say my name...

Cross-posted with Cheer Up Alan Shearer.  The best English presenter of coverage of the Premier League that you've probably never even heard of: meet Canal +'s Darren Tulett.

I spent much of the Christmas period in France, and I was delighted to see that there is plenty of TV coverage of the English Premier League. Not only was I able to watch more a less the full round of fixtures on Boxing Day, but also the rescheduled Arsenal v Wolves game the following day. Coverage was pretty good too. Canal+ has this thing they call a “multiplex”, where they show you live coverage from a game, and then if something starts to happen elsewhere, they flick their coverage to one of the other games. On Boxing Day, with a pretty full fixture list all kicking off at the same time, this worked pretty well.

I suppose it’s a little annoying when they flick games just as you’re getting your bearings or if you are interested in one game in particular, but given that we spend our time in England on days like this watching a TV programme that consists entirely of Jeff Stelling flicking between coverage of a bunch of blokes watching the games, whilst we get no live footage of matches at all, it’s a relatively good way to absorb the afternoon’s drama.

Canal+’s studio coverage is actually fronted by an Englishman; he speaks impeccable French, of course, but his accent is clearly English and he also – unusually for French TV – pronounces all of the English club names correctly and could actually tell you what Wigan or Norwich are like. Darren Tulett has apparently been working in the media in France since 1998 (when he asked Bloomburg, his employers at the time, to transfer him to Paris so he could catch some of the World Cup) and has ended up anchoring TV coverage of the football almost by accident… and he’s clearly a bit of a character. For the Boxing Day coverage, he was dressed up in black tie (the concept of Boxing Day is alien to your average Frenchman and in 2011 was a normal working day), but for the Arsenal v Wolves game he was wearing what looked like a velvet smoking jacket in burgundy. Apparently he’s always a snappy dresser, my father-in-law tells me, and has been called “the Austin Powers of French television". His studio guests for the afternoon’s coverage were the distinctly unpromising Gerrard Houllier and Jean Alain Boumsong.  Actually, from what I could gather, Boumsong is an excellent pundit and Tulett is a good enough presenter to know not to let Gerrard Houllier speak too often....

He was funny too: often, at the end of a game, we would get a pitchside interview with one of the French-speaking players – Florent Malouda at the Chelsea game, for instance – but Canal+ also took the live feeds of interviews with some of the managers. When Alex Ferguson came on, Tullet informed the viewers that he would do his best to do an off-the-cuff translation as Ferguson spoke, but did warn us that he was Scottish so….. Sure enough, although the translation initially went well, before long, as Sir Alex became more and more impenetrable, so Tullet’s translation became a bit slower until he eventually started laughing.

I thought he was great fun. He’s got a really light touch and he knew how to bring the best out of his pundits and the coverage that was flicking around games. Apparently he’s known as Darren d’Angleterre and presents other football programmes on French tv that are inspired by the likes of Fantasy Football – one is even called “Match of ze Day”. He once (so I read) persuaded David Ginola to re-live the error that cost France World Cup qualification in 1993. In the sketch, Ginola ends up trying to hitch a ride out of the stadium with his France shirt over his shoulder to the "Lonely Man" theme tune from the Incredible Hulk. Brilliant.

Until I saw him on Boxing Day, I'd never even heard of him and he could probably walk unrecognised through the Sky Sports studios.  When you think of some of the idiots we have presenting football coverage in this country, that seems remarkable.

Darren Tulett might not have scored 48 goals for England or anything like that, but he is possessed of charm, wit, a lightness of touch and the ability to competently present coverage of the English Premier League.... all of which is more than can be said for some people we might mention.

Can we send Gary Lineker to France on an exchange deal in the January transfer window?  Please?

Although, to be fair, why would Tulett want to come back?

He's a legend, and you can follow him on Twitter too - @DarrenCanalPlus

Our loss is French television's gain. 

France 1 - 0 England.

the new diana....

