloody awfully wrong at the moment. There’s this tacit approval of conning the officials within the game. The times you see Steve Bruce, Mick McCarthy (or indeed any one of them managers at whom Lady Luck is always flicking the V’s) saying ‘we had one go our way today... that’s football.’ The referee always gets the flak but surely the only one to blame is the sneaky bastard who threw himself to earth in the first place. Or am I being naive?

It was left to the athletics to lift the soul this weekend – and in the form of young Mohamed Farah, the Robbo spirit soared like an eagle attached to umpteen thousand helium balloons.

Denied in the 10,000 metres by the latest lad off the Ethiopian production line, Farah hit the home straight in the 5K with the same death skull grimace on his face. Lagat, chasing him, looked no less in fear of his life. In fact it was hard not to imagine a bloody great lion looming up in the background.

And that’s why I love athletics. No bikes, motors, gloves, pads, just a lad or lass in his/her vest with his eyeballs out, going for it. OK you have to exclude Usain Bolt from that description as the lad just flows across the track like a duster across a newly-polished floor. Whereas, currently, the UK sprinters move like wonky-wheeled shopping trolleys on a cobbled street.

If I’m honest, I tend to enjoy the lads’ races more than the lasses. There’s summat about a female athlete’s body that’s intimidating and well just not sexy. Them six-packs for starters.

Put em away love!

On balance I prefer the hour-glass figure to the brick shithouse when it comes to your lasses. Still, despite the fact that they’re barely wearing owt, they’re not there for my delectation are they? And that Aussie hurdler Sally Pearson would just tonk me in the gob with her leading leg if she read this. She was just magnificent.

And that’s where athletics seems to embrace a good swathe of the assortments of humanity. Scrawny little Kenyans, gangling Croatians, women the size of wardrobes, men the width of the Wirral, all seem to have summat they can have a crack at.

But the sprint finish off the back of a middle distance race... there’s nowt to beat it.

Footy resurfaces tomorrow with England at home to the 115th ranked team in world football. Yes, Wales come hunting a shock, this time armed with the left-wing wonder-monkey that is Gareth Bale. A bigger test for Smalling you might think than some scurrying Bulgur egged on some racist thicksters from the terraces.

I shall be watching it on ITV, bless it, with his dough-faced host the saggy Baggie Adrian Chiles. An Eeyorish attitude suits watching England games, I reckon, so I’m looking forward to the old grouse’s presentation.

He’ll no doubt be accompanied by a whole welter of former Middlesbrough managers – and I think Boro’s current position in the English game is testimony to how much these blokes know.

I see A narrow England win – 2-1 – but that’ll be enough to start gearing ourselves for another let-down over the summer. England fans have sat through more anti-climaxes that the neighbours of my Uncle Keith after he married that Croatian nymphomaniac. We’ll see.

But temporarily at least, with Rooney at the top of his game, there’s a tiny flame of hope for the England team again, even if it has all the permanence of a lit match in a hurricane.

I 8-2 inform you but...

2011-08-29T12:37:00.006+01:00

Arsene, Arsene, Arse....

What the hell is going on? That’s the first time he’s ever selected a first XI using a tombola. I’m not sure what the team instructions were either... Let’s keep it shite for the first hour? Go out and depress yourself? It struck me that while United played a fluid 4-4-2, Arsenal played a 0-10-0 with everyone in the hole.
Wenger had his head in his hands before the game started.

Seriously though, I’ve never seen owt like it. You might say the senior players never really came out of their shells at Old Trafford. Of course invertebrates live in shells and this was as spineless a performance as you are likely to see from any team this season.

Arsenal’s great strength – passing, moving, creating – the chief architects of this at present are Arshavin and Rosicky. Like a stampede of horses being fronted by a couple of fat, gelded Shetland ponies.

Andriy and Tomas take a break during training

I’m just guessing that they sit around at training until Pat Rice looks over at ‘em and then they hurriedly break into a bout of gentle trotting til he buggers off again.

Arch victim of Sunday’s debacle was the lad Carl Jenkinson. He’s 19, and looks like he’s been left at Paddington station with a note a round his neck, bless ‘im. Walcott railed at him at one point, which must’ve made buoyed him up. After all there’s not enough space in the universe for what Theo doesn’t know about defending (witness the trip on Evra).

At least Jenkinson was trying, mind, until he became the third straight red card for Arsenal in the Premier League. Each one of them was making their full debut, I believe. Which suggests that the wearing of an Arsenal shirt involves some sort of Faustian pact in which you have to surrender 90% of your brain function.

There was a mitigating circumstance (not, mind you, the one about our boys being tired after midweek – Arsene goes to that option faster that an Allardycean centre-back goes to hitting it long).

No there were eight players out – or eleven depending on who’s doing the maths. Of those the big miss was Vermaelan, the only tent-peg in Wenger’s wind-blown canvass of a defence. Even the Belgian couldn’t have covered for the dithering of Djourou. He’s got all the strength and positional sense of a fledgling sparrow that’s fallen out of the nest.

Van Persie tried to look forward to the next game – home to Swansea, which has banana skin written all over it – and said the team gave of their maximum. Really? That’s the best they could do? Jeez, that might even call an audible ripple of discontent at the Emirates Library.

There was no Song, Wilshere and Gervinho; and Sagna, Gibbs and even Squillaci might’ve helped. But United don’t have Ferdinand, Vidic or Rafael available either. It just so happens that Ferguson has bought replacements – and good ones at that. And that is why this sorry drubbing leaves you pointing the finger at Monsieur Obstinate.

His squad has no depth, except in the matter of tiny midfield tippy-tappers. He’s had the whole summer to line up his targets in central defence, central midfield, centre forward... and he’s signed the Ivorian with the head of a river dolphin and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain who sounds for all the world like one of them promising English sprinters who turns to shite when he hits his twentieth birthday.

The good news is that Wenger has signed a South Korean who was very much on Fulham’s radar a couple of seasons ago. That’s where he’s at now, picking up Fulham rejects. South Korea must be the most recreational of countries – there’s Parks bleeding everywhere.

So, three days to get back on the trail of some decent players. Somehow you’ll be surprised if he manages to muscle Cahill or Samba over to the Emirates, whereas you just know Harry Redknapp’s going to be standing in front of the press on Thursday morning conjuring footballers out of every box, top hat and sleeve while Kevin Bond plays his Debbie McGee.

Not that Spurs haven’t got a worry or two. Two thumping defeats from Manchester outfits and Harry’s been bleating like a forlorn lambkin about all the transfer speculation surrounding Modric and Crouch. My heart bleeds, H. And Spurs being such a poverty-stricken club n all.

Daniel Levy appears to be the only person left in the country who thinks Modric is going nowhere. £40 million quid you’d get for him, Dan. It’s not like the money’d be wasted, is it? I mean you haven’t got Wenger for a manager.

Still while we crow about North London’s plight – HA! – it all means that the Manchester stronghold on English football has grown all the tighter. Those of us expecting Dzeko to turn from Ugly Duckling into Ugly Duck have been rudely surprised. Mancini’s got that side by the scruff of its neck and in Aguero, Silva and Nasri he’s got a little triangle of delight to rival any that you might have come across while late-night googling.

Meanwhile, Fergie’s latest vibrant rebirth, with Rooney very much at the delivery end, is a joy to behold. I’m not entirely sure about the success of the Wazza barnet, mind you. It still looks like a child has filled in the gaps with a felt-tip to me.

You can't help feeling if a comb-over was good enough for Sir Bobby then... respect the traditions, Wayne

It’s true to say that City’s success is built on obscene wealth while Fergie’s success is built on perceptive purchases and a canny youth squad. Oh, and obscene wealth.

Only Dalglish’s Liverpool threaten the Mancunian dominance, and even then that’s as a nettle threatens a carthorse. It could be a long few years for the ABM brigade.

Oh and re Usain Bolt’s false start and how we might have to change the rules... Bollocks, Mr KFC knew what the rules were and he fucked up. End of. Unless we want to give him his gold medal BEFORE the final and treat the race as his coronation.

As we say on Teesside 'Hard fucking cheese, you dopey bastard.'

Arsene's Goners?

2011-08-22T10:44:00.003+01:00

Watching Arsenal thus far is like looking at a mantelpiece at a country manor. Every time Lord Wenger comes down for tiffin, another sterling silver candlestick has gone missing.

"Mon Dieu! Ou est tout le monde?"

The fledgling season has only one talking point thus far. Well you could bang on about Manchester City’s bright start, but why the fuck bother? A brain-damaged monkey knows that eventually the spending will reach a tipping point whereby there are so many decent players in the City squad that they simply can’t help winning the tile.

Mancini’s doing no one any favours by not picking Bonkertelli to start. Dzeko seems to be following the Drogba route to football stardom. One terrible lumbering season followed by a revelatory second effort – he looks as if he’s swapped his feet with Rodney Marsh’s at the moment. And Aguero looks very good indeed. But there’s summat rotten about the state of the Premier League when they can afford to keep Tevez, brooding like a betrayed Spaghetti Western extra, on the bench and still pay him a four-bed terrace in Hull a week.

Oh and there’s also Bill Kenwright, the Oliver Twist of the division, who can’t have any more from the banks to buy anyone. Everton’ll be all right but only cos Moyes works wonders. I bet if he has to paint a door at home he can do two coats using the contents of one tester pot.

But the travails of Arsenal are the real story. The team aren’t playing any differently, i.e, they keep it very well. But do we really want four midfielders who’ve been cloned from Tomas Rosicky? Van Persie is wafting around up front like a schoolgirl in a ballet class, primarily cos Arsenal have forgotten how to create chances.

The only plus so far is the proof of Vermaelen’s value to a back four that played like a bunch of revolving doors last season. That also suggests that Wenger doesn’t have to take a spotter’s guide with him when he goes looking for centre-backs.

Of course things could not have started much worse for Le Prof. Three suspicions already, the last for the comically-named Frimpong – which appropriately enough already sounds like some sort of fashionable and stupid haircut. Me I wouldn’t let the player on that pitch until he’s taken the gaffa tape off.

Here's Frimpong before his mates played that nasty stag night trick on his bonce

For all that the Frimp is a proper holding midfielder, but as with many of Arsene’s recent selections for that position, tackles like Paul Scholes in a blindfold. His second effort, in which he tried single-handedly to answer Liverpool fans’ dreams and transfer Lucas to somewhere in mainland Europe, was deserving of a straight red.

Nasri’s move to guess where is back on, and at Eastlands he can enjoy rubbing shoulders with the likes of several other millionaires who are content in these times of austerity to warm their arses on a subs bench and do half the work of a proper footballer for five times the pay. You can’t blame him, really.

So Arsenal’s cupboard is looking a tad bare, but there is £35 million to spend on someone and about nine days to throw it around. The Wenger wish-list is like one of them long lists that book prizes start off with. Latest front-runners are a bloke called Yann M’Vila and the lad from Lille who’s named after the serpent that hissed in Eve’s ear – the Eden Hazard.

A partner for Vermaelen should be top priority too and frankly it’s no good Arsene frantically rubbing the top of his head like a cold turkeying junkie, he should’ve bagged Gary Cahill already – and long before Cesc finally went home.

Perhaps this is where Wenger’s been least able to get his head around the new world order. Even Fergie didn’t faff about in the transfer market, such is the draw of the Abu Dhabi dirham. The Emirates is decorated by the shirts of greats that have gone before but the chances of Wenger bagging a so-called marquee signing are nil. In fact the possibility of him getting a beach-tent signing aren’t great.

And while we can indulge in a bit of schadenfraude at the Frenchman’s expense – and even that is difficult to maintain when the poor man looks as forlorn as a rain-drenched kitten – Arsenal’s difficulty in keeping hold of its players is a sign of a deeper malaise.

Wenger’s managed to keep a wage structure of sorts in place, and therefore attracted players who can by and large respect that sort of a thing. He’s had to let go of those that find £55k a week an insult, of course, but then if their sole motivation is money do you really want them hanging around? (It’s the same with them bankers we were told would leave the country if we hit them with a one-off tax on their bonuses – tax ‘em and wave the bastards off at the airport, say I).

Wenger is still a believer in bringing players through the youth system, Frimpong being the latest example. I think this is partly Wenger’s preciousness over the way his side must be schooled, but there’s summat endearingly old-fashioned and honourable about it, too.

And when you look over to Nasri’s next home you see a club that survived on a top-class youth squad now entirely overlooking such resources in favour of the latest arrival on the gravy train (one Pullman carriage each, all magnificently appointed with chunks of bling).

We keep hearing about the Chelsea kids too, McEachran especially, but he’s bench dressing still.
Here's Josh McEachran eager to get on the pitch and run rings round the opposition.

The only plus about Everton’s plight is that we get a 17-year old making a debut and looking tip-top from the start. That simply won’t happen at Chelsea or Citeh.

So I hope Wenger can keep 11 players on the pitch and find a way to turn it round, but if even Arsenal can’t find players who want to stay there, lack of trophies notwithstanding, then the Premier League is truly in the Age of Preposterity.

Dick Barton

2011-08-15T09:51:00.006+01:00

The Premier League starts… with a whimper.

Thank Christ for Jabbering Joey Barton. It’s hard not to imagine him stepping out of a smashed shop window with a wide-screen telly in his mitts. Everything about the lad reeks of the kind of upbringing that would make an Old Etonian wince.

Of course Joey’s surprise appearance might be considered an attempt by the Geordies to put him in the shop window, but I don’t see anyone clambering over injured Malaysian students to get to the uppity Scouse muppet.

Incidentally, I don’t want to lace this whole blog with references to the lawless hoodied gits that rifled through the shops the other day, except to say that Cameron’s Big Society implied that communities be encouraged to ‘help themselves’ and this might have been misinterpreted.

Any road, it was good that the footy wasn’t postponed everywhere, even if that did allow Joey to do his ‘chippiest kid in the playground’ act.

‘Course Joey’s eloquent tweets seem to give the lie to his reputation of letting his feet do the talking, either with ball, or with the skull of someone who might not be to his liking. He’s got a bit of form with Arsenal following since Abou Diaby’s brainstorm last year when the big midfielder shook Barton around like a drinking straw, got sent off, and Newcastle grabbed an improbable 4-4.

Maybe that’s what was rankling with Alex Song when he used the lad’s calf as a doormat. While there’s a bit of you that, like the Cantona assault on a Palace fan way back when, says "‘kin right, son", there’s also that bit of you that thinks that there’s still a stampy, stropping underbelly to Arsenal that reflects the manager’s schoolgirl petulance.

And Gervinho hit the deck like an encyclopedia off a high shelf. I’m getting right miffed with the apologists that constantly suggest that cos ‘there’s contact’ a pen should be given. Depends on the contact, surely? Defenders will have to spend the whole season making sure that they cut any loose threads of their footy tops cos one waft of a tatty yarn is enough to bring a 6ft striker rocksliding to earth.

Barton was similarly outraged and grabbed Gervinho round the collar. While he was feeling around in his shorts for a cigar and a lighter the Ivorian managed to snake out the sort of slap that couldn’t have wafted the steam of a fresh cup of tea and, after a moment’s reflection, Barton turned into Rivaldo.

Plaintive cries of ‘He punched me, he punched me!’ followed. And Gervinho, forehead ballooning furiously over the tightest headband ever strapped round a human bonce, made a hasty exit. The twit.

Barton’s mark was made but at least contributed to the entertainment which is a damn sight more than the rest of his team-mates managed.

Pardew continued to be stout in his defence of the Shameless extra in the No.7 shirt, insisting that Barton wasn’t deserving of a red card. Then again Pards’s appearances on Match of the Day 2 have been strictly limited since he described a magnificent Michael Essien tackle by saying ‘He’s absolutely raped him,there.’

As Ken Clarke’ll tell you there are different levels of rape – apparently – but I still can’t think what Pardew thought he was saying. It was hard not to sympathise with Wenger’s assertion that the two tusslers should’ve got the same punishment, but maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if the Gooners hadn’t played with the usual clockwork passing patterns and yet finished with all the end-product of the post-Thatcher mining industry.

To be fair to Joey, which is a hard concept to embrace, he had a a top season for the Geordies last year and he is still a very decent midfielder. He’s a good passer, has a decent shot on him and rarely gets caught in possession – of the ball, anyway.

I have this horrible feeling that, given he’s more irritating than one of them tiny spiny fishes that swims up your cock in the River Amazon – and that he can more than string a sentence together – he’s being lined up by sports phone-ins and TV couches everywhere as the latest antagonist of the great British football fan.

In other words, stick him in crap clothes and a Kate Winslet wig and you’ve got Knobbie Savage. Or bring back that naff tash and you’ve got Gary Neville. And football needs its bruisers, its nutjobs, its preeners and primpers, its unhinged, one-eyed pillocks.

Still, it stirred up a weekend of timelessly pedestrian footy. United proved the value of having a goalscorer from the opposition, but didn’t look all that tasty. Rio, like some disobedient poodle, is back on the couch, Vidic is getting creakier too, and De Gea looks flakier than a Gregg’s sausage roll.

Torres looked lively but Chelsea still need an overhaul, the minnows did okay barring poor old QPR. And the worst aspect of the weekend’s games was the injury to Kieron Dyer. I mean I’ve never been a big fan of the lad but no one deserves his level of ill luck. By all accounts he’s been brilliant in training but put him on the pitch and his shins turn to celery.

Finally, the weekend was the crowning achievement of the England cricket team. That’s right, the ruthless oiled machine of the modern game is now England. Three cracking pacemen, a tidy old tweaker, a top six that could not only make a century but, in Cook’s case, bat for a century, and a keeper who counter-attacks like a bearded South African-English Gilchrist.

It’s just right pleasing really even if India’s bowling attack has all the edge of a chicken passanda. It’s only the silly old decent Englishman that wants Sachin to get that 100th hundred you know. Flower n Strauss don’t want the bloke getting so much as a sniff. Pitiless, they are. Isn’t it grand?

Premier Predictions

2011-08-08T14:46:00.032+01:00

Well bugger me it’s back. After a summer full of more tittle-tattle than an at-home Ann Summers party (you should hear the missus and her mates guffawing like some Teesside coven - chilling), we are proud to announce the return of The Best League In The World. Or the Fastest. Or, if you have a degree in Creative Accounting, the Richest.

The curtain-raiser was surprisingly provocative. I say make it a derby every year regardless and we might have some fireworks instead of the usual just-off-the-sun-loungers/plane from Malaysia torpor. But is that a pointer to the rest of the season?

Here’s Robbo’s predictions... and remember punters, I am the man who put the ‘Damn!’ into Nostrodamus.

ARSENAL

Wenger’s team increasingly resembles a dimly-remembered boy band who had a couple of hits in the early 80s and now hang around outside China White’s hoping the doormen will recall what they used to do.

So far Arsene has studiously avoided strengthening his squad in the right areas. Still no Cahill or Jagielka – just another flashy frontman with a bootlace for a headband. They’re too easy to score against. And for the Joy of Cesc, let the lad go. The top four is beyond them. 6th.

ASTON VILLA

Look just cos McLeish dumps Brum in the mire doesn’t mean Villa get the rebound effect. It’s not as if HSBC are lining up to hire Sir Fred Goodwin is it? (And here he is looking like a bloated Jimmy Somerville).

Villa have offloaded their hard-working wingers Young and Downing and replaced them with a French Stephen Ireland. N’Zogbia is wonderful if he can keep his noddle together, but he won’t be the alpha male at Villa. Not so much a new dawn as the same day as yesterday. 8th.

BLACKBURN ROVERS

Well it’s great for us to have a bloke called Goodwillie in the League (my missus’s relatives are called Badcock – true – so if you’re name’s UglyKnob let us know and we can put together a Spaghetti Porn Western).

The Foghorn Leghorns in charge have been crowing about capturing some Galactico or other ever since they arrived at Ewood. No one’s showed up yet. Jones has gone, Samba wants to fly the coop, and the whole thing's going off half-cock. Kean will be the first to bite the managerial bullet.

Anyway I’d rather walk the M25 (in the fast lane) than watch Blackburn. Fingers crossed for 18th.

BOLTON WANDERERS

Bolton have been mixing up the humps up to Elbows Davies with a nodding reacquaintance with the Reebok grass. They’ve got a ruddy awful start, fixtures-wise, mind, and they’ll need to scavenge from the big boys again for a bit of creative nous. Could be tough but my wife has always had faith in the Coyle, so... 11th

CHELSEA

Well who the hell knows what to expect here? Roman’s brought in a new broom and the old dust is still lying about the dressing-room. It’s the age-old conundrum for Villas-Boas. How do you get complacent money-bagses to keep it up all-season long? And how the hell do you get Fernando Torres to stop thinking he’s a poor white trash Emile Heskey? And why is Salomon Kalou? 3rd.

