Ha- I was only joking when I suggested that Liverpool

supporters should buy out their own club

http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,2249738,00.html

Remember kids- you read it here first...

http://footballisnotmygod.blogspot.com/2008/01/if-two-texans-will-get-away-with-it.html

In the last 630 mins of football Newcastle

have scored 1 goal against top flight opposition.

To put this into context- Derby County- who have the worst goal difference in the premiership by far, have scored 6.

Crisis? What crisis?

STOP PRESS: Derby don't lose!

It may only be a 1-1 but god, I am sure the Deby players did a lap of honour after that result last night. In fact, they do a lap of honour pretty much anytime they win a corner, or so I've heard.

Liverpool also lost and now languish just out of the European places. I predict fallout shoud they somehow fail to qualify for the Champions League. With all that debt, only nominally secured, hanging over them, the pressure must be mounting on Rafa Benitez. You see, I am not convinced that these texans will pay out of their own pockets should there be a shortfall in Liverool's profits next season- even if the debt is secured against their personal fortunes. Not when their are sellable assets like Fernando Torres around. The idea that a couple of wealthy tightarse Americans might strip a club back to its bare bones appeals to my sense of fatalism. I was really hoping the Glazers would do it to Manchester Utdb actually.

Today is also transfer deadline day and this blog will not be offering any transfer news or last minute reports on all the action before the 'window closes'. None. Not unless that is either Gascoigne, Ginola, Cantona, or Asprilla make unexpected comebacks...

I was going to do something like proper journalism this morning

and do some careful research into the GSE Group who have just bought Derby County. Sadly, however, google turned up nothing on them, not even a company website, and since the web is pretty much the only research tool I have, my impetus is now well and truly blunted. In the absence of evidence though I am now free to imagine just how shadowy the organisation is, I mean, why would any 21st century business not have an easily googable website, unless, and I say this in sinister italics, they have something to hide...? HMMM? Even the overlords of what I'll dub the Global Empire, the Carlyle Group, have a webiste http://www.carlyle.com/. On this site they carefully disguise just how much money they get for every bomb dropped on the middle east.

So what digs with the GSE? How come they need to communicate nothing to the football obsessed British public? Why no website. They must be either incompetent, or mysterious, or both. And how can this be when they buy Derby at such an opportune time. When relegation certainty has shaved off the price a bit, but before the competition to purchase hots up at the end of season. Smart move then.

The purchase ensures that over 25% of premiership clubs are now foreign owned. A fact which could, in the right hands, trigger a mini frenzy for nationalist economics. Time to dust off the Scargilite banners perhaps.

" Nationalise the National Game!!"
"Tell the yanks to fuck off home and stop calling it soccer"

The campaign chants could be fun too- "What do we want? Nationalisation. When do we want it? After Match Of the Day."

In Newcastle the revolution continues. With queen's infantryman Dennis Wise hanging up his Leed's coloured tracksuit and coming to the club, presumably to take the role turned down by Alan Shearer. As reported elsewhere last week Alan was overheard saying- "Kevin is his own man and can do we what he likes. But it is my club."

Football- where the narrative never stops...

If two Texans will get away with it then so can I!

I will buy Liverpool FC. And my finance plan...

1) Buy the club for 375 million, promise the fans a brighter more successful future
2) Increase ticket pricess 10%, ditto merchandise
3) Introduce a rip off bond scheme, like Northern Rock, to give fans a 51% stake in the club, or threaten to start the asset stripping- sale and lease of stadium, share a ground with Everton, selling Gerrard whether he likes it or not, etc.
4) Watch the fans remortgage their houses in a desperate bid to make the bond scheme work and save the club
5) Hope I don't get too many death threats
6) sell off the other half of the club at a bargain knockdown price
7) Retire to the Cayman Islands

Today's first gag is brought to you courtesy of Frankie Howard

after another customary error from Wigan's Bramble at the weekend gifted Everton their opener. "Ooo Titus, you silly boy. You are a clutz Tightarse." Or words to that effect.