[this - cross-posted with CUAS - was a difficult one to write.  I found it so hard to judge the tone, but I wanted to make the point without seeming gratuitously offensive.  I hope I've managed.  Let me know what you think]

Before I say anything else, let me just make it clear that I think that Gary Speed’s death yesterday, at the age of 42, is unquestionably tragic; an awful, shocking piece of news. It’s difficult for me to imagine a circumstance so terrible that hanging myself seemed the best option, and I hope I never experience anything remotely approaching it. At the moment it seems pointless to speculate on the circumstances surrounding Speed’s death. For me, it’s enough to know that another human being reached the point where he took his own life. Horrible.

Gary Speed was an excellent footballer: you don’t make 840 domestic appearances (including a once-record 535 Premier League games) or win 85 caps for your country without having some talent. Listening to the hysterical coverage over the media yesterday in the wake of the news of his death, however, and you’d imagine that he was one of the most remarkable people ever to live. Mark Pougatch was anchoring BBC Radio Five Live’s coverage, and his reaction was typically overblown: he remarked that he had never, in the whole of his broadcasting career, which includes presenting current affairs programmes, covered a story so remarkable. I can understand why friends and colleagues of Speed – people like Robbie Savage and Shay Given – would be stunned by the news of the sudden death of someone close to them. But everyone else? Was it really a stop all the clocks moment?

If – and it’s apparently by no means certain – Speed was suffering from depression, then we can hope that this news serves to help spread understanding and awareness of an awful condition that can strike anyone, no matter how famous, wealthy or happy they may superficially appear to be. There have already been a number of high profile footballers who have suffered from depression in recent years: coincidentally, Stan Collymore wrote movingly about his own experiences of the illness on Saturday, at more or less the same time as Speed was appearing on the BBCs Football Focus programme, talking brightly of his plans for a future. Less then 24 hours later, Gary Speed was dead and that future - his future - died with him.

It’s only a couple of years too since the German International goalkeeper, Robert Enke  killed himself in 2009 at the age of 32 after battling with depression for six years. It’s an awful, often invisible condition, that strikes without warning and without discrimination and that we understand so poorly.

Speed’s death was sad; the tragedy of a life snuffed out too soon. A tragedy for sure, but also the kind of tragedy that happens every day. Every death is a tragedy in its own way: every soldier or civilian blown up in Afghanistan, even those who don’t receive a funeral procession through Royal Wooton Bassett, every child in the third world who dies of a treatable illness, every cancer victim, every road traffic accident, those Russian sailors not rescued by Prince William… but not every passing will be marked by minutes of silence or of applause, or by tearful fans tying scarves to the gates of football clubs or by special phone-in programmes on the radio. Gary Speed was clearly a much loved and respected man, but it should not lessen the tragedy of his death on Sunday to acknowledge that he was just another human being in a long list whose lives ended too soon. In the UK alone, the statistics tell us that 15 other people took their own lives on the very same day that Speed took his (more than 6,000 each year in the UK and rising). The fact that those other suicides may be less marked does not make them less significant. Crying more loudly doesn’t make the tragedy any greater or the loss any more deeply felt by the bereaved.

Football is a strange sport: it is resolutely hard-nosed and yet also incorrigibly sentimental. The death of such a well-respected football man, especially at such an age and in such circumstances, was always likely to provoke an outpouring of emotion around the country, especially at those clubs where Speed played or in the country he represented with such distinction, both as player and latterly as manager. What has surprised me, however, is the apparent depth of our emotional incontinence, the sudden outpouring of feeling and an apparently nationwide desire to wallow - and judging by the radio this evening, we're still wallowing -  in what seems like a disproportionate level of grief. A tragedy, yes….but a cause of nationwide mourning and gnashing of teeth?  According to the media - and we are led by the coverage of events like this in the media to set the tone - then yes, it is.

I can’t help but wonder, if that other famous recent football suicide, Justin Fashanu, had been found dead in that Shoreditch lockup in 2011 and not in 1998, would he have got the same sort of reaction?

Gary Speed, human being. 1969-2011. R.I.P.

find out what it means to me...

It's Remembrance Weekend. A quick look back through my archives reveals that I usually have something to say about this (the last couple of years can be found here and here).  I get quite emotional when I think about the sacrifices made by ordinary people during the two World Wars, and as a result, I tend to get quite annoyed when I see how people seize and manipulate that sacrifice and the names of the fallen for their own petty outrages and political point-scoring.  It's happened again this year, and Poppy fascism has been all over the press again.  There's nothing new here, only the same phoney outrage and indignation, so rather than rehash my own tired old counter-arguments and frustrations again, I'm just going to literally re-publish something I wrote two years ago as it is still directly relevant today.

