Andy's Glasses

The people of Manchester are accustomed to seeing women lying on the floor. Its normally a Friday night about 11.30 and the pavements are littered with little frilly skirts, high heels and orange faces, laughing, screaming, puking. But this was different. This poor soul was blown over by a wind so strong that they actually cancelled two football matches last night. And that never happens. Sadly, much as we prayed that the Etihad might actually blow away, that never happened.

What did actually happen was that the league was decided last night. The ‘new order’. The way forward. The rest of the season. Which has now become wonderfully obvious, totally transparent and blindingly errr… errrr… well blindingly something.
Those previously known as ‘the top teams’, and I say ‘previously’ even though they’re still actually at the top… for the moment, are all in melt-down. Arsenal have taken one point from their last possible 6, Chelsea have gone to shreds and the goal machine that was Manchester City have failed to score in two games and totally wimped out of last night’s match because the weather wasn’t nice enough. You need to be paid way more than a mere £250,000 a week to out in the rain, I’m afraid.

Manchester United are looking for someone to talk of ‘the big 9’ so they can be included in something worthwhile.
So the ‘big three’ are on the downward slide, no doubt about it. The only teams really doing what they should be doing currently are West Ham, Liverpool and Spurs.

West Ham went from relegation hopefully (well, I was hoping) to European contenders in two weeks. I wish I could feel happy for them. The Premiership’s ‘artful dodgers’. Though the Artful Dodger had charm, style and charisma, all of which are patently lacking at the Boleyn, and haven’t been seen there since Billy Bonds hung his boots up in 1836. And so they have become less Ray Winstone (cockney charm and lovely) and more Bob Crow (dangerous, ugly and gangsterish).

Liverpool are on fire. If only. Sadly that’s only in the metaphorical sense. Hammered Arsenal, did enough to beat Fulham in last night’s tricky little fixture and cast aside all who come before them. Very high scoring, very consistent, bit dodgy in defense at times but score loads and loads. Destined for greatness.

And then Spurs. The mighty Spurs.

At long last not just a victory but a WIN, a proper, 4-0 demolition of lesser opposition. Albeit not very good opposition on last night’s showing. We were wonderful, we were awesome, we were magnificent. I’ve seen the future and its called Nabil Bentaleb. The French (yes, French, but still good. Go figure, eh?) teenager was outstanding as we blew Newcastle away. The whole team looked fab but there again, the whole of Newcastle didn’t. Which always makes it easier.

Should the season come down to goal difference, we have no chance. But if can continue to play as we did at St James’, I predict a top 2 finish. Some might say ‘a big “if”.

And so the league will finish thus come May:

Tottenham
Liverpool
Everton
Southampton
——————————————————
West Brom

lots of teams that no-one cares about, whose supporters
are worthless and inbred and they just shuffle
around the middle of the table forever and ever

West Ham
——————————————————
Arsenal
Man City
Chelsea

Sweet dreams are made of this.

Happy thursday

A xxxx

Well the good news is, the strike’s off. Hooray, the tube shall run and God (Bob Crow) saw that it was a good thing and it came to pass.

Though what I reckon actually happened was the they all bottled out and wimped off like a bunch of (Milwall-supporting) little girls.

This current argument is about closing ticket offices in stations. And I speak to a lot of people each day and whilst its maybe not the first words to be discussed, its kind’a in there somewhere and virtually everyone I speak to is against closing ticket offices. Women because it would make the stations less safe, particularly at night. And men because they won’t be able to find the trains without someone to point them in the right direction. Maybe that’s just men from South London, I don’t check addresses.

Turning up to a station and finding no-one to answer a question, or sort out a dodgy barrier or a failing Oyster card, is an effin pain.
And I reckon that the strike last week, although also a right effin pain in its own right, was accepted by a majority of Londoners who really support this cause.
But if they went out again, I think that support would start to wane. It would get lost in the mess that strikes cause. And thus the union would lose sympathy and the backing of the public. So they cancelled the strike and agreed to ‘talk’. Or ‘shout’, as Bob Crow usually does. Particulary when he is at Milwall.