EVERTON

How’s the song go... Fairly Cross Ol’ Moysey? Not a whisper from the Toffees in the transfer market save for the Mo Cyzslak looky-likey clinging on to Jagielka and Rodwell like a Christmas kid refusing to share his selection box. While Kenwright’s delving behind the sofas, Moyes'll be lining up the 4-5-1 and praying to God that Saha stops breaking down like a Jeremy Kyle show housewife every five minutes. They’ll start the season like a traction engine and finish it like a dragster all over again. 7th

FULHAM

You kind of forget they’re still there somehow. Everyone’s favourite nightclub bouncer Martin Jol is in charge now. They’ve got Gudjohnsen and Riise for a bit of nous, Zamora’s fit, it’s a tidy squad. Were it not for that fucking Michael Jackson statue you could start taking them seriously. 9th.

LIVERPOOL

Oh shite, another dawn beckons. Can avuncular Kenny keep that Mona Lisa smile for the next nine months, or will he just be another Moaner?

Dalglish’s midfield is so filled with options he'll end up like a pissed bloke at a curry house and find he’s ordered too much. And if he has, then Jordan Henderson is the unnecessary tarka dhal, Joe Cole is the stale naan, and Steven Gerrard the disappointingly lacklustre signature dish.

Having said all that Suarez and Carroll, if he can stay upright on a bar-stool for the season, could be the best front two that's yet to appear in Nuts magazine. THIS COULD BE THEIR YEAR... but it won’t be. 4th.

MANCHESTER CITY

Oh I’m just bored of ‘em already. All that money and they turn out a team to play Allardycean footy. Dzeko’s a dzoke. Balotelli’s bonkers. Tevez continues to say he’s thirsty for a change – mainly cos he adores the Kia Aura of his agent. They’ve bought a chump in Clichy. And the best English winger of the last ten years continues to see more cameos than your average Antiques Roadshow art expert. For Chrissakes Adam Johnson, leave, son!

Clearly Mancini will muscle them up the table a little further in a way that shows all the daring of a pensioner booking a coach tour to Bournemouth. They’re Blackburn Rovers with genuine money. 2nd.

MANCHESTER UNITED

The great thing about Ferguson is every time he reinvents a team it’s like there’s a new club in town. Cleverley, Jones, Wellbeck, Smalling – they all, like Rooney (despite the patchy top weave) look like old heads on young shoulders.

Now no doubt, His Puceness will be flinging the usual pot-shots at the FA, the refs, the everybody who isn’t us brigade, and it’s amusing that a club that’s spent like they have this summer can still get away with a somewhat Redknappian line of appearing like the poor relations. But it’ll be fascinating to see how this team kicks on. I can’t see ‘em not winning it. And I’d rather them than the big lunks across town. 1st, dammit.

NEWCASTLE UNITED

You’ve got to worry for poor old Pards, haven’t you? Well you’ve got to worry for anyone who has to work with Joey Tweet-Tweet Barton.
(I say put Barton and Balotelli in the Big Brother House, turn the cameras off for the night, and send in forensics first thing in the morning).

If they don’t start well, I can see it being bum-squeakingly bad all season. They’ll scrape it though but... and Ba’s a top signing. (You don’t want to be signing for Swansea with a surname like that.) 15th.

NORWICH CITY

Good pies at Carrow Road, they tell me. That’s what’d comfort me if I were a fan. 3-down to Spurs at half-time? So the fuck what, I’ve got a Delia steak n ale and I’m a happy man. They’re so busy planning for the drop they’ve probably bought a birthing pool and their own gas and air. 20th.

QPR

Anagram fans will welcome back Neil Warnock. “Colin’s” main job is to keep hold of Adel Taarabt, a man who you can’t mention without using the word ‘mercurial’. (A similar relationship exists between the words ‘Hamilton’ and ‘reckless’; or ‘Flintoff’ and ‘pedalo’).
Word is the R’s will be charging £72 a ticket which may be no more than a bit of metal in the fluff of your Paul Smith jacket for the likes of Briatore and Middle Earth’s very own Ecclestone, but it’s a cynical fucking hike on the purse-strings of the poor saps who sat through years of non-achievement with grim resignation. For that reason alone, 19th.

STOKE CITY

Pulis is a permanent scowl isn’t he?
Slowly but surely we are learning to love the stout yeomen of the Potteries. And like us, they are learning that life doesn’t start and end with the towelette attachment to Rory Delap’s shorts. There's a kind of charm in their charmlessness.

As long as they prepare a comfy corner of the physio’s room for Jonathan Woodgate I think nowt much’ll change. An honest to goodness 10th.

SUNDERLAND

I think Steve Bruce is just a shite manager? Never has a man presided over a team that positively binges on bad results. Unlike Brucey, Sunderland are downright bulimic.

As ever he’s lobbed some lucre about and ended up with a couple of creaky artisans from Fergieland and a likely lad in Connor Wickham. When I heard Bruce had bagged him I thought he must be a Ghanaian called Can’t-ee Kick’em.
Mackems prepare for more feast or famine. 14th.

SWANSEA CITY

Look I don’t know if their fans care two hoots about this season given that after watching Cardiff finish three successive promotion-chasing seasons like one of them twats in a home-made flying machine jumping off Brighton pier, they've got there first.

Nice to have Angel Rangel back on Match of the Day, mind, joining the ranks of Looney Rooney, Patchy Squillaci and Stephen Hunt. The Swans will play some nice stuff but can they hold out at the back? I give ‘em a hope. 17th.

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR

On Saturday, there was a worry that Modric had secretly joined Man U but it turned out it was just one of the mascots holding hands with Carrick (and increasingly Carrick needs his hand holding). Still here is, still trying out an all-blue kit.
‘Arry must be gagging to trim the squad of some expensive weeds, mind.

David Bentley must be there to breathe out carbon dioxide for the house plants. And I swear I saw a card advertising Robbie Keane’s services in a telephone kiosk last time I was in London.

It’d be nice to think Spurs will tiptoe into the top 4. But there’s more chance of Sepp Blatter retiring gracefully to an Alpine log cabin (and if he does I’ll be the one hollering from the ski lift in a bid to start that avalanche). 5th.

WEST BROMWICH ALBION

Roy worked the wonders he can work with lesser mortals last season. Give him top-of-the-range internationals like Joe Cole and he hasn’t got a clue.

No reason to believe he can’t weave more magic this year. The resources look meagre but then again the chairman has done this really weird thing of trying to balance the books rather than go pissing in the Arabian or Mid-West American wind for a slush fund. They’ll be fine, man. 12th.

WIGAN ATHLETIC

N’Zogbia’s gone now. Cleverley’s back in red. Who’s left? And where the hell did they come from? Martinez is the one huge plus for the Latics and his bit of nous should see them clamber up the table a little.

But they really are becoming an unfeasible tale of survival – in 2012, prepare yourself for the story of how, trapped under a fallen bus, Hugo Rodallega manages to cut off his own arm and arrive at the DW just in time to nod in a far-post winner and consign Blackburn to relegation. 13th

WOLVES

Ah, doughty old Mick. As bluff as they come, he makes Geoff Boycott sound like a Harrow-educated diplomat. If you aren’t chuffed that Wolves stayed up then you’re either a Baggie or a berk.

Having said that there’s nowt complicated about the Wolves way. And now if you get past Karl ‘De Jong’s a Pussy’ Henry you’re going to run into Joltin’ Roger Johnson or George Elokobi, who eats brick shithouses for breakfast. Enough spine to stay another day. 15th.

That's it. Boro for the FA Cup, obviously. Obviously.

Test is Best

2011-07-26T13:45:00.005+01:00

Test Cricket. Well, there are those of you who think that it’s about as dull as sport gets but I tell you, that’s garbage. It’s still the acme of the sport.

In a brilliant article earlier in the week Simon Barnes described the long form of the game as being like a novel. I’d prefer to say that the Test Match is the tantric version. One-day cricket is a back of the alley knee-trembler and Twenty 20 is a quick Sherman before you leave the house of a Friday night.

But like Barnes I like to think I have the intellect, the stamina, the discretion to enjoy something that lures you in, that ebbs and flows, that has its apparent doldrums and its mighty storms, and be able to appreciate it for its full and glorious nature.

I don’t mind your abbreviated snack-food stuff but it feels like it’s been structured for the goldfish-memory, sound-bite generation.

To back up the analogy of the well-told story, the latest instalment of Test cricket had more sub-plots than a Swedish crime novel.

First, take a look at the characters involved:

the Little Master, Sachin Tendulkar – as refined a piece of batting machinery as has ever set foot on to an outfield. A living legend destined to fulfil the arithmetical nicety of scoring his 100th international hundred in the 100th Test match between the two sides and the 2000th Test match of all time. Only actuaries would have believed that this meant that it must happen.

Then there was Stuart Broad, a lanky prep school pretty boy with a temper shorter than Shaun Wright-Phillips; a man who could hardly buy a Test wicket and whose place seemed to belong to the less media-friendly face of Reliable Old Tim Bresnan. Broad bowled like a genius, arcing devious deliveries in and out and off the pitch like Glen McGrath had supped from the fountain of youth and found a decent haircut and an English accent.

There was Rahul Dravid, who like Sachin had never quite mustered a hundred at Lord’s. He’s nicknamed The Wall is Dravid because of the stoutness of his defence, unlike Martin Keown who has a similar moniker cos it’s very much like talking to one. Dravid struggled manfully to three figures despite the consistent excellence of England’s bowlers.

Dravid’s doggedness was to be expected, however, unlike that of one Kevin Pietersen (remember him? He was very big in the noughties).

KP’s innings was precisely the sort of grind that would’ve left most superfast broadband customers thumping holes in their laptops. Such was his bind of self-restraint that at times he resembled nothing less than a fat lass sat in front of a never-ending conveyor belt of treacle puddings. But he held fast, did KP, until finally with 150 to his name he gorged himself on his just desserts.

There was, too, Matt Prior, a sort of NCO of the England XI, marching busily to the wicket in the wake of some pretty meek batting from the top order. With help form the rejuventated Broad, he tonked the ailing Indian attack to the four corners of Lord’s with such assurance that it almost looked inevitable.

England were very indebted to an injury to Zaheer Khan a bloke who hoop a delivery around like a Ronaldo free-kick when the force is with him.

The last day’s play was marvellous, not least cos the ground was packed out with fans who could barely believe they were there. Swathes of Indian fans attempted to get a touch of Tendulkar as he went to his nets, as if he were the cricket equivalent of the Blarney Stone.

Dravid and Laxman, another wondrous batter, were at the crease. Jimmy Anderson, at his best a promiscuous bisexual of a bowler in that he really swings it both ways, was ready at one end. At the other there was Chris Tremlett, built like a tower of brick shithouses. To come was Broad and Graeme Swann, the best spin bowler in the world.

Slowly but surely they chipped away at the Indians like four men trying to upend a boulder with the trunk of a tree, until eventually the rock shifted and the whole cliffside caved in. You needed patience to understand it. To understand the stoppered rage after Broad’s plumb lbw was turned down by the umpire Billy ‘Oooh look at me, aren’t I quirky!’ Bowden.

To understand the agony of Dravid’s lame waft and nick behind, or Laxman’s pull to midwicket, or hothead Harbhajan’s brainless waft to mid-on.

Let’s be clear. There is nowt wrong with this whole yarn taking five days to unveil itself. Long may it continue, especially cos as a Sky Sports refusenik I enjoyed most of it on Test Match Special on the radio. To me TMS is as much a part of the English summer as sheltering under trees during a thunderstorm and getting botulism from a not-quite-cooked piece of barbecue chicken.

Sometimes the private school and chummery and vowels more fruity than an Innocent smoothie have me reaching for my Teesside Book of Working-Class Outrage but the advent of Tuffers and Vaughany seemed to have redressed the posh monotony. (Although hearing Tuffers give good counsel to Test Match batsmen is a bit like Peter Stringellow starting up a line in Marriage Guidance.)

And there’s always Boycott. Straight-talking no-nonsense Geoffrey. I bet he’s never done a cryptic crossword. Or changed the font on his computer. Cricket is bloody obvious to Boycs. Not so much a tantric week of sensual love as a steady straightforward me-on-top shag with the missus. Not a rambling saga but the Haynes Manual to the Honda Civic. What a cracking pundit he is.

"I'm off down the Corridor of Uncertainty to the Bar of Utter Truth for a glass of Simple Fact"

Despite all that, I’m gagging for the footy season to begin, particularly if Balotelli continues to entertain so royally. The lad’s head must rattle from all them loose screws.

Clarkey of the Course

2011-07-18T12:01:00.004+01:00

Look golf is a stupid game. I’ve never liked it, not least cos it is the one sport that makes me violent in the extreme. I reckon I could make a decent cage-fighter if I went straight into the ring following a windswept nine holes.

To me, golf is one of them weird ritualised sanctuaries of the middle class. Like Waitrose. Or Cafe Bastard Rouge. It’s all Pringle sweaters and business chit-chat; the sort of place where comfortable finance directors discuss Audi TTs and share-prices while tutting over their bifocals cos I’ve been playing in me trainers.

There’s never a decent ale on tap and the only totty represented there still seems to be the middle-aged wife of the treasurer heaving herself around behind the bar with all the alacrity of a hibernating bear with arthritis.

To me, golf clubs are just a sinister cover for a heinous scheme to clone Peter Alliss. Shudder.

So it comes of a bit of a surprise when someone wins a golf tournament and I end up with tears in me eyes.

As I say, golf is a loveless pursuit. For every decent strike there’s a dozen evil twists of fate that make you feel like you'd happily rotivate every mother-fecking piece of turf that ever played host to a pimpled ball and chuck it into the back garden of a Hebridean crofter to fuel his peat-fired aga for the rest of his bleeding days.

But Darren Clarke, eh? Has there been a more welcome winner of anything in the past few decades? Really?

Even putting aside the personal tragedy the bloke’s endured, here’s a man who visibly enjoys his life. In this era of dietary fascism, where pastry is the devil’s work and a deep-fried bread-crumbed piece of flesh can only be eaten responsibly if some supermarket think-tank has labelled it a ‘goujon’, here we have a sportsman whose chosen method of perambulation is the lumber. That’s when he’s not grinning through the fug of a cheerful B&H, or gabbling happily over a third Guinness.

Put simply, he’s a bit like you and me is Darren. Twenty years he’s been cuffing a white dot through the gorse and grass of Britain’s links, and somehow smiling through it. Up until now, you’d have thought that his greatest triumph was the heart-tugging holing out at the K Club in Ireland to secure the Ryder Cup in 2006 – all in the wake of the death of wife Heather, who unsurprisingly was as popular a golf wife as ever there was.

Of course what made the victory even sweeter was the fact that you spent the whole day waiting for him to fall away. There were much more heralded players who had already ducked under the Open canvass for a sheltered weekend.

I’m not sure Lee Westwood will win a major. There’s something about his humble demeanour and that Agassi-style waddle that never quite convinces. And the new world number one Luke Donald looked as happy in the wind and rain as a Royal Ascot debutante.

Clarke though has spent his last few months back in Northern Ireland and I dunno about you but every time I’ve looked at the weather forecast recently I’ve been half expecting to see the province relocated somewhere in the North Sea such has been the crapness of their weather.

People say that links golf is a bit of a lottery, and maybe fortune plays its part there more than say the manicured and preposterously fake technicolor avenues of some of them American courses, where even the water hazards are dyed blue to convince the homeys that they’re real.

To be fair, the Americans were dogged at this tournament and at one point yesterday it seemed inevitable that Mickelson, wielding his club like an expert whittler, was going to storm past even the Ulster Teddy Bear and lift the jug himself.

One word for you son - haircut

At one point you thought that the young lad Ricky Fowler – impossibly not yet the name of an EastEnders character and dressed like a camp Blackpool fan – would get back in it.

Then there was the little-known American (to me any road) who looked destined to grab the trophy. The lad Dustin could certainly drive a ball further than I could a car. But thankfully he carved one out of bounds, as if recognising that to deny Clarkey would’ve been an act of pure villainy. Let’s face it none of us have forgiven Stewart Cink for denying Tom Watson – a man who has a turtleneck even when he’s not wearing that style of sweater - his victory in 2009, the slap-headed God-fearing git.

And so, as if moving to the strains of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ (walk on through the wind, walk on through the rain), the Ulsterman strode on mightily and wonderfully.

I heard him in a press conference this morning. He’d had no sleep, he was slurring with emotion and no doubt booze. He wasn’t quite the staggering pisshead that was Freddie Flintoff in 2005, but he wasn’t far off.

Great sporting boozers of our time

Today he goes back home to Portrush to be with his two lads. He’s got a fiancée n all, and she’s easy on the eye, I reckon.

Nah, it’s hard to believe but sometimes the right people win. It’s not always the narrow-eyed cold-blooded egomaniacs that lift sport’s greatest prizes. Not only were we partisan Brits delighted that the transatlantic threat was extinguished, so was every other golfer that walked the course this weekend.

Of course this means three Northern Irishmen have won a golf major in the last 13 months. The R&A are looking at maybe hosting a future Open in the province. Mate it’s the least you can do. Apart from anything else, a good old gale and the odd bit of horizontal hail doesn’t do the chances of our doughiest players any harm at all.

And yet despite all this, I’m still not going to my local pitch n putt this week. Cos golf is, as I say, the stupidest of games.

Transfer Tittle-Tattle

2011-07-11T12:05:00.004+01:00

Ahhh! The Beckhams have had a baby girl (or as you say in Essex ‘ge-uw’). The name? Well that’s always a source of great interest as celebrities seem unable to call a child anything resembling a name.

I was convinced the answer would have something to do with his nibs’s football/modelling career so I had my money on Bernabeu, with a couple of side-bets on Police and Row-Z (where that scuffed penalty kick ended up in 2004).

Sorry pet but this is your Mum and Dad.

But it turns out they’ve named her after an obscure Australian lager: Harper Seven. Although Becks was pretty keen on Guildford Four. He discounted Birmingham Six as he couldn't imagine them scoring that many.

Obviously the ‘seven’ bit is cos she’s sixth in the family and after they got past four they lost count. As for Harper, I guess Posh reckoned it had royal connotations (as in Harpers & Queen’s) or they have a fondness for loyal bench-warming Geordie goalies who’ve finally secured a first team place.

Still it’s the silly season at the mo. Football carries on in a kind of Heat-magazine style gossip form. The chippiest kid on the block at the mo is Little Luka Modric. Having never listened to Elvis Costello he really wants to go to Chelsea. He’s such a tiny wee thing, it’s hard not to feel like he’s being bullied out of the sort of wage packet that Even Fred Goodwin might come out of hiding for.

You can’t help thinking of Suzanne Vega’s plaintive little tune: ‘My name is Luka, I live on the second floor, I play for Tottenham, Yes I guess you’ve seen me before, If you hear something late at night, some kind of trouble, some kind of fight... chances are it’ll be Daniel Levy coming round with the thumbscrews and the baseball bat.’

Modric says he had a gentleman’s agreement to discuss matters if a bigger club came in for him. Note the carefree use of the term ‘bigger club’. What he means is ‘richer’. A club’s size is directly correlated to its wealth. There are no other factors: forget tradition, loyalty, relationship with the fans.

"What?.... 80 grand a week, Mr. Levy? Call yourself a gentleman!"

Nevertheless I think Modric has been naive – and given he’s only twelve years old you hardly blame him for that. Perhaps he should ask Martin Jol about gentlemen’s agreements with THFC. Fact is, Modric can’t be sold now without Levy and Spurs looking like spotty teenagers trying to keep hold of their half a cider at a night-club for big boys.

You might say that Levy’s taking his cue from Wenger’s successful retention of Cesc Fabregas this time last year. And a lot of good that did them. When he wasn’t crocked Cesc was as unremarkable as an English penalty shoot-out defeat, as if half of him was already tika-taka-land – a point he proved with that impish backheel at the Nou Camp.

Of course Arsenal is the hub of football speculation at the mo. The fans are beginning to lose faith in the Wenger Plan – a kind of tika-taka lite – the same as Barca but without the burden of all them heavy trophies.

Clichy has jetted off from the Emirates to the Etihad. Bendtner has finally been given to leave to piss off somewhere – anywhere, probably. Apparently Niclas would have sent his resignation himself but he just missed the post. He could’ve e-mailed it but he couldn’t find the net either.

And England’s very own Manuel Almunia is destined to leave too. ‘Almunia’ always sound like a little-known department of rural Spain to me: a place where people constantly wander aimlessly out of their homes only to wonder why they left the door wide open.

Gervinho has arrived. Now there’s more to being a top footy player than adding ‘inho’ to your name like you’re some kind of honorary Brazilian (hmm... that sounds like something that comes with being made a freewoman of Romford).

Despite that, and a headband that’s so tight it resembles the sort of thing shepherds clamp on to lambs’ tails, the lad’s a class act.

But Fabregas will return to his beloved Barca, which leaves a question mark over Samir Nasri, the player of the first half of last season (unsurprisingly as that is Arsenal’s favourite bit of the season – the bit with no pressure).

Samir’s in demand. In fact if your club haven’t put a bid in for him then you support a club with no ambition. (NB – in the current climate of club football, ‘ambition’ is another word for ‘money’: c.f ‘bigger’).