The win lifts Everton into the supposedly elite top four, and puts all the pressure on Merseyside rivals Liverpool who have so far enjoyed a dismal league campaign, by their lofty standards. The force may be with Everton, who have an unsettling unbeaten run in the league. The stats are with Liverpool however, who have two games in hand. One of which against Aston Villa- and no doubt Martin O Neill's men will use this next encounter against one of Europe's best as a yardstick of both their progress and potential. This is the problem with being a good big club like Liverpool (as opposed to a rubbish big club like Newcastle). Other teams really want to beat you. The measure of a top team therefore, rather than just a very good team, or even a lucky and good team, is to finish in the top 4 in consecutive seasons, at least.

Meanwhile Kevin Keegan's Newcastle got off to a start with what will hopefully prove an atypical performance. A 0-0 against a Bolton team who seem to have internalised the concept of quagmire and reproduce it in the form of tactics on the football pitch.

Fulham continue to plummet Championshipwoods with an air of gritty denial. It would be a shame to see them relegated although in my opinion they ain't been the same team since they lost Saha and Boa Morte. I rarely watch Fulham so could be wrong though. I am also somewhat unsure about Ray Hodgson. I doubt not his experience but his class- I know he did great things and is respected across Scandinavia- but then so are Abba.

And finally a question. There is nearly always a team that looks safe at this part of the season but then implodes and falls into the bottom three to fight in the spring survival dogfight. Who will be this year's surprise relegation package then?

Bolton? too obvious. Spurs- not under Ramos and Poyet (they are missing Poyet at Leeds I think), M'brough- could be... Newcastle....

Having said all that it is always a team no-one expects- at all- West Ham then. Although that is crazy talk.

Greatest Ever potential football double entendres

"He's working it round the edge of the box. Goes left. Goes right. He can't penetrate the defence though, tries to muscle his way through, but he ends up poking it wide."


"If they look like they might go down this year the fans will be queuing up to give them a hard time"


"They won't just lie back and take this. They're skilled at coming from behind you know."

"there is no greater ignominy than someone shooting from the edge of the box when you're unprepared to deal with it."

"He shoots! And the rival fans really look like they've got egg on their faces now"

"They'll be on the receiving end of a tongue lashing come half time."

"This is an opportunity they simply must take, split between two legs""

I actually gave little cheer when I heard Keegan

was going to manage Newcastle again. Yay for him. The most likebale idiot ever to grace the backpages. Who will ever forget his "I'd just love it if we beat them, Love It!" breakdown. Who could forget his spontaneous England resignation speech. "I'm just not up fo the job". Who could forget Faustino Asprilla wobbling down the wing in the Champions League.... Newcastle are no longer in the team I would most like to go down category (that is back with Bolton again). thanks only to Keegan. Welcome back sir.

(image left: Keegan does The Crane while impersonating Daniel Son from Karate Kid)

Meanwhile, time for something completely different. Names. Silly names.

When we were staying in chile a few years back we met a girl in her early twenties, a chilena, and her boyfriend, a swede. Nice couple they were. Bumming around south america selling jewellery, and, when not travelling, they lived communally in a community in the Atacama desert. Like of the sort that went out of fashion in 1969. I can't remember her name. His name is etched into my memory though. It is Recto. Quite a common name in Sweden I understand. In chile however his name brought hilarity- as Recto means rectum in Spanish.

When this nice Swedish lad first met his girlfriend's parents they asked "What is your name then?"
"Recto"
"Yes, that is what they call you, but what is your name...?"

'Why do you mention this?' I hear you cry (proverbally speaking). Well, it is because last night Elano scored for Man City. This brought something to my attention. As my girlfriend fell about laughing like a schoolkid. El ano, in Spanish, means The Anus. Probably the funniest name then , since Kuntz. It is also begging a double entendre. "the defence have been solid today. they're really getting stuck into el ano." Etc.

Next post- greatest potential football double entendres... But first this

A list of Keeganisms

'Gary always weighed up his options, especially when he had no choice.'
'Chile have three options - they could win or they could lose.'
'We deserved to win this game after hammering them 0-0 in the first half.'
'You get bunches of players like you do bananas, though that is a bad comparison.'
'Nicolas Anelka left Arsenal for £23million and they built a training ground on him'
'I know what is around the corner - I just don't know where the corner is. But the onus is on us to perform and we must control the bandwagon.'
'I came to Nantes two years ago and it's much the same today, except that it's totally different.'
"In some ways, cramp is worse than having a broken leg."