The bad news is the rain. Its horrible. Its dark. Its really wind-driven and cold and yeuchy and vile and I don’t like it one little bit. I know, I know, there are people in this very country having to sail round their own lounges in little dinghies and need a canoe to take them to the toilet. Half the countryside is awash, afloat or a-fucked-up totally by rain and floodwater. But to be honest, I can only be so concerned for those people. They chose to live in flood plains, they bought homes ‘on the river’, which is a fine sentiment in 1527 when you need to sail along to see the hangings at the Tower every week, and fab for the Henley Regatta, but the rest of the time being on the river holds very few merits. And being visited by that same river for a month or two in a rainy January/February is awful. Almost tragic.

So here, on the high ground (in every respect, I’d like to add… but won’t, out of decency to the sufferers), I just want the rain to stop and it to get 20 or 30 degrees warmer. Is that too much to ask??

And tonight its a BIG night in football. I don’t know who decided that February 12th must be special, and keep it holy, but that’s how its worked out.

Spurs go to the frozen and arctic wasteland that is Newcastle. Can we win? Can we draw? Can we keep warm even?

Arsenal host Manchester United. And that should be big. It would normally be big. It would often be massive and crucial. But Manchester United have lost the plot of late. And face an Arsenal team humiliated on the weekend by Liverpool. Oddly, following that one, poxy, (ok, a bit humiliating in magnitude) loss, there were questions being asked about Wenger. The man who’s had them top of the league for months. And also, quite suddenly, the latest incarnation of Jesus Christ Our Lord Who Walketh on Water, the ‘best transfer the premiership has ever known’, the Second Coming of Mezut Ozil, is being slated as a mistake, an error, he’s a waste of space and time and certainly 42 million quid and can’t keep up with life in Our League, so should piss off back to… back to… back to wherever they welcome people who look like he does. I have no idea where that might be. I can think of certain institutions, but not a specific geographical location on planet Earth.

How fickle. Ozil’s brilliant. Has an off day and he’s a tosser. I despair at fans and pundits.

But I only despair really when Chelsea are winning, and last night they managed to fail to do that, having been leading for all the match.

So maybe there is a God.

If so, DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS SODDING RAIN, PER-LEASE!!!!!

Happy wet wednesday

A xxxx

There are only so many ways to become a football commentator or pundit.

You can be a famous player with a skinful of trophies and a deep understanding of the game. Like Gary Neville.

You can be a famous player with no understanding at all of the game. Like Alan Shearer.

You can be a famous player with trophies, possibly a deep understanding of the game, but no-one can tell because no-one can understand a word they say. Like Kenny Dalgleish and Jamie Carragher.

You can never have played at a high level but have an encyclopaedic knowledge. Like John Motson, Jeff Stelling.

You can be a really really good looking woman/girl who knows nothing about anything except how to pout, show cleavage and bend over a lot in a tight skirt whilst pointing at a giant league table.

Or you can be Gaby Logan. Who probably ticks more boxes than anyone else.

You can even just appear to be nice, like Gary Linneker (who apparently isn’t very but don’t quote me on that).

Lastly you can be a foreigner whose only English sentence is ‘at de end’a da’day’ which is repeated for the entire hour, but you wont’ be invited back.

What you can’t be is Nancy Dell’Olio.

Unless footballing knowledge is transmissible with bodily fluid exchange (eeeeuuuuwwww) its hard to imagine that her years as Sven Goran Eriksson’s main squeeze improved her education much. And if that was the case, Ulrika Johnssen is much more qualified in other ways to be a pundit (see ‘cleavage’ above).

Nancy is a silly orange person who is allegedly a lawyer, apparently an Italian and increasingly an annoyance.

And she wants to commentate on the World Cup. Well don’t we all? Stupid lump. The average man on the Clapham Omnibus probably knows more about football than Nancy and her entire extended family. Mainly because Italians only know about acting, diving, cheating, feigning injury and being boring as fuck when on the ball.

Ah but Nance, as I call her, has an ‘average knowledge’ about our beautiful game, but thinks we need to discuss ‘other things’ during the game.

The price of fake tan. Handbags by Louis Vuitton. Scicillian vs Neapolitain food. The history of cosmetic surgery (not including Wayne Rooney’s hair transplant). The best vibrators by kilowatt/hours of battery life.