Plus I get to quote Joseph Heller again, which is always a good thing.

This is a cross-posting with the excellent football blog, Cheer Up Alan Shearer. 

I originally published this post here back in November 2009, talking about the crusade to try to shame all Premier League clubs into attaching a poppy to their playing shirts, but the current furore around FIFA's refusal to make an exception and allow the English football team to display the same emblem on their shirts in this week's international match against Spain is essentially the same argument being repeated again.  The reaction to this "refusal" (actually a refusal to break a rule that applies to ALL emblems - a more commercially motivated version of what we might call the Jon Snow defence) has been widespread, including the Prime Minister and Prince William as well as the luminaries and reknowned patriots of the English Defence League.

It is an entirely predictable outrage, and we have the same tired old reaction around the poppy every year with tedious regularity... and in fact, the outrage itself really proves FIFA's point that the poppy clearly IS a political symbol.

The FA might have now reached a compromise with FIFA that enables the team to wear poppies on black armbands, but the whole incident does nobody any credit and certainly does not indicate to me any greater respect for Our Brave Troops.

Anyway, here's my rant again.  Still sadly apt.  I fully expect more tiresome and predictable criticism of Jon Snow for his refusal to bow to "poppy fascism" and wear one as he reads the news.  You can set your watch by it.

Anyway.  Here's the 2009 post.

---

There's a bit in Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" where Captain Black runs something he calls the "Glorious Loyalty Oath Campaign", where everyone in the squadron finds themselves forced to sign oaths pledging their loyalty in order to get absolutely anything or everything:

"Almost overnight the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was in full flower, and Captain Black was enraptured to discover himself spearheading it. He had really hit on something. All the enlisted men and officers on combat duty had to sign a loyalty oath to get their map cases from the intelligence tent, a second loyalty oath to receive their flak suits and parachutes from the parachute tent, a third loyalty oath for Lieutenant Balkington, the motor vehicle officer, to be allowed to ride from the squadron to the airfield in one of the trucks. Every time they turned around there was another loyalty oath to be signed. They signed a loyalty oath to get their pay from the finance officer, to obtain their PX supplies, to have their hair cut by the Italian barbers. To Captain Black, every officer who supported his Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was a competitor, and he planned and plotted twenty-four hours a day to keep one step ahead. He would stand second to none in his devotion to country. When other officers had followed his urging and introduced loyalty oaths of their own, he went them one better by making every son of a bitch who came to his intelligence tent sign two loyalty oaths, then three, then four; then he introduced the pledge of allegiance, and after that "The Star-Spangled Banner," one chorus, two choruses, three choruses, four choruses. Each time Captain Black forged ahead of his competitors, he swung upon them scornfully for their failure to follow his example. Each time they followed his example, he retreated with concern and racked his brain for some new stratagem that would enable him to turn upon them scornfully again"

Of course, anyone refusing to sign one of these oaths is immediately branded as somehow being disloyal to their country, to their flag and to their cause:

"Without realizing how it had come about, the combat men in the squadron discovered themselves dominated by the administrators appointed to serve them. They were bullied, insulted, harassed and shoved about all day long by one after the other. When they voiced objection, Captain Black replied that people who were loyal would not mind signing all the loyalty oaths they had to. To anyone who questioned the effectiveness of the loyalty oaths, he replied that people who really did owe allegiance to their country would be proud to pledge it as often as he forced them to."

Captain Black's rival, Major Major, is actively prevented from signing any of these oaths, even if he wanted to:

"What makes you so sure Major Major is a Communist?"

"You never heard him denying it until we began accusing him, did you? And you don't see him signing any of our loyalty oaths."

"You aren't letting him sign any."

"Of course not," Captain Black explained. "That would defeat the whole purpose of our crusade".

Thus does Joseph Heller neatly skewer empty patriotism.

I was reminded of this when reading about the Daily Mail's latest campaign to try and get every Premier League football club to display a poppy on their matchday shirts during November.