But according to The Sun – which could mean it’s (a) untrue or (b) confidential or (c) just summat some copper told them - Wenger’s keeping him. And Fabregas. Such is Arsene’s self-belief, he is unable to comprehend either of them leaving even if that means another season of winning nowt.

"Shh, don't tell Arsene I had my fingers crossed when I promised to stay!"

Given half a chance I reckon Wenger would be checking the back of Clichy’s head to see where the Man City spies inserted the brain-altering microchip. But before Gooners everywhere start jumping with joy at the news, a little reminder for you: these blokes were there last year, and the year before...

And there’s no sign of Wenger bagging a decent centre-back yet. He’ll be in for Samba but he’ll come out with some no-mark Colombian called Passo Doble. And where’s the midfielder who likes a tackle? (That’s a tackle – not the Wilshere-trademarked studs-up lunge).

Chances are that 2011-12 will be the identikit Arsenal experience. A bright start, a lot of cooing, a centre-back injury, a quarter-final Champs League defeat, a Cup semi-final, and a drastic loss of form come February. The football equivalent a lover that brings you to the point of climax and then stops to ask you whether you think they’re any good at it.

Meanwhile I’m still trying to get over the Women’s World Cup defeat. Hopefully in 20 years time little Harper Seven Beckham will be taking the deciding penalty. And doing it better than her Dad.

Toe to Toe With Klitschko

2011-07-04T12:14:00.003+01:00

David Haye. The Hayemaker. Making hay while the sun shines (out of his arse if you believe the hype). Anyone who watched the Fight of the erm, Decade was it? - or did they manage to hype it up to an epoch this time? – can be certain that the braided braggart has reached the end of his line.

Before the Valuev fight you sensed that Haye’s main goal was to make sure he was remembered. And to that end he gobbed off like a schoolboy baiting a caged gorilla. Still he got in there and whittled away at the Russian cliff-face and got a result.

Not so cocky now, eh Dave?

This time there wasn’t even the slightest sign of him even chipping a nail on the Ukrainian’s chin... which would be fine if he hadn’t called Wladimir a ‘fucking dickhead’ and accused him of yabbering on and saying nothing – a remark which is unsurpassed in the history of exchanges between Mr. Pot and Mr. Kettle.

Now you might say Haye has pepped up a heavyweight division which is as devoid of character as a Steven Gerrard post-match interview. But he seems to leave all his showmanship in the pre-fight build-ups. In the fights themselves he’s just another journeyman heavyweight with a big right hand.

Lennox Lewis was apparently comparing Haye to Ali last week. And, laughably, in favourable terms. Clearly the Hayemaker is nowhere near Ali's class in the ring, so maybe Lennox – another somewhat uninteresting man from boxing’s recent history unless you dwell on the fact that he still lived with his mum in his 30s – was on about Haye’s audacious use of the English language.

Well even here I fear Muhammad Ali is slightly ahead on points. On Saturday night Haye appeared to float like a bee and sting like a butterfly.

Maybe I’m being too hard on Haye – perhaps you have to give him grudging respect for fashioning himself some mighty paychecks from a bit of talent and a lot of bluster.

Nevertheless the broken toe excuse doesn’t wash. I’m sure there are pain-killing injections to help with that – and surely getting belted in the face by a 6 foot 8 inch Cossack is going to distract you from a crack in your phalanges.

The point is that Haye offers this as an excuse after the fight. I mean what was he hoping to do, kick his ass? If it hampered him so much then he should’ve withdrawn but that would’ve denied a handsome purse. And the pinky pain hardly stopped him from dodging a Klitschko KO from round 4 onwards, did it?

I’m not saying he’s Dis-Audley Harrison, but if that was the Fight of the Decade then I suggest we take down all the boxing rings in Europe and go back to a bit of honest to goodness cock-fighting ‘til 2021.

In the meantime Wimbledon drew to a close with yours truly getting it right and wrong. I tipped Kvitova to win the ladies and she didn’t let me down. Not that I want to watch two strapping lasses from a Nazi Youth propaganda poster knocking nine bells out of each other too often.

At least we were saved from Azarenka v Sharapova which would’ve been a festival of grunting post-Soviet grunting the like of which hasn’t been heard since the outlawing of the Stalingrad Sow Slaughtering Championships in the early nineties.

Kvitova saved her whelps for the odd celebration of a winning point. Not that you expect someone of her dimensions to emit a noise that sounded like she’d sat on a hamster.

The men’s final had better moments in it, and was a refreshing change. Djokovic is an extraordinary player. He doesn’t seem to possess the most dangerous of weapons: he doesn’t have Nadal’s whiplash forehand (and I bet you wouldn’t want to come up against Rafa in a post-shower towel-flicking contest) or that fluent Fed backhand. The serve’s not terrifying either.

But he doesn’t have any weaknesses either, not least in his body which appears to be more flexible than a Nick Clegg policy commitment. And he covers the court to such an extent that even the Rafa was reduced to clumping it over the baseline in despair.

I liked the celebration, too – eating the grass was a nice touch. I think he’s going to have to smoke some before our Andy Murray can get anywhere near him.

That’s not to say that Murray’s crap. He’s very, very good. It’s just that Nadal’s a blinking animal. But Djokovic has proved what needs to be done to beat him and Jesus it looks like hard bloody work. Let’s hope the Scot is up to it.

Old Rafa is disarmingly nice, isn’t he? On court he looks for all the world like a Spanish Popeye, narrowing his eye and bulging his biceps. Off the court he’s a pussycat which is in fact the diametric opposite of David Haye’s performance in Hamburg on Saturday.

I’m off to see a bit of one-day cricket on Wednesday and I’m hoping and praying that Jonathan Trott isn’t batting at number three. The lad doesn’t do one-day innings. He likes to spread ‘em out over two or three. Why the feck are they picking him?

Meanwhile a Latin American model has promised to strip if Paraguay win the Copa America. Given I listened to a BBC 5Live broadcast that listed the reasons why England’s national team is shite (too many foreigners, club v country, media pressure, being a bit too tired, schoolboy centre-halves just hoofing it, being generally a bit crap, etc.) maybe it’s time that Capello resorted to these more alternative incentives.

That's a mobile phone in her cleavage by the way. Wonder if it's on vibrate.

Frankly the lass in question, a Senorita Larissa Riquelme, leaves not too much to the imagination, but it must be worth sounding out Rachel Riley just in case.

Williams It Was Really Something

2011-06-28T11:18:00.004+01:00

I find myself conflicted by Wimbledon.

There’s so much about it that makes my Northern working-class gut retch acrid bile. Yesterday the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (and if you’re a true blue-blood when you get a title the lackeys just say ‘pick a town, any town’) got front-row seats because... because, I dunno, his Mum loved the tennis, didn’t she? Cue, moist eyes and me missus grabbing for the Kleenex.

Murray gave them a bow – it must’ve been sarcastic, surely – and I thought they least they could do was bow back, or tell him to stop being so feckin’ stupid. But if you’re brought up that way you just do an infinitesimally small nod as if somehow you deserve it.

I mean all the great and the good have been there to watch, haven’t they? – Bob ‘Wake Me Up When He’s Finished’ Willis, Dermot O’Leary (the little plank at the start of X-Factor), erm.... oh you know, all of them. It’s like one of them ‘orrible ITV C-list festival shows ‘An Audience With Andy Murray’.

Oh and Billie-Jean King was there – still looking like the scariest schoolma’am in the history of American education.

She’s regarded with great fondness by the commentators, with much being made of her ‘knowledge’, ‘expertise’ and ‘enthusiasm’. The implication is that she’s one hell of a bore.

'Course Wimbledon holds on to its traditions like a drowning man clinging to driftwood. Rafa Nadal is defending the Gentleman’s Singles which actually makes it sound like a website detailing exclusive public conveniences for closet homosexuals. The women compete for the Ladies’ title. Ha! That’s no lady, that’s a screaming Eastern European banshee.

Everyone’s still wearing white - presumably cos it looks proper against the green of the grass. I couldn’t give a toss what they’re wearing although I don’t think Venus Williams was helped by trying to play tennis in a lace bin-bag.

There’s also the major bug-bear of hearing two-bit also-ran former British number threes chuntering away about players whose deeds far exceed anything they’ll ever do. Like sparrows giving flying advice to albatrosses.

You watch the tired litany of English wild-card holders all bombing out in the first round and you know for a fact that in 2020, half of them’ll be working for the BBC for 2 weeks of every year.

And there’s the fans, bless ‘em, queuing up in their little tents and looking for all the world like the bit of Glasto that’s set aside for the Women’s Institute. (Incidentally, watched a bit of U2 and, like avocadoes and Little Britain, I’m still at a loss as to why they’re so popular. Beyonce, on the other hand... ha-cha-cha-chaaaa!)

And yet despite all the hackles on me back, it’s a fantastic tournament. This may have summat to do with the fact that we live in rare old times as far as the men’s game is concerned. Jimmy Connors doesn’t seem to appreciate the rivalries at the top of the game cos they’re all so nice. I used to hate watching Connors play meself cos it was hard not to wish a decent barber on the basin-haired grunter.

Federer and Nadal (complete with perennial injury cloud) we know all too well. Djokovic is clearly a magnificent player but appears shorn of any personality on court, except when he’s smashing the shit out his racquet. (I empathise with the lad; it usually takes me four points – or pints - to get to that stage, not two and a half sets).

But yes, they’re all nice lads.

People in the game’ll tell you that the Williams sisters are nice lasses n all. I’ve no doubt they are. Trouble is no one seems to warm to them in this country. Now let me be frank. I think it’s cos Venus and Serena stomp up here with their strapping, let’s not deny it, black limbs and make one Caucasian after another look like they’re made from so many stale twiglets.

Elena Dementieva - serves like a girl.

Now I could take or leave the Jehovah’s Witness stuff but then again I don’t remember either of them sticking their tennis racquets into my hall to stop me closing my front door. And I could probably do without the use of ever-increasing decibels when the point gets very serious.

But there seems to be an underlying sense that their achievements need to be downgraded somehow. They did it their own way, their Dad learnt tennis from a book, they don’t play enough tournaments, they seem to be able to win them whilst managing a business and having a life... all most irregular.

And maybe, too, it’s the fact that there’s two of them. If one don’t get you the other one will. And somehow that’s not fair.

It’s bollocks of course. I don’t think it’s possible to overstate their achievements. They grew up in Compton, played a sport in which black people are as rare as a decent salad in Newcastle. They’ve contended with implicit prejudice, personal tragedy and, as Serena’s blubbing proved after her victory in week one, they care deeply about the sport they play.

I mean what's not to like?

Maybe, like the retrospective love-in that the (not very feminine) woman Martina Navratilova enjoys and deserves, there’ll come a time when a nostalgic fondness for the Williamses overcomes us all. I remember Chris Evert being ‘Miss Poker-Face’. Then she married John Lloyd and we loved her. Ahh!

Maybe Serena could take up with Jamie Murray, eh? Or we could just acknowledge that, even with injuries leaving them looking rustier than the bedsprings in a water bed, both Venus and Serena proved themselves to be two of sport’s greatest exponents and fiercest competitors.

In the meantime, Rafa’s foot’ll be fine and he – and Kvitova (who?) will be champions.

PS Is there a bit of you out there that wouldn’t mind if a bit of David Haye was left in Hamburg?

PPS Mike Doyle died today. A great player, one of them who, were it not for Bobby Moore, would’ve played for England many times.

The Fun of the FIFA Fiefdom

2011-06-21T12:53:00.004+01:00

Now I don’t want to get all heavy this week but might I begin by quoting the FIFA statement on Honest Jack Warner: “As a consequence of Mr Warner's resignation, all ethics committee procedures against him have been closed and the presumption of innocence is maintained".

Well there you go - in FIFA land it appears that you can be as dodgy as a Peter Beardsley haircut for years and years but as long as you resign before they finish their investigation you are presumed innocent. Dunno about you but there’s something in that very statement that suggests Warner is guiltier than a shepherd caught with a ewe’s hind-legs in his welly-boots.

Vice President, Mr Warner, does not mean President of Vice.

Look out sepp n Jack. Check your watches are still on your wrists!

It strikes me that when the police come round my house looking for stolen goods I can just tell ‘em that I don’t live there and re-direct them to my blameless criminal record.

If I get caught speeding on a motorway I’m sure the Old Bill will be more than satisfied when I remind them that I gave up my driving licence a couple of days ago so the fines no longer apply.

Fact is, Blatter’s FIFA have such contempt for the traditions of law and ethics that they wriggle off the hook like greased Berlusconis at every turn.

Warner’s insistence that he’s done nowt wrong is accompanied by a curious mention of the FIFA tradition of offering ‘gifts’. I mean what the fuck does that mean, Jack? If you go for a meeting with Mr. Warner what can you expect? A paperweight? A signed photograph of Dwight Yorke? A contract for the building rights to a new football stadium/education facility?

I think, though, that it’s the blatancy that feels so insulting. Like Assad’s ridiculous speech blaming a little bunch of ‘saboteurs’ for a wholesale nationwide protest in Syria. Or the fact that the senior executives responsible for the Potters Bar crash all worked for Railtrack – which no longer exists – so they cannot be hauled in front of the beak.

I mean are we really supposed to be that thick?

Blatter’s been greasing so many palms nowadays that it’s impossible to shake anyone in FIFA by the hand without sliding off and hitting your chin on the million-dollar shagpile. The man who put the Swizz into Swizzerland is proving pretty well non-stick too. But anyone who believes the ethics committee operates independently of the Sepp-tic head must be lost in a cloud of hippy happiness somewhere in a field in Somerset.

And FIFA, remember, is an organisation that is intent on laying down codes of conduct to the game’s officials, its players, its managers. From what you can glean from this latest hollow joke of a ruling, that means keep diving, feigning, tugging and whingeing. Get away with as much as you can. It’s what football people do, isn’t it?

Meanwhile one of sport’s most fastitdious gentlemanly pursuits has got itself a new hero. Rory McIlroy, a leggy pixie of a man, tonked the field to all parts at Congressional last week.

Here's Rory modelling the new McIlroy Ear-Muffs

I’m not a golf nut. In fact I only have to see a Pringle sweater and I want to firebomb the nearest Edinburgh Woollen Mill. For me, the question ‘What’s your handicap?’ is right up there in the list of crap conversational ice-breakers with ‘What are you driving these days?’ and ‘You look a bit like that Gary Sinise fella out of CSI.’

(By the way my golf handicap is that I’m shit at it.)

Nevertheless you can’t help warming to the Tigger-toed lad from Holywood. Anyone who can smile while they’re earning vast sums of money has got to be welcomed. If only Andy Murray could summon up more than the odd rictus grimace, eh?

Plus McIlroy possesses that easiness of style which suggests that the golf fairies were at one end of his Moses basket when he was a gurgling babe, magicking touch into his fingertips. (I’m not sure what the golf fairies look like, mind, although I bet Ian Poulter has got the outfit somewhere.)

And of course, young Rory has turned around two terrible experiences – the last at Augusta was as bad it gets, and got stronger from it. When a lad like him plays in a way that a pitch n putt plonker like me can entirely empathise with, then you know the lad’s having the worst round since the Blue Bell ran out of beer on draught.

Even the American galleries were right behind him, although there wasn’t any home-grown talent to root for, was there?

How delightful it is to live in times where American sporting dominance seems to be on the wane! Wimbledon starts this week and the men’s champion has as much chance of being American as it has of being a pony.

All right the women’s champ will probably be a Williams – which most people have told me will be boring. Well you know what if it’s not a Williams it’ll probably be some six-foot-one inch blonde Eastern European with all the personality of a flagpole. So you takes your pick.

I mean who wants to spend two weeks looking at this?

If I had to choose a winner this fortnight, I’d go for the weather, narrowly followed by Nadal. I reckon Venus’ll win the lasses (they tend to share it out between them Williamses). There’ll be one British woman in the second round draw (Keothavong’s playing some other English lass who’s 2,376 in the world).

And Murray’ll make the semis. Sigh.

Meanwhile Villa-Boas has resigned as Porto coach and appears to be on his way to Stamford Bridge. He’s like Mourinho’s Mini-me. You wouldn’t be surprised if Jose’s funding a Mourinho-cloning laboratory would you? Be interesting to see how many of the old guard allow themselves to be lectured by a lad who’s barely out of his managerial short trousers.

Fact is, Chelski could do with an offload of the Drog, Lamps, Essien et al. Maybe the New Boy’ll make it happen. Interesting times.

Hamilton's Accidenticals

2011-06-13T22:35:00.006+01:00

There are bad boys in all sorts of sport.

In some sports it doesn’t seem to harm you that much. Iron Mike Tyson was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Infamy – I mean Fame. Not sure whether Evander Holyfield’s earlobe has joined him there.

Robbie Savage seems set to be setting our teeth on edge on with his squeaky-balloon voice on 5Live’s airwaves for years to come.

John McEnroe has become just about the best former player turned commentator there is (apart from, of course, the mighty Richie Benaud, but then Richie never questioned the umpire’s seriousness).

And now motor racing has its own bad boy… Lewis Hamilton. ‘Is it cos I is black?’ he asked half-jokingly after the last race. To which I hope the stewards responded with ‘No, it’s cos you’re a twat.’

"And if he doesn't get out the way then I just ram him, right Boss?"

Even I have to admit that the Canadian Grand Prix was unbelievably exciting. The only thing that ever makes F1 interesting is rainfall. Personally I’d happily watch it if the half the contents of the Pacific Ocean was ritually doused on every track across the globe (especially if the Gollum of motor racing Bernie Ecclestone was underneath it).

But torrential downpours aren’t enough for Lewis. He’s driving like a steroid-pumped road-raging wanker in one of them not-quite-sports-cars that the Japanese build. I wouldn’t be surprised if he can’t hear instructions from his pit-lane cos he’s got some dog-awful Black-Eyed Peas cack blasting into his earholes.

I’m not sure it helps that the cars seem to have ads on them for beer. If I had a car with Singha written on the front in the rear-view mirror I’d be trying to get to the pub twice as fast meself. Maybe he should join another team. Red Bull gives you wings and given the places Lewis tries to overtake he’s going to bloody well need them.

As Niki Lauda said the point is that one day the lad’s going to kill someone. It’s not as if he’s one of them indestructible Chelsea tractors. It’s all well and good telling us that F1 fans love the overtakers. Fact is he’s on his way to the undertakers if he’s not careful.

Plus it was pissing it down. I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to drive a car that quick. Me, I’m happy with summat that gets you from A to B, preferably driven by someone else so I can get stuck into my Singha beer.

But everyone knows you have to rein it in a bit when it’s chucking it down. It’s one of them eternal truths of the road – like motorway service station sandwiches are overpriced and you can’t get a decent pouring teapot at any of them. Or Nissan Micras are driven by old people. Or… stop me. I’m about to consumed by that horrible condition known as Clarkson’s Guff.

Fact is they’ll have to ban the lad if he carries on like this. And no, Lewis, it’s not remotely cos of the colour of your skin – it’s because of the colour of your fellow competitors’ trousers after you’ve loomed up their wing-mirrors.

On a note that is almost as life-threatening, can it be true that Alex McLeish is going to take up the reins at Aston Villa just weeks after taking his doughty alehouse team of Birmingham City down a division?

"How much more money am I gonnae get at Villa? This fuckin' much!"

In Brum that’s going to go down like a glass of pureed phlegm. Amazingly the board at St. Andrew’s saw fit not to sack him – which given he won a Cup seems reasonable. So for him to resign seems a tad shocking. (Mind you football managers these days are as expendable as paper knickers so it’s hard to blame them if they become a bit self-serving.)

Villa fans won’t want him anyway cos he’s of tainted stock. They didn’t want McClaren either. Houllier was welcomed with folded arms and half of them didn’t much care for O’Neill.

McClaren has of course weaved a strange course since he put down that brolly (or flew away on it like Mary Poppins). Of course if that particular McClaren had been being driven by Lewis Hamilton he’d have taken a few other managers out en route.
He’s now at Forest, which must be delighting the locals. And Villa fans too.

But Villa fans are amongst the hardest to satisfy, I reckon. They’re up there with the Geordie bottlers when it comes to having expectations that aren’t supported by any evidence whatsoever. Martinez would’ve been a good choice but he, unlike McLeish, has appreciated the loyalty shown to him and stayed with the Rainbow Coalition that is the Wigan Athletic squad.

Chances are that Villa fans would look a bit suspicious if Guus Hiddink walked through the gates at Villa Park with a spring in his step.

Still I have to agree that McLeish doesn’t seem a good fit. He seems to settle on big lunks who get the job done and when you look at the talented lads at Villa, who knock it about well on occasions, there’s going to be an almighty culture shift.

I mean if you want a manager who’s good with young players, happy to bring them through if he thinks they’re good enough, and has had success before in different leagues, then McClaren would be as good a pick as any.

He's back - the fella with the umbrella

The England debacle has done nowt for his reputation but frankly Capello’s England aren’t up to much are they? Maybe he’s just a victim of our expectation that cos we invented the game we should be the best at it.