ITS FOOTBALL YOU DOZY TART; WHAT THE FUCK ELSE IS THERE TO TALK ABOUT??????

There’s a fab new game on the internet. No, not suicides, they’re old news. This is even better than that.

Neknominate is a drinking game. Someone goes online and challenges you to pour half a pint of Scotch, a litre of vodka, a quart of red wine (must be red, mind), two pints of lager and a dash of lime into a big bucket and drink it within 3 minutes. Or 5. Irrelevent really. You film yourself then post it online.

Fucking brilliant.

3 kids have died already. That’s how much fun it is.

But that’s not why its tragically, chronically, irredeemably sad.

Its sad because why not play such games when together? Why the ‘online’ shit? At least make it sociable, make it fun, plus you have someone to call the ambulance for you.

Maybe we can get Nancy Dell’Olio involved.

Happy Birthday to Rachie

A xxxx

Who was it said that children should be thrashed hard and often? I can’t remember, and neither can google, so perhaps it was me who coined that phrase in response to my own nightmarish offsrproglets. Bless them.

Well its the same with football teams. Spurs are indeed thrashed hard and often but despite the logic of the argument (if there is one) that such things build character, create precedents never to be repeated and demand the sufferers to ‘bounce back’ with a vengeance, it never quite works like that for us. Unless you count a poxy, dire 1-1 draw at Hull as ‘bouncing back’. Personally I don’t see it that way. A thrashing is humiliating, its horrible, it attacks your fundamental need to, if not win, then not to lose too badly, it destabilises your momentum. Basically; it hurts.

In a way England thrashed Scotland in the rugby yesterday, even though the score was only 20-0. Could have been more. Should have been more. We (this is a different ‘we’ than the Spurs ‘we’, this is about patriotism, about Englishism and nothing whatsoever to do with Briitishness) were in a different class to the Scots. They were awful, we were wonderful. The Scots were so bad they couldn’t even sort out their national pitch, which looked like some of the football pitches I used to play on in my youth over at Hackney Marshes, when it was a marsh, before they Olympified it.

But Spurs didn’t play yesterday, they play today. Against Everton. Big match. Massive. 12 pointer (I could explain but you simply wouldn’t understand). Its basically the battle for 6th place. Wow. Doesn’t get much bigger than that. Maybe 5th? The only other match today is also massive in its own not-quite-so-massive way. Manchester United play Fulham. The disappointed against the tragic. And I’m not prepared to say which is which. Fulham haven’t won since Prince George was born and Manchester United are underperforming. Which is the Manc way of saying ‘not top’. Arrogant fuckers, why are their expectations so high that anything except a runaway league-topping season is deemed ‘underperforming’? By that logic there are 91 teams underperforming every year.

But I’m afraid I can delay no longer. No mention of Chelsea’s romp over Newcastle to go top, no-one cares that West Ham beat Villa, and Manchester City have suddenly just run out of goals. Or they’ve used up their quota early in the season and aren’t allowed any more. So much as I’m never one to gloat, nor snigger, jeer or in any way display any kind of schadenfreude, we need to talk about Arsenal.

I didn’t see the game. Who the hell has ‘BT TV’? But I managed to keep up with the score (though only just) during lunch due to the incessant text messages from some of my friends. Nothing spiteful, nothing gloaty, just odd messages that were very informative. And nice. I was in the car when the 2nd goal was scored. By the world’s only living corpse, Martn Skertl. Then the texts; 2-0, bite of chicken, 3-0, sip of water, 4-0, spat the water over the table as I high-fived Rachie. Perhaps a high-four would have been more appropriate at that time but I couldn’t get my thumb out the way. Then it all calmed down in the second half and we had to wait ages for the 5th. Oddly, or perhaps because I’m a Spurs fan, I have this morbid fear that however great the lead in a game, ‘its not enough’. Spurs have squandered so many big leads in so many big games that I almost forget that when other teams are dominant, they generally remain so for the duration. Wankers. That’s not entertainment.

So Liverpool, the season’s other big scorers, managed to throw the table open at the top. Whilst they remain a few points short, Arsenal, Chelsea and Man City are now, to all intents and purposes, neck and neck. But only Chelsea are (horribly, revoltingly) consistent and the Scousers could close the gap if the inconsistencies continue. Everton have hopes and Spurs are just Spurs.