Capello investigated for tax fraud...

"this would never have happened under Silvio Burlesqueconi (sic)" says Capello. Before adding, "this is why I took the job in England anyway. Despite the general population shouldering a massive tax burden the super-rich pay practically nothing." He said this in Italian by the way. Not in his broken English. I don't speak Italian but do speak Spanish so I was just kinda following roughly what he said. I might have invented bits. He then went on "I am from Turin. In my city we are all corrupt fascists and conservatives. Institutionally. Unfortunately this current government hails from further south in my country, where they are all corrupt communists and and socialists. And this is the way of it. When we have a north leaning government we persecute the corrupt in Rome. When we have a Rome government, we persecute the corrupt from Turin etc. C'est la vie. Saysyrahsyrah (sic)"

If actually guilty of tax fraud Capello is guilty of nothing more than stupidity, apart from the crime of tax fraud. The world is full of havens for men of his wealth. A quick chat with an accountant in neighbouring Switzerland could have proved advantageous. He could even have combined watertighting his financial situation with a trip to the Caribbean or the Seychelles.

Why the rich, who are most able to pay, should insist on tax dodging remains a mystery. Presumably it is these same instincts that led them to getting rich in the first place. And staying rich long enough to be called rich. But if I, as socialist and pacifist and general all round nice enough but poor person, have to pay for Northern Rock and Iraq (a combined bill of £3200 per tax payer more or less), I don't see why anyone else should wriggle their way out of it either.

Ok- this is mostly about the team I wish would get relegated

this season. Newcastle. If only to wipe the idiotic conceited smirk of your archetypal Geordie fan's face. But before I launch into that I just want to say one thing. God Man U look good going forward. they have, what I think, is perhaps one of the most potent attacking forces in recent times in Tevez, Ronaldo, and Rooney. It says a lot that a player with as much guile and class as Tevez should look like a goal poacher against the other two. Admittedly Newcastle made them look better than they were over the weekend which all ties in nicely to the primary theme I said I wanted to start with . In the absence of Allardyce are the Toon Army finally watching the sort of football they want? I thought not. Besides, I cannot imagine Mark Hughes, who is currently making little flirty eyes in the direction of Mike Ashley and putting on his best black and white 'you could try and fuck me' frock, making the Toon Army sweep aside the likes of Chelsea as Moses would the Red Sea either. Regardless of whether this previous sentence makes grammatical sense or scores high on the readability scale or not.

Newcastle fans however are not interested in Hughes, and his little black and white dress. They want Mourinho. As was widely reported yesterday. And I am sure they do. They want him. I expect Jimmy Fivebellies used to shut his eyes and bash one out while imagining a Pamela Anderson and Jet the gladiator threesome too. So while Mourinho is sure a dreamy accessory in the big cock contest that goes on between premierhip chairmen, Mike Ashley had more realistically set his sights lower. I mean, I hear Peter Reid is available...

Wouldn't it be great if Newcastle

could find no new manager, and rudderless, unable to find anyone that the fans were satisfied with, they slipped to the bottom of the league and into the Championship?

Newcastle's new potential manager!

Mike Ashley has announced his plans for the new Newcastle manager. In an exlcusive for football overdose football is not my god tells us

"Newcastle is a big club. We need a big manager. Big Sam may have been big but he wasn't big enough. I've been talking to God recently and I think he might just fit the bill. He is, afterall, the lord of all creation and pretty big. Almost bigger than Newcastle. Whether or not he can meet our ambitions and get us playing the kind of football we expect however remains to be seen. At the moment we are not sure- we're considering God or Alan Shearer- who is the next best thing but more popular with our supporters."

The search continues.

this blog has been quiet of late

this is mostly due to a wall shaped depression I've been having. You may suspect that this is because Everton have been knocked out of two cup competition recently (just one more to go) but the depression is despite rather than because of this. I feel like Robby Savage would had he been rubbish at football, imagine that!

