Back From Brooklyn...

So I've been away. For far too long. I've been in USA where, even in Brooklyn, soccer seems to be the attention-seeking toddler peeping through and around the legs of the unfeasibly tall (basketballers) and unfeasibly wide (US footballers) that dominate the game.

Yes I could've paid Rupert Murdoch and sucked up the Sky-spunking Premier League but I chose not to do that. It's good to have break from this sort of saturation. Off the wagon I was in a manner of speaking.

Have I missed it? Well apart from Boro's brilliant form - that petered out at Ipswich to greet my return, ta very much - not a lot.

In my absence, the Premier League has sought to right itself. Citeh and Chelsea are strides ahead of the rest. When Mourinho says his players don't dive, I kind of agree. Cahill's impression of a leaping impala getting taken out by a crossbow has to be one of the most laughable examples of this disgraced art we have yet seen.

Mourinho wil probably make sure there's a lot less falling over in the next few matches, but you can't help thinking that, following two typical cockney forays into he teeth of the North-East (I've seen you Londoners up here - "Brrr!! I need another layer!" "Isn't the architecture bleak?" "oooh that's very hot for a rogan josh" etc. ) the Portuguese wanted his boys to make absolutely sure Hull were beaten.

Pellegrini seems to have bought himself a bit of time now that Citeh have taken a baby step into the last 16 of the Champions League. Rushing back Aguero might seem a good idea but anyone with half a mind - Robbie Savage for example - would know that the reason he keeps twanging ligaments and muscles is cos they keep rushing him back. Duh!

Meanwhile the story of the season continues to be twofold. West Ham are doing well - please God don't make this lead to a rallying cry for Big Sam to take over the reins for England. And the romantic second team of last year are doing shite. From runner-ups to run aground. Liverpool have fallen from grace like a mighty tiger sliding into a bath of beans.

Yes they have lost a front two, but Rodgers has had money to burn and replaced them with a big Scouse workhorse he doesn't trust (Lambert) and a big Italian twerp who no one trusts (Balotelli). In short Rodgers has been rubbish this year.

I see he reckons Liverpool can target a top four finish after they bundled in a last minute equaliser against a ludicrously timid Arsenal. I guess his reasoning is that they can't play any worse. And Sterling seems to be sharper now he's dispensed with the Little Richard bouffant. Small man, big hair never works does it? He looked like a particularly cool character that never quite made it into the Peanuts cartoons.

In other news, Alistair Cook has finally been relieved of his duties as one-day cricket captain after being utterly crap at the format for as long as anyone can remember. Mind you, just cos the decision was a 'no-brainer' doesn't mean the England selectors didn't take a fucking age to reach the same conclusion as everyone else.

Honestly that bunch of deflanneled toffs don't make decisions in a hurry do they? I've seen glacial valleys formed with greater alacrity.

The Barclays Center from my distant view. The Duke of Cambridge is the very slapheaded fella on the front row.

Meanwhile, Robbo's sporting horizons have widened. I watched an NBA game at the Barclays Center which featured an on-court meeting between our royals and theirs. William and Kate plodded in that tiresomely studied regal manner while the ball was in play. I mean they didn't pay for their tickets, they couldn't be bothered to turn up on time and then they put the players off.  Plain bloody rude.

Beyonce and Jay-Z - both shorter than you'd imagine - welcomed our national no-marks with open arms and it all got in the way of watching one Lebron James who, despite me being very sketchy on the technique and principles of basketball, stood out from the fray like Darcey Bussell on a hen night dance floor.

The man is grace personified. He did very little for the first half, then decided to show up for a quarter and the Nets were dead in the water. Lebron sat down for the last eight minutes, his work done. He might just be the finest sportsman I've seen in the flesh. Then again, there's always Alan Foggon.

The mighty Foggo

Of course returning for a Christmas break after a football-free period is like a crash-dieter getting a fortnight's binge at Gregg's. It'll more than get me back on the bad side. I have always cherished this wall-to-wall footy festival. It's not quite the same without the iron-hard frozen pitches, the snow walled up around the pitch-sides and the orange balls pinging about like mysterious glowing planets.

And you have to regret the creeping professionalism that prevents a bunch of top-class sportspeople from tottering across a frozen wasteland on Boxing day with Watneys Red Barrel and a dodgy many malted whisky repeating at their befrosted lips as they blunder around like bad-ass Bambis and some old-school Burnley or Leicester takes them apart.

I guess that was usually a United or a Liverpool. I haven't mentioned Man United. From my distant viewpoint they appeared to be stumbling into a run of victories which were single-handedly maintained by one David De Gea. If that man patrolled the Mexican border, no one would get in.