I fully expected Arsene Wenger to find 5 faults with the ref and demand his usual re-count. To blame the officials, the stadium, the rise in fuel tax, anything. But he manned up and took it upon himself. For once.

So come on Spurs; do it for England, for London, for… for… for meeeeeeeeeeee.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Call me perverse but I love it where the old world meets the new and causes ructions. I like it when value systems clash and no-one really knows what to do about it. Because its like rugby; these are the ‘breakdowns’ and its where it all gets interesting.

Princess Dutchess Middleton Catherine of Cambridgia is one such breakdown. No, she’s not having one, not yet anyway, she is one. Because she’s a Queen in waiting and therefore is dutybound and honour-bound to act in a particular way. A way set down when Boudica was around, when Mary Queen of Scots was shedding blood, when Victoria was a mere babe. And these rules state that unlike those three who actually took the throne, a queen who is ‘merely’ the wife of a king is essentially an heir-production mechanism. She’s a womb with a view. But no-one cares about her views, only in viewing her. So she must look fab all the time. That’s her job. Look good and bear fruit.

And this is just soooooo contrary to popular feminist zeitgeist. Its diametrically opposed to any form of equality. The whole royal thing, if you think about it, is a complete anachronism, a throw-back to feudal times, which is why Americans love coming over to see the whole regalia. Cos they don’t got one where they live. They could have shared ours but instead decided to have a tea party and go it alone. So fuck ’em.

All people ever say about Kate is how lovely she looks, how it took her 93 minutes in the gym followed by 6 months of anorexia to get ‘back to her pre-birth weight’ and what fabulous clothes she wears. Which may be flattering in a bland and superficial kind of way, but is that something to aspire to? When we’re talking the rest of the time about more women in the boardrooms, certainly more in parliament? All she has to do is look pretty and have babies. She needs to get a proper job. Like a lap-dancer.

Another breakdown would appear to be right outside 10 Downing Street. In the little guardroom that one passes through en route to visit the Camerons. Yes, I’ve been there, hasn’t everyone?? And you go through a Heathrowesque room, answer a few questions, show id, get scanned, have a full-body search with rubber gloves, give a DNA sample, sing the national anthem in Yiddish, pledge allegiance to Guy Fawkes and call the guards ‘fucking plebs’, then they let you pass.

But those guards; what a job. Awful. Standing around all day in the cold looking like policemen with nothing to do between visits or terrorist attempts. Which is why they have time to pretend some Tory mp called them plebs, to fabricate the evidence, make up a lovely story and end up in jail. Cos what else is there to do all day? And night??

The answer being: look at porn. Of course, its so terribly obvious. You can do it on your smartphone, its easy, even if you’re a particualry unsmart policeman.

“‘ere Terry, got a great picture ‘ere of some tart gettin’ shagged up the gazebo by three horses; I’ll bluetooth it over to ya”

They were accused of sending ‘extreme pornography’. Which I though was soft core porn viewed whist hanging upside down on the top of a mountain. But I was wrong. Its very naughty porn. And looking at it during working hours is not quite cricket. And right where the Cameron children are less than 200 yards away through only 7 brick walls!!!!

Its all bollocks. Just don’t film them and send it to your mates. Not during office hours.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I’m a hugger.

Always have been. Probably a deep-seated insecurity thing, but I hug. Men, women, girls and boys, I hug. Unconditionally. Especially women. But I generally don’t ‘cop a feel’ unless I can get away with it, or I’m paying good money for it. And as most of the men I hug are old and ugly, who’d want to feel that???? I come from a family of huggers. Maybe my ancestors were pick-pockets, I don’t know, but I grew up with hugs and that’s kind’a what we do.

Some people don’t feel comfortable being hugged. Well tough shit. Close your eyes and think of England. Others reciprocate too enthusiastically and it becomes almost sexual foreplay. In Waitrose. By the yoghurt counter.

Yet you have to be careful with all this hugging. Rule 1: don’t hug strangers. Even if you really want to. Because she might slap.

