What a wonderful night! What a wonderful week! First Chelsea lose the Premiership, and now they've been bundled out of the Champions League. Fingers crossed there'll be more good news at the end of the season and they'll get stuffed by Man Utd in the Cup Final. And then - oh, what a dream! - maybe next season Roman will walk away, fed up with what his gazillions have bought.

What fun seeing the look of utter desolation on John Terry and Frank Lampard's faces.

Is there anyone out there who isn't a Chelski fan who's not delighted tonight?!

Lionel Messi's wondergoal from last week is on a video here, side by side with Maradona. The commentary's not bad, either...

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So the chances are there will be two English teams contesting the final of the Champions' League next month.

That means two sets of English fans in Athens.

Good job the place is already in ruins.

(By the way, watching Man Utd last night was simply joyous. Domestic rivalry seems pathetic in the face of such astonishing football. It was, quite simply, the best performance by a team I have ever seen. Mind blowing stuff.)

I love this story. West Ham, who serve a useful function as the team to which Spurs ship players either too old to play for us any more, or who just can't hack it at a big league club (and who supply us with their talented junior players when they outgrow a minor Premiership team), have now had their status as the Spurs back-up team completed.

Eggert Magnusson is a fanatical Spurs supporter, who has been known to hire a private plane to bring him to White Hart Lane for a Spurs game, is now buying West Ham, presumably to formalise their status as our back-up team.

It's the sort of story that leaves a warm glow. I wonder if my Spurs season ticket will now allow me to watch the odd training match at Upton Park. it would be quite fun when they play the likes of Man U and Arsenal to see which of the West Ham (maybe they'll change their name to Spurs B, for the sake of accuracy) players we might want to transfer over to the proper club if they play well.

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Never mind. Order has been restored. To give West Ham their dues, they did a good job jumping and kicking their way through the first half, doing their best to keep a team superior in every respect from playing football. But when Mido's goal went in, they folded. The second half was just embarrassing. West Ham were clueless and dishevelled.

It's odd, because they have a lot of very good players. But something dramatically bad has happened. Pardew can't have turned into a bad manager over the course of the summer. But six losses on the trot is, if their football today is anything to go by, a fair reflection of how bad they are as a team.

Why would Eggert Magnusson want to buy a Championship team? Especially given that, as I understand it, he is so passionate a Spurs fan that he regularly flies over to watch us play.

UPDATE Iain writes:

The aggression around me was something I'd rather not witness again...Very different to where I sit at Upton Park, where we often get away supporters among us and enjoy friendly banter with them. I'm not pretending it's like that all over the ground though!

OK, I grant that last sentence. But come off it! Upton Park has quite the most rancid, unpleasant atmosphere for an away fan of any ground in the country (with the possible exception of Fratton Park). The last time I was there, a couple of seasons ago, I had to leave after the end of the first half as the home fans were spitting on us in the away end. Even the Stamford Bridge gas-chamber hissing is as nothing set alongside the truly vile atmosphere at Upton Park.

If in other posts I seem to have an animus against the Hammers, it's not because of their annoying habit of taking points from us last season. It's because visiting Upton Park - which I cannot imagine ever doing again - has consistently been one of the most disgusting experiences of my life.

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Schadenfreude: Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.

Palermo 3-0 West Ham (agg: 4-0)

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This is a very useful site, which not only has all the Premiership match goals every week, but also some of the best goals and games from the past.

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The poor mite. There, there.

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Ben Thatcher, a thug who calls himself a footballer, disgraced the Spurs shirt every time he wore it. He now does the same thing for Man City.

Last night he assaulted another man, Pedro Mendes, by smashing Mendes' face with his forearm. Mendes had a seizure, lay unconscious and was taken to hospital.

If the assault had been on the street, Thatcher would - one hopes - be charged with assault. No doubt he would be told to sweep a road for half an hour as punishment, but the point remains that he would be charged.

The incident was not on the street, however, but on the pitch during a match between Portsmouth and Man City. The upshot? Nothing. Thatcher was booked, but wasn't even sent off.