[did you notice that most Premier League clubs - but not all - had poppies in place on the shirts last weekend, in the last round of fixtures before Remembrance Day 2011? In the Blackburn v Chelsea game, the home side had poppies and the away side did not... although there was a wreath and a solemn silence and apparently that was enough to avoid comment.  Perhaps people were saving all their anger for the International game?]

As a result of their bullying, there are now only three of the twenty clubs holding out: Liverpool, Manchester United and Bolton Wanderers [Bolton ended up wearing poppies in 2009, and as you'll notice from the picture of Super Kev above, taken last weekend, they didn't bother putting up a fight at all this year]. As a spokesman for Manchester Utd not unreasonably said:

"We don’t think it’s particularly necessary. We sell poppies around the ground and all our officials wear them and we work with Armed Forces charities in a lot of other ways throughout the year."

Not good enough, apparently, and the Mail is continuing to try to bully them into changing their minds. Obviously, their readers are full of considered opinions on the subject. Here's lazzruss:

"Yes Yes Yes!!! It is beyond my capacity to put into words how this 'government' has ruined our once Great Britain by sytematically [sic] attacking our spiritual and historical heritage and culture and we have had enough! Banning poppies is the final insult to our nation as this shows a complete disregard and contempt for our Glorious Dead who gave everything including their very lives for the sake of the future of our Nation and every football team owes them their success and privileges - to display a simple poppy proudly on their shirts should be a moral imperative for anyone who loves our Country and what we (not the inept and shameful Labour Government) stand for."

Let's leave aside the fact that the majority of the players in the Premier League aren't even English, eh? Why let that get in the way of a good rant about WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY?

Um, perhaps it's a statement of the obvious, but if you try to force people to wear a poppy, aren't you restricting our freedom to choose not to wear one? Isn't that the same freedom that "Our Glorious Dead' (note the capitalisation) fought for? Like it or not, that's the same freedom that allows a student to get so paralytically drunk that he urinated on a war memorial in Sheffield. Not very nice, for sure, but surely more a story about binge drinking than it is about any calculated disrespect for the dead, whatever the Daily Mail try to make of the story (flogging too good for him, naturally).

This "Poppy fascism" seems to be everywhere at the moment. Apparently the BBC are under pressure because the dancers on "Strictly..." weren't wearing poppies last week. All of the judges were, but none of the dancers. Not good enough, apparently, as everyone on the X-Factor was wearing one.... The BBC initially (and not very bravely) hid behind "Health & Safety issues" as the reason why the dancers weren't wearing poppies, but have now apparently changed their minds in the face of all this public outrage. 

Where does this oneupmanship and assumed moral authority stop? Why are we only displaying our poppies for a couple of weeks of November? Does that mean we're being disrespectful and unpatriotic for the other 50 weeks of the year? Should we all be dyeing our hair red and tattooing poppies onto our cheeks so we can be displaying our gratitude and support for the sacrifices made on our behalf every single day of the year?

Of course, you can trust the good old Guardian for an alternative view, and Marina Hyde today has a good rant about this "phony poppy apoplexy":

"So on Saturday, know that every late challenge, every sending-off, will be in the memory of those who fell in battle. Then accept the fact that media campaigns to foreground the poppies that are not being worn, as opposed to the ones that are, serve not as a memorial to the sacrifices made on our behalf, but as a reminder of our hard-wired one‑upmanship and infinite capacity to find ways to divide ourselves."

The commentators are even more strident:

"Forced wearing of the poppy to commemorate a fight against tyranny? Britain seems to get sillier and sillier, and more and more irrelevant every week."

It seems that the spirit of Captain Black is alive and well and still busily hunting out people who won't sign his loyalty oaths.

"You never heard him denying it until we began accusing him, did you?"

Think on that if you leave your house without a poppy this November.

----

Two years on, and the same tired old arguments and outrage are very much in evidence again.  Depressing, don't you think?  Perhaps we should be spending our weekends on a pilgrimage to the Cenotaph via Royal Wooton Bassett instead of watching a game of football?

Enjoy those armbands on the England side on Saturday, and let's think again on Marina Hyde's words from her 2009 article:

"So on Saturday, know that every late challenge, every sending-off, will be in the memory of those who fell in battle". 