Dave Lee Travis, noted (who???) old BBC radio DJ and Top of the Pops host, ‘back in the day’ is also a hugger. Well, was also a hugger. He’s probably slowed his huggish tendencies by now. Court cases do that to you. And for some reason I believe his protestations of innocence to the charges of sexual assault. What did it for me was one of the witnesses, Dee Dee Wilde. One of the first group of (appalling) dancers known as Pan’s People who pranced around every week on that very tv show. And they made up for any lack of artistic skill and dainty-danciness by being gorgeous and wearing very little that wasn’t diaphanous or invisible. And Dee Dee said in court that DLT indeed hugged them every week, but in a very ‘uncle-ish’ sort of way. No groping. No groin thrusting. No wandering hands. Just nice, safe, warm hugs. Every week for all the years they worked together. And I believe her because she was so gorgeous, back in that very day when it all allegedly happened. I can actually say that his failure to grope a Pan’s Person, when given the chance would actually indicate that he’s either gay or completely asexual.

Working on the ‘no smoke without fire’ principal DLT must be guilty, but I feel for him. As opposed to feeling him up. Which would be horrible.

Whereas William Roach was acquitted of all charges yesterday. And his charges were not mere gropage and naughtiness but rape, pillage and plunder. Then more rape. And serious sexual assault. And for some reason (maybe because he looks like a weasel and always seemed to have slightly less personality than a door-frame) I’d already found him guilty on all charges. But these were serious allegations, horrible ones, nasty and abusive. So why take 40 years to come forward? I can’t believe every one of his accusers and all of their parents (those who were told) felt too intimidated or ashamed to come forth? Rape is a vile crime and its very very difficult to prove. And that’s if it happened yesterday. 40 years ago? No chance.

It all comes back to Jimmy Savile. Who has been declared ‘too dead to testify’.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

For a nation fairly obsessed with weather, we don’t do it very well. Any slight change in norms or expectations seems to cause havoc, chaos and disruptions to the entire country. The trains stop, the roads break, the valleys flood, the snow is the wrong kind, everything seems to have a rather profound effect.
I’ve never been to South West England. Ok, one weekend in Devon, years ago, but never quite made it to Cornwall and Somerset, two of our most beautiful and beachy counties. Because every time we think to embark upon the ‘long drive’ it seems easier just to jump on a plane and go to Spain/France/Italy/Thailand where the weather is guaranteed so you don’t have to wonder how to spend two weeks indoors at Faulty Towers watching the August rain pound the windows.
And now its gone. South West England has been drowned. Submerged under a sea of floodwater the likes of which haven’t been seen since Noah played for Bethlehem City FC. So I’ll never now get the chance to sit in the 17 hour traffic jams that represent the only realistic way of getting to that part of the world in summertime, to enjoy the ‘English Riviera’. I’ve blown the opportunity. Like Sodom and Gomorrah, I’ll never get a chance to visit. Unless David Cameron gets his finger out, puts his wellies on and goes down there with a big bucket to start dredging the 792,000 acres of flooded plains with the accompaniment of his fellow band of useless political associates.

Its a national treasure down there. And now its gone. Like Jimmy Savile.

Why would Swansea City go and sack Michael Laudrup? He’s a lovely man. A Great Dane. Intelligent. Handsome. Classy. He got them into europe last year (for those lowly enough to consider the Europa League as ‘europe’), kept them in mid-table security, had them playing beautiful football and was the nicest guy in the world who everyone in Swansea thought walked on water.

Now they’ve sacked him.

Because they lost a few matches.

And its all because of expectations. Realistic or not. That’s why managers get the boot. Because the team aren’t ‘where they should be’. But who decides ‘where they should be’? Its typical of most newly promoted teams to do pretty well in their first season (except Watford, of course) but then struggle in the second. By which time, the mediocre success enjoyed early on has caused a mass-spending spree necessary for that ‘push towards the champions league’. Ok. Right. Then panic sets in as league position looks rather tenuous (currently 12th but only 2 points above the relegation zone) and reality deeply digs in to the delusions of grandeur, severing them almost totally.

So sack the manager. We’ll get another one. A better one. A proper Welshman? A proven German?? An unintelligible Spaniard??