And while there seems to be as much luck as judgement going into the United renaissance I cannot help but be impressed with Van Gaal, not least because he is refreshingly direct about the stupidity or otherwise of his own players. I doubt, Louis would've have been insisting in the innocence of his staff after a performance like the Chelsea Tumblers put in against Hull.

I till reckon Chelsea'll win - yes I tipped Citeh at the start of the season - but somehow they grind it out. As for the quadruple... no. The treble, quite possibly, but they won't stop Real Madrid. No one will.

As ever I shall be handing out some pressies for the great and good of British sport in the next blog. But I have one question: what the fuck is Lewis Hamilton, a dull man in the dullest of sports, doing winning Sports Personality of the Year? McIlroy - far less dull even if the sport he plays isn't exactly thrilling - was a far more deserving recipient.

Tsk. I dunno. You leave the country for a couple of months...

Allardyce, Bless Each Morning You Greet Me

A really very curious weekend of footy. I keep thinking Middlesbrough could have been top - that's how weird it is.

The Premier League table just looks odd, like a cut-out and keep from a time when Ipswich and Burnley and Derby could and by God did win the First Division title. (They were happier times: pies were tuppence, terraces were human wave machines and modern beef cattle would've turned up their noses at the pitches.)

Southampton stroll forward with a curiously able collection of talents assembled by Ronald Koeman, who I keep imagine being played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Had anyone really heard of Pelle, Mane and Tadic before August? I was lamenting the disembowelment of Pocchetino's posse just weeks ago - now it seems it couldn't have been kinder.

Just as astonishing is Fat Sam's Fancy Dans at Upton Park. Again what Allardyce has managed to find - and this is football's equivalent to finding a suitcase full of cash in a public lavatory - is two goalscorers. We knew about Valencia but the other lad is lethal. Indeed, with a tight defence, a snappy midfield and agreat front man you could see Sam's got the full package: the backs, hacks and Sakho.

Big Sam seemed more than a little chuffed to be kissed by Russell Brand. I was looking forward to reading Brand's new book Revolution but at the last minute I realised that simply by purchasing the contemporary tome I'd be buying into a tired and unaccountable establishment paradigm that disenfranchises the working-class and only seeks to propagate its plutocratic hierarchies ad infinitum. So I eschewed its doubtless enticement and found myself compensated by the twin enchantments - steady there missus - of a glittering pint of Northern ale and a beautiful lady. Don't you know. (Anyone could write that stuff - trouble is, he does.)

Amongst all these refreshing table-top developments we cannot of course overlook the leaders and their comfy six-point cushion.

Chelsea continue to bolster the received wisdom that titles can be bought. Yesterday's match against the latest converts to that principle, Manchester United, threw together two of the most charismatic managers in the game. That's what I was told, anyway. Repeatedly. Til I told someone to shut the fuck up before I lamped him.

Journalists love to purr over these so-called masterminds as if this was less a footy match and more Kasparov v Karpov. Unfortunately for football managers, when they actually put their pieces into action they more often than not fail to behave int he expected fashion. Just ask Gus Poyet, whose solid rook Wes Brown turned into a right prawn, while the steady unyielding King Vito fell over and resigned long before the game was lost.

Nevertheless, Mourinho does seem to take a tighter hold of his men that most, if that doesn't create too unnerving an image. Once he and Van Gaal had disentangled themselves from as sincerely a held embrace as two men have ever mustered (I can't imagine Wenger even hugging his wife with such feeling) Chelsea fell into the Jose shape and stayed there.

Meanwhile Van Gaal's back three, four or five (depending on how many fingers you had covering your eyes) resembled a Dad's Army outtake at times, all of 'em darting in opposite directions, none of which was towards the ball. Mourinho missed a trick - there were goals to be had, particularly while Hazard was up against Rafael, a man who defends like a teenager lost in a haunted house with just a dim torch for company.

Mourinho's caution backfired, Fellaini mysteriously found some form and, as ever, United's forward forays showed enough swagger to encourage the Stretford End. Van Persie's goal was celebrated with the sort of clamour you'd expect for a late equaliser at, say, St Andrews. (There'll be one before 2015's out, I tell you). Yes, United get a plucky point. Well done, you scrapping hard-pressed little millionaires!

Although both Jose and Louis indulged in an after-you session when asked who might be the better of the two, I'd have to agree with the Dutchman that Mourinho pips him. The accusation with Mourinho is that he's only ever done it with huge squads on massive budgets. True. But not every one is good at that. Just ask David Moyes.

I'm not saying that Jose's teams spread joy to all and sundry - as Sunday showed he'd rather have a Matic than a Messi - but he knows how to get rich egocentric young men to work together and that takes some doing in this day and age.