Paul Hayward writes something similar in this year's Guardian:

"You either buy a poppy or you don't, you either wear it or you don't. You can buy one in October if you like, though you shouldn't have to, and if you are occasionally seen without one it doesn't make you a bad person. Because surely the whole strength behind the poppy's symbolism is that it is the most understated of statements. It is a quiet, gentle reminder, not a shouted command. Above all, as a gesture it is personal and private, and ought not to be forced to go public".

If we follow the logic of the poppy fascists further, if it's disrespectful to our brave troops not to wear a poppy, is it not also disrespectful if we don't play a full-strength side and if John Terry doesn't start? An insult to the memory of their sacrifices?  As LB said last night in the pub, what would our reaction be if the game on Saturday was against Argentina and they insisted on wearing a memorial to their Falklands dead?

Quite how this annual farce shows any respect for the people who have sacrificed their lives fighting for their countries is beyond me.  Being seen to show respect is not necessarily the same thing as actually being respectful.

---

As a reminder of how quickly football can change, the first game of Sven Goran Eriksson's reign as England manager was against Spain in February 2001.  A Spanish side including Iker Casillas, Raul and Pep Guardiola lost 3-0 to goals by Nick Barmby, Emile Heskey and Ugo Ehiogu.  The start of the side hailed as a "Golden Generation".

England's line-up that night?

James, Phil Neville, Powell, Butt, Ferdinand, Campbell, Beckham, Scholes, Andy Cole, Owen, Barmby.
Subs: Gary Neville, Martyn, Brown, Ehiogu, Phillips, Sheringham, Fowler, Heskey, Lampard, Carragher, Wright, Ball, McCann.

Spain are, of course, now World and European champions.  England, meanwhile, have won chuff all.

...never stopped me dreaming

Look, I would write you a really interesting, insightful post... perhaps about the riots, and how the Nottinghamshire Police have done an amazing job keeping everyone fully informed about what's going off in the streets via regular Twitter updates, or maybe about how researchers, part funded by the MS Society, have identified a pile more genes that cause multiple sclerosis... Another day, perhaps.  The truth is that I've spent an absolute AGE writing up a set of pre-season predictions for Cheer Up Alan Shearer and I haven't got the energy to do anything else but go to bed. 

It's mostly wasted effort as I've put everyone in about the same position in the final league table as everyone else is predicting, but I've spent hours writing this all out, so would be much obliged if you could go and have a look and a laugh at how highly we've placed Wolves.

We're planning to do more with CUAS this year, so do keep an eye on it.  I do at least one post a year where I talk about how I don't actually really like football all that much, so you can look forward to that one, at least.

We're also on Facebook now, so please feel free to 'like' us.
... And inevitably we're on Twitter too.  @cheerupno9

Enjoy.

It took chuffing hours....

you better listen to the radio...

When I'm tootling about at home in the morning, or in the evening when I'm getting dinner sorted, I quite like to listen to the radio.  I'm usually a Five Live man, but for a while, the dial was sometimes also set onto BBC Radio One.  I listened to other stations, but I found Zane Lowe in the evenings to be a pretty good way of discovering new music and -- save us -- I used to find Chris Moyles tolerably entertaining in the mornings when I wanted to listen to a bit of light banter and some music instead of just news chat.

Yeah.

Well, Moyles is about the same age as me (he's actually about 2 weeks older) and it was easy to listen to him referencing things that we both grew up with and playing music from the early-90s.  Quite how that fits in with the station's remit ("The remit of Radio 1 is to entertain and engage a broad range of young listeners with a distinctive mix of contemporary music and speech. It should reflect the lives and interests of 15–29 year olds but also embrace others who share similar tastes"), I don't really know.... but it's hard to argue with listening figures that have him pulling in something like 7.5 million every week.