As a devotee to a ‘sacking team’ where managers generally last 4 months if they’re good, less if they’re not, I’m saddened that Swansea should adopt this model. Particularly when they had such a prize. Who do they want? Allardyce??

Happy thursday

A xxxx

When is London not the absolute and total best city the world has ever known?

When there’s a tube strike, of course.

So today, and tomorrow, and probably some kind of knock-on to Friday, the tube workers are on strike. Led by the ever moderate, very photogenic, awfully pleasant, Bob Crowe. The leader of their union. A man with all the charm of a hob-nailed boot. As it kicks you in the teeth. Every Daily Mail reader’s favourite. Every traveller’s nemesis. The man who earns £142,000 a year but lives in a council house out east. The man who, like some modern day Nero, arranged the strike from a beach in Rio de Janeiro. I don’t think Bob plays the fiddle. Probably plays darts.

And yet… and yet… and yet…

Bob has a job to do. Which would appear to be to keep the transport system in this country exactly as it was in 1924. All change is rejected, derided, scorned and refused, on pain of striking unions. So when they took ‘guards’ off of trains, there was uproar. The fact that trains, back in the 70s, no longer needed a man to push a button to open the doors cos the driver could do it, was irrelevant. We’ve always had guards and therefore we WILL always have guards. But we don’t. The unions then did their ‘thing’ but slowly, awkwardly and obviously with lots of redundancies that no-one ever wants, guards are no more.

So now its about ticket office staff. Who also seem a touch superfluous to requirements now everyone uses Oyster cars, or touchless bank cards and I haven’t bought a ‘ticket’ in 10 years.

I hate the thought of 950 people losing their jobs. Which is where Bob comes in. “Nearly a farsand peoples is gonna be art’a work, ain’ day?” He even speaks in ‘1924’. But his point, as is his point with every single change proposed by London Underground management, is ‘saaaafety’. It ain’ safe. Whatever improvements are suggested in terms of line running or job changes is ‘unsafe’. Because that way Bob seems caring. “All I’s cares abaaart is da saaaafety of tube travellers”. And as ‘progress’ is usually something to do with job cuts, the two sides start, continue and end from positions diametrically opposed to each other. And Bob’s ‘safety concerns’ can always be placated by extra money for his workers.

BUT DIS ISSS NOT ABAAART MUNNEEEE!!!!

And again, Mr Crowe has a point; he just doesn’t make it in a very nice way. But he didn’t get where he is today by being nice.

If they remove office staff and we have unmanned stations I would not let my wife/daughters/loved ones/Spurs fans travel by tube at night. Too dangerous. Only Tai Chi masters like me would be safe from the muggers, rapists, drunk and scallywags.

But London changes during strike days. It mobilises in a different way. Everyone goes where they can and then walks. So the streets are really really crowded. With walkers, hoofing it along the thoroughfares to their destinations with looks of determination, of fighting spirit, of battle on their tube-free faces. The atmosphere’s great. Its like the Blitz all over again but without the Germans. And bombs. The Queen Mother (may Her sould rest in peace) would be proud.

Because we’re heroes, one and all. For making it to work.

Where’s me medal?

Happy Strike Day

A xxxx

At the end of the match last night, as the Manchester City players sulked disconsolately round the Etihad offering cursory, miserable handshakes to the Chelsea players and each other, their rivals were bounding around in glee. Chelsea had won. Against all odds. They had defeated the previously invincible, they had felled the mighty, they had in fact shut down completely the most prolific goal-scoring machine in the entire history (!!!!!) of the Premiership. Ok, that’s only 22 years but still no mean feat. Thus the Chelsea players were ebullient. They were joyful, jubilant, celebratory, over-the-moon, flying on air, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…

Yet in all this joy, one Chelsea face stood out. The scorer of the only goal of the match, no less. And what a goal it was. For only he, Branislav Ivanovic, among a sea of ecstatic team-mates, looked like he was just about to board a ship to a Siberian Gulag at the insistence of a Cossack’s bayonet.

Yet the inherent misery of the East European psyche really should be put aside in the wake of what was an amazing game of football. Most of which I saw. Not all though. So I missed the opening 20 minutes. Or ‘the only bit where Man City looked good’ as it will come to be known. But I had to watch what I could of ‘the battle of the bank balances’.

