Brimful of Ashes

Not saying it’s cold or owt but there’s not an unneutered brass monkey on Teesside. As we watched the Boro’s latest blundering attempt to overcome feeble opposition there was a point where I considered pouring me Bovril down the insides of me trousers just to find out if my bollocks were still on the outside.

I mean it was so cold you had to wear a coat. In November. I felt a right jessie.

Some real men

I’m hoping and praying this doesn’t mean that fixtures will be cancelled cos the iddy-biddy football supporter might have an ickle slip on his way to the ground and get a bruise. For Pete’s sake, how long before you have a crack squad of under-employed solicitors hanging on our frozen street corners with an unsigned lawsuit in their hands and the local council in their gun-sights?

It’s weather like this that makes you pine for somewhere like Brisbane. I have been to Brizzie once, and I don’t remember much. Whether it was the dullness that made me drink or the drink that made it dull I can’t say. Actually it might have the dullness of the drink. Well it was Australian. Amber nectar my arse. If nectar really tasted like Foster’s there wouldn’t be a pollinated flower on God’s green earth.

Of course, there’s been some encouraging signs in the build-up to the Ashes. Which basically means that while Englishmen and South Africans were doing ok, the Aussies were batting like drunks with toothpicks.

Inevitably, someone had to spoil the impression and them someones were Peter Siddle –who bears all the hallmarks of a bloke you wouldn’t want to call a tosser under your breath (the tosser) – and Michael Hussey, a man who rejoices in the nickname Mr. Cricket. Mind you, when you’ve been called ‘hussy’ all your life anything’ll do. Ask my first girlfriend Natalie from Thornaby.

200+ behind on first innings, you knew what was coming. The return of the invertebrate England batting line-up. Just so many pale pink Pommie prawns for the summer barbie. And yet, as TMS crackled in and out of my fractured dreams, there seemed to be no signs of the debacle to come.

Not once did I hear the Boycott drone muttering ‘that’s just plain silly is that.’ Not once did I hear the faltering toff that is Martin-Jenkins so much as whisper ‘oh and he’s OUT – no he’s not that’s a fine shot for four!’

The only difference in me aural landscape was the progressively louder strains of ‘God Save The Queen’ from the Barmy Army. Ah the Englishman abroad - pissed, tuneless and heat-stroked - I'd take out the lot of 'em were it not for the fact that they get up the Antipodean nose like a funnel-web spider up a drainpipe.

At the end of the fourth day Shane Watson – one of them old school Aussies (blond hair, blond wife, tiresomely optimistic) – said that Australia had had a pretty good day. England were 309-1. Yep, and that Atom bomb was a great day for Hiroshima. Plank.



And so it was that Cook and Trott batted on into the fifth day like two schoolmasters ambling down a corridor, gently cuffing the backs of well-intentioned but inept schoolboys. Ponting, a man who looks like he’s been built by Nick Park, did his usual captaincy stuff. Not a fuckin’ clue, that man.

Punter has to be the most fortunate captain in cricketing history – and I’m not talking about his batting here which is as good as there is. For most of his career as skipper he’s had two options: give it to Glenn; or give it to Shane. In both cases it worked. Not cos Ponting has the remotest bit of nous or intuition but cos he had two of the greatest bowlers the world has seen on his pudgy little plasticine palms.

I mean for Chrissakes a cocker spaniel could’ve got the hang of that after a couple of days. Now he looks around for a go-to-man and up strides gentle Ben Hilfenhaus. Or fiery Pete Siddle – not a name you want to Spoonerise. Or Xavier Doherty – if that really is his name. Or there’s always Mitchell Johnson as his ‘Go-From Man’.

If Mitch starts marking his run-up you then one, you know Punter’s run out of ideas and two, you can add a quick fifty to the score. Surely Bollinger will replace him for Adelaide. Actually I reckon you could replace him with Asti Bastard Spumante and it would be an improvement.