Robbie Savage actually gets a mention when you tour the Nou Camp stadium in Barcelona. The guide says "here, when you see a game on Saturday you get to see Ronaldinho in midfield, in the english premiership you get to see Robbie Savage." This rather neatly expounds the 'problems if the English game'. Or, to remove my thought from the realms of cliche, the way in which the premiership passes off mediocrity as brilliance. There is no better example of this than the FA cup. the manner in which vastly 'superior' teams struggle against relative minnows, who are paid just a fraction by virtue of their lowlier footballing stature. When Everton get knocked out by Oldham, or Blackburn lose 4-1, it is as if Rome's favourite gladiators were defeated in combat by sacrificial Christians. This of course the magic of the FA Cup. And what makes it a far worthier competition, in terms of stakes and drama, if not outright competition, than the Premiership. It also show s us what a simple game football is and how with luck, motivation, and organisation, triumph is attainable in cup competition. England should take note.

On that note Capello enjoyed his first day as England manager this week. I particularly enjoyed his farcical, mostly for the cameras, meeting with Stuart Pearce. This was a chance for Capello to showcase, for the viewing public, how advanced his English had become. He stumbled a bit.

"The uhhhh, how you say, tell me of the, uhhh, proximo, Next, uh,Game, please" He managed. But even in this he managed to be equally as eloquent as Steve Mclaren, even if he was missing Sven Goran Erikson's taciturn diplomacy and sleightness of phrasing. Sven always reminds me more of a UN spokesman , in terms of style and delivery, than a football coach.

For now however, I will leave these ramblings, and turn by mind to more pressing, and weightier matters.

Hasta luego...

It is the first commercial break

and sellars has so far only demonstrated one or two trademark slapstick flourishes.
this is not what I tuned in for!
and now that enjoying zoomzoom Mazda advert is on. I hate the kids that whispers zoom/zoom.

Its back- Sellars disrobes and hums tunelessly. this is more like it.

1722

He gets and extra blanket. It is building nicely. The kettle has boiled.

Still no sign of Cato...

There is football on the other channel- I don't believe I'm sitting here doing this. I can't enjoy either the movie or writing this way...

1726

the english style french farce/cum mystery/slapstick comedy continues. I'm either going to sit down properly and enjoy it Or watch the match. Yay- Clousseau plays violin in bed!

SILLY EXPERIMENT OVER at 1728

Blow by Blow Report of the Pink Panther

Everyone loves Peter Sellars as much as nearly everyone hates alex Ferguson.
16.50

We are told a precious stone has a flaw. If you look deep inside it you will see a pink panther, leaping. Cue music. Music which is both exciting and nostalgic. Watch those famous credits of everyones favourite homopink wild cat roll. Meanwhile on the BBC they are still showing the darts... "LETS PLAY DARTS!!" or rather let's not.

16.55
the music carries on but the animation ends. there is a cat burglar- he escapes with the help of dynamite!

1657
a student is on the run from the police. As I type this the action shifts form Rome To Paris.

so far this is your bogstandard tale of intrigue and crime and sophistication. a women changes outfits in an old style elevator. Her trick fools the police.

cue French national anthem and cue Sellars. He does something clumbsy. the women is the clue to the crime. they must find her.

Back To Italy.

1700

The women is skiing in the alps. she cherishes a small dog.

I can't be arsed to do this all the way through the film.

I think I might just do it until Cato turns up.

REBELS DEMANDS PRINCESS RETURNS PRECIOUS GEM.

shenanigans in swank hotel.

My girlfriend is demanding I stop fucking about on the internet and make her a cup of tea. she has a poorly stomach.

the princess is a wonderful skiier and someone has stolen her dog! The plot thickens

Sellars tells us his name is Clousseau. He romps in a cupboard with a female police inspector with a mink coat. He clumbsily leaves the hotel room.

the female police inspector is having it off with someone else.

1710

the supposed master criminal is meeting the princess for dinner.

My girlfriend says she has a fever. she really, really, wants her tea.

sellars/clousseau does something clumbsy.


Mood music- get comfy by the fire. Pretend to have a limp.

where is CATO?!

"I enjoy reality too, but then again, I don't smoke"

the guests in fur coats are here.

