Today is a milestone as I’m officially closer to 50 than 40. And I think it’s fair to say that short of Arsene Wenger squaring up to Bombardier Allardyce and kicking him square in the swingers during the pre-match handshake at Upton Park on Saturday and saying “Blow on those bubbles, fat man”, I couldn’t [...]

This was supposed to be the summer that all agents dreaded, European’s equivalent of Black Friday (note to FA: that’s a not a “choc ice” reference). Where the recession’s bite would see the rise of Wengerism and the shrinkage of sweeteners. All the omens were there. Roberto Mancini undigified shrieking at Brian Marwood, the cost-cutting on both sides of Milan, FC Franco haggling with Daniel [...]

A bleary day in my part of the world so let’s look at news and rumours from around the world of football.
Let’s start in the noisier part of greater Salford, where Paul Wilson suggests the Middleastlanders spending sprees of the past are inhibiting their pursuit of Robin van Iscariot.
Nick Miller doesn’t understand why some supporters [...]

So 24 hours after RvP announces he wants to leave Holloway Road Properties because he disagrees with the club’s direction, minority shareholder and convicted racketeer – Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov — sent a letter to Stan Kroenke. But rather than use the post office, courier, e-mail or fax, he decided to use the medium of Associated Press [...]

The Fort McMurray Fury depart later this afternoon for our third round of games in the Edmonton elite league. Sadly, the bus doesn’t leave until after 4 p.m. local time, which means I must endure another round of park-the-bus stodginess from Woy’s boys. On the topic of the Three Lions, the quite brilliant Brian Phillips looks at [...]

It’s a pretty sedate Monday following a weekend dominated by international friendlies and frenetic spinning of tales in the rumour mills, facilitated by Twitter. It’s becoming ever harder to sift the real from the surreal as Twitter appears to be populated by people with too much time on their hands, many who are either socially dysfunctional, barely [...]

The release of Forbes‘ annual list the most valuable football clubs could not have provided a more suitable backdrop to Saturday’s Battle of the Brands. Because the tilt between Roman’s Rent Boys and Holloway Road Properties PLC is nothing if about the money. There’s no silverware on the line in the London repechage as the league [...]

A burst pipe at our main plant prevented me from posting yesterday, which was apparently National Cleavage Day, which was marked by UEFA — and when we think of boobs, what a better place to start — by banning Arsene Wenger for three matches and fined him 40k in Greek indebtedness notes for intemperance towards [...]

It’s Thursday and, frankly, it’s tough to concentrate. The Fort McMurray Fury u-12 boys leave tonight for the provincial championships in Grande Prairie and we’ve decided to break up the trip into two legs so the kids won’t travel on the bus all day and then be forced to play a game on Friday night. [...]

THURSDAY AFTERNOON BONUS LINKS
Because I’m going to be at an all-day meeting on Friday, I’ll post a couple of quick links of interest before I leave work this evening at a very ungodly hour.
Michael Cox looks at Tom Cleverley’s importance to Manchester United while Gareth Bale says he “tends” not to dive. Hahahahaha.
Thursday morning
OK, here’s [...]