Words Dept.: category

Someone predicted on a forum on the Liverpool Echo website at 10.28am yesterday that Arsenal would draw Liverpool, Man Utd would get Roma and Chelsea would play Fenerbahce, leaving Barcelona v Schalke in the quarter finals of the Champions League. The idea of fixing a live cup draw seems initially ridiculous until you consider the [...]

The outcome at 18.33 today – whereby the appointment of Fabio Capello as the new England manager was finally “approved” – was reached unpredictably speedily during the course of this week. And, rather as it does with Wimbledon and the Eurovision Song Contest, the BBC has taken ownership of the event.
It’s been impossible to switch [...]

Today’s Guardian blog piece called “Israel and Russia: the best of football friends” is a neat lesson in how to avoid legal action, while at the same time suggesting a “conspiracy theory” about how some of Roman Abramovich’s money, through the (Russian) Football Academy Foundation, is tied up in Israeli football.
It hints at something whiffy [...]

A bewildering choice of headline in the Manchester Evening News, which appears to use Carlsberg Special Brew as part of a punning headline in a story about the “homeless and disadvantaged” today.
Man City footballer Didi Hamann is pictured on the back page visiting a “resource centre for homeless and disadvantaged people in Stockport to help [...]

While I was away, Jose Mourinho resigned as Chelsea manager. I must confess I felt confused and disorientated by this turn of events. Luckily, there was an excellent distillation of the saga in the Mirror from that renowned expert Fiona Phillips (of GMTV):
We truly won’t see his like again. He was so charismatic and so [...]