I came to my senses obviously and have now more or less stopped listening to Radio 1 entirely.  Perhaps he's always been like this, but it dawned on me that Moyles was essentially a big, self-important bully with a gang of cronies laughing at his every joke, and decided there was more to life than listening to him swaggering appallingly across the airwaves each morning.  I still like Zane Lowe, but now I'm much more likely to be listening to either Sport on Five in the evening or to stream some music though the kitchen radio instead.  In the mornings, I'm not exclusively a Breakfast on Five man.  I know that Nicky Campbell isn't to everyone's taste, and many will remember him from his time on radio 1 in the Smashy and Nicey years, but I think he's got a nice light touch whilst also being unafraid to chase after the difficult questions... in fact, he can be surprisingly tenacious.  I also used to like the way that Shelagh Fogarty pricked his pomposity, something that I'm not sure his new co-host Rachel Burden has shown yet, but it's still early days.

And I like the sports coverage too.

Lack of sports coverage was initially the main reason that I couldn't get on with the Radio 4 Today programme, but now I find that I can't listen to it because I find the presenters fogeyish, hectoring and just plain boring.  They all strike me as a little bit too aware of their exalted position in the broadcasting pantheon as the BBC's flagship show, and it leaves me entirely cold.  Plus, what the hell is "Thought for the Day" all about?  Who wants to hear some leading religious figure climbing into the pulpit on a topical theme each morning?  Screw that.

I may have to change my listening habits again though: football is back.  As I got up this morning, thanks to Alex Ferguson's ongoing and extremely childish feud with the BBC, I had to listen to Manchester United's assistant manager, Mick Phelan, go on at great length about yesterday's Community Shield game against Manchester City.  He parped on and on without saying anything of great import, and I was left to wonder why the BBC felt the need to play the damn interview at all.  Couldn't they just have had their football correspondent paraphrase?

This evening was even worse: on the drive home, Sport on Five had already begun, and a panel of experts was deep in conversation about the weekend's game and the imminent start of the Premier League season.  Arsenal have signed a new player today, I learned.... but as it was neither a big striker or a dominant centre-half, I was treated to five minutes of incredulous blustering about Arsene Wenger's broken transfer policy by no lesser a luminary than Steve Claridge, with John Motson chipping in about how something had gone deeply wrong at the club.  There may be problems at Arsenal, but as a fan of a 'lesser' Premier League club, one that was nearly at the very bottom of old Division 4 not all that long ago, I find the obsession with covering the perceived 'failures' of the 'big' clubs more than a little tedious (these things are relative, after all - as a Wolves fan, I'd love to 'fail' like Arsenal).  There are plenty of other clubs in the Premier League, never mind the rest of the football league pyramid, you know.  Not much word on Martin Jol's transfer policy at Fulham, or of Steve Keen's chances at Blackburn this year.  How about Nigel Clough at Derby? John Coleman at Accrington Stanley?  Pfff.  Forget about it.

I stupidly clicked on a link to read an article in the Guardian today.  The article itself was fine, but the comments underneath seem to be full of idiots spouting regurgitated opinions with an added dash of bile and partiality.  Compared to the comments on articles in the same newspaper on stories about cricket or rugby, which often genuinely add to my enjoyment and understanding of the game, these idiots drag football down to the lowest common denominator.  Who'd be a football journalist if you have to put up with those idiots below the line all the time?

I like football and I support a club that is (just about) still in the Premier League.... but even so, this saturation coverage -- of the Premier League in particular; the football league season kicked off this weekend just past, but - with the possible exception of Big Sam at West Ham - the main focus of all the analysis I heard was on the "big" league -- is making me want to scream before a ball has really been kicked in anger.

Bearing that in mind, will you allow me to point you in the direction of the football blog Cheer Up Alan Shearer?  LB and I (but mainly LB) have been doing this for a little while now, but we've recently relaunched and will be putting up insightful analysis over the coming months.  Well, that or whatever old shit floats across our minds, anyway.  Latest post: Glen Mulcaire.... before the phone hacking, the handy non-league football years.

Enjoy.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a comprehensive (ahem) pre-season preview of the Premier League to write.  So, if Wolves are finishing in the top 4, does that mean Arsenal or Man City will be missing out?

.... and what you're looking at is the master plan

The football season is already upon us, and the Premier League kicks off this weekend. I've just spent hours and hours pulling together an almost completely hopeless and ill-informed preview of the season over on Cheer Up Alan Shearer. Mystic Meg I am not, so do go and amuse yourselves at the implausibility of my predictions. Besides, I haven't the energy to write anything else after that marathon.

