Karren Bradyâs football diary Saturday, November 26 THERE'S a delicate balance between treating players as adults or schoolboys and former England rugby coach Martin Johnson was nowhere near finding it. Three dossiers were compiled over his team's embarrassing World Cup tour and a number of comments in them were damaging. I still have some sympathy with Jonno though. I bet that if all the moans of our footballers after the 2010 World Cup flop were published they'd add up to a paperback. In my experience, the best managers are eagle-eyed but occasionally turn a blind eye. I'm often asked if I would write a report on the doomed 2018 World Cup bid. Now that would make interesting reading and grown men cry. Sunday, November 27 WHAT a dark, dark day. My husband and I are in shock at the sad loss of Gary Speed. I never met him but I am told no better man adorned football. The truth is that being a footballer does not ring-fence you from life's pressures, we are all vulnerable. Football has lost a true professional who carried himself with dignity and will be sadly missed. My heart goes out to his family. Monday, November 28 FOR all Man City know of the whereabouts of Carlos Tevez, he could be on the Russian space mission launched at Mars four days ago. I'm told he's actually sent a sick note from Argentina but this boy moves at speed. AC Milan appear to be interested in acquiring him, no doubt at a knockdown price, but only after what they call a rigorous psychological test. I wonder what they would find in there. I suspect there is more life on Mars. Football crazes works so fast that by the time the spacecraft lands in 10 months' time, these mind tests may be as common as knee scans. Tuesday, November 29 OWNER Tony Fernandes is looking for a new home for QPR â a sensible move. He's quite right when he says it makes no sense to move away from the club's fan base. But other than the old BBC centre, it's hard to know exactly where they could relocate to in their vicinity that has the scale and makes any kind of financial sense. Chelsea are thinking of a move to Battersea Park. I'm very interested to see how that develops as my husband owns a piece of Chelsea's ground. Yes, Flat 1a of Chelsea Village. Wednesday, November 30 I SUPPOSE I could look at the failure of a single woman to make the shortlist of 10 for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year contest and say, like Bob Marley, 'No woman, no cry' â but I do, I really do. I see the problem. The contenders have to be regularly on television, women's sport is not regularly on television and, therefore, no women are in the frame. But hold on. The shortlist came from male-stacked sports staffs on the nation's newspapers, as well as magazines such as Nuts and Zoo. To give you an idea of how the latter group think, Nuts run a weekly quiz featuring a woman with the invitation 'Would You?' I was in it recently and was mortified as 75 per cent of replies said they would, which only makes me feel worse. Thursday, December 1 IT takes guts or an acute amount of pig-headedness for an owner to stand by a manager when the terraces turn against him. That's no criticism of Sunderland's Ellis Short for sacking Steve Bruce nor of Venky's for sticking with Steve Kean at Blackburn but rather a statement born of experience. At Birmingham, we backed Bruce when we went down and at West Ham we chose to let Avram Grant go. Those calls may have been right or wrong but I believe they were for the right reasons made after careful consideration. We believed Bruce was skilled enough to lead us back up, which he did, and this, frankly, was not what we thought of Grant's abilities. Friday, December 2 PROOF, if ever it was needed, that the knives are out for Chelsea is splashed across the page of a newspaper today. A knife was found in the youth-team dressing rooms. Perhaps it was found next to Ashley Cole's air gun, I don't know. Honestly, is this 'newsworthy'? Dressing rooms are nothing compared to the things you will find in a boardroom. The list would read something like a cross between The Generation Game and an Ann Summers catalogue. A condom was bad enough but I'm still trying to work out what a dog lead was doing in the men's toilet? iReader