Let’s face it, the best England players right now wouldn’t get into the first teams of many other national sides. After all, a lot of them play for Villa.

Swiss On A Roll

2011-06-06T10:49:00.006+01:00

Tired, England were. That’s why they could only scrape a 2-2 against some Swiss youngsters who were barely out of their trainee leiderhosen. Tired!

If England’s players always end up knackered in June then we may as well throw in the beach towel now. It reminded us all too clearly of the abject tournament we suffered in South Africa when Capello first labelled his team ‘out of puff’.

The new England kit is apparently going to be stripy and cotton. The subs benches are going to be futons and all the lads will be issued with blankets and inflatable neck pillows should they nod off pitchside.
Jack Wilshere in training for England's match against Switzerland

The problem is to keep the planks on the field awake. It’s important to choose the right planks, mind. I’m not sure what Micah Richards has done wrong this season but clearly he’s a better right-back than Glen Johnson. The Liverpool man is fine going forward but at the back he’s a wandering charity gift bag.

And as for Lampard, is he earning ten pound a minute in sponsorship for Childline or summat? Cos there’s no other reason for him to be on the park. Lamps seems to need four touches for every one from his team-mates. And he’s got to be the luckiest penalty-taker ever. Every one gets scuffed to the keeper’s right but somehow squirms in.

The substitution at half-time was good but why leave Young on the bench in the first place, especially when Rooney’s off getting his pubes repositioned? And while we’re on that subject, why is Shrek having a hair transplant anyway? It’s a bit like putting a smart new roof on a vandalised council house. It’s not going to look right is it?

D’you think that after the Champs League final he looked at Messi, Xavi and Iniests and asked himself ‘What is it that they’ve got that I haven’t?’ and the dopy slaphead answered ‘Hair!’

Rooney was of course missed but not as blatantly as Darren Bent missed. Bent’s advocates point to his goalscoring record at domestic level. I point to his capacity to fuck it up when it really matters (not to mention Crouchy’s fantastic goalscoring record) at international level.

'Arry's seen it all before at Spurs

There’s always a certain something in Bent’s eyes - it’s called fear. You don’t see it in the pupils of Defoe or even, God hang up his boots, Michael Owen.

But 2-2 wasn’t a bad result in the end. Fortunately the might of Montenegro couldn’t topple the Bulgars so we’re still top of the weakest group in qualifying history. So Capello should take us to the finals, quacking and limping all the way. It’s preposterous that the man’s still in charge.

It’s been an exciting week if you’re Swiss. (That’s not a sentence you’d expect to read anywhere). First there was Sepp Blatter’s re-election as President of FIFA, accompanied by some lackeys and sycophants queuing up to bloody the FA’s nose.

The Argentine representative was particularly offended by insinuations of corruption – Sr. Grondola adding that he’d offered his vote for England’s 2018 bid in exchange for the return of the Falkland Islands. (That’s not corruption – that’s the oldest form of financial transaction – bartering.)

Still Sepp won and talked about steering the FIFA family ship away from the rocks or some sort of bollocksy maritime metaphor. Switzerland is land-locked, remember, and if FIFA'S a family then it's time to call in social services. We need a new father-figure, Gawd help us.

Here's Rog serving in the Swiss Alps - the home of tennis

But there are good and noble Swiss men and one such, the divinely-talented but camply-jacketed Roger Federer, managed to light up the French Open once more. Not that he won it, of course.

Rafa Nadal successfully convinced the press that he was vulnerable this year and then gave Murray a bit of a tonking and barely let Fed have a sniff once he turned around the first set. Put Rafa on a surface the colour of an Essex girl’s skin and he can’t be beat.

Murray did ok against him but it was a bit like watching a tall tent peg getting repeatedly battered into the ground with a sledgehammer. Federer played some glorious shots and whether he bores you or not he has that thing that I envy and admire the most in sportspeople, ease. Brilliance without apparent effort: I’m thinking Zidane, Iniesta, Sehwag, Gebreselassie, Bolt, Bosko Jankovic.

Nadal is not an easy watch. Every particle of his being seems coiled and sprung. None of his shots flow particularly and, like Murray, there’s no discernable relaxation in his face so that most of the time he looks a grimacing maltreated pit bull terrier.

The trouble with a pit bull is it hangs on and doesn’t let go. Even the odd feline Federer scratch doesn’t put him off. He’s beaten his Swissness three times out of every four now. So it doesn’t matter how serene and fluid Federer is, the old attack dog’s gonna catch up with him in the end.

It’s a great time for men’s tennis – what with Rog and Raf and Jockey-Itch. There seems to be a lot of mutual respect (take note Lewis Hamilton) and in Paris they were quick to overrule dodgy line decisions even if they weren’t in their opponent’s favour.

Is it possible, while it takes a break, that football – from its fat ancient pocket-liners to its newly-quiffed and gelled tumblers in their gated communities - might have enough self-respect to want to safeguard the reputation of the beautiful game in the same way?

To not appeal for a throw-in when it hit you last. To not throw yourself on the floor and rail at the ref if he spots it. To not interpret the word ‘marking’ to mean leaving your fingerprints all over the centre-forward’s jersey. To want to represent your country even when the gaffer decides you’re not what he wants and not go off in a huff like a jilted Pageant Queen?

But then maybe they don’t mean to do these things, eh? Maybe they’re just tired. Bless.

The Beatification of Barca

2011-05-29T11:47:00.005+01:00

There are times in domestic English football matches when a team that is comfortably ahead makes a great play of just keeping the ball - and their astonished fans, unused to such serenity, holler ‘Ole!’ with every pass.

It strikes me that Barcelona start a football match in that mode. If they were an English club, the supporters would have suffered a collective bout of laryngitis after twenty minutes.

What my Mrs will be wearing this year

If a football were a drug, and my lass would contend that it is, the chances of most English clubs being done for possession would be virtually nil. Certainly, there’d be very little chance of proving that the ball was not going to be given away cheaply.

To extend this analogy too far, Barca can rightly claim that despite being found with the ball about their person almost all the time, its possession was only ever for personal use.

Only Arsenal can even suggest that they have got anywhere near the style of the Barca pass master class. Unfortunately, the Gooners seem unable to grasp the concept that doing f-all with three-quarters of possession is worse than having no possession at all. It’s a poor imitation. Arsenal are Leona Lewis to Barca’s Beyonce.

Nevertheless, I’ve grown tired of the Catalan love-in recently. The prevailing opinion seemed to be that Lionel Messi was a dinky little Angel of God and Xavi, Iniesta and Villa his blue and red striped cherubim. In short, here was the divine in football form. Football folk everywhere tottered down the aisles and knelt in their pundit’s pews catatonically muttering the same prayer as every other member of the congregation:

‘Our Barca,
Who Art in Heaven,
Lionel be thy name.
Thy kings shall come,
Thy Wembley won,
On turf by the best eleven.
Give us this day our Abidal,
And forgive us our Messi-passes,
as we forgive those that Iniesta against us,
Lead us not into Tottenham, but deliver us from Arsenal,
For thine is the Pique, the Puyol and the Pedro,
for Alves and Valdes, Amen.’

But there were those of us who, having watched the festival of diva-dives and devilry at the Bernabeu, wondered whether they fully deserved their status as Soccer deities.

Well, after Saturday night, we’ll just have to concur with the best manager the game has seen – this is the best club side we’ve ever seen.

It’d be easy to put that down to the magic of Messi. Much was made of how to stop him but frankly he’s as hard to pin down as a Nick Clegg policy statement. He’s more elusive than Sepp Blatter (and Jeez is that greased pig gonna slip through the hands of justice again? I wouldn’t be surprised.)

"Big bag of cash? No! Where could I be hiding a big bag of cash?"

What I like most about Messi is the fact that most of the time he just shifts the ball on. Until he finds a bit of space for himself he’s just another pint-sized protector of the ball. Not Cristiano Ronaldo, in other words. When he does get space to run with it – well, he twists and turns unstoppably like a fast-flowing stream in evening sunshine.

Clearly he was the headline act, but there’s still something about Caspar the Friendly Ghosting Midfielder Andres Iniesta that makes me go a bit wooey. I’ve never seen weight of pass like it. Xavi too. Yes they’re just tapping it this way and that but there’s barely a moment when a player has to check his stride or work hard to recover.

Contrast it with United, who knocked it about as best they could but always resembled a snooker player gradually getting more and more out of position until eventually all the bloke could do was whack it and hope for the best.

Not since me and a few mates joined in a kickabout on Acklam Park with a bunch of casual keepy-upping 14-year-olds has there been such patent one-sidedness in a match. Like our keeper on that day, you half-expected a very wooden Van de Sar to start trying to edge the goalposts together while the ball was up the other end. Trouble was it wasn’t up there long enough.

And here’s where Barca outdo every other team. It’s not the keeping the ball so much as the getting it back. When not throwing themselves like presidential bodyguards in front of the latest Barca onslaught, Rio and Vidic were hurriedly tapping it sideways to each other or as more tiny Catalans swarmed about their knees. It reminded me of this bit in Barbarella. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m__CJdolrhY (Rio Ferdinand is played by Jane Fonda.)

Having said that, I thought that Rooney pecked around tirelessly for opportunity like an anxious free-range chicken and made the most of what came his way and the United goal was a beaut.

Too many players were off the game, not least Park who couldn’t have found a bargain in a pound-shop, and Valencia who couldn’t have found the pound-shop in the first place.

Carrick was part of the bodies-on-the-line brigade. And Giggs was so dizzied by the Barca boys around him that he was ready to call for a stupor-injunction.

Fergie had the good grace to more or less shrug at the defeat. Cos to be honest what can you do? No other team in Europe would’ve fared any better. You almost sympathise with Mourinho’s tactics:

‘You won’t have much of the ball and yet you’ll still have the desire to kick something. In the absence of any alternatives, kick them.’

So yes, there’s no doubt the Pope’ll be beatifying Barca’s behemoths soon. It’s partly club ethos – Abidal lifting the trophy demonstrated that perfectly – and it’s partly happy accident that Xavi, Iniesta, Messi et al have arrived at this same moment in time.

All I know is that to begrudge this team anything is about as mean-spirited a sentiment as you can imagine. I suggest you join me, Barca fans, and millions of Scousers everywhere in hailing a brilliant performance by a wonderful side.

Welcome to the Riverside

2011-05-23T22:06:00.007+01:00

So another Premier League season passes by. A good one, I reckon, if not in terms of quality then definitely in terms of thrills n spills.

Yes, Man U ran away with the title in the end with the tiresome inevitability of a British woman’s defeat in the first round of the French Open. (‘French Open’ always seems to me to be a contradiction in terms, by the way... like ‘US Intelligence’ or ‘mature student’)

And Man City managed to somehow fund a FA Cup/Champs League double from the loose change down the back of an Abu Dhabi sofa.

But the real drama came down among the dead men on Sunday. At one point it was like a quartet of lemmings jostling for the best cliff-top position, all of 'em desperate to revisit the Riverside!

And in the end the downward dogs are Blackpool (shame! weren’t they sweet with their nice passing, Pippa Middleton-coloured shirts and their complete lack of wealth?) and Birmingham (hooray, that’ll teach them nasty bully-boys to steal a trophy of the delicate artistes at the Emirates!).

Actually Brum bagging the Carling was the footy equivalent of ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ pipping Downton Abbey to the BAFTA.

'In all earnestness I put down the demise of the Blues to the most unpropitious ailments acquired by Messrs Dann and Zigic, vagazzle'

So here’s my summation of the season, club-by-club.

ARSENAL: Fell away like a Viagra-starved knob, didn’t they? Even the Arsene evangelists are losing faith now. Wives are walking Islington streets to pay for their husband’s season tickets and still he won’t spend some fucking money. 6/10.

ASTON VILLA: Houllier’s got a dodgy ticker so let’s not be too hard on the bloke. This team has a lot of English talent in it. Which explains why they’ve struggled so much. 5/10

BIRMINGHAM CITY: Europe here we come! Brum, brum, put-put, splutter, pffff! Not a word of support offered to McLeish in the build up to Sunday’s match. I’m amazed the increasingly pink Scot is staying. Hopefully they’ll return playing some recognisable footy.

BLACKBURN ROVERS: Sacking Allardyce was the second dumbest decision I’ve witnessed. Can’t say I watched a single game they played this season. Someone said Chris Samba was huge this season. And last year he was Luka Modric, I suppose. 4/10

BLACKPOOL: Defended like easily fooled toddlers. You could get round they’re centre-backs by tapping them on one shoulder and running round the other. Great entertainment, mind. I wish they’d remained.

BOLTON WANDERERS: Osteopaths in Bolton are out of pocket since Owen Coyle reintroduced the notion of grass as a surface on which to play footy. Incidents of neck-ache have gone down 90%. Still like my missus, they’re not averse to the odd hump and just cos it fizzled out doesn’t mean it was a bad year.

CHELSEA: Ah now here’s the dumbest, crassest, shoddiest decision of them all. Ancelotti tried his best to get this one-paced, shiftless bunch to get their act together. Then Abramovich yokes him to Fernando Tourist who were it not for a puddle would’ve finished the season goalless. Grrr. Is it any wonder we don’t like the Blue Meanies?

EVERTON: Moyes still butting the glass ceiling of the top four. They are the thin soup of the division – very poor starters. If he can get them to win a game before September they may get somewhere. Like 5th.

FULHAM: Sparky’s worked wonders when he’s not getting all chippy about not having the Citeh job anymore. Think they’ve improved since the Michael Jackson statue. I’ve looked closely at it and it moves like an Arsenal centre-back.

LIVERPOOL: ‘Place your hands upon me and I will HEAL you now!’ Okay King Kenny shrugs his shoulders and does the Glasgae grunt thing, but that’s what he’s really saying. He’s revived damp squibs like Meireles and Maxi Rodriguez (surely that’s a hairdresser, not a footballer) and not a Nando or Stevie G in sight – although I reckon you’d find it tough to keep Andy Carroll out of Nando’s. Next year, who knows? Maybe 5th!

'This is just the beginning - soon ALL mercenaries will wear sky blue!'

MANCHESTER CITY: I know, I know. First trophy since the Late Cretaceous period, hard to begrudge the fans, you’re just jealous, etc. But it’s been bought. And come the transfer window, they’ll be like them seagulls in Finding Nemo. ‘Mine, mine, mine, mine!’ Makes you shudder for the future of English football.

MANCHESTER UTD: Pretty ordinary weren’t they? And lucky too. Tsk. I think 19 is enough. C’mon Glazers it’s time to reveal the masterplan. Then the fans can get the Norwich kits on and start from scratch. Hasn’t done AFC Wimbledon any harm...

NEWCASTLE UNITED: Chris Hughton. Well you could tell he wasn’t right for the job. That promotion raised too many hopes, I reckon. Pardew’s come in and lowered expectations - and I reckon that’s Ashley’s new tack. His head’s not as fat as it looks.

STOKE CITY: Bit narked they were so poor in the Cup final. A lot less 1D than previous seasons. But the Rory throw is still the most potent weapon. Which is fine. We all like keepers to look stupid and the Delapidator does that beautifully.

SUNDERLAND: Okay, does Steve Bruce know what he’s doing? No. I reckon if you could pull off that mask of a much-broken nose there’d be a tiny little Steven behind it squeaking ‘Help me! Help me! All my players are shite!’ 2012 relegation candidates, I tells ya.

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR: Larvely European adventure, Arry! They put it right up Johnny Foreigner, bish-bash-wallop! Actually Spurs were the division’s most entertaining team. But there’s a lot of chaff with the wheat still. One top striker and some centre-backs who can walk unaided, v much needed.

'No I don't believe I ever have been to Liverpool. I fear you're confusing me with Boro legend David Hodgson'

WEST BROM: Roy Hodgson. What can you say? Liverpool just seems like a bad dream to him now. (As Middlesbrough does to many a tourist). Old Davwos still knows his onions. They might start to feel at home in the PL by this time next year.

WEST HAM UTD: Another classy dismissal by Sullivan n Gold. Jeez, didn’t they’re used to be a gentlemanly way to sack people. Even that tough old scrote Lord Sugar doesn’t drag his apprentices down a tunnel and tell em they’re fired. West Ham oozed talent and indifference. Even Scotty Praker’s side-parting lost its edge by the end. Dismal.

WIGAN ATHLETIC: No I dunno either. They are the hold-up stockings of British football, no one knows how they stay up. If N’Zogbia goes, things’ll be well tough. But if they keep this up, they’ll get fans coming to the ground and everything.

WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS: Gone for all money at 3-0 down against the strangely lively Blackburn and still they clamber back out of the swamp. It’ll be good to watch Mick’s shock of grey slowly receding further up his pate next season. Happy for him.

On the whole though, there’s nowt for Boro to fear in season 2012-13. We should beat any team that comes down in 2011-12. Sigh.

Taken for Grant-ed

2011-05-16T09:19:00.006+01:00

Hello! Or as we Poles say 'Halo'.

Phew! What a week! And that's just this blog. Last Thursday, some bloke called Polish Dad appeared to have hijacked this site - but insisted he'd saved it from a worse fate than that. (Looking at Kusczak’s performance at Blackburn I wouldn’t want a Pole saving anything for me!)

Not realising that I am technologically-challenged he tried to explain himself: 'Blah-bli-blah-DOMAIN, blah-bli-blah OPEN' he wrote - or summat like that. Any road it appears he did save the day, so a big Polish thumbs up to the lad. And even if he didn't, thanks, son, for giving an ageing Teessider heart failure.

Poland is of course famous for many things including this - its reasonably good volleyball team

In this area of high beer and cholesterol consumption, heart failure is nowt new. However in that London, I'm imagining Irons fans are busy blowing themselves into bubbles and fading and dying as we speak.

Those of us with a cruel streak (and here I talk of every football fan I know) will not shed a tear for that weird triumvirate of Sullivan, Gold and Brady.

It strikes me that not one of 'em knows owt about football. It could be that porn magnate Sullivan ordered the back four to stay wide open to allow as much penetration as possible. Sullivan was keen for Avram to play someone in the hole who could push up behind the front two.

The selection of Grant, and his non-sacking in January, have been tell-tale indicators of a club that - ironically in Sullivan's case, doesn't know its arse from its elbow.

At least Hammers fans will be able to watch their team play in the Olympic Stadium soon - the main benefit of that being that they'll be so far away from the pitch that the pain will take longer to reach you.

When push comes to shove at the lower end of the league you need a gaffer who can stir the emotions. While Blackpool have got Tigger, West Ham have had to make do with Eeyore. While Wigan have Mr. Motivator, West Ham have Droopy.

Here's Avram wondering why he bought Robbie Keane

Grant seems a nice enough bloke but Gawd knows why he was hired. This will be the season West Ham fans remember as The Year of Scott Parker. (Or Scotty if you want him to sound like a really annoying pooch). He's been the footballing equivalent of Atlas. No wonder his Achilles twanged after carrying so many passengers.

He'll be off to somewhere wealthy in the summer - cluttering up Man City's midfield mantelpiece no doubt. Can't say I was too chuffed about the Cup Final result although Citeh were hugely superior to Stoke.

(Oh and by the way if the FA ever allow Premier League matches to be played on Cup Final day I will personally go round there and squeeze their gluttonous heads into a miniature replica of the Cup itself. Shocking decision!)

Mancini's side may have been a bit flaky at times this season but one thing you can't do is strongarm them out of it. At one point Tyldesley suggested that Stoke's aerial firepower was to be feared. Except even Huth looked like a border collie amongst the wolfhounds of Toure, Richards, Kompany and co.

They keep telling me the sky blue's the limit now. That the first trophy is the hardest to win. I'd love to disagree. But if Mancini can fork out a flaming fortune just to have a minder for Balotelli (Vieira) then the rest of us are pissing in the wind.

It's Chelsea Mark II. Abramovich never bothered about buying a dud. Kezman, that cokehead Romanian fella, the expensive scatter cushion that was Winston Bogarde. Doesn't matter that they stank. Same with Citeh now. Dzeko turns out to be Bosnian for 'cack'. No bother. We'll lay a trail of cash to the door of Karim Benzema or some such.

It's not a happy prospect unless you've been spitting out the dirt from Man U's wheelspins for three decades.

And them people - the fans - are the ones who have earned the right to crow.

United are of course Premier League Champions. Which really means that City are celebrating sloppy seconds for now.

As I've said before, it really doesn't matter what you think of Ferguson, fact is he's won the League with a great deal of averageness at his disposal. Which makes him, in this day and age, close to a genius. And, by the way, no one likes a genius.

If you look at the celebratory pogo-ers at Ewood Park on Saturday there's only Vidic and van der Saar who you can truly say have been exceptional all season. Rooney's blown hot and cold. (And if there's a football fan in the country who hasn't at least indirectly been told to fuck off by Wazza this season then he wasn't on the pitch when you watched Man U.)

"It's all very well but what am I gonnae dae now ITV are getting rid of Taggart?"