HERE FOLLOWS A BRIEF INTERLUDE WHILE I MAKE THE TEA

1714

for those of you too busy watching the FA cup

I will be doing a full "blow by blow" account (like a minute by minute report only less exact and very probably appearing as one ot two posts not 90 different ones as to avoid clogging up the blog) of the stuff on the other channels. Such as The Pink Panther with Peter SEllars. TODAY!

Anelka IS NOT leaving bolton.

that is at least according to everyone's favourite hardy perennial loser Gary Megson. As Anelka usually jumps into bed with bigger paymasters with only the scarcest of sultry looks back faster than a Parisian whore with credit card bills I'd be particularly surprised if a player of his pedigree stays at Bolton until February. Besides, statements like "YADDAHYADAA" sorry, no more transfer rumours today. That shop is closed, at least until the next rumour gives me the chance to make a bad gag at its expense.

Invented Rumours...

A rumour s a strange thing. It exists in a netherworld between the fantastical and the unlikely yet has its roots in truth. In the postmodern psychodrama that is modern Britain rumours are hard currency and sometimes even masquerade, sometimes wittingly others not, as news. News of course is supposedly factual and objective which of course it isn't.

RUMOUR 1- Chelsea to buy every single centre forward in Europe.

with drogba absent in the African nations cup chelsea have decided to buy, or at least link, themselves to every centre forward in Christendom, and few in the Islamic world too. This decision will create fierce competition for first team football, especially in pagan overlord Drogba's few weeks' hiatus from the premiership. "In my country" says Roman Abramovic "monopolies are practically an historical necessity. So if we can't have them [all the centre forwards in europe] I can't see why anyone else should either."

Rumour 2 Allardyce to be given a game by game contract

"while we are all, board, players, fans, and ex-players who wield ungodly influence on the fate of this team, fiercely supportive of our once succesful and determined manager we have decided to formalise the unfolding narrative of this season in the form of a contract. If Big Sam, as some refer to him (his wife maybe?), loses two games on the trot he will be sacked. Then poisoned. Then stabbed. Then shot. Then wrapped in barbed wire and dropped into the Tyne. Even if he did once cure the Prince Regent's bad blood and led Bolton into European competition. this means nothing to us. we want attacking football. Bring back Faustino Asprilla. The club are also drafting in a rabid violent humanoid (sapien-sapien) with low IQ bred in a social housing experiment run by the Umbrella corporation as a replacement for Joey Barton."

Rumour 3- Wenger to model for AXM

Eloquent yet skinny french Buddhists are in. So in recognition of this Arsene Wenger will pose in tight white pants for gay style mag AXM. He will be joined on the shoot by a hareem of nubile young African boys in prepubescent sized sackcloths and they will writhe around him servile angst while impersonating Thierry Henry in the va-va-voom advert.

Rumour 4 Cristian Ronaldo to Join Grampus 8 for 100 million pounds in the second half of 2011.

Rumour 5- Defoe and Saha are swapped by Man Utd and Tottenham

Rumour 6- New work for Laurie Sanchez

Laurie Sanchez, recently sacked by Fulham, proving that there is nothing like the premiership to ruin a good reputation garnered at High Wycombe and Northern Ireland, will join a troupe of travelling eastend music hall performers that relive that wartime spirit and remember Brick Lane before the Vibe Bar.

More than this I cannot possibly say.

happy new year

And to think I felt a bit cruel when I described Joey Barton as a "10 man brawler" recently. I was almost taken in by Gabbi Logan's description of him as "a troubled young man trying to get over his past and his problems." I'd forgotten that this was shorthand for "cunt". "Interred over the festive period" how deliciously cruel that sounds, Barton now joins fellow cunt Lee Bowyer and, amazingly, Neil Kinnock, in the Scrapped in Fast Food joint Hall Of Infamy. If I recall, although it is all hazy, Bowyer threw a chair through the window of KFC when the nice Asian server told him there were no Tower Burgers and he would have to settle for a Zinger, and Kinnock had a bit of argy bargy in a kebab shop over I don't know what.

In case you missed the story racist axe murderer's brother Joey Barton had a fight with about half of merseyside after, presumably, some idiots in shell suits called him twat to his face.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7162323.stm