Whether England can maintain the surreal dominance of the last two days remains to be seen. KP is like a myopic banana-grader for the EU – he’s still capable of missing a straight one. Prior didn’t get going. I don’t think Broad should worry too much about keeping his gob in check. He’s better when he’s cranky.

And Swanny needs to settle down a bit. At the moment he’s been built up as the one wot’ll win it for us and the last bloke that was said about was Wayne Rooney. I’m not saying Graeme’ll turn into a feckless user of whores and slater of fans but he needs to just settle in and keep it simple.

Wazza of course has slipped back into the United team with the minimum of fuss and even let Dimitar Berbatov get the plaudits for the five goals he bagged v Blackburn. I’ve never quite understood why the great alehouse brutes that stroll Terminator-like onto the park in the colours of Blackburn Rovers always play so meekly at Old Trafford.

If Big Sam knows why he’s not telling.

Meanwhile the BBC Sports Personality of the Year line-up has been announced. And – what the hell – no footballers? After all they’ve done for us? Tell you what, it’s Christmas. Panto season. Stick ‘em all in some stocks and we’ll custard pie the lot of them. For a week. Or better yet, just keep striking them in the face with James Corden.


Pick him up by the ankles and use him like a hammer. Joy unconfined.

I'm off down the boozer. Now. Where's that long-sleeved T-shirt?

Gooner Have to Do Better

Regular readers will once again notice that this blog contains very little reference to Middlesbrough Football Club. Well there’s a reason for this. As me gran always said ‘If it’s pissing it down outside, let’s not talk about the rain.’ Or as I’ve always said: ‘Just cos I’ve done a shit doesn’t mean I have to keep going back to sniff it.’

So it is to other matters I turn.

I spent the afternoon with a wine-drinking Arsenal fan. Needless to say he was into the third bottle when I left. And in between quaffs of his Chilean Red (he’s got 32 more bottles in his underground cellar and apparently the longer they stay there the more money they’ll make) he told me what Arsenal needed.

It wasn’t, apparently, the boss to be having an affair with a 39-year-old (that means 40, obviously) woman who has been variously described as a waitress, a singer and a French rapper. (If by ‘French rapper’ it means that she talks quickly and incessantly in a language I don’t understand then it could well be my missus.)

I don’t care what Wenger does off the pitch, mind you. Neither did my mate. He reckons Wenger needs to do three things: defence, defence, defence.

This is the Wenger Giant Knife, apparently - surprisingly it lacks that cutting edge.

It remains the case that Wenger’s best-ever back four was probably the one he inherited when he got to Arsenal. Adams, Keown, Winterburn and Dixon. Attacks foundered on that flinty foursome like balloons in a porcupine farm. If Gooners ever did a Mount Rushmore they could do worse than chisel them faces into the rock face.

Behind them loured the mighty frame of Yorkshire’s moustachioed answer to Steven Seagal, David ‘Don’t Come It with Me’ Seaman. You can imagine Arsene arriving at the club and just forgetting about defensive matters.

Gooners have of course seen a series of centre-backs trot across their green and pleasant playing-fields like a string of second-rate mules on a Blackpool beach. Stepanovs, Luzhny Cygan, Senderos... transparently woeful plodders – like Adams without the nous or the part-time poetry.

Wenger’s keepers, post-Seaman (which sounds like an online fertilisation clinic) have all displayed only a passing acquaintance with the goalie’s arts, or in Jens Lehmann’s case, sanity. The most gaping gaff in Wenger’s latest version of Boyz2Men is not digging round in his office for George Graham’s big Brown envelope collection so’s he could slide a heap of cash under the nose of the horribly under-employed Shay Given.

Even Koscielny and Squillaci (if that is his name and I can’t help feeling he’s just a brand of kid-friendly pasta) would look sounder in front of the Irish No. 1.

Of course, my pal’s lament and alcohol intake was exacerbated by losing a two-goal lead to Spurs in a pretty abject way. Arsenal still look as pleasing on the eye as a Kara Tointon thigh but they’re pretty easy to score against...