Somehow Old Purple Chops has managed to patch together a winning side out of crocks and journeymen. And there's never been a string of games when they've all been playing shite at the same time - unlike Chelsea and Arsenal.

Rooney and Berbatov have alternated purple patches. Nani's dip in form has been easily covered by Valencia's return and the work-rate of Park. The foetal Brazilain twins have covered manfully for absentees at full-back; similarly, Rio's creaking back hasn't caused too much disruption. Carrick has been very good in the run-in. And Gawd knows what he's on but Giggsy continues his campaign to become the Peter Pan of the PFA. (According to Twitter rumours he's been using a super-injection for years).

I'm hoping that Cardiff can muster a way to the Premier League after a series of rhythm method seasons. (They look like they're in but withdraw at the last second). Be nice if Dave Jones could get that particular monkey off his back - then again Craig Bellamy could make all the difference.

Who they might replaced is well anybody's guess. Me? I hope it's not Blackpool n Wolves to sink, as we'd lose two of the best post-match interviewees in the game.
Bit I reckon the Tangerines will go, joined by the Tired Toilers at Brum. Suffice to say bums will never have been squeakier.

Rest assured Boro fans will empathise with the lot of yer.

Give it back now

2011-05-12T18:48:00.000+01:00

Robbo here. But will this go up?

The End of Mourinho?

2011-05-04T10:34:00.004+01:00

A Robbo Robson Exclusive

Reports coming in from UEFA are suggesting that special operatives from UEFA have, following extensive and meticulous covert surveillance, found and killed Josama bin Mourinho.

Mourinho, whose whereabouts was not shared with Castillian secret intelligence for fear of a leak, was found cowering behind his pizza margherita with extra jalapenos in a hotel room not far from Las Ramblas in Barcelona’s city centre.

'Don't look at the eyes, boys, don't look at the eyes!'

He was unarmed but officers were obliged to avoid the monster’s glare and wear protective earpieces should his sultry sneers for mercy convert them instantly into Special Ambassadors for his mission.

For a long time now UEFA (Upholders of European Football Artistry) have waged a clandestine war on the one they call The Special One. He has been the Beautiful Game’s Public Enemy Number One, Football’s Most Wanted and Least Loved, a man who is the ultimate in Ends Justifying The Means.

Mourinho’s ability to escape capture has been one of the great mysteries of modern sport. He is rumoured to have traversed great distances in any number of modes, and once passed through several banks of security in a laundry basket. (Admittedly the baskets at Chelsea need to be enormous given the amount of dirty laundry they get through each week). It is said that Mourinho once travelled from London to Milan in a flight powered entirely by his own ego.

While much of the evidence of Mourinho’s misdemeanours is anecdotal at best, there are many who put down their demise to the overweaning influence of the Portuguese-born translator. Referees have felt compelled to retire, and voyeurs have fervently felt the need to defend themselves.

Members of FC Barcelona have also been victimised. Sergio Busquets has been so manipulated by Jose’s Special Forces that he seems to feel every scratch, tug and nudge by an opposition player through his face. It is thought that this condition has led to cerebral damage that may have turned him into a racist shit. (Certainly Emmanuel Adebayor, a Mourinho aide, seemed to think so when he was sent on an assassin’s mission last night. Personally I was on his side although having said that, it’s not as if the Madrilenos aren’t averse to the odd monkey chant when it suits them.)

Then there’s Javier Mascherano, a fearsome man renowned for his power and malice that a Mourinho operative reduced to the role of writhing soap queen yesterday evening. Rumours are that the Masch spent the evening on Monserrat Caballe’s washing line though he rejects the idea that he is that big a girl’s blouse.

Image from a grim pro-Josama website

Mourinho has maintained that the Catalan capacity for fakery is not of his making. Indeed sources at Real Madrid are said to be pushing for an investigation into the whole structure of FC Barcelona. They have recommended that a special commission be headed up by Lord Scarman in the full expectation that he will find the Masters of Magical Footy guilty of ‘institutional simulation’.

While few share Moaninho’s beliefs, he has insisted that his failure to win every European competition he has ever entered is down to a conspiracy. When UEFA has been unable to defeat him, they have invented victories from goals of a paranormal nature, made members of his crack squad ‘disappear’ early in proceedings to face the water torture of the ‘early bath’ or forced him to squeeze into uncomfortable corners from whence he has had to communicate in more inventive ways.

Even then, UEFA have been powerless to prevent him from using such cutting-edge technology as the I-pad, the mobile telephone and even, fiendishly, a notepad and pen.

There are some mainstream sympathisers with the arch criminal’s view that diving divas need to be punished. If UEFA really wanted to deal with this they could view video evidence and start suspending the pimping plungers here and now. To the average man in the street – and I’m nothing if not that – it seems such an obvious and fair policy that even Nick Clegg would have difficulty reneging on it.

Central to the mission to destroy Mourinho has of course been the match they call El Crappico. El Naffico is a long-held tribal dispute somewhere in the fictional confederacy of states known as ‘Spain’. It is Moronho’s belief that the forces of evil are reined to the cause of the Catalans.

In particular he has sought to blame the organisation known as Unicef, which as everyone now knows, stands for the Unfeasibly Naughty Institute for Cheating Embryonic Footballers. There is circumstantial evidence that for years now Barcelona has been flooding its training camps with tiny schoolboys who for the first year are trained in dodgy play-acting and the second year learn how to do a triple twist with pike and tuck. Even the stadium’s name ‘Nou Camp’ translates as the ‘New Theatrical’.

Mourinho attempts to lure a young boy away from the Camp Nou

Of course Maureenio’s contempt for Barca may also derive from the first time he ever translated Bobby Robson at the Nou Camp. (And, bless Sir Bob, but it’d been nice if Jose had worked as a translator for the old fella when he was England gaffer too.)

Whatever the source of his malice and menace there seems to be little international outcry at Jose’s demise. UEFA have however been unforthcoming with photographic evidence of the end of the Special One and counter-conspiracy theorists are even now suggesting that the dark lord will rise again. Indeed to my certain knowledge he’s been seen driving a cab in Stockton-on-Tees.

In the meantime Barcelona officials have distanced themselves from exuberant celebrations on the streets of Barcelona. They have insisted that allegations of improper conduct by their representatives are completely unfounded and - well, it’s thought unlikely that we will witness any more third-rate Hollyoaks style tizzy fits from them in the final. Especially if Scholes plays as the Ginger Ninja always leaves plenty of evidence on the thigh of an opponent to make play-acting unnecessary.

Me? Were it not for Messi and Iniesta (another serial diver, mind) I wouldn’t care too much for Barca at the mo. Still they’ll be up against United. And they’ll beat ‘em. As for the Moochinho? Beware the second coming.

Wenger's Lament

2011-04-26T21:59:00.007+01:00

Finally the tall grey man stood up and approached the lectern. So ashen was he, he resembled nowt less than a cigarette that had been left in an ash-tray to burn itself out. He stiffened sinews that had long been stretched to breaking point by the agony of watching errors that even the mascots sniggered about.

And then, in a tired but impassioned Alsatian voice, Le Professeur addressed the apostles that gathered before him

“Somewhere there is a place where the world is at peace; where footballer shall not harm footballer; where the extra pass shall be the equal of a goal;

“where pint-sized pretty boys with flicky faffy feet shall be feted – and clumsy rumbling oiks with all the grace and touch of sponge-shoed yetis shall be scorned and jeered and pelted from the stands by philosophy graduates;

“where centre-halves are as French fancies – decorative, lightly frosted and easily crumbled and devoured; where goalkeepers are friendly buffoons whose every touch makes you tremor with a mixture of mirth and fear; where the Big Number Nine is a work of fiction and the small number fourteen a joy to behold.

“Here bottles of mineral water are safe.

“There are no horrors to abhor, or ignore, depending upon who committed them.

“Children from across the (predominantly French-speaking) world can hold hands around a golden orb like some freaking Benetton ad and preach possession unto each other, forgetting that it is only nine tenths of the law and not even a fifth of a score;

“Here, tippy shall pass to tappy and tappy to tippy; to score off your knee is a crime; the long ball is a dance party that finishes at six in the morning; tackle is what you cover when you stand in a defensive wall and humping it into the box is only available on the adult channel.

“Spectators shall hiss ‘Shhhh’ if someone says ‘Hoof it, you soddin’ twat Djourou!’

“The season begins in spirit and wonder, glimmers with a thousand dreams and finishes with some really nice compliments, thank you;

“And the joy of Cesc remains forever;

“But there are no medals here – but then what are medals but mere trinkets to adorn the necks of the artisan? An artist needs a cup for nowt more than somewhere to put his peppermint tea. What is the pursuit of trophies without the pursuit of perfection?

“For one day, mes amis, we will score the perfect goal. And it will not be scored by going round the outside or hitting it long and feeding off the knock-downs. It will be an orgy of one-touch purity (unless Bendtner’s on the pitch) put together by nimble pixies with magical magnets in their feet and paradise in their souls.

“And even if you do say that Barca have done that already and are way better at it than you’ll ever be, hear this, oh Gooners!

“We shall not desist! We shall through our desire, our mentality, our technicality and our one touch too many, ascend the sheer face of English philistinism and bring forth a better way: the Arsene way!

“For I have been to that mountaintop! And we shall all get there again one day – though obviously we’ll probably trot back and forth and fail to find the direct route to the top.

“And once there we shall gaze across all we have achieved. Top four finishes, Champions League quarter-finals, runners-up medals by the sackful. And still a huge amount of wonga in the kitty for a decent keeper and a centre-back with a spine.

“And we shall embrace then at a job well done.

“For we shall look back at that which went before: the dark days of 1-0s and George Graham. The ineffable tedium of that team (apart from that fluky 2-0 at Anfield which bagged them a title). And we shall not fear our true selves.

“And yea, though Fergie may sit astride a higher peak, lost in clouds of champagne spray, and Jose may glower above us too (I shall not know for I won’t be looking – I’m no voyeur), we shall not weep. For we shall know in our heart of hearts that we have striven to bring to a game full of base urges and crude lunges a sense of beauty, of Art.

“And to those of you that cry ‘Go, Arsene, go!’ I say ‘Non’. I am Arsenal. Why even my name is writ in Arsenal’s. Arsene to Arsenal. One day Harry Potter will manage Stoke City, a Del Boy Trotter will coach Bolton and Robbie Savage will be represented in Scunthorpe.

“So will I change my outlook, my philosophy? Jamais!

“I will hold true to it with every fibre of my increasingly hacked-off being. And remember this, mes amies. If we win nothing more. If we simply piss away Kroenke’s kazillions on an over-expensive Tomas Rosicky cloning machine and never achieve another thing except the affection of football fans everywhere bar White Hart Lane, then remember – we will always have The Invincibles... “

There’s a ripple of applause from the folk who throng the Emirates Library. “Yeah, they were great them Invincibles but they had a couple of hard bastards at the back, two more ugly buggers in midfield and Thierry Henry. And a proper goalie.”

Le professeur pauses for thought. He looks the man in the eye, then he picks up a bottle of water, slams it on the floor and storms out.

In Praise of Fergie

2011-04-14T20:25:00.004+01:00

Here's an ugly truth for you. Alex Ferguson, Sir, is the finest football manager the English game has ever seen. I mean that's uglier than a close-up of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's face mid-shit.

'How come I cannae see any decent opposition through this specs?'

I can hear the protests from the Scouse brigade but the Liverpool dynasty wasn't just one bloke was it? There'll be some advocates for Cloughie and maybe he did more turd-polishing with the players at his disposal but...

And there'll be some that argue that he can't be the best manager ever cos he's bleeding 'orrible. That opinion's got about as much influence as a Liberal in a cabinet meeting.

This latest outfit at Old Trafford are proof positive of Fergie's greatness. It's not a great team. The midfield's had a creativity bypass unless old man Giggs is Pilated in. The bench is pretty threadbare if you ask me. And if Vidic or Rio is out the back four's distinctly creaky.

Hellfire the Croxteth Bruiser was set to leave cos he recognised the shortcomings. Now Rooney's buzzing again and looking like the bastard son of Susan Boyle and Roy of the Rovers.

(Incidentally, Graeme Souness - emphatically not the best manager the English game's ever seen - insists that Rooney needs to be angry to play well. That is of course self-serving bollocks. Souness was always angry and it suits him to suggest other people need to be similarly furious.)

So how come United are still on for the treble? Well mainly cos Fergie's got them playing in a way that suits them. His reincarnations of United over the years have been little short of amazing.

First of all there was the Party Central brigade of Robson (get well soon), Brucey and co who he managed to dry out enough to keep going for a whole season. Then there was Hansen's 'kids' - a bunch of squeaky-voiced schoolboys who matured into top-class footballers once Robbie Savage had left. Not long ago he had Ronaldo, Tevez and Rooney criss-crossing across the opposition back-line like the Red Arrows in human form.

This season he's got a ploddy steady grind-it-out bunch of triers. Plus the best goalscorer in the division who cost him 6 million (I mean Chiquitita or whatever he's called - a snip).

He's not stuck to the same formations or looked for the same types. Not for him the tippy-tappy automatons of Arsenal. Or the steely-eyed mercenaries heeding the whiff of Roman's wallet.

He's made the best of what he's got or paid shed-bloody-loads when he's had to.

Yes he's bought a lot of duffers along the way: Djemba-Djemba (so shite they named him twice); Poborsky (he should've torn up that Czech a lot sooner); and Kleberson? Well not clever, son...

'What?... No boss I never ordered no taxi!

But he's made legends of looneys like Cantona, he's been patient with gelled show-ponies like Ronaldo and Nani, and his 1999 front pair were Cole and Yorke - I mean you'd have to be a genius to think that that was going to work.

It's an astounding record. There are things we can do without when it comes to Fergie. The gratuitous ref-bashing. The absurd mentality that makes him think United are being victimised just cos Rooney's gets banned for being a plank and he gets put it in the stands for saying the ref was biased.

He could also talk to the Beeb and stop sending Stonewall Phelan in to bat for him. It's petty and tedious. Then again the good managers seem to be able to harness their neurosis for the good of the team.

And there's the mysterious way he seems to manipulate time to encompass his team's victories.

(Maybe Rory McIlroy could do with his bunker mentality. Poor lamb. For three days he trotted around that course like a finely-tuned Goofy - and for the last round he was little short of a grief-stricken Donald Duck.)

It's clear Ferguson inspires loyalty, that's for sure. Some of the steady Eddies that have stuck there cos he's stuck with them: Brown, O'Shea, Fletcher... you've never heard them bleating about lack of first-team opportunities like the vast cellar of whines across the city at Eastlands.

Now I realise this blog will be coming as a great surprise to a lot of you. But the thing is I've been waiting for the demise/retirement of the Govan Beetroot for about fifteen years now.

I've been watching his touchline-jig getting more and more like your pissed Uncle attempting a hokey-kokey at your cousin's wedding. I've been waiting with baited breath as the noisy neighbours pelt him with wads of Abu-Dhabian wonga. I've watching the face redden as the old boy seems ready to reach for the blanket and the thermos.

(And while he does like his red wine, I reckon the boozy complexion must be down to the same condition as I've got - rosacea, it's called. You can alleviate the symptoms by cutting down on alcohol and spicy food so it looks like I'm stuck with it.)

Skin complaints? Bring 'em on.

Only Mourinho has kept Fergie under during all that time. And Wenger's Untouchables for one glorious strong-tackling season. Be great if real And United could fight it out at Wembley in the Champs League Final. The footy wouldn't be great but you could just watch the dug-outs for 90 minutes.

So do I like Ferguson? Nah. Not much. Am I saying he could've done all this without United's cash? Nah. And while there's still some debt for the Glazers to offload there'll still be money in Fergie's kitty.

But he's bloody good at his job. I mean I don't like our postie much either - he's always trying to charm the missus and he can't whistle in tune (I'm thinking of getting a dog) - but so long as he gets my letters to me I don't much care.

So fair play to him. I reckon a double at least this season. Barca'll probably stop him in Europe. But for him, at his age, with his track record, to be able to get that pretty ordinary side to two semis and a pretty certain Premier League.

The best ever? Fact. Rafa.

Now piss off and leave the rest of us in peace you gruff n greedy Glaswegian codger.

Wayne Looney

2011-04-04T12:17:00.004+01:00

I’ve not much cause to go see young lads play footy but me nephew was playing for his local Saturday morning team last weekend so I thought I’d pop along.

First of all the playing surface was slightly less suitable than the Somme. It had more bobbles than your grandma’s cardy. Secondly there was a little knot of parents on either side of the pitch rooting for their little ones and as ever, there was a bloke who was really letting himself down.

He looked like a scalped hog, this bloke, and his gob flapped for 30 minutes like a bedsheet in the breeze. His kid, a half-decent player with boots the colour of kryptonite and hair so heftily gelled he could barely lift his chin to the horizontal, was called – get this – Anton. That’s right, he’d named him after the crap Ferdinand.

And this father bollocked his son’s every pass and tackle until young Anton tumbled like some jessie out of the Royal Ballet School over a non-existent limb and the fresh-face ref waved play on. Anton’s Dad went Fergie-coloured and blurted out a sentence of such invective I dare not repeat it on these pages. Suffice to say it was a fucking disgrace.

Of course, this was nowt compared to the effort put forth from the mouth of England’s finest current footballer. Wayne Rooney. I think, finally, we’ve had enough of him. Haven’t we?

If he’s not elbowing some unprotected opponent in the face, he’s telling brassic England fans to dtop booing him and his mates after they’ve turned out a performance that couldn’t have been lamer had they all stayed in bed for 90 minutes.he’s bawling down the lens of a camera like he’s in the middle of a bleeding war-zone and he’s just taken out the people who killed his family. And we’ve seen enough news on the telly recently to know what that looks like.

All this self-serving tosh about Wayne being a passionate footballer... unlike, say, that Ryan Giggs who clearly doesn’t give a toss about the game. And remember that Bobby Moore? Very few yellow cards... no f-words... He just couldn’t be bothered, could he? I’ve seen more passion in a haddock.

My mate points out that footballers are confusing passion with out and out fury. (And that doesn’t bode well for their missuses, does it. ‘I BOUGHT YOU SOME FUCKIN ROSES, RIGHT! COS I FUCKIN LOVE YOU, YOU BASTARD SLAG! HAPPY VALEN-FUCKING-TINE’S DAY!’ ’)

The mate in question is an Arsenal fan which brings into question his understanding of rage in a football context. I think he believes throwing a plastic cup on the ground is tantamount to Dr David Banner going green.

But I take his point. Cos who exactly is wild Wayne wailing at when he looks down a camera lens? And why would anyone condone such unhinged mania?

Note Carrick's expression - every bit of him's yelling 'aw don't do that you twat!'

And all this of course on the back of Richard Scudamore insisting that clubs, managers and players need to take more action to sustain the laughable Respect campaign. At the mo, refs are getting no protection from abuse whatsoever, least of all from the lumbering neurotics who select the teams or the Neanderthals who play it.

You might say Fergie got a touchline ban for calling Martin Atkinson’s impartiality into question. Except somehow the Govan Beetroot is able to talk to the bench on an absurd white phone and still give half-time team talks to spur his players on to, albeit very impressively, turn around a 2-0 deficit. How exactly then has his Puceness been punished?

Referees need to be supported very directly by the FA. When Clattenburg didn’t quite see the Rooney elbow v Wigan but gave a free-kick anyway, he should have been permitted a second look after the game. And then the Scouse Mouth would and should have got a three-match ban minimum.

But the FA say it was dealt with at the time. Well no it wasn’t. If new evidence comes up in an old court case you don’t say ‘well, yes, I know we got the wrong man but I think you’ll find the judge dealt with it at the time.’ It’s preposterous.

So if Scudamore’s serious about trying to repair the tarnished image of English football then I suggest he and his cohorts start today. Ban the toilet-tongued lout and tell him to learn how to talk to people.

And back refs when they dismiss players after they get called a cunt. Back them, back them, back them.

Refs can be helped by the FA allowing video evidence to be used to up or downgrade cautions and dismissals (including hopeless tumbles like Jagielka’s woeful plummet on Saturday). They should use goal-line technology immediately. All communication between players and officials should be directed through the captain.

And to be fair, they should give managers a bit of breathing space before they come off the park and talk hokum to some mike-carrying no-mark in the tunnel.

Me, I’d like to see Rooney off the England team-sheet n all. The Ghana friendly the other night suggests that he’s not as pivotal as he’d like to think in the national set-up and during the World Cup he couldn’t have hit an aircraft hangar with a carpet-beater.

It’s clear Wazza is a talented player. He’s one of the reasons people have been misguidedly optimistic about England’s chances in big tournaments. But until he can let his feet do the talking I don’t want to see his badly-shave bollock-headed Phil Mitchell-looky-likey face on the box again for a bit.

He’s an embarrassment waiting to happen. Even when he plays well he spoils it by being little short of a Friday night oik after his first ever half a lager.

'Fuckin' Ave 'Im Kai!'