Explain, please, why such a blatant assault escapes criminal charges when it's during a football match.

UPDATE: Good.

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Here's how you know you're old. It's not when the coppers look young. It's not even when Cabinet ministers are younger than you are. It's when you read this headline

Sheringham signs for Crystal Palace

and realise that it's not Teddy to which the headline refers, but his son, Charlie:

The son of former Spurs striker Teddy Sheringham has signed a two year deal with Crystal Palace.

18 year old striker, Charlie was released by Ipswich Town at the end of last season but has impressed Palace during the club's pre-season tour to the USA.

Commenting on the new contract, Dad said:

"I hope I can play against him. We're similar so I can see what he is trying to do.

"He's certainly got no better advisor."

I watched the England game in a bar in Rome. Coming back yesterday was instructive - a real lesson in the partiality which dominates coverage here.

When Rooney was sent off, there was not one person in the bar who thought the incident anything other than a straight red card. How can stamping on a player's groin not be? Rooney is lucky that he merely had to leave a football pitch. I can think of no good reason why he is not behind bars in a German prison - his violent conduct is at least as bad as that of many of the fans who were arrested.

Blow me down, now that I'm home it's not Rooney who is being pilloried but Ronaldo, who did nothing more than say something like 'that's a red, ref'. Yes, he should have kept his mouth shut, but I'd be grateful if someone could tell me why pointing out the severity of a foul is a worse offence than committing the foul.

The truth of the matter is that England did not deserve to be alongside France, Italy and Germany. We were, to use the technical term. crap. We have some good players - Rooney, when he keeps his cool, Gerrard and Owen when he is fit and - Come On You Spur! - Lennon. But most are typical English plodders given a veneer of something better because we usually see them play in Premiership teams alongside far better players. England are a second rank football team. Just as the league table doesn't lie, nor does the fact that we now always go out in the quarter finals. That's because the quater finals is the level of our ability.

Berate Sven for getting £24 million for doing bugger all all you like - and I rejoice that we're shot of him - but it's not Sven who was the real problem. It's the players. Big Phil, Wenger, Lippi. Jurgen, whoeever; none would have made any real difference. If the players aren't good enough, they're just not good enough.

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I love the headline on this:

Referee Poll quits internationals

Graham Poll has decided to retire from international tournaments after being sent home early from the World Cup.

Like he had any choice in the matter!

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Why has ITV dumped Gabby Logan from the big games? And, to compound the error, replaced her with the terminally bland Steve Rider?

It's bad enough having to endure the awful Clive Tyldesley commentating. But at least there used to be Mrs Logan to look forward to at half-time.

Forget the fact she's easy on the eye. More valid is that, professional link-provider as Mr Rider may be, when it comes to talking about the football he appears about as informed as some bloke that has just walked into the studio, whereas Gabby Logan knows her Kuyts from her Kakas.

Dump Steve. Bring back Gabby!

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What a hilariously bad performance from England. Scraping through thanks to a free kick against that footballing giant, Ecuador. Can we please, please, stop the hype. Anyone who thinks England stand a chance against a decent team needs to be sectioned.

The defence is comically bad, but then Rio Ferdinand has always been preposterously overrated. Any so-called 'cultured' defender - someone who doesn't just hoof the ball out but passes it to a midfielder or even, wonder of wonder, runs with it himself - is fogiven the fact that he can't defend. Rio manages netither to defend nor pass. But he's 'cultured', so it's fine.

Ashley Cole had a good game, for which due praise, but John Terry was the plodder he always has been. Brute force works in the Premiership, but at international level when that's your only skill, you get found out pronto. As for Hargreaves; poor dear, it's not his fault that he was asked to play at right back. He did the best he could.

As for the midfield - where were they? Cole seemed like he'd rather be doing anything than playing for a place in the Quarter Finals. Gerrard had an off day, which everyone has sometimes. Carrick did as well as anyone could as the holding midfielder, but with no defence or attacking midfielders to link to, he was stuck. And Becks...well, if I could score from free kicks, I'd add as much to the team as he does now. The man is past it. Sven might not be engaged to him, as he put it last week, but he certainly seems irrationally besotted.

