Picking Over The Ashes

Okay I've been resisting even mentioning it for a couple of months but I wouldn't be human if I didn't want to say something about the cricket. (I do mention the footy later). Although in this case cricket is a term as loose as an English batsman's forward defensive.


I've read various articles cataloguing where it went wrong for England this winter. Not one of them has suggested that the self-centred twots that pissed on the Oval pitch last summer just got a little bit too complacent for their own good.


Mitchell Johnson was quick, yes, but he sprayed it around like, well, like a celebrating Englishman's urine. Clarke was a top batter, yes, but he's got a bad back so we'll pick four - count 'em, FOUR - lanky pacemen to bowl at him and he'll run and away and hide. Haddin's old. Harris gets injured. Warner's a nutter, Watson's an lbw in waiting.


We haven't got any time to practise while we're out there but who cares? We beat them 3-0 at home.  We're great, they're crap.


Wait, wasn't that 3-0 based on scraping home in one, the rain saving us in another, and the fact that Ian Bell was unbelievably good all summer. None of this seemed to matter a fig.


There were mitigating factors. Trott's departure didn't help but clearly the man needed to go and his admission of mental anguish was the only courageous act by an England player all series.


At the opposite end of the spectrum you have the comedy spin king - Tuffers' heir apparent - scampering off the sinking ship with his trousers round his ankles, the yellow streak down his back visible to all. No mental breakdown for Swanny. No he'd just had enough and was bowling a bit shit. Compare that to Matt Prior - having a dreadful series himself but still around to support those that replaced him.


Now I have been told - and I believe it to be true - that cricket is a game for vertebrates. You need a backbone. The wafts and swipes and tossed-off tonks that saw batsman after batsman surrender just stick so horribly in the craw that I'd like to see them all join Swanny on the after-dinner circuit and leave some less self-satisfied bastards in charge.


So something has to be done. Now of course George Osborne would tell you the job's only half-done. Let me finish ravaging the poor and then we'll have a proper economy in place.


And indeed Weed has said he's staying (a Weed is an unwanted Flower). Cook looked catatonic by the end both as batsman and skipper but who else is there? Pietersen gets loads of flak but frankly he's not the only one to have been awful and at least he got a few (and I mean a few) on the board before he gave it all away.


Not one of the three replacement six-and-a-half footers was ready to bowl. Only Broad and Stokes can claim to have tasted anything like success. I'm surprised someone hasn't shouted 'FUCKING SHAMBLES'. Oops I just did.


It's debatable whether Flower is the man to steer the pedalo SS England out of choppy waters. He took us there didn't he? But there's no doubt that whoever comes in, you can't just jettison half the team when their records speak for themselves. Cook, Pietersen, Bell, Anderson and Broad have to stay. For now. The rest of it is entirely up for grabs.


Grab a blindfold, grab a pin, get out your Wisdens and pick now!!!


The cricket management don't have Fat Sam's get out of jail free card. There's not even an injury list to concern Andy Flower. Allardyce's threadbare selection for the Cup thrashing at Forest was par for the course. He has a League Cup semi-final and Premier League survival to think about. Hammers fans are just fortunate that their manager picked eleven human beings - I'm sure Sam was hoping to field a couple of lambs and a guinea-pig.


Allardyce has the avowed support of Sullivan and Gold - and I don't know about you but that would give me the creeps. It's like being kissed by Michael Corleone. But even his troubles don't quite match up to Moyes's at Man U.


Since I tipped them for 4th, United have rediscovered their early season form. Delightfully enough. It doesn't help that Van Persie's out and Rooney's not fit. But what's worse - and to be fair Fergie papered over this crack quite brilliantly - is the midfield is just a vacancy.


Cleverley? Anderson? Giggs? Fletcher - welcome back but..? Fellaini, when he returns, well he's not exactly creative, except with his elbows. Compare that with the top three's midfields: Ozil, Ramsey, Cazorla, Wilshere; Toure, Silva, Nasri, Navas; Hazard, Oscar, Willian, Mata. And they don't all get a start each week.


In the case of Chelsea and Arsenal, if the out-and-out forward creates or takes something that's a bonus. The midfield is the team. Moyes's side has resorted to lumping it forward more just to escape the errant flicks of a Cleverley or the tortured toe-pokes from Kagawa.


Moyes doesn't see him buying anyone in the transfer window. If he can't pick up someone to tweak the central area - and I suggest Dereen Brown might not be a bad place to start - then goodbye Champions League.


Tonight they're at Sunderland. Not a place to fear. I suspect if they don't get out of there with a win, the Govan Beetroot will be out of the stands and under a dug-out roof before too long. For Fergie, it must be like watching a stranger crunching the gears on your beloved old Ferrari.


But stop moaning United fans. It's not God-given, after all. And besides, you're making the rest of us smile and that's got to be worth something hasn't it?