... unlike Kara


Spurs’ goals featured some traditional Arsenal defending. A hopeful punt upfield saw Jermaine Defoe win the header that led to Bale’s opener. Fabregas ruined a gorgeous performance with a handball that only a stroppy kid who was trying to get his ball back cos he wanted to go home would have tried. And Kaboul’s flick on was the sort of goal that every team reckons on getting against a Wenger outfit.

Apart from Campbell and the unfortunate Vermaelen I don’t think Arsene’s found a good defender. Gallas was pretty flaky, to say the least, while he was with the Frenchman (witness Nasri’s refusal of a handshake pre-match) and Ashley Cole only really learnt to defend when he naturally left the club cos of that pitiful 55 grand a week offer from David Dein.

It doesn’t matter how long Arsene keeps up his claim that youth will win the day, the feeling remains that the poor little lambs will always be taught a one pass too many attitude. I hat slagging off Arsene by the way – and I’ll always watch his teams play when I can – but frankly he’s got another year of nowt approaching.

He’ll have no regrets though, our Arsene:

Sing, Arsene Sing!

"Non, je ne regrette rien.
Non je ne regretted rien.

Je n’achete pas
un bon centre-back
ou un demi-decent goalie mais
Ou meme un Reynard dans le boite.

Et
Non, je ne gagne rien
Non je ne gagne rien

Depuis la Tasse
De la F.A
Dans 2005
Nos avons gagne fuck-tout!!!!"

And yet this season, with United staggering and Chelsea stuttering, you’d think that someone would be grabbing the League by its throat.

Of course, the average England football fan would love to grab someone by the throat. And that someone is whoever decided that Capello should stick around post South Africa and continue to confuse our boys with his strangled English and feckless selections. Somewhere there’s a plot he’s lost.

He appeared to go for youth v France in an attempt to prove to his doubters that youth wouldn’t work. Ergo it’s better to go back into the annals of history and drag out retired carthorses (Carragher, Davies). I’d long since given up on getting the call but if Jay Bothroyd’s on the radar and going to make sure me mobile’s charged up for the next time Il Cap names a squad.

Ok, he’s not helped by the fact that England squads these days face more late withdrawals than a Roman Catholic orgy, but to be frank no one seems to bother taking him seriously anymore. And to think his was going to be the iron fist that got our feckless party animals biffed into shape.

This is how many decent forwards are available to me!

It is certainly time he went. Given every important phone call he makes is done by Franco Baldini we may as well be shot of him and just go for an interpreter in his place. Barca fans will tell you that that worked for Inter.

On Wednesday the team were visited by stupid-haired X-Factor hopefuls One Direction –and that pretty much describes the trajectory of Capello’s England. Down, down, down.

As for Arsene - there are many days ahead - but I think we can all agree that from now on they are numbered.

Vettel They Do Now?

Well they all told me down the Blue Bell that I had to watch it. It’s the closest race for the Formula 1 World Drivers Championships in years. Four drivers could still lift the trophy. Obviously, I shrugged, I’ll have to watch it.

When the Beeb bought the rights for F1 back a while ago, I wrote a blog saying how tedious the sport was and, not that this is a martial state or owt, I was advised to withdraw it in favour of something milder. Or blander. Or at least nowt to do with F1.

Since then, the Beeb have gone overboard on it. Every time I turn 5live on I’ve heard David Croft’s voice on a trailer purring ‘Let’s Go Racing!’ as if he’s some tiny Clarkson-operated puppet.

Nevertheless I tuned in for the grand finale. In Swansea. Where the Boro had an anonymous defeat to get through. And there it was. Brundle and Jordan pottering up and down the pits like a couple of bewildered reality TV celebs – offering no insights but soaking up the testosterone like two man-sized tissues.

Jake Humphrey was on the cusp of a climax all afternoon n all. Here are a bunch of blokes who only have to whiff a bit of Castrol GTX to come over all hot and sweaty. I mean God help any driver who left his petrol cap off round there... Lord knows what he’d find in his tank.