As for Lampard: is it not now plain to everyone that he is the most overrated player on the planet? Second in the world, according to FIFA. Come off it. Just like the USA are the 7th best team in the world. So he's had more shots than anyone else in the tournament. Big deal. So could I have done if they'd stuck me on the pitch. The fact that not one has gone remotely near the goal surely has some salience? Drop him. He might be good for Chelsea, but he's never been anything other than a total waste of international space for England.

Robinson looks as though he's scared witless that he might make a mistake. Every time the ball is near him I start to think 'maybe James should be playing', which surely says it all, given that James is worse than useless.

Rooney of course is exempt from this criticism. The man is breathtaking.Every piece of hyperbole attached to him is merited. It's not his fault he's playing for a joke team.

In Lennon's 10 minutes he did more than most of the rest put together. But heaven forbid that Sven might actually play him from the start.

My favourite moment though was Garth Crooks' interview with Becks. With the England captain having been seen by the entire nation spewing the contents of his stomach onto the pitch, Garth asked the one question that didn't need to be asked: "So David, it looked as if you were being physically sick. Were you?".

Still, at least now that watching England is out of the way we can revert to watching decent football. Portugal v Holland is a mouthwatering prospect.

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This was my favourite sight from the World Cup so far:

John Pantsil, the Ghana defender who plays for Hapoel Tel Aviv, pulled an Israeli flag out from his sock in the celebrations after Ghana's 2-nil demolition of the Czech Republic. The Argentinians looked awesome on Friday, but there was something so joyous about the Ghanians' play that they've become my favourite team (after England's donkeys, of course).

Meanwhile, this is the none-too-surprising take of a Milwall fan:

You can tell football has cleaned up its act by the extraordinary proportion of women in attendance. A few years back, the only women at World Cup matches were those awful Brazilian hags baring their breasts while executing a samba — and one or two grim-faced munters from Derby or Bolton in XL England shirts howling vituperative abuse in the manner of those tricoteuses who gather outside the law courts when a kiddie-fiddler is on trial.

Now the stands are full of women with attractively painted faces, except for the Iran games. It has become such a terribly inclusive tournament. That opening ceremony, with its bizarre array of floating women and horribly confident children, set the tone. I do not know what ill the world has done to deserve German hip-hop, but that World Cup slogan — barked out in a somewhat menacing Prussian imperative — summed it up: “A time to make new frentz.” For you, Tommy — for all of us — the war is at last over. The fans know it and so do the referees.

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Here's some cheery news.

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Hilarious quote from Arsene Whinger on the BBC site:

I had two aims at the start of the week: to win the European Cup and then to make Thierry stay. I only managed one of those but, for the future of the club, that's certainly the best one.

Sure it's good news for them. Without Henry they'd be just an average bunch of mid-table mercenaries. With him, they're as good as they can possibly be.

But unless you didn't notice, Arsene, even with M Henry in your team, YOU LOST! Now that they'll have him again next year, they'll have a better future than if they won. Which they didn't.

Work that one out.

UPDATE: That's enough about the Gooners from me. I'll post some World Cup stuff (I've been asked to do some regular columns during it so will be posting them here) but looking back I can see there's been a bit too much silly footie stuff in the past couple of weeks. But make sure you read the second comment below, posted by Jonathan. I think he's got me good and proper.

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...so I guess this sign wasn't needed:

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The Guardian's headline writer must have had fun writing this completely true and accurate headline:

Brazil out of the World Cup

Talking of football - what a surpise that Arsene Wenger should have spent last night bleating about the result, and the match being ruined by the sending off. Here's the thing, Arsene: when a goalie does what Lehmann did, he gets sent off. That's what happens. It's part of what's called The Rules.

What a lovely night it was all round.

UPDATE: Oh happy days!