Before you scoff, do please try to remember that it's actually a lot harder than it looks. Just so I can get my excuses in some ten months early, I might also add that the Premier League looks very, very average this year - outside the top four or five clubs anywhere. I reckon there are three distinct tiers:

1-5
6-14
15-20

within those pockets, I reckon anyone could finish almost anywhere... and actually the bottom two tiers are pretty much up for grabs too - you could almost as easily finish 6th as 16th.

Who'd be a pundit, eh?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to have a long lie down and to think about the make-up of my Fantasy League Team (which oddly, given my predictions for the league, I'm usually quite good at).

...and lest we forget it's still summer, I've some pondering about the make-up of England's top order for The Oval too. Ramprakash? What short memories people have. In what way does Ramps' track record make you think that he stands up to pressure any better than Ian Bell or Ravi Bopara? In 50-odd tests, he averages 27..... If I was a selector, I'd be beating my way down to Somerset, cap in hand and hoping that Banger will consider a one-off appearance.

But enough sport, eh?

ready to go....(?)

Well, it looks like our summer break is almost over.... the football season is nearly upon us again.

[blows on tiny party horn]

No?

Not excited by that?

(me neither....)

Pressurised by the impending kick off, I have finally pulled my damn finger out and managed to pull together a particularly half-arsed review of my own predictions for the 2007/8 season over on Cheer Up Alan Shearer.

You can read it here.

It took me bloody ages too.

...And I'll have to document my wild guesses for this year in the next couple of days too.

Mutter mutter.

I'm not predicting Spurs for the top 4 again, I know that much.

...But I don't fancy Stoke's chances much.

...and I'm counting on Berbatov's move to Man Utd to complete my fantasy team, although as I've also picked the little Croatian fella and I've got Bentley, perhaps it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Oh, but aren't they all Spurs players?

Damn.

Curses. It looks as though I'm getting into the swing of things now....

Stupid, neverending game....

people are fragile things....

It is exactly fifty years since the Munich air disaster, when an aeroplane containing a Manchester United squad returning from a European tie in Belgrade crashed after failing to lift off from a snowy runway at the third attempt.

Twenty-three people in all died, including 8 members of the famous Manchester Utd team known as the "Busby Babes".

Whether you are a Manchester United fan, a football fan or simply a decent human being, we can surely all agree that this was an awful tragedy and that it is well worth spending a quiet moment remembering those who died today.

LB has written a lovely heartfelt piece on the tragedy here, and I strongly encourage you to have a look.

we've been up all night moving the goalposts...

In case you've been living in a cave for the last few weeks, you'll probably know that there is a massive sporting occasion going on in the England this weekend.

Yes!

England will be taking on India in the third and final test match of the summer at the Oval. England will be hoping to snatch a win to share the series 1-1 and to protect their unbeaten record in home series since 2001.

Oh.

Hold on.

The new Premier League season is kicking off too, apparently.



If you are remotely interested in this noble game (and a big hello at this point to any American readers who may have discovered the game in the last month or so) then you should be heading over to Cheer Up Alan Shearer. For my money, this is one of the best football blogs on the internet.

Oh alright then. Perhaps I should declare an interest at this point: this marvellous and insightful website is the brainchild of our very own Lord Bargain, although he is (occasionally) helped out by me and (very occasionally) by Flash.

If you get over there now, then you will be able to:

--> Marvel at the manifold marvellous contributions from several reknowned writers in the latest installment of the A-Z of football. I is for.... intelligence, injury time, international management, infiltration and Italia 1990.

--> Gasp in amazement at the stunning insight of ST's pre-season predictions. Or perhaps you will simply be stunned at how obvious they are.

--> Get involved in the Predictions League. Stun us all every week with your amazing ability to correctly predict the scores in every Premier League game. If you get started this week then you won't have so much ground to make up on Lord B.

Also look out for the moment when I put up that inevitable post where I say how I don't really like football anyway.....

Go and have a look. The Guardian football writers do... they steal ideas from us (well, from Lord B) all the time. Their most recent piece of thievery involves stealing the predictions league from us.

Pah!

Anyway.

As you were.