And I’ve got a horrible feeling that when Kai’s playing his first competitive seven-a-side – probably on an immaculate green lawn amongst the dignitaries of downtown Didsbury la-di-dah – some generous volunteer official will have his ears bawled out by the fat slaphead Dad on the touchline who no one’s talking to.

ROBBO PODCAST - The 6th!

2011-03-25T20:34:00.005Z

Robbo6: RIP Liz by Robbo Robson

The Citeh Snore

2011-03-21T11:43:00.004Z

Well it's Run-In time and the irritating pattern of the season has changed very little.

It’s frustrating that United remain just out of reach, like some unruly kid that keeps ducking under your arm when you really think you’ve got the little bleeder cornered.

Fergie’s touchline ban saw him up in the stand on a trimphone from the 1980’s, supposedly calling his minions on the bench. Is he allowed to do that? How’s that a punishment?

'Sorry Fergie? You want me to pull off Hernandez at half-time?'

The FA have said to his Knightship 'You're grounded son! Now go to your room! Oh by the way I've topped up your mobile pay as you go and there's a bottle of your favourite claret in the airing cupboard. Love you!'

The Gooners continue to play a back four as familiar with the art of defending as Eric Chabal is with flower-arranging. Almunia wandered out of his box like a bloke who’s suddenly discovered he's gone in the Ladies bogs by accident. Hopeless.

Wenger's answer to the psychologial crisis in his defence is to bring in that pillar of rational thought Jens Lehmann. Hmm. He'll be getting Dale Winton in soon to give a bit more bite to the midfield.

Chelsea on the other hand have regained a bit of bumptious swagger if you overlook the distinctly fragile Fernando. Blues fans are not on his back yet but Torres still looks like he’s carrying a heavy burden. Where’s the pace gone? Have those overworked hamstrings twanged too often? He looks nowt less than a Spanish Michael Owen right now.

Or a Castillian Sheva. Perhaps in six years time Torres’ll be back at Atletico and reminding us of what he once had. But the omens aren’t good. And Liverpool’s head honchos must be smirking like April Fools Day Pranksters at the £50 million they got for a toothless nag.

David Luiz, on the other hand, is top notch. You need a certain self-confidence to get away with a barnet like his (although Marouane Fellaini would spit on such coiffurial restraint) and this lad is right to have it.

Here's David Luiz as a toddler. Bless!

Chelsea was my tip at the start of the season and with the bronchitic Arsenal choking and the corridors of Old Trafford getting clogged up by defenders on trolleys the Blues might yet nick it.

More likely is United bagging the league and Chelsea dumping them out of Europe. We'll see.

One club that won’t be in the final shakedown is Man City. I’ve heard Citeh fans saying a top four finish’d be great and that the club are just building but I have to say I’ve found them a right bloody infuriating lot to watch this season.

The main problem is the fact that the footy they play is utterly tedious, especially when up against a team in the top half. Mancini’s selection at Stamford Bridge couldn’t have been more miserable had he had Stockport County’s budget.

But given that money pours out of Abu-Dhabi like chocolate flows through a Willy Wonka factory, you’d think Mancini might be up for putting together something that teeters towards a style that might just pass, on a good day, for enter-flaming-tainment.

I tell you what, you wouldn’t give Roberto £300 million to design you a house, would you? He’d just build a big solid grey concrete box with iron gates everywhere and CCTV at every door. I suppose you might have David Silva watering the flowers in a couple of window-boxes but that’s your lot as far as flamboyance is concerned.

It’s not like they haven’t kept spending the money. But Balotelli seems to have more loose screws than a mother of fifty-seven kids. There’s a lot of talk about body language these days and Mario’s is easier to read than most. Right now, I reckon his body is saying is saying ‘I’m barking mad, me’. And only someone temperamentally unsuited to the pressures of top-flight footy could get a grass allergy.

"Please, gaffer, let us keep the snood n gloves"

Actually I needed a new TV the other day so I bought a Marioballo telly. It didn’t stay on for long.

Mind you even a sneezing itchy-eyed Balotelli’d do a better job for you than Edin Dzeko. I’ve seen shopping trolleys with a better first touch and his awareness of others couldn’t be worse if he played with a bag over his head. He's not lazy, or potty, just a bit shit.

The aggrieved skipper Carlos might not hang around much longer if he constantly has to cope with either Nutty or Slack as his partner upfront.

In the end Citeh’ll win summat – maybe even the FA Cup – but I preferred Sparky’s Citeh when they were throwing caution into a very strong wind and just about winning 4-3.

Meanwhile we’ve got the latest episode in the Lame Duck Meets Damp Squib farce that is Fabio Capello’s England. It’s not the Italian’s fault that England have a game against Wales followed by a friendly v Ghana. I mean What the Fuck?

When you look at how sports are administered in this country – and you only have to look at the England’s cricket schedule this winter to realise it’s not just the FA - you’ve got to wonder whether an aquarium of randomly quizzed octopuses might do a better job.

Meanwhile John Terry, a man so unpopular he wouldn’t win a Mr. Unpopularity contest cos no one wants him to win anything, is back as skipper. Capello hasn’t spoken to Rio yet. The idea that they’d understand each other is preposterous anyway.

Terry is a natural leader, I’m told. And yes, he has got a big gob and he gets stuck in. And I dunno, what with the centre-forward’s elbows and the left-back’s handguns, it’s hard not to think that Terry is the epitome of the England footballer right now. And as such, he’s the man to lead us through the Oblivion that is Capello’s England.

PS Well done Matt Jarvis! (‘Boro born!)

Arsene Around

2011-03-14T20:28:00.003Z

Gooners. RIP, almost. Well for another year any road.

There are questions that recur in life. Why when it is so necessary does water tasted so fucking bland? Why can’t Paul Scholes tackle? Who watches Homes Under The Hammer? But my favourite at the mo: How long has Arsene Wenger got?

'Taxi! S'il vous plait!'

There’s no way Arsenal would ditch the Frenchman completely – his presence runs through Arsenal like that yeller streak down Audley Harrison’s spine.

And your average supporter – and by that I don’t mean Croydon born and bred but Man U through and through, I mean those of us that are through a third set of dentures having ground down the previous choppers watching a never-ending clump of numpties let us down - we’re still thinking we’d kill to be still in four competitions come March, even if we’re out of three by, well, not much later in March.

But Wenger did two things when he came to Arsenal. He won trophies; and he did it in a nice way. I say ‘nice’ – that’s overlooking the fact that in Winterburn, Bould, Adams and Keown there was already in place a set of defenders so intimidating that Wes Craven could’ve thrown ‘em straight into a movie without giving the lass in make-up so much as a text message.

Hindsight’ll tell you that Wenger’s Invincibles were founded on Henry’s goals and more to the point a rock solid defence with the best holding midfielder the Premier League’s seen in Patrick Vieira. (If you tell me it was Roy Keane I’d be hard pressed to disagree so I’d suggest a tie-break between them. Give em a 12-inch deep-crust pepperoni each and he that has the least mozzarella left on him after twenty minutes is the winner. Although I think they already tried that in 2004.

And what sort of bloke would bring a pizza into work anyway? What next? A twelve-bore shotgun?)

Incidentally, anyone else notice that Sr Torres told La Marca that the atmos at Chelsea is far better than it was at Liverpool (obviously that was before that twinkly little tinker Kenny came back in). He said: “Here, you don’t have to prove you are a professional, it is assumed.”

Yeah, apparently that Jamie Carragher couldn’t hit a frigging elephant with an air-rifle let alone a student. And Nando says there’s lots of laughs and japes at the Bridge too. Like what, a sweepstake for how long it takes Drogba to get up after some defender breathes on him? Ho, ho. Or the who-can-take-the-laziest-penalty competition. (Anelka judges that one as it’d be unfair to let him compete).

Jeez, if them boys in blue are assumed to be professional then the world has truly gone tits up. Which of course it has for way too many poor souls, so let’s not dwell there.

Where was I? Wenger, yes.

You compare that Pizzagate 11 to the one he might put out today and where is the flinty midfielder? Where is the 25-goal a season striker? Where is the Campbell/Toure centre-back pairing. On Saturday Djourou wore the expression of a surprised heron chick and the eager Koscielny is horribly worrying, not least cos, like Lee Van Cleef before him, he is has a profile even when he's looking straight at you.

I suppose at least the last three results give the explanation for the question ‘Why the long face?’

There’s no doubt that this latest collection of Wenger Boys are all Arsene’s own work. He is pretty much to blame for their success or failure. The fact is all these kids have been brought up to keep the ball. Ping it about. One-twos, give-and-gos. Lovely.

Trouble is no one’s ever taught them how to do owt else. Now you might say they’re trying to emulate Barca (oops, man-size tissues out for the pundits). But even I’ve seen Barca bung Pique up front for the last ten minutes. And any road, Barca’s players do it way better. The little dinked-pass by Iniesta and the sneaky finish by Messi after Cesc’s ‘Sign Me Boys’ backheel last week... you don’t see Arsenal unpicking a defence that ruthlessly. At least not nearly as often.

And so teams do what they have to against the North Londoners. And that’s what Man U did on Saturday. He explicitly did it as it happens. Seven defenders on the park. One bank of four, one bank of five, lone striker, defend from the edge of your box and... let ‘em have the ball. Birmingham’s tactics in other words.

And then play it long and watch the Clouseauesque back four try and deal with you. It’s not sophisticated but by ‘eck it works. Arsenal’s travails against weaker teams in the FA Cup just illustrate their frailty.

Beauty is skin-deep they say in which case Wenger may have put together a side that is as beautiful as they come. But it’s a kind of, I dunno, that lass out of the Amelie films beauty.

Lovely to look at but, bless, you wonder if it couldn’t be a bit dirtier. (That’s a tad Keysish but you take my point.)

Now I should say that I love what Arsene has brought to our footy. We’re a better place, even with the hissy fits, the whinges and them terrible bouts of temporary blindness. But time is up for him if you ask me. And some bloke on 606 came up with the replacement:

Owen Coyle. Took Bolton – plodding alehouse grinders in the Allardyce mould. Taught them to use the grass but never eschews a big hump up to Cap’n Elbows when he needs it. Might just lead the Trotters to Cup Glory as homage to that epitome of all things un-Arsene Nat Lofthouse. And Arsene still overseeing like an elderly Merlin.

Of course fans of the victors’ll be making two bloody expensive trips to Wembley. Please get the semis back on neutral territory in a venue that suits the supporters , not the pockets of the bleeding FA!

Give That Man a Sainthood!

2011-03-08T10:44:00.003Z

I think it’s official. Kenny Dalglish is the purest manifestation of the Divine. Soon Scousers will be flocking to the unveiling of a plaque in Dalmarnock reading ‘Kenneth Mathieson Dalglish, footballer, manager, seraph, was born here.’ Certainly, there’s not a bloke from the red half of Mersey side who wouldn’t happily allow King Kenny to larrup them with a carpet beater after Sunday’s 3-1 win.

Get thee behind me Satan

I can’t say I wasn’t jumping off me seat with every tiddly toe-poke from Kuyt as well. The boyish Dutchman has endeared himself to Koppites with a work-rate that makes your average anthill look like a Top Gear Mexican. There’s always the impression that all that energy doesn’t get converted into owt but to be fair the lad’s been slung out on the right for a couple of seasons doing the Benitez graveyard shift.

Turned out he was an annoying little goal-hanger all along. Heh-heh. ‘Course he wasn’t the star of the show, mind. We’ll give that to the very impressive Luis Suarez. His teeth are in good company: Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, and now this lad with the horse-choppers.

But great footballers aren’t built on their looks – unless you’re my missus, who seems to think David Bentley’s got a lot going for him. This Uruguayan is as slippery as the notoriously difficult to catch Soap Eel. And with Andy Carroll lumbering on to the pitch like summat out of Lord of the Rings things are definitely on the up for Liverpool.

Dalglish compounded that feeling by betraying hardly and signs of euphoria during his post-match interview. If you look hard enough you can see a smirk, but downplaying such a victory is a masterstroke. Or maybe it’s just a tad honest.

Man U were crap. Three defeats in five and you can’t say it hasn’t been coming. If you take player of the season thus far, Nemanja Vidic, out of the defence there’s not a lot there. A nasty little nerk in front of the back four might’ve helped. It reminded you of why Nicky Butt got his fair share of games for United, and Fletcher must’ve been gnawing his arm off on the bench just waiting to get into the likes of Suarez and Meireles.

Not that there wasn’t even malice out on display. Jamie Carragher’s challenge on Nani was plain evil. Even so, Nani didn’t make things better for himself by recovering enough to sprint after the ref before tumbling to the floor again as the second wave of agony kicked in. Is this what passes as acting in Lisbon? I bet the Portuguese version of Casualty is a veritable orgy of howls and writhes and heads in hands.

Look it's Portugal's top drama queen taking a break from diving practice

To be fair Nani is out for three games now, Carra’s karate kick was as bad as it looked. It’s that when Nani goes down he usually gets the Drogba treatment – someone scuttles on with a magic sponge, the poor victim hobbles to the touchline in a parody of a victim of trench warfare and five minutes later the bleeder’s tormenting the back four as if Jesus Christ himself was the club physio.

Fabael or Rafio or whatever that pre-school doppelganger’s name is had a flying hack at Skrtel n all and my favourite bit of the match followed as the two teams clustered together in a post-closing time pub car-park melee while Dowd stood there with his arms folded like a quietly exasperated father of twenty-two. At least Phil was even-handed in his generosity.

Dowd wasn’t the only ref to get it in the neck this weekend. We had the usual gleeful brains trust review of decisions by Clattenburg, Halsey and the officials at the Emirates. As usual we get the pundits and the managers hollering for ‘consistency’.

Be nice if the managers heeded their own advice. Arshavin’s disallowed effort at Arsenal was mentioned to Steve Bruce who more or less said it was brilliant that the bloke had got it wrong. When the boot’s on the other foot Bruce always does that double-speak tosh of saying ‘I hate criticising officials but...’

Meanwhile Holloway and McCarthy showed a deeper understanding of the travails of the ref – Big Mick admitting that he might just’ve felt less charitable if Halsey’s decision to deny Stearman a very legitimate goal had proved terminal.

But the thing is, as some wiseacre put it on the 5Live phone-in, you look at the Footy Rulebook and it says ad nauseam ‘in the referee’s opinion’. That’s how decisions are made. And too many times the frigging imbeciles of post-match analysis forget that a ref – and as far as I can tell they seem like a decent bunch of blokes apart from that lass who knows the offside law better than Captain Caveman and Andy Gray – has only one view of the incident.

If you listen to a lot of them you’d believe that a ref was capable of the sort of visual pyrotechnics you get in Inception. (I watched that last weekend. It’s bleeding potty isn’t it? Like In the Night Garden for grown-ups. Although there are several regular boozers in the Blue Bell who believe In The Night Garden is for grown-ups.)

Here's David Cameron looky-likey Iggle Piggle wondering how it is Mark Clattenburg can live with himself

Ferguson’s post-match comments after the Anfield debacle were among his most lucid of the past three or four weeks. In fact it’s a policy he should stick to. Martin Atkinson might agree. The notion that Atkinson is neither strong nor fair is tantamount to slander. The FA should haul Ferguson over the coals. Otherwise we’ll have Rafa Bloody Benitez shuffling into view with his latest dossier and rather than dismiss him as football’s David Icke we’ll have to start paying attention to the beardy conspiracy theorist.

Oh and by the by, I tipped Chelsea for the title in August and I may well be proved right. (And if that doesn’t finish ‘em off nowt will).

England Expectorates

2011-02-28T16:42:00.008Z

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.

The Seeds of Destruction

2011-02-22T21:28:00.003Z

Another mish-mashed FA Cup weekend which seems only to fuel the mean-spirited bleeders who reckon that the tournament is a busted flush and should be replaced by summat even more likely to allow some cash-wielding mercenaries to canter cheerily up the Wembley steps.

Well one set of greedy buggers were dumped out courtesy of the most unsympathetic of football weapons, the Boot of a Neville. Phil gathered himself, visualised the ball on the spot as the shinbone of Cristiano Ronaldo and smacked it home.

But there’ll still be those that argue in favour of the seeded draw. This they say would avoid the travesty of finals like Millwall-ManU (the only time when the New Den cries of ‘No one likes us, we don’t care’ must have rung pretty hollow to their opposition’s fans).

Well, I’ve seen more disappointing finals to be frank.

The Spice Boys circa 1996. The Old Spice Boys now, I suppose.

I seem to remember Liverpool v Man Utd in ’96 when Cantona saved the nation from extra time and spared us any more cack from Merseyside’s brigade of wanky white-suit wearing wallies. Apparently both sides were pretty major teams at the time.

Arsenal v United in 2005 wasn’t the best two and a half hours of my life either. Mind you them hours were spent in the back of a Ford Transit van on my 26th birthday. No, I won’t elaborate. I also remember Sunderland beating the Damned United, and Southampton – a ragtag of wandering veteran minstrels – somehow taking out Tommy Doc’s crop of vibrant men-in-waiting. Both these clubs were so unlikely to win that they were underbunnies – the ones the underdogs have for breakfast.

The idea persists amongst the pro-seeding lobby that what the FA Cup requires is a final between the two best clubs in the country. Why? Chances are that ManU will play the Arse in the last eight. Good. We might get the less than usual suspects at the final.

You might also want to bear in mind that the top (or tell you waht. let's make that the richest) use the Cup as a run-out for the sulky subs get to have a run-out, and that the manager spends the next ninety minutes with his fingers crossed hoping that the squad makeweights might muster a performance. Of course if it’s Arsenal you’re up against then you counter the meaningless tippy-tap with a big scary substitute and you’re laughing – though maybe not quite as much as Barry Hearn thinks.

"Lawks love a duck innit marvellous, etc!"

I mean I know that’s a cash cow and a half for Barry Hearn but the Matchroom Maestro has been milking it like an engorged wet nurse ever since. And the boys are off to Vegas. Been there – it’s shite. One night and I wanted to stick a neon bulb up the backside of every ivory-toothed croupier in the whole of the Goddamn city.

But any road, to me the whole point of the FA Cup is its randomness. You can have Chelsea-Arsenal in the third round. You can sneak a win at a Premier League ground and get rewarded with an away trip to Peterborough or somewhere a bit crap like that. It’s luck, is all it is.

Seeding would guarantee a Premier League club for some and yet by and large it would also prevent a club like Crawley from getting to Round 5. The hardheads’ll tell you that the minnows can then get a guaranteed pay-day. Them that value the Cup above its ability to pay the bills – like me – will tell you that every FA Cup year needs its story and if by the time of the last 32, there’s no collection of no-marks with a dream in their hearts and a Ronnie Radford rasper in their boots then you might as well consign the competition to the potty days of footy history.

‘Do you remember the Football Association Cup, Bert?’
‘Yes, ha ha! Laughable wasn’t it? D’you know back then people used to play football for the love of it?’
‘Ha Ha! The soft-minded paupers!’
‘Apart from Manchester City of course –‘
‘'Course!'

Now my only regrets about expressing this view is that (a) I’ve depicted meself as some sort of moist-eyed moron who’s bought into the romance of the Cup without applying his poor sentimental brain to the harsh realities of modern sport (partly because that is 80% true) and (b) I find myself agreeing with BBC Radio 5Live’s new Voice of Football Reason Robbie Savage.

"I speak my mind, I do - which should take about 23 seconds max"

Now there was a time when no one had a good word to say about Savage – although I always thought tosspot was a very good word to say about him. What can you say about him? He gave 110%? He wasn’t completely shite? He’s got very shiny hair?

That’s about it. Other than that he was a needly little bleeder who used incitement and niggling as compensation for his lack of pace and talent. A kind of honorary Neville in a way.

So how come people keep telling him he’s a legend on phone-ins? I mean he’s not the worst pundit I’ve heard. He’s not the ironically named Mark Bright. Or Garth ‘just cos I use the occasional long word doesn’t mean I’m not talking shite’ Crooks. Or Andy ‘decent bloke but as empty as Space’ Townsend.

He can string a few words together I suppose although whether them words have owt to do with each other is anyone’s guess.

The only thing about Savage which I can sort of understand is that he’s one of them players that you loathe unless he’s wearing your team’s colours. That suddenly legitimises him. A bit of ankle-tapping – well, football’s a man’s game, eh Robbie? In the ear of the ref for ninety minutes – well he’s just using his experience...

It’s just that a bit of an attitude doesn’t make you an insightful pundit does it now? I mean you only have to listen to that arrogant plank Brian Moore on the rugby to realise that.

And if that’s the pot calling the kettle an ethnic minority then so be it.

Loony for Rooney?

2011-02-15T12:20:00.008Z

St. Valentines Day. Bloody hate it.

It's one of them Christian-Capitalist conspiracies that blackmails you into chucking your wallet at naff poetry and furry fluffballs with embroidered hearts dotted all over them.

I once went out with a lass who was dead narked that I hadn't got her any make-up for Lovers Day. The poor mare had read somewhere about the St. Valentine's Day Mascara, she said. Any man foolish enough to fall for such a load of cods deserves to have his bank account reappropriated (unless he's a customer at Allied Irish in which case that's probably already happened).