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So, it's Big Phil. (Not, of course, that one should take anything handled by the bunglers at the FA for granted.)

Leaving aside a rather nice result for my bank manager (I backed him at 78 to 1 on Betfair) he was clearly the outstanding man for the job.

What interests me however is the assertion by football pundits that fans want an Englishman. I literally do not know a single fan who wanted Allardyce, Curbishley or, worst of all, McLaren. Indeed, every fan to whom I have spoken has said it should be the best available candidate, whether that was Scolari, Huddink or whoever.

That's where comments come in useful here. If there are any fans out there who do think it should be McLaren rather than Scolari (which is what it comes down to) let us all know why!

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Congratulations to Arsenal, who by salvaging a draw yesterday against Tottenham have guaranteed a place in next season's UEFA Cup. That's quite a performance for a scratch international XI.

No doubt their fans will be licking their lips in anticipation of playing teams of Finnish fisherman and part time Moldovian motor mechanics in the UEFA round robin stage at their new stadium. Enjoy it, Gooners!

Such a shame that M Henry will now be off to play Champions Leage football. If he wants to stay in North London, he could always pop up Seven Sisters Road.

UPDATE: And well done to Tottenham's feeder team in getting to the cup final. Shame you'll lose your last match of the Premiership season, though.

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Further to this story about Wembley , my understanding is that the situation is much worse than today's reports indicate.

A few weeks ago, an acquaintance who is involved at a very senior level with the construction told me that there would be an announcement at the end of March that the stadium would not be ready in 2006. I mentioned this to a few people at the time, but it was not written up as I could not corroborate it.

Today's announcement, however, is exactly as he told me it would be, and because everything I was told has now come to pass, I am exclusively revealing the rest of the story here.

He went on to say that there is no chance whatsoever that the stadium will be ready until the summer of 2007, and that in his opinion there is almost no chance of the stadium being ready until 2008 - and possibly late in 2008.

The announcement of the delays would, he said, be staggered for PR reasons, so that each delay seemed incremental, rather than having to reveal that the stadium would be at least a further 2 years behind schedule.

You read it here first.

How wonderful to be able to start the day with some good news! Some team called Arsenal humiliated, and the final collapse of Sol Campbell's going-nowhere career.

A despairing Sol Campbell walked out of Highbury at half-time last night after being hauled off by Arsène Wenger. The (former?) England defender endured a calamitous evening in front of Sven-Göran Eriksson, the head coach, giving away two goals before dashing from the scene of the accident as his team lost 3-2 to West Ham United.

While declining to criticise the centre half for failing to hang around for the second half, the Arsenal manager did admit that Campbell had hit a psychological low. Wenger had been forced to substitute him even though he had to replace him with Sebastian Larsson, a left winger.

“I took him off because, in his mental shape, he was too down,” Wenger said. “Sol felt guilty. I always want my players to stay (after they are replaced), but there are exceptional circumstances. He did not do it to disrespect the club or the team. He was just very down. His confidence is not the highest. I don’t think he has a problem with his physical fitness, but he is not well.”

Here's some more, just to rub it in:

Campbell's Highbury horrors take a hammering By Matt Dickinson, Chief Football Correspondent

Arsenal 2 West Ham United 3

NO WONDER Sol Campbell could not wait to flee Highbury last night. So long a stalwart of his country’s defence, the giant centre half embarrassed himself in front of Sven-Göran Eriksson. This may have been the evening when he became a former England defender.

Campbell has suffered some heavy blows in the past 12 months, losing his Arsenal place for the FA Cup Final and then his usual berth at the heart of the England defence, but his confidence appeared to have plumbed new depths last night judging by the words of deep concern from Arsène Wenger, his manager.

Campbell left the ground at half-time through a combination of guilt and embarrassment. For weeks — make that months — his enthusiasm appears to have been sapped, in part by the knowledge that he is now surplus to England’s requirements after playing every minute of every leading tournament since the 1998 World Cup.

