RIP Jimmy Hill. Passed away at 87. Poor bloke had Alzheimer's towards the end, too. Grim stuff. One of the more memorable characters of the game, with a stint on MOTD after his playing career. Won't be missed by the Mackems, of course.
Yesterday was the first time since Nov 8 1975 that Man United, Rangers and Celtic have all lost on the same day.
Senator Hillary Clinton, December 19, 2015. "Maybe the back door is the wrong door." To which I must respond, "Au contraire." Sentor O’Malley, on the same debate stage, on the other hand, is talking about: "A safe haven in the back end." which plays much better in the US in 2015, IMO.
Lewis Hamilton would beg to differ, but doing so might mean he's in the UK long enough for HMRC to want to have several dozen words with him.
Two referee appointments to report - Mike Jones will be in charge on Boxing Day against Norwich, and Anthony Taylor will referee the game with Watford on December 28.
"I'm just grateful the little **** has got his comeuppance at long last." Another victim of Spurcats' "does not scrub up at interviews' ism.
I'm not a fan of Michel Platini either, other than as a player. He appeared to have a (perhaps understandable) problem with English sides and I wasn't impressed whenever he turned up at our games. I can only think of two occasions, but he didn't look very neutral to me, for a start. The Lazio game at WHL that finished 0-0, despite our side putting the ball into the net repeatedly, would be the first example. The second was the away game at Lyon, where he looked quite happy to see us going out, until this happened: Gutted!
It's hard not to look at what's going on with FIFA without thinking that Blatter has gone out of his way to make sure that Platini won't be the man to replace him. After all, it was only a couple of years ago that Blatter said he would be stepping aside to let Platini have a free run at the FIFA presidency, then reneged on that promise which left Platini twisting in the wind in a position where he either had to back a rival and risk being blacklisted by Blatter until the end of time or backing Blatter in the hope that when Blatter actually did deign to step aside that he would offer Platini the exact same deal - even though it was public knowledge Blatter promised the exact same thing to Mohammed bin Hammam, only to throw him under the bus to neuter a potential rival before making sure he kept him silent by giving his nation a World Cup. Of course, the next thing it's hard not to think is how The FA have spent years kvetching about FIFA, yet have still not seen fit to put up a candidate of their own at any point. Almost as if it wouldn't take long before The FA were exposed as being corrupt in their own right...
Great name tarnished department: "Fifa presidential candidate Tokyo Sexwale has appeared before a US grand jury in New York as part of an on-going investigation into World Cup bribes."
Goodness I'd forgotten all about that. It was almost too bizarre to get upset about because disbelief took away a lot of the anger. It was either incompetence or corruption, neither option are very palatable. Remember that there was also racist chanting by Lazio fans at the match. Can't remember if there was punishment for that, but chances are it was very little.
Don't be ridiculous. An £80k fine wouldn't deter a club like Lazio. UEFA would never fine them that amount. It was £32.5k. They did it again in the away leg and to another club, so they got fined again, which clearly worked well the first time: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/20938573 They also fined us and Maribor, presumably for being racially abused. Either that or having too many goals ruled out for no reason, as Bale had one chalked off in the away leg, too. Four in two legs has to be some sort of record, doesn't it?
But the only way that a player's value can go up appreciably is if he does very well for us. There are four good examples in the Levy period: Carrick, Berbatov, Modric and Bale. That is the sort of signing we should be aiming at, not the ones who only make a small difference. We will only get one of these every three or four years but they are worth lots of small failures