These two teams represent ‘the change’ in football. That’s putting it very nicely. Others might say they represent ‘everything that is bad, awful, dire, immoral and vile about football’. Both teams have been ‘bought’ at massive expense by owners with bottomless pockets who simply buy up every available player and plenty who wouldn’t be available but can be extricated from clubs/contracts by the application of masses of cash. Ending up with a situation where the wage bill alone at Manchester City exceeds their annual turnover. Chelsea’s financial situation is a little better, but only because they’ve had 5 more years under Abramovich than City have had under the Emirate Sheiks to come up with any number of ‘vehicles’ in which the Dodgy Russian has basically been ‘buying’ the club’s debt in various devious and dastardly ways.

Hence Jose Morinho accusing Manchester City of failing in the criteria of the ‘financial fair play’ rules. Rules so complicated, convoluted and intricate that Deloitte’s can’t understand them, nor the highest courts in the land. Only Michel Platini knows the secrets those rules (allegedly) contain. And he’s not telling.

So football is ruled by teams who have unlimited financial resources. These two, Real Madrid, the Italian giants, Paris St Germain. And here’s a sentence that will never be uttered in any other context: only the Germans do it properly.

However, on the upside, we get players over here that are brilliant. Eden Hazard last night was described as Messiesque by the pundits. And the little fucker was just that. And he was just one of a dozen fantastic talents on show in the game.

The result also makes the league battle way more interesting that it would have been if City had won. Its now a 3-horse race. Spurs are a bit below, in more of a 3-legged race. Can frugal Arsenal keep up with the might and wealth that currently keeps knocking on their door? Its like the paper shop on the corner trying to keep out Tescos. Only time will tell.

Happy tuesday

A xxxx

Yep, and I have been. Give a daughter a set of beard trimmers and a head and she’ll have it shawn within 10 minutes. So why spend 85 quid and three hours having some cross-dressing nancy-boy called ‘Tarquin’ prance around cutting one hair at a time and making a production number out of it when Rachie and the hedge-trimmers does the job during the half time break of the Arsenal/Palace game? Hence the ‘selfie’ (wearing my uber-cool, Spurs dressing gown).

The Coen Brothers are uber-cool. They probably have Spurs dressing gowns too. Even though they grew up in Minnesota and, despite their jewishness, wouldn’t know Tottenham Hotspur from a bowl of chicken soup. In fact on current form, I think the chicken soup might play better.

However, they do make films. Exceedingly good films. If you like your movies a little odd, a touch obscure, a sprinkle of ‘noir’, a hint of ‘wacky’ and a soupçon of bizarre.

Fargo is in my genuine top 10 of all time fave movies. Which unfortunately has at least 97 entries, but still, they make the cut. And The Big Lebowski and possibly No Country for Old Men and A Serious Man…

Barton Fink…

Blood Simple…

Anyway, I love a Coen Brothers movie. Which is why we went to see Inside Llewin Davis on Saturday. Because its by them and therefore is beyond any question as to whether it should be seen or not.

Coming out after the film, (in the literal sense, I’d like to add), the word I heard uttered numerous times by loads of strangers making their way into a cold night in East Finchley was ‘pointless’. Mel called it pointless. I though it was pointless. Thus, I feel, the general consensus is that it is totally pointless.

But perhaps that’s the whole point? To be, seemingly, pointless. It kind’a goes nowhere. It says nothing very much and it lacks ‘action’ in any normal sense. (Folk music and musicians by their very definition, don’t do ‘action’).

Although… the lead guy, Oscar Isaac, is brilliant. In a pointlessly brilliant way, of course. And the supporting cast, Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, the always outstanding John Goodman, are all wonderful. It has some fantastically funny moments too and, as you’d expect, its filmed beautifully and looks stunning.

So its a bit like me: superficially gorgeous and says a lot but is essentially useless, pointless and worthless.

In short, I really liked it. I just can’t work out why. But heh, I don’t have to. Its art, its an aesthetic, I can like it if I fucking want to, and worry about being labelled ‘pretentious’ later.

It has to be seen, otherwise there’s just no point.

Philip Seymour Hoffman. What a waste.

Happy monday

A xxxx