The increasingly difficult battles with fitness and weight gain have not helped his cause and, last night, all those weaknesses and insecurities undermined him to such an extent that Wenger could not trust him to play after the interval. He preferred to throw on Sebastian Larsson, a left winger. As Wenger tried to piece together a defence out of midfield players and rookies, West Ham United were delighted to take advantage to record their fifth win in succession. Arsenal have won five in their past 16.

I could reprint lots, lots more. But I am a gentle soul and hate the idea of embarrassing the Gooners any more or seeing Sol Campbell humiliated. I'll leave it at this:

Champions League? You're having a laugh.

It's not often that I bother reading Rod Liddle, let alone link to him, but I can't resist this from his piece today:

The funniest chants directed at blameless foreigners occurred in a game which, mercifully, never actually took place. Somebody with what we might kindly describe as a sense of mischief thought that it would be a good idea for Millwall to play a pre-season friendly against Iran at the New Den.

Common sense — and, I suspect, representation from the Metropolitan police, British and Iranian governments and, possibly, the United Nations — prevailed and the game was eventually called off. But the songs had already been written and were doing the rounds on the various Millwall fans’ websites. “You’re Shi’ite and you know you are,” is, by any token, pretty good. The politically acute, dark and baleful “you’re next and you know you are,” is even better. But best of all was the one to be directed at Iran’s female supporters, a chant which combined in seven short words not just gratuitously offensive sexism, but an incitement to racial and religious hatred: “Get your face out for the lads.”

I'm not going to add much to the coverage given, quite rightly, to one of the most magnificent football matches and team performances ever.

Of the Big Clubs, Liverpool has always been the only one I can stomach winning - and when they do it in such a manner as last night, surely everyone (bar Evertonians) can celebrate their achievement, too.

One vignette. I've been watching the coverage of the parade. Outside Anfield, a reporter asked one of the crowd - live on air - why she thought it was important for her to be there (imagine the response in a broad scouse accent to get the full effect):

"Important to be here? Important to be here. I've been waiting twenty f**king years for this. Of course it's important to be here".

Glorious.

There's been a fuss in the past couple of days over a call by the National Association of Head Teachers deputy general secretary, Martin Ward, to ban football until after the 9pm watershed, given the amount of swearing which can be easily lip read by kids. The BBC has dismissed the idea.

I wonder if anyone was watching Sky Sports yesterday. As is their wont, they had a Portsmouth fan on after their game at Arsenal.

"How did you play?", the fan was asked.

"We were shit", he replied.

"Please remember you are live on national television", he was reminded. "So what do you think of Velimir Zajec (the Portsmouth manager)?".

"He couldn't motivate a fart in a curry house".

The interview was swiftly terminated. Don't you just love football fans?

From today's Guardian:

Hoddle's return to Saints gets closer

Glenn Hoddle's appointment as Southampton manager is simply a matter of time despite official denials from his agent and the club yesterday.

Announcement at 08.26:

Wolves appoint Hoddle as manager

Good to see the Grauniad as on the ball as ever.

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This is why August is known as the silly season.

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I've only missed one Cup Final since I've known what football was - Man U versus Palace in 1990. For some reason I simply couldn't be bothered - a team I want to lose every match, and one I just can't see the point of (on which note, much as I dislike West Ham, I do hope they beat Palace in the play-offs; the Hammers are a proper team who should be in the Premiership, Palace a waste of everyone's time). I couldn't have been more wrong - it was a thrilling 3-3 draw.

But today? Ugh. Talk about wanting both teams to lose. I'll either be working, watching the cricket, or watching the Scottish Cup to see if Larsson scores on his farewell to Celtic. I'm certainly not going to watch Roy Keane and Dennis Wise, two foul thugs who are a disgrace to sport itself, let alone football.

Still, at least it's not the Gooners versus Millwall. That really would be hateful.