Hi there, car-lurverzzz. You don't wanna know where my pecker is right now. Hmmmm

These men are the acme of all that is disturbing about petrol heads. I’ve never so much as groaned at the sight of a motor car – let alone these aerodynamic slivers of tin and advertising that these millionaires sweep around the car-parks of the world.

Of course in the world of Top Gear that makes me a frigging eunuch. (If that’s not a contradiction in terms).

I’d have more interest in F1 if the drivers had to incorporate a bit more of what drivers actually do rather than sitting in a me-shaped hole on a wheeled playing card while computers and pit crew told them everything.

I mean that’s not driving. Robbo’s F1’d be miles bloody better:

1. Put your own bloody petrol in the car.
2. Change your own tyres.



3. Try driving with a Ginsters pasty and a grab bag of Quavers between your thighs.
4. Roundabouts. Loads more crashes and lots of bibbing at each other. Cracking.
5. Make the traffic on the grand prix circuit two-way. With an overtaking lane.

In fact, let’s just make sure it’s possible to overtake. Cos that was the worst aspect of the Abu Dhabi Doze and almost every other F1 race I’ve ever seen. Barely one car went past the next. Every overtaking manoeuvre was attempted from the pits.

I mean it’s bloody ridiculous that a race should be decided by how quick some blokes in overalls get your tyres on. Frankly, Vettel and co could’ve been given the day off and we could have just had a petrol pump-off between Red Bull and Ferrari.

Ferrari have been caned for their strategy. Well you know what – if it was a foot-race – a marathon or summat – and your lad lost, there wouldn’t be any inquest into the blokes who didn’t give their runner his water and new trainers at the right time.

And whether you get off on the sound of noisy throttling and the scent of turtle-wax or not, there has to be a better way to decide who is the best driver of these freaks of technology than stuff that happens, effectively, off the track.

Back on track are, of course, Sunderland. Yes. Sunderland. I watched the highlights but you only have to look at the stats to know that the Black Cats toyed with the Blue mice all afternoon. What’s going on?

Well Chelsea were more all over the place than Brucie’s nose. And a midfield of Ramires and Mikel are little better than what Man U have available when Scholes is getting his breath back. Chelsea’s squad suddenly appears puddle-deep.

But it’s too easy to blame Chelsea. Sunderland were, annoyingly, magnificent. Even at 2-up you still thought Ancelotti’s men would mount a comeback every time someone said the name ‘Bramble’.

This is the team that got shellacked at St. James a fortnight ago. But it’s one of them seasons. I’ve heard some bemoan the lack of quality. Maybe, but if that makes things a bit more even, then great.

Man U keep hauling themselves back from the brink – theirs must be the poorest unbeaten run in the history of football. Man City are still up there despite the lavish expenditure leading to pretty nil.I saw this play called Art once, in which this bloke had spent a bleeding fortune on a painting that was nowt more than a white rectangle. Change the colour to sky blue and that’s Man City. Honestly, I’d rather watch Formula 1 right now.

Arsenal continue to graft out the results and Wolves keep not winning and playing well. Which means they’re doomed.

In fact, I’m loving this season so far, not least cos we’ve got some highly quotable managers.

Last week Mick McCarthy managed to get through a little monologue about pink boots without uttering the single word ‘poof’, although you could tell it was right on the tip of his tongue (don’t leave that image in your mind too long, people).

Here's Wolves's latest training session

Olly Holloway’s outrage at questions regarding his wholesale changes of personnel at Villa Park were a delight. Remember not to meet Ian for coffee. Sam Allardyce lamented the indeficiencies of his team at WHL. – me either - and ‘Arry Redknapp is... well ‘e’s ‘Arry, innie? Salt o’the earth, no messin’, don’t buy a car off ‘im, etc.

All of them – plus Brucie and Pulis – are old-fashioned English eccentrics. Not quite top-drawer players who’ve become in their own ways very good managers. Long may the refs and the FA give ‘em summat to get arsey about.