If you've bought owt like this in the last couple of days you are a twat. Fact.

I mean if I want to be romantic with the missus then I'll do it on me own time not when Clintons Cards tells me to. She'll tell me it's nice to be presented with a thing of beauty on the 14th Feb so I took her down to the lounge and let her watch Rooney's winner v Man City over and over.

Although I have to confess, Wazza's moment of acrobatical wonder was his only contribution to the game. And it can't disguise the fact that the rampaging ogre-boy of 2004 is a distant memory for most of us.

United continue to blunder on to the title without ever looking convincing. One thing's happened in the Blue Bell, mind. For a few years now we've referred to a needless snippet of greenery on your food as a 'Nani'.

Sprig of parsley on your fish pie? That's a Nani. Mint leaf on your vanilla ice cream? A Nani. If Man United were a tasty dish, Nani was the unnecessary garnish. Not any more.

When they go forward, Portugal's Wacko Jacko Looky-Likey (during the Billie Jean years, before Michael started to want to look like a waxwork of Diana Ross) is now very much the chunky beef in the steak and ale pie. (With Vidic the hardy topcrust pastry you have to struggle hard to get through).

Nani's finish for United's first goal had the lazy ease of a Greaves. Indeed Wazza can count himself well bleeding lucky to be on the pitch given that The Languid Bulgar is in tiptop nick and Speedy Gonzales can't wait to get off the bench.

Javier Hernandez - another of them feckless fat Sombrero tossers for the Top Gear team to get their lazy hands on.

I'm not doing down the goal Rooney scored. My cliche accumulator tells me that it was: a Derby game. A Six-pointer. It deserved to win any game. But his every other touch was that of a man with kapok-covered boots.

So why the Sunday paper gush? (Apart from the opportunity to use 'Roo' in a dozen headlines. And that overhead kick saved his bacon otherwise I'm sure one of them would've come up with 'Roo-matic'.)

Could it be that the Man-Child that led England's Euro 2004 bid cannot be forgotten. That we're so desperate to revive that a kid so hirsute that he must be a genetic hair's breadth away from Richard Keys, we'll grab on to the first sign of that resurrection to prove that England's only world-class forward is back?

It's uncomfortably reminiscent of your Lawros and Hansens purring every time the creaking Michael Owen taps in a three-yarder. "'E's a goalscorer, Gary." Er, yeah. He's also got hamstrings with all the robustness of cheese straws thanks to the likes of Houllier running his little calves into the ground before he'd all growed up.

Owen of course was a 17-year-old wunderkind too when he, for the first and last time, scored a goal having picked it up over ten yards away from goal. (It may sound like I'm sniping but that's still six yards further out than Lineker.)

But that golden boy is so far off the teenage terror that he's now a Fool's Golden Boy. And despite Rooney's latest terrific tonk I'm thinking he's in the same tarnished boat.

The Jesus pose by the corner-flag can't disguise the fact that not that long ago the Old Trafford saviour was more than shuffling his avaricious little pegs across Manchester with all the speed and grace of an Egyptian dictator skipping town.

WR: "At least we don't play for them no-marks across town." CT: "Yet!"

Given the aforementioned Chicharito and Berbatov, Fergie might well see the close season as his big chance to get shot of the Scouser and cash in. He doesn't normally faff about, does he?

Certainly Rooney's a long way off joining the really big names. Like Ronaldo. I mean the retired Brazilian one. (Although let's face it, the idea that the lardbucket only just retired is as laughable a notion as the idea that the Big Society has been thought through.)

Such is the preponderance of flesh about Ronaldo in recent times it's difficult to recall how lethal he was when on song. The two goals in the 2002 final when the bloke had his haircut the wrong way round will live in the memory for a while. (Not least cos a piss-poor German team somehow stumbled to the final to face them.)

Wearing that merkin on his scalp was said to prove how confident the lad was feeling during the tournament. Maybe. Nevertheless, history will not instantly recall the fleet-footed assassin of that final, nor will it trumpet his record of 16 goals in World Cup Finals (unsurpassable unless Blatter's ugly reign leads to a year-long tournament that involves 128 countries - and it coyld happen). Instead history may remember a truly great footballer as the fat bloke with the bad barnet who cried off in 1998.

Too much Ronaldo at McDonaldo's methinks

I pray that Rooney is remembered more fondly.

Can Chelsea Right The Cech?

2011-02-07T10:44:00.005Z

Some people think your Teessider is a gruff mean-spirited bastard who dodges his rounds and breathes through a ventilator. Unfair, I reckon. Most of us get by with an inhaler. Plus, we have a footy team that never stops giving. Ask your average Palace fan.

Again, I had to rely on the Premier League to soften the blow.

The goal glut helped. 41 reminders on Saturday of what one of them elusive things looks like. And certainly the Chelsea-Liverpool game was a vintage bit of schadenfraude.

(I know! Get me! Tony Thompson introduced us to this word on Sunday - I thought it was that Austrian psychiatrist who thought that every time you dreamt it had summat to do with shagging your mother).

"No, Robbo, I am Sigmund, you must mean my brother Schaden."

Anyway, first off, didn't Torres look really weird in blue? The wife, a Nando groupie in waiting, reckoned it wasn't his colour. Ta, love. There are times when Andy Gray and Richard Keys make sense.

Secondly, on MOTD2 I heard Shearer (and by the way, Al, cuffs are for wiping your nose, son - they can't possibly be white) feeling a bit sorry for Torres. Yeah, me too. £170 grand a week, swanky pad in Chelsea if you want it, Drogba to play off... a right sodding burden, poor lamb.

Apparently it's hard being up against your old pals. Especially that Carragher, who was back to his best. You get the impression Jamie couldn't wait to get out there on the pitch and feel a number nine shirt in his clenched fist again. But Torres wasn't prepared to stick with them blokes cos he wanted to win trophies. After Sunday it just looks like Torres has chosen a different wind to piss into.

Ancelottery reckons it'll take the Spaniard a while to settle in. True enough. In which case, leave him on the bench for a bit. Lord knows it's taken the Queens of Strop Anelka and Drogba long enough to find some common ground. You don't need three mopers up there jostling with one another like three teenage lasses after the same fella.

King Kenny meanwhile goes from strength to strength. Of course the irony is that Dalglish's reds went into that game with a mindset that would've sat well happily with Roy Hodgson.

Little Clockwork Kuyt gives you a bit more energy than a narked Nando as the front man, and Meireles did well to support but essentially it was one of them team selections that began with the mantra 'It's 0-0. Let's hold what we've got.'

Having said that, Liverpool had the best chances.

Which begs questions about Chelsea's deficiencies. For a while now, their failings have started from the Number 1. Cech, headguard, notwithstanding, still plays like he's got a Stephen Hunt kneebone heading for his bonce.

When he turns out the light at night, this is what the big Czech sees.

It's understandable. I'm sure we've all had nightmares about Stephen Hunt (and there is summat instinctively really bloody annoying about the hairy little tick - he looks for all the world like some manic gnome who gets two hours off the toadstool a week and intends to make the most of it) but you can't have a keeper who's afraid to get hurt.

A good keeper is, by definition, fearless. In a successful club, it's the goalie who takes on the extra chillies at the Tex Mex; it's the goalie who helps you get back into your house at two in the morning by climbing in through the skylight - without the aid of a ladder; it's the goalie who puts it all on 17 black when everyone else is ready to go home.

Cech (has he put on weight or does he just look like a Heavy Petter?) has lost that recklessness. He keeps making that cardinal sin of keepers and engaging his brain - and Chelsea look flakier than the shoulders of a Geography teacher because of it.

By eck thouh it was a brilliant goalfest was Saturday. Not least the peanlty count - all of which barring a supposed push by Rosicky on Williamson, seemed pretty justified. (Honestly Rosicky couldn't push open a serving hatch in a doll's house).

The Geordies epic comeback was utterly marvellous, mind. The only downside was Wenger's uncharacteristically meek post-match interview. Of course it included the usual dose of myopia (Specsavers must have an option on him as their poster boy when he retires) he was relatively sanguine about the disastrous draw).

If he could avoid saying things like 'Don't listen to that Moyes boy - ooooh, he's a little liar he is!' then we might even be looking at a new Arsene.

Add to that the tardy end to Man U's inexplicable unbeaten run at the top division's David to the Goliaths, then it was a grand weekend all round. Incidentally has anyone else noticed that when United score Fergie stands up and applauds in a way that's reminiscent of either (a) a surprisingly camp Taggart or (b) Leonid Brehnev at a Mayday Parade.

"I want you to kill the soldier who yelled 'Look at the tits on that!' immediately!"

Wolves fans may be smiling ruefully at their boys inability to beat the teams around them but I've one word of warning for 'em: Middlesbrough.

Aye we were pretty topnotch when the moneybags rolled in through the smog but we bollocksed it up against everyone else and still went down. At least you know that Big Bluff Mick McCarthy will still be there by the end of the season.

Unlike Roberto di Matteo, who made the mistake of getting his team off to a good start. Faced with a poor string of results the Baggies Board have thumbed through the Official Guide to Running A Football Club and acted on the one solitary sentence in the manual that states: 'If in doubt, sack the manager.'

If I was the chairman I'd be telling the club shop to buy a job-lot of WBA yo-yos for next year. Before Di Matteo went I still had the Baggies as the best of the woeful W's that prop up the tight bottom.

If you had to pick one to avoid the drop now it'd be Wigan. However given that Tangerines haven't fallen so rapidly since the last Spanish harvest, and Blackpool are looking the likeliest candidates for the drop.

In a perfect world, you'd lose the grinders - your Brums and Blackburns - and keep your grass-is-for-passing outfits like West Brom and Blackpool.

But reality states that them that can Stoke it up will climb clear. So for me it'll be Blackpool, Wests Brom and Ham. And you'll all be welcome at the Riverside. (I hope! But God it's hard trying to write a blog with your crossed fingers grasping on to horseshoes, rabbit's feet and lucky heather while simultaneously clutching at straws!)

Andy n Nandy Are Coming to Play!

2011-02-01T11:19:00.005Z

It’s transfer deadline day. The window closes at midnight and the football world is agog for the last-minute defenestrators.

Down the Blue Bell speculation is rife: we’ve had several dead certs that have appeared in the Teesside area in the last 24 hours.

Yesterday morning, David Beckham was definitely walking a dog down Linthorpe Road at half-eight (he’d had a severe haircut and grown a droopy tache but it was 'definitely him');

at lunchtime, a cabbie dropped off Jamie Carragher at a branch of Bairstow Eves Estate Agents and he was definitely eyeing up the bigger properties;

and in the late afternoon Richard Keys was apparently thrown out of a mixed doubles tennis match for shouting 'Smash it!' every time his opponents threw up a defensive lob.

"Call that a smash? Do me a favour, love"

As it turns out, none of it was flamin’ true. Instead, Middlesbrough plunged into the black and white film archives and come up with some bloke from Casablanca. I was hoping it was Paul Henreid, but it turns out it’s some Charlie called Marouane Zemmama.

Which begs the question is 'Who’s Zemmama?' Huh? Well here’s what it says on Wikipedia:

« Marouane Zemmama est un footballeur marocain né le 7 octobre 1983 à Salé et évoluant actuellement au sein du club d' Hibernian FC. » Well sacre bloody bleu.

Nevertheless a stack of bollocks rumours from a bunch of long lunchtime lager specialists makes more sense than what actually happened yesterday.

Liverpool and Chelsea are the culprits.

You remember Liverpool? Unbuilt stadium, temporary Messiah in charge, rest home for the expensive liabilility. So obviously it’ll be a home from home for the big rumbling Geordie with a piss-poor ponytail.

But 35 million quid? I mean I even heard a couple of hedge-fund managers saying that was ridiculous and they treat money like bog-roll. The best you can say about Andy Carroll is that he’s promising. He was also one of them local boys made good, Newcastle through and through, a lad who couldn’t get out of bed of a morning without blowing Blaydon Races across the top of an empty Bottle o’ Dog.

Turns out he’s a Geordie Rooney. A magpie, yes, but a dirty thieving one. Unless you believe that the lad had no choice in the matter. Blaming Ashley will suit the Gallowgate, so I fully expect that to be the case. But it’s way too much, man. There’s not been a more stupid purchase of Tyneside talent since my Missus bought Jimmy Nail’s cack album Crocodile Shoes.

Carroll’s now officially worth more than Balotelli, Tevez, Ferdinand, Rooney. I mean crikey the lad’s good. But is he worth getting on for 100 Kenny Millers? Carroll’s fitness record is a tad ropy n all. Then again, if Chelsea are going to splash the cash for hamstrung pretty-boy Nando Torres for £50 million. It’s a kind of horse-trade in Sicknotes.

While the dartboards of Gateshead might not all be wearing a newspaper cutting of Andy Carroll’s face, chances are that an effigy of young Torres might be adorning the top of this year’s Croxteth bonfire.
"Burn 'im, he's a Cockney!"

Torres, much like the shambling bucket of greed that is Darren Bent, has spent most of the season playing like a lazy shiftless pillock. Or, if you will, Nicolas Anelka (at his worst). Of course it appears that there are reasons for this and those reasons are that he should’ve left in the summer.

Torres’s strike rate for ‘Pool is undeniable. He’s a cracking player, true enough. But even one as gifted as that lad finds it hard to really compete when his finger is permanently wedged up his arse.

At least Koppites can content themselves with the knowledge that in Carroll and Suarez they’ve got a couple of lads who will really put a shift in. Plus with Suarez, Dalglish has got himself some decent back-up to Beppe Reina between the sticks.

Of course the staggering thing about the amounts of money changing hands yesterday is that it takes place in straitened times.

I was under the illusion that football might just get affected by the enforced penury that the Eton Debating Society are about to slide us in to.

If there’s one thing that really makes you choke on your meat pie n peas it’s having some family-moneyed chinless pillock telling you how we’ve got to hold our frigging noses and swallow some bitter pills.

(It’s like having Eamonn Holmes telling you to eat more salad. Or the Taleban advising you on the best schools for girls.) I mean what the fuck would they know? The only belt-tightening they’ve ever experienced is probably just some part of a fag's initiation ritual.

"I say George, are you tightening my belt?"

We were told that Chelsea’s days of big spending were over; that Liverpool’s debts were so astronomical that they were a FSA judgement away from bankruptcy. Now they’re spending money like they’re Real Madrid after a wink from the Spanish Government.

I dunno about the rest of you decent souls out there but me, I just hope these deals go tits up. I don’t wish the individuals ill – in fact to be honest I think Carroll is potentially the number nine England have been lacking – but a club that gets into grief and just unfurls a wad of blinking tsunami of wonga to redress the imbalance makes me despair.

And what’s more this transfer window business seems to have created a world where financial power is simply heightened. All day yesterday all I can think of was ‘Arry Redknapp with six phone son the go desperate to snap up anyone.

Apparently he nearly got Charlie Adam. Yeah, cos you’re well short of midfielders aren’t you mate?

I tell you next year just put everyone who’s available in a big fuck-off pen in the O2 arena and all the chairmen and managers can play Cash in the Bastard Attic with them.

Fair Play Rules? To quote one of the most twatty of current phrases 'Bring It On!'

Keys On His Knees

2011-01-25T10:40:00.006Z

Who’d’ve thought it? Richard Keys and Andy Gray are sexist!

Here’s some other exclusives for you while I’m here. Graham Norton ... not into the ladies. Victoria Beckham... not into the later novels of Kurt Vonnegut. David Cameron... never eaten a pickled egg.

As usual you can’t hear yourself think for the touchline tantrums of the PC brigade. And on this occasion I’ve got some sympathy with this Sian Massey lass who Keys and Gray were having a pop at.

Here's Messrs Keys and Gray with an innocent trainee lineswomen. They're a disgrace aren't they?

First of all, it’s a crap job being an assistant referee. When I was growing up a lineswoman was the telephone exchange operator who could put you through. It’s especially tough on a lass cos them ref’s shorts look shite on a woman’s backside and you can’t exactly offset the effect on even a regular-sized arse by slipping into some three-inch heels with studs on the soles.

Frankly if they could find a more flattering outfit for the lady officials I’d welcome it. Watching Boro at home this year has required all the distractions you can get.

Here's an initial thought on the type of outfit I'm thinking of. Ladies, do advise of materials, practicalities etc.

Secondly, Richard Keys is the quintessential faceless nerk that gets to host football programmes. Clearly he’s well-qualified to espouse his views on gender politics given he’s so hirsute you literally have to shave him to find his fecking face. (Actually, I find the word ‘hirsute’ to be gratuitously sexist. Unless you’re talking about a top-tashed Tajikistani shot-putter called Tamara who can bench-press two Trabbants, the word should be his-sute.)

Keys’s job, as is the case with that Swami of Smarm Steve Ryder, Manish Thingammy and increasingly, the boy-faced crisp-whore Lineker, is to say eff-all in as unobtrusive a way as possible. In other words, don’t draw attention to yourself.

The reason I enjoy Adrian Chiles presenting the Chumps League, ravaged by the fatigue of early-morning starts as he is, is cos he’s not afraid to let slip a churlish Black Country sneer every now and then. Even Colin Murray, who can appear to be entirely caffeinated and as easy on the ear as a wasp in a jar, has a bit of devil-may-care charm and genuine enthusiasm.

Keys can come across as nowt more than a plughole of trapped pubes in a suit. If the chat about women not knowing the offside rule was supposed to be a bit of banter then remind me not to bother having a pint with them two wags down the boozer.

Of course there are aspects of women’s increasing involvement at footy matches that can get on a man’s goat. My Mrs’s interest seems to be directly related to the high totty quotient.

Mrs. Robson's personal selection this. Nah, me either, lads.

She enjoyed Italy in the last Euros n all - when their contribution to entertainment was so minimal their possession stat for the first half v Spain was -23%. But they looked good in their tops.

As Keys n Gray noted, the Offside Rule is a bone of contention between any self-respecting footballer and their partners, regardless of their sex. Anyone who hasn’t used two mugs and a bottle of gunged-up HP sauce to describe this bit of footy legislation to an Unbeliever is not truly a football supporter of any worth.

It doesn’t help that there’s now this flaming rider to the Offside Rule. The Mrs had got the hang of it until Ruud van Nistelrooy started behaving like an infant school goal-hanger and I had to re-explain the new interpretation to our lass by saying that the Dutch Man-Horse was not active when the ball was played in. So he was technically onside.

‘Not active?’ she snooted, ‘I s’pose that means you’re permanently onside, then.’

There’s a lass who sometimes sits behind us at the Riverside and is as passionate a Smoggy as you’re ever likely to hear. She’s also got a squeal on her that could be heard from bloody Neptune. Shrill doesn’t even begin to explain it. When Boro score it’s like I’m having me earwax removed by ultrasound.

I mean I’m all for the lasses getting involved but Jesus Christ, pet, can you find a lower register?

My dear old Dad (dear as in the fees to keep him at the Sunshine Home for the Bewildered are going through the frigging roof) is going a bit deaf and can’t hear higher notes and sounds now. All I can say is 'Lucky bugger'.

Point is, I might like to see linesladies in hula skirts. I might like to see lady footy fans issued with gags. I might like my wife to find more enjoyment in a slick passing movement than she does in the beauteous patterns that Man City’s groundsman is able to mow into the Eastlands turf.

But none of this has owt to do with whether a lass is capable of officiating at a football match. And to suggest that her ability to make a decision is compromised by the lack of a cock in her pants is sexist as far as I understand the definition.

Personally I’d be more than happy to see more women reffing games (as long as they’re not going to drive themselves to the game – JOKE!). They can’t be worse than the card-wielding pipsqueak Mike Dean. But the main benefit might just be that calling a lady ‘a blind f***ing c***’ is far worse a sin than shouting it at some well-meaning part-time actuary from Saffron Walden who happens to like running up and down the line in a blatant toupee.

I dunno why that should be – although some well-groomed Oxford Professeress in a trouser-suit’ll probably tell you it’s an inverted form of society’s inherent patriarchal chauvinism – but I’d more than welcome a reduction in the gobshite tendency of the modern-day footballer whenever the ref gives a decision against him or his team-mate. (NB – it doesn’t happen in women’s football.)

On the other hand, looking at the likes of your Wazza, I doubt they’d be reining in the odd ‘c***’ and ‘f***’.

And when it comes to odd fucks, Rooney knows what he’s talking about.

Nice Little Urners!

2011-01-07T12:00:00.004Z

There’s the chill evening pint on a warm summer’s day.

There’s the soft kiss of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey after the ten minutes’ thawing time is up.

There’s the hard smack of a green chilli crunched off the top of a true jalfrezi.

And then there’s the taste of victory. Sweet, full-bodied, crisp and consummate Victory. I say Victory. I mean, Utter Annihilation. England were more dominant than a fat lass at a finger buffet.

Apparently this is the worst Australia team ever. Really? Good. Once they’ve unpeeled themselves from the chunky soles of Team England’s DMs they can go away and deal with that. Of the blokes currently wearing the baggy green only three of them could reckon on deserving another go. Hussey, Haddin and – if only for a bit of gumption, Siddle. Let’s hope the baggies are recyclable.