More generally, is there anyone - bar Man U or Milwall fans - who actually cares about the Cup Final any more? (And yes, I know: if Spurs made it to the final I'd care!) It seems to me the whole thing is media hype now. Not one of my friends has mentioned it to me in recent days, and that's been the case over the past few years. We used to have all sorts of parties to watch it, but no one I know is bothering with anything like that. It's just an end of season version of the League Cup now.

UPDATE: My brother in law makes a good point: much of the 'Cup Final magic' was because it used to be one of the tiny number number of live games on TV. Now, with more than one match on most days, it's all rather superfluous.

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You are Sven-Goran Eriksson. You have at your disposal one of the best central midfielders in the world. Where do you think you'll play him?

On the left.

Step aside Taylor the Turnip; come forward, Sven the Swede.

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Ian Holloway, the QPR manager, after winning promotion:

Every dog has its day and today is woof day. Today I just want to bark.

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Is anyone able to tell me what on earth Rio Ferdinand's wages - based on a private contract between Mr Ferdinand and Manchester United - have got to do with Frank Doran MP? Does he want to check my invoices too, to make sure I'm not charging too much for the drivel I write?

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I've a smile on my face.

Here's all you need to know: Romania 5 Germany 1. "We let ourselves be slaughtered. It was humiliating" (Oliver Kahn).

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First they beat the Gooners, then they do their best to dump themselves out of the Champions' League.

At least there's something to smile about today.

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"The first time he took me to bed he kissed me everywhere. I looked down and there was David Beckham kissing my breasts! David Beckham!"

Well, it beats Peter Beardsley, I guess.

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Forget about Fallujah. Ignore the fact that Islamic terrorists are trying to destroy our society. Don’t bother yourself with trivialities such as the future of Western civilisation. Concentrate, instead, on the only thing which really matters: David Beckham’s away form.

I would love to be able to say that I couldn’t care less what Real Madrid’s No 23 has been up to off the field. He is, after all, only a footballer. Since when has he been a moral leader? And since when has he been anything more than a gifted footballer? I am unaware of his having groundbreaking views on Samuel Huntingdon’s theory of the Clash of Civilisations, the chances of cold fusion really being possible or the writings of Kant. All that should matter about him is whether his feet are in working order.

But, much as I’d like to be able to say that I don’t care, I can’t. It is no longer possible to function as a fully integrated member of society without having a view on Posh’s husband, on Rio’s drugs test, on whether Sven should have met Peter Kenyon or even, God help us, knowing who Peter Kenyon is.

Such things have got nothing to do with football. They’re not about football, but about footballers’ antics. Such is the exalted place which football now occupies in the national psyche, however, that you need to know about them. Yes: I mean you. Don’t think that, just because you have zero interest in 22 men kicking a ball about, you can escape. If you want to have any idea how the rest of the British people think, then you need to know who these sportsmen are and what they are up to.

Once upon a time, football was watched by football fans. They followed their team’s results and went to matches if they could. Unfortunates such as I were saddled, usually for family reasons, with no-hope teams such as Spurs.

No longer. Football fans are now in the minority. Today, it’s footballer fans who dominate. They choose the most fashionable club to support and then — this is what they really care about — follow what their numb-brained heroes are being paid to wear and to tell us to wear, with whom (and how many times a night) they are sleeping and in which cesspit of debauchery they are picking their conquests up.

How we ended up with the majority of the population drooling over the antics of a bunch of predevelopmental, barely post-pubescent, grunting ruffians is by now almost irrelevant. So relentlessly are we fed a diet of this wretched pap that an entire economic structure has evolved around it, from the girl whose ambition is to shag a footballer and flog the story, through to the hack whose job is to buy up the resulting tale, to the mindless fan who grabs the newspaper and reads enviously about doing it seven times a night. In the entire charade, who is paying what for whom, and who is playing whom for what, is a moot point.

“Mindless”, because whatever traces were once present of the footballer fans’ brains have now been so wholly dissolved by this onslaught that they have no capacity to understand that others might not behave similarly. So anyone who seeks to curry favour with them — anyone with something to sell, whether they be politicians or retailers — must affect to be infected with the same obsession. Hence Tony