Of course even he finds some players 'unmanageable'. Signore Balotelli, for one. Ironically a simple tap-in from three yards is what Mario finds 'unmanageable' at the moment. I feel a bit torn about the bloke. At least he's trying. It's just, well, I'm not sure he's really that much cop. And neither do the Kop.

Yes it's a rum old league at the mo, and with the top twenty in the Championship separated by a distance even shallower than the depth of Peter Schmeichel's analysis (seriously keepers don't really know owt about footy do they?) it's looking like everything's very difficult to predict. Apart from Chelsea winning the Premier League. Tsk.

Moaning Geezers

There's always a tipping point in a Premier League season, where managers under pressure can't be bothered to zip it any longer and out pours the bile in a kaleidoscopic yawn, such as you might see from a Bigg Market reveller on a Friday night .

This weekend is a case in point. They were all at it. Harry Redknapp says he can't play Adel Taarabt cos he's three stone overweight, a fantastic achievement by the lad in four months. The old cockney claims he could get about the park quicker than the Fatman of Fez. Maybe so, but could Richard Dunne outsprint either of them?

Who ate all the couscous?

Clearly Redknapp's demeanour isn't helped by losing a game against a bloody awful Liverpool team. Even Rodgers couldn't hide from the outrageous fortune of two own goals, a quite bewildering array of misses (Leroy Fer's first chance suggests he couldn't hit a Taarabt from five yards) and a lively performance from Sleepy Sterling.

Harry insists he's not under pressure. Er... he is. When you're bottom of the league and your central defenders are running them into your own net from everywhere, you're in deep doo-doo. Word is he would have had Taarabt on the bench, but the subs at the other end of it were terrified of what might happen to them when the Moroccan sat down.

Meanwhile Garry Monk, whose Swansea team started so brightly, is incensed that the lack of a win since August is down to bad refereeing. Also, down to poor finishing, but hey let's not your team's inadequacies get in the way, eh? And it was one bad refereeing decision on Sunday, Garry. Moses went down like a tablet of stone and the ref bought it. The dolt. How could he?

Well, he bought it not just cos of crowd pressure but because Moses decided to try and con him. It's typical of the ridiculous hypocrisy that football perpetuates that a referee can be pilloried while the cheat is almost forgiven as it's 'part of the game'.

Not that Monk's forgiven him. Apparently the Swansea City team ethic is so squeaky-clean that players get bans for doing that sort of thing. We'll see - but it's nice to hear some proper condemnation of the dive.

Meanwhile mealy-mouthed Mark Hughes reckons that Shawcross didn't foul Bony, and that somehow poor Ryan's getting picked on after some intrusive analysis into aspects of the lad's defensive play. In other words, just because Shawcross holds onto attackers like a kid holding on to the handlebars during his first ever bike ride, he shouldn't be penalised.

Well, fact is, Sparky, he should. It doesn't happen, no. But it should. And in this case it did. Definite penalty kick. And Hughes took Shawcross out of man-marking duties after that which probably goes to show that if more refs gave such decisions, wrestlers like Ryan might be relieved of their duties more often.

Meanwhile, look at Arsene Wenger's interview with Jacqui Oatley. This is as close as you can get to watching Wenger call someone a total fucking idiot. Oatley asked searching questions that were effectively asking Le Prof 'Why aren't your team doing very well?' 'My God you still need a holding midfielder and a decent centre-back' and 'Are you saying you couldn't win cos they defended too much?'

Yes, these are the sort of polite and fair questions that are bound to incense a football manager, and Arsene responded by suggesting that the reporter - she - 'wasn't listening very well' and was asking incomprehensible questions. Petty France. Not dignified.

Yes it's a long time since Arsenal won that Community Shield, innit? It's a long time since Swansea were in the top three, And it's a long time since anyone got beat 8-0. (Save the best til last).

Gus Poyet actually mustered a reasonably controlled response to the hammering, given that Sunderland caved in like a bamboo bath chair beneath an elephant's arse. The Uruguayan confessed to utter embarrassment and admitted that there were some players who basically hid behind the furniture for the last twenty minutes.

Vito in happier times

Vito Mannone lived up to his appearance - his performance was as Gru-some as the other Despicable Mes in the team - but at least he's offering the fans their money back for a 700-mile round-trip of abject misery.

And that's the least he could offer, Frankly Southampton couldn't have had more freedom and space had they been offered an afternoon at a cabinet minister's country pile. Koeman sat there like a Dutch Buddha, smirking away and probably feeling none too troubled by the fact that he can no longer call on Lovren, Lambert and Lallana. Indeed why Brendan Rogers persists with Balotelli when honest Rickie sits on the bench in Taarabt-like inactivity is beyond me. People keep telling us how talented the lad is. Irrelevant! He's a lazy little sod. Lazy enough to get into Sunderland's first team.

PS Boro. 3rd. Just saying.