We need to talk about Vlad. I think he’s totally losing the plot. Never one having the greatest grip on reality, as everyone else seems to recognise it, he’s now just gone. The lies, denials, history re-writing is all fine when its ‘just’ about institutional athlete doping, sending hit squads to foreign lands to murder people and locking up any political opponent who he hasn’t already killed. But now? It’s all Ukraine’s fault. They’re all neo-Nazis who represent such an existential threat to the most heavily armed nation in the world that action must be taken. Which involves the murder of innocent civilians. Children are dying FFS, because he feels insecure.

And sport and politics are now inextricably linked; they never used to be, but since the Apartheid years, their domains have crossed. So we must look to sport’s lead before we make our international policy statements. And this is what they do. They BAN Russia. From all sports, all football, all events, everything. Good, strong, decisive. Except they allow the formation of the ‘International Footballing Federation’ which looks like Russia, sounds like Russia, takes drugs like Russia and is associated with President Putin like Russia, but is actually nothing to do with that nation. Which you can tell because they are BANNED from playing the Russian anthem before matches. Hah! That showed ‘em. Just like the International Olympic Committee or whatever it was called allowed Russia to compete following their last ban.

Ok, FIFA have ‘relented’, having been accused of spineless pathetic token gesturism of the most stupid and meaningless extreme. They effectively wanted to ban their national anthem. WTF??

Putin now represents the biggest danger to the world since Hitler. He is a man with no boundaries, no limits, no grip on reality and no-one he’d ever listen to brave enough to explain things to him. He has no support outside his country, other than at Chelsea football club. Everyone else is wearing our ‘je suis Ukrainian’ t-shirts and hoping for the best. Though we currently have no idea, with a 40-mile long military convoy approaching Kiev, what ‘the best’ might even look like.

God help us all

A xxxx