Where Are the Women?
Just watching Manchester United playing at Besiktas in Istanbul.
In the crowd scenes of the Turkish supporters there is not a female face to be seen.
Compare that to teams like Watford and Ipswich where twenty to twenty-five percent of the regular supporters are women.
A Missed Opportunity to be Miserable
I had thought about going to Middlesborough today to watch Ipswich. I’ve not been to the Riverside and I wanted to check out some local history and prove once and for all that my family is not related to Lord Byron.
Luckily I didn’t as Town lost by three goals to one.
I Like Capello
He may a hard bastard with the England team. Or he may be a complete pussy-cat.
But he has this attititude that all managers of whatever, should copy. His dealing with the statements of Slaven Bilic is clever, inoffensive and will motivate England.
Judging by the expected result tonight, his attitude has worked.
Ulster Says No!
Well almost!
What a pity as they deserved to win in Poland.
An old friend was on the streets of Dublin, when Northern Ireland beat Spain in the 1982 World Cup Finals in Valencia, and it was one hell of a party. Note that I said Dublin!
Kenny MacAskill
Kenny MacAskill is the Scottish Justice Minister at the centre of the Megrahi case.
I didn’t know much about him until I read this profile of him on the BBC web site.
He is an interesting character and judging by his anti-English views, he is not the sort of person, I would get on with. It may have been to a appreciative audience, but his views on the England football team as “The Great Satan”, was a bit much.
Ipswich 1 – Crystal Palace 3
Not a lot to say about this, but they really are in a pickle this year.
It seems to have got worse since David Norris was injured at Coventry.
The Five Live Riddle from Gethin Jones
He always asks a question on Saturday morning on his show.
Today’s question was.
Which footballer scored 8 goals in his home league and then came to the Premiership, where he didn’t score. He then played in Europe and didn’t score for his new club, but did for his country. He then came back to the Premiership and scored another goal. He was then transferred to another Premiership club, but didn’t score. He is recognised as one of the best footballers of all time.
I heard it driving back from Cambridge and thought it might well be a goalkeeper. Possibly Edwin van der Sarof Manchester United, who had played before for Fulham. I just wondered if he’d actually been in the Premiership earlier before Fulham. He hadn’t according to Wikipedia.
But searching for goalkeepers, who’d scored goals led me to José Luis Chilavert, who was famously nicknamed El Loco. No prizes for what that means. He scored 74 including eight for Paraguay, which is way ahead of anybody else at his level.
A link there to a video of one of Peter Schmeichel‘s goals gave me the answer.
Setanta Again
I used to subscribe to Setanta, as it gave me a lot of Premier League matches and Racing UK. Now I need to subscribe to one company to get both. The price will be more than twice what I paid Setanta.
No wonder they went bust!
But seriously, why do I have to pay through the nose to see some racecources on the box and the others are free?
Because most of those running racing are as described by Will Carling and can’t understand that one Racing Channel is for the best of the industry.
Connor Better Than Rooney
That was the headline on the front of the East Anglian Daily Times today.
It is hype, but how many sixteen-year-olds have scored two goals on their competitive start? Not many. I think Trevor Francis scored more but he was an exceptional talent.
I was at Shrewsbury and after watching England last night, he’s a bit like Emile Heskey. Big, strong, athletic and pretty nimble. I wouldn’t give very long odds that Connor leads the England line in the 2014 World Cup.
What Would Oswald Mosley Have Thought?
Just watching the Holland-England game on the box.
One of the odd things of this match is that Holland are playing in all plain orange and England are playing in plain white. You don’t see that often these days, as marketeers think that fancy strips sell better. The new England strip says that they don’t, as it is selling well. I suspect that something plain is acceptable in many more places like decent restaurants and clubs!
It’s interesting to look at the England side and see how many players are not your average white bloke.
They started with Green, Johnson, Ashley Cole, Ferdinand, Terry, Barry, Beckham, Lampard, Young, Heskey, Rooney. Only Green, Terry, Barry, Beckham, Lampard and Rooney would fall into Mosley’s preferred racial group.
Look at who Fabio Capello would have preferred to play like David James and who he used as substitutes and you might have an England team that line is as James, Johnson, Ashley Cole, Ferdinand, Terry, Barry, Wright-Phillips, Lampard, Young, Heskey, Defoe. Here it’s only Terry, Barry and Lampard.
Does anybody care?
I don’t!
My father wouldn’t have either.
He told me he was there at the Battle of Cable Street, when a coalition of Jews, communists and anti-fascists opposed Oswald Mosley and his supporters marching through the East End of London. But my father wasn’t a communist, although he did have Jewish ancestry, but a left-wing member of the Tory party. That may seem strange today, but race and religion often wasn’t a problem for a lot of Edwardians. It certainly wasn’t for my father, who I never heard say anything racist.
As I get to know my father more from people who met him, I suspect that he was there and his claim that he hit Mosley with a tomato may well be true.