'Look at us, Punter, they've done us up like skippers!'

Lord knows we’ve had some cack-handed selectors in the not-too-recent past. This lot of Australian pickers must select using the blindfold and the drawing pin.

Not since Marilyn Monroe stood on that grille have I seen owt quite so wafty as Phil Hughes. Shane Watson would be great if he didn’t get halfway up, look down, and come over all dizzy. Ponting has been honest about his form and has taken out his frustration on officials rather than the turgid lame-brains all around him. Michael Clarke has all the confidence of a baby turtle trotting through a seagull colony.

The bowlers have been average to poor, bluntly spearheaded by Mouthy Mitchell who has talked a lot but Perth aside, delivered little. Leave the sledging to the snow, Mitch, mate. Hilfenhaus must be Old German for Trundle.

You could see how desperate the selectors were getting cos of their Freudian slip of a selection policy. First, Bollinger. Then Beer. I half-expected to see a bowling attack of Neil Harvey Wallbanger, Glennlivet McGrath and Keith Miller Lite.

Nah, they weren’t up to much – and for once, England got ‘em by the throat in Tests 4and 5 and didn’t let go.

The Barmy Army were in their pomp – like the footy fans of one of them Championship sides that still somehow stagger to the FA Cup Final, there was no pricking the joy. (Just watch us cheering when Mowbray leads our boys out in May!) Obviously there wasn’t a bloke amongst them who earned under forty grand a year, but what the hell? It’s good to see the old-fashioned values of beer, sunburn and stupidity all condensed into one jolly mass of Englishness.

As for the heroic Englishmen well... it’s a wonderful achievement. It really is. And a lot of the credit goes to Flower and Strauss. We can just about expunge the memory of the 5-0 drubbing last time around. Just about.

Cook was the revelation of course. His namesake discovered Australia but even had that Cook imbibed a dozen senna pods he could not have got more runs. As it was he was closely followed by a dose of the Trott. I’m not sure I could watch Jonathan for too many days in the future. He can make Chris Tavare look a bit carefree. But he’s been like cement for the team.

Pietersen, well... he’s been Pietersen. His claim that England wouldn’t be where they are today were it not for his sacrificing himself to get rid of Peter Moores is very Marc Almond (takes a lot of swallowing). But they’ve managed to cage his ego and got him back somewhere near his best.

Ian Bell – perhaps the least engaging post-match interviewee since Alan Shearer – showed bags of style on the park (if you ignore his twatty sunglasses) and Prior flayed them like a master butcher on Day Four.

England weren’t afraid to ditch the slightly struggling stork that is Finn for the hulking menace that is Tremlett. Tremlett was the rediscovery of the tour. He must be hugely intimidating to face, like being charged at by a runaway tennis umpire’s chair.

Bristling Bresnan took up the mantle of honest Yorkie with great verve. Swanny didn’t tear them apart but didn’t half shut ‘em up. And in Jimmy Anderson England have a rival to Dale Steyn as Shit-Hot Bowler in the World.

And just to prove that the team is a team, Collingwood leads them out this morning/last night, even though by his standards he’s been pretty shite. I mean in this series he averages less than Ponting!

It’s great to see the Durham lad bow out now, mind. He’s been damned with fiant praise over the past couple of days cos he’s ‘made the most of his limited ability’. To my mind that’s the highest praise you can give.

Obviously we’d all like to be Kevin Pietersen and be able to reverse sweep a six in a blindfold, but Colly’s done more than just grind out inningses and he’s been a top one-day player, a more than useful dobbler of a bowler and the finest English fieldsman since the scurrying twitchfest that was Derek Randall.

Apart from the Western Australian aberration, where Mitchell Johnson’s arm was clearly being remotely controlled by Denis Lillee with a handheld monitor, it was a series of complete bliss.

Count 'em. An innings and 71. An innings and 157. An innings and 83. Hmmmmmmmm!

The Aussie failure is being matched in the Premier League too. Chelsea, the Abramovincibles, the Blue Meanies – a team that oozed through and over the opposition like so much West London lava – have well and truly cooled off.
Soon Ancelotti’s eyebrow will take off out of there and the rest of him will surely follow.

Meanwhile in Ipswich the prawn sandwich salesmen have come out of hiding. And back in Cheshire a pair of Irishman’s hounds are cowering in their kennels and begging not to go our for walkies.

Now can one of youse lead me back into football management?

If we needed verification, we have it. Keano is a cack manager.

Ipswich could do worse than bring in Andy Flower.

Window Of Opportunity?

2010-12-31T13:19:00.007Z

Transfer window time. Leave it open and the cold draft of Premier League reality blows through you and some poor chairmen start to eye the hard pavement beneath with some fondness.

Using the odd hunch, some inside information and a load of old bollox (in other words, the Lawro way) here's my thoughts on the January to come. And beyond ins ome cases.

ARSENAL
Having analysed where his young guns are going wrong, Arsene beefs up his midfield with three more Eastern Europeans, Arshicky, Roshavin, and Tippitappovich. He buys a new centre-back too – the Frenchman Laissez-Faire.

ASTON VILLA
Gerard Houllier welcomes Liverpool to Villa Park with a team comprised of baa-lambs. It’s a goalless draw by the way. Stephen Ireland, bought from Man City for £8 million (or £10 a sulk) is sold to WWFC (that’s not Wolves that’s Whoever We Fucking Can).

Delighted to be at Villa isn't he?

Gerard looks to invest in some proven goalscoring talent, but unfortunately Michael Owen damages a tendon while emptying the dishwasher and Villa continue to struggle in the wake of....

...BIRMINGHAM CITY
Alex McLeish decides against any reckless spending in January. Which doesn’t half piss off Mrs. McLeish. Birmingham City however are keen for more of a cutting edge upfront so they plump for a man who can always be relied upon to finish his meal, Yakubu.

BLACKBURN ROVERS
The chicken farmers rebut allegations that they know nowt about football after selecting their new management team of Glenn Cockerill and Chick Young. Out of retirement come Hen-ning Berg and Egg-il Olsen. After a good stuffing at Sunderland, and a bit of scratching around at home to Liverpool, the owners insist they are confident of success in the FA Coop.

BLACKPOOL
Ian Holloway is confident that Blackpool will survive the drop and the jolly Bristolian’s turd-polishing continues as new signings Chris Iwelumo and Ade Akinbiyi score twice each as the Seasiders end January by defeating Man United.

BOLTON WANDERERS
Owen Coyle’s incredibly white snarling teeth remain unexplained. But he continues to encourage his team to add Routes Two and Three – unless it’s twenty minutes to go and you’re a goal down in which case bung it up to Big Kev and cross your fingers.

CHELSEA
Ancelotti is pretty clear that he’s not going after anyone in the transfer window, although Chelsea have signed up four highly promising foetuses from under the noses of rivals Manchester United.

EVERTON
Selling Yakubu has removed several pounds off the wage bill and infinite stones off the bench. Moyes trawls the world for a reliable goalscorer and ends up playing Phil Neville up front with Cahill.

FULHAM
Sparky’s already mentioned he’s going to bag himself a new number nine until Zamora returns, and as luck would have it, Wayne Rooney becomes available. But Sparky says he’s looking for a goalscorer and opts for the laidback Roque Saga Cruise.

Roque in a familiar pose

LIVERPOOL
Woy is welieved of the weins at Wiverpoow and while the new owners search desperately for a saviour they install a temporary Messiah in the form of King Kenny Dalglish. It proves hard to sign anyone for the crisis club but even harder to get rid of people. (Apart from Reina who goes to Man United in a shower of Koppite saliva). No one seems to want Poulsen, Ngog, Lucas, Babel, Konchesky, Meireles, etc, etc....wonder why?

MANCHESTER CITY
Mankini goes from strength to strength. City put in a bid for Villa – that’s Aston Villa, the whole lot of ‘em bar Ireland. And Roberto is forced to pay thousands of pounds for new pipes and slippers for the front three of Balotelli, Jo and Adebayor. Plus of course the satnav tag for Tevez.

MANCHESTER UNITED
(Someone beat them for Chrissakes.) Fergie bags Beppe from Liverpool but sells Michael Carrick to a major department store’s shop window and Owen Hargreaves to medical science.

NEWCASTLE UNITED
Pardew is replaced in January by a plate of jellied eels. The eels look to improve the Geordies’ defence by stealing Jamie Carragher from Anfield in the hope that his presence will make Sol Campbell look pacy. In the meantime Ashley wins a high court injunction forbidding Andy Carroll to go within four hundred yards of Eastlands – or Harry Redknapp’s house.

STOKE CITY
Tony Pulis meets Mark Hughes for handshaking practice, which descends into an argument about who’s the most Welsh. Meanwhile Pulis buys ina bit more creativity to Stoke’s central midfield with the purchase of Vince Grella. Yep. Vince Grella.

SUNDERLAND
Steve Bruce’s team continue to beat the good’uns and lose to the bad’uns and so he too goes on the hunt for the manager’s holy grail – the goalscorer. Darren Bent is appalled until he realises that his latest hot streak has gone as cold as Aberdonian ice-cream and his team are shedding points like a hedgehog with eczema.

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
Well Spurs keep on putting a smile on everyone’s face. Arry tries to lure Carroll from Newcastle by offering a part-exchange show-pony in the form of Bentley or Krancjar. No one’s biting. Or elbowing. Or headbutting. And Spurs keep all eleven on the pitch for a change.

WEST BROM
Di Matteo is desperate to shore up his static defence and replaces his entire defence with four bags of cement. Fortunately Fulham are their first opponents and Andy Johnson is unable to find a way past the stationary objects and the Baggies win 1-0.

WEST HAM
Avram spends a fortune in the transfer window and by February the investment in the American genetic technology consultancy pays off when Grant picks all ten have successfully cloned Scott Parkers and the Irons win comfortably. Capello, by the way, doesn't fancy any one of them.

WIGAN ATHLETIC
Roberto Martinez’s scouts have been scouring the four corners of the globe once more and unearthed an Amazonian Indian with a sweet left peg, a Congolese forest pygmy who’s surprisingly good in the air (the obverse of Peter Crouch, effectively) and a Filipino nanny to help Charles N’Zogbia get his toys back in his pram.

WOLVES

Mick McCarthy keeps up his “nobbut middlin’” blather like he were some monosyllabic Dales farmer from All Creatures Great and Small. And no one comes. And everyone stays. And none of ‘em get any credit cos they’s just ever so ‘umble Wolves.

Reckon we'll mek it til end of May Mr. 'Erriot?

And in cricket, Graeme Swann explains that the reason for the sprinkler dance is that it illustrates how we pissed all over the Aussies. Tsk!

And I stick by my prediction that Chelsea win the Premier League. Somehow. It may be that Liverpool won’t finish third, Villa won’t end up 8th, or Blackpool 20th. In fact I reckon we can forget them ideas. Please.

Oh and the Boro?... erm...

Well Happy *!?%ing New Year to the rest of you.

Christmas Pressies

2010-12-20T12:41:00.002Z

It’s Christmas and it’s time for Robbo-ho-ho to hand out some pressies to the great, the good and bloody awful. Obviously most of these won’t arrive in time. And given the Post Office’s price hike on stamps. I’ve decided to save some dosh and send a lot of them by minicab.

To Sir Alex Ferguson: a really comfy chair like the one Jimmy Saville used to have on Jim’ll Fix It. You’ll be able to press a button and whatever you require – a glass of red, a prawn sandwich, a hairdryer – will appear magically from within the arms of the chair. And you’ll never need to get up again. In other words can’t you just eff off and let some dopy numpty like O’Neill make a complete Horlicks of the job?

To Sepp Blatter: I thought of honey, or Demerara sugar, or maple syrup but let’s face you’ve had a year-long glut of sweeteners so how about a night out at G.A.Y. with your Qatari hombres?

"Oooh, look at me! What a great jessie I am!"

To Audley Harrison: a job in Milletts – you’ll be in the tent department, Audley, keeping a close eye on the canvass.

To Big Sam Allardyce: a telescope. That way you can keep an eye on your new side’s forward passes.

To Avram Grant: I don’t reckon Av does Christmas but just because he avoids Santa’s sack doesn’t mean that Sullivan n Gold are going to be so neglectful. I reckon they’ll give him a few months rest back home.

To Lee Westwood: a major, which will come a little easier this year as I’m giving Tiger Woods a majorette.

Arsene Wenger: a big nuggety bastard of a midfielder: I’d even go so far as Lee Cattermole. Or anyone whose spine is a tad stronger than the stem of a dandelion.

Fabio Capello: well, the obvious thing’d be an English-Italian phrasebook. I’d like to add to that some magic mushroom tea just so that his imagination gets a little run-out and he stops using his substitute bench as a replica 11 for the one he starts a game with.

Mitchell Johnson: The Steve Harmison Book Of Fast Bowling. Take some tips off from Steve’s trusty sat-nav. We can’t be having Mitch finding a bit of form at this stage in the series.

Carlos Tevez: a snood cum nijab so we don’t have to look at his gritted teeth every time he pulls on a Man City shirt.

Wayne Rooney: a DVD of Algeria-England from the World Cup. See if he can sit through it without booing his tits off by the end.

FIFA: if they can’t give us the bloody World Cup – and let’s face it we could host it tomorrow but that doesn’t leave many palms to grease does it? – then they can give us some goal-line technology. You know... so we end up with a fair result...? Oh wait, sorry, you’re FIFA! What’s fairness got to do with owt?

Howard Webb: an orange card – it’s halfway between a yellow and a red and it’s the card you wave at a Dutchman when he assaults his opponent in front of the whole world.

Arjen Robben: a right foot.

Alan Pardew: a Geordie accent. You can do a right shite job at NUFC and with one of them you can get away with it. Talking of which....

Alan Shearer: a new set of shirts cos them white cuffs and collars every week make him look like he’s trying just a bit too hard. (I mean for Chrissake I get more uppity about his outfits than I do about that Rachel Riley on Countdown, who they keep dressing like some incredibly numerate street-walker. I mean it’s tough getting a seven-letter winner when you’re fighting off a lob-on.)

"All right, duckie! Fancy a consonant?"

Adrian Chiles: a rest. I’ve never seen anyone less up for an evening kick-off in my whole life. You could put a nail bomb under his chair and he’d still mutter lugubriously ‘well clearly there’s someone here who’s not that keen on watching the footy.’

Mike Hussey: I’d like to give him a laser pen – directly into his unblinking eyes just so we can get the bleeder out before he’s stopped England in their tracks again.

AP McCoy/Phil Taylor: a job swap as they’ve neither of them owt to prove in their own sports and I think the Power could probably coax a nag over the Grand National fences. And I reckon McCoy could get a nine-dart leg if he was on horseback at the time. (Incidentally – thoroughly enjoyed Sports Personality of the Year and it’s good to see the top two get the credit their transparent genius deserved.)

Colin Montgomerie: can he hand back his ‘Coach of the Year’ award at SPOTY? He didn’t coach anyone. He just picked some players to go and play golf. He hardly found a group of golfing Fergie fledgelings and melded them into a formidable dozen. Still Capello won it last year. Go figure.

David Beckham: a lovely fluffy cloud and a buffed-up halo so he can sit in his rightful place on the right-hand side of God (aka Bobby Charlton). I’m sorry but Becks gets a Lifetime Achievement Award at the same age as Giggs just wins the normal thing. He’s 35. When he’s slowly knocked off the FA one by one and held Cameron’s bollocks in a vice till he gives us back some playing-fields and footy coaches then I’m not sure he deserves the unflinching adoration of the nation. Don’t get me wrong – I like the bloke – it’s just that he’s not Mahatma frigging Gandhi just yet, is he?

Besides which he continues to give James Corden kudos and that’s not on.

And finally Tony Mowbray. A bottle of Tanqueray. And may that be the only import from North of the border that you bother yourself with for the next three years. Oh and a fucking miracle.

Middlesbrough's first team get some pre-Christmas training in

Happy Christmas one and all - except you Sepp.

Robbo Podcast 5

2010-12-15T09:40:00.001Z

Robbo 5: Christmas Hurley-Burly by Robbo Robson

Car-lost his bottle?

2010-12-13T13:01:00.004Z

Anyone know what’s up with Carlos Tevez? Too many mirrors in his house perhaps? Can’t get a comfy enough snood? Or is he fed up of being outstropped by Mario Balotelli?

Or is it something a little deeper? Not that I reckon that the Argentinian has any more depth than all the other shallow mercenaries that pull on a sky blue jersey these days.

Rodney Marsh said on the radio on Sunday that Carlos is on £286,000 a week tax free. There’s another loophole just waiting to be closed Mr. Osborne. (I reckon I’ve worked out what really annoys me about George – that puffy face and ghostly white skin makes him look like the Prince Regent/George IV. If he’s not a direct descendant from that unforking family tree of royalty then I’m an overlapping left-back.)

"Silver spoon? I've got a whole blasted silver service up my backside, wot, wot!"

Any road, suffice to say Tevez’s dispute is not about money. And frankly as far as I can tell Man City look like they’ve dropped their trousers and bent over the reception desk for the young gaucho.

If he really is fretting for the wife and kids then for Chrissakes fly ‘em over. Yes, I know it’s cold but hellfire, Carlos, you can’t even walk onto a football pitch without looking like you’re one last push away from pipping Amundsen to the Pole so I’m sure you can find plenty of winter wear for the nipper and the lass.

Or, on your wages, you could build them a tropical theme park like some big fuck-off Eden Project for homesick Latin American housewifes and put her in there for the cold snap.

Or – as has been allowed by the club that contains ‘certain executives’ – you can meet up with them in Tenerife. That’s right. City really have been treating you ill.

First of all they buy you from their neighbours and use you as a poster boy. And sorry City fans but if Fergie had’ve indulged him the way they have at Eastlands he’d still be there, don’t you worry.

They made him the skipper. They let him pop back home every now and then. They don’t fine the little pillock when he bad-mouths the manager in front of the whole bleeding world.

Now Tevez is a popular footballer cos he’s got talent, yes, but more than that he’s one of them ones that, if I can borrow from the phrase-book of Simon Cowell, ‘always gives 1000%’. (Incidentally, here’s a piece of insight to make you loathe Cowell even more. You just know that every time he has to give the casting vote on some poor muppet’s future – and the crowd are baying and he’s waiting and waiting like some badly-crapped public school Buddha – you just know he’s getting a semi on? Shudder.)

Now we all like a tryer. It’s the reason Becks stayed in the hearts of the fans of clubs he played for – cos he never coasted. Football fans in this country can forgive greed, stupidity and being just a bit bleeding shite but what we can’t forgive is laziness. Which is why Berbatov gets such grief. And why I used to throw bits of pastry at Mark Viduka every now and then (I reckon most of it went in his gob).

Carlos Tevez is not lazy. At times he hunts down the ball like a dense Jack Russell puppy. If you’re a central defender with the ball at your feet, I reckon you can always hear him coming by the under-the-breath growling and the faint spray of canine saliva.

Most clubs would be delighted to have him pulling on their jersey.

The trouble with your footballer is you have to spend more than 90 minutes a week with them. And clearly Carlos is a difficult cove to have around the place.

His statement has attempted to spare all the important people from a slagging. Strangely enough Mancini, who he saw eye to eye with in an all too World Wrestling Federation way at home to Bolton the other week, is not one of his problems.

"You're right, Carlos, if only more of the team were like you, eh?"

Less surprisingly Sheikh Mansour – the only bloke at Citeh who pips Tevez on the monthly income gauge - is also complimented.

He resents the implications about Joorabchian’s role in all this and insists he’s a free-thinking individual. He says in his statement: "I hugely resent suggestions that I have been unduly influenced by others. I wanted to leave in the summer, but was convinced to return.”

So you haven’t been unduly influenced but someone convinced you to stay in the summer..? Hmmm.

Put simply I’m not quite sure what he’s expecting from his employers right now. He’s signed a contract. Yes it involves not being in Argentina much. Yes, it involves trying to get along with a bunch of people and players whose motivations for being at the club are a little suspect, frankly. And yes if Nigel de Jong was up against me in your average 5-a-side kick about I’d be dressed up like and ice-hockey goaltender. Or I’d be in the changing-room sobbing cos I wanted to see my ickle baby.

But really, sunshine, you’ve been here for four years, the terraces at Eastlands resound to the sound of your name and quite frankly when you’re on so much wonga it’s like you win Deal or No Deal every flaming week I think it might be possible to get over a bit of discomfort and carry on.

"If you don't like blues ar reds, you're going to be very disappointed"

Like he said just a week ago: "A sacrifice has to be made when you make a commitment like I have done with City and it is something I am going to see through.

"Once that job is done I will have plenty of time with my kids."

Well now you didn’t really mean any of that, did you son? And while I’m a bit smirky about you so blatantly ripping the piss out of the noisy neighbours, I reckon City are right not to sell. On balance, I’d say the gaucho is being bloody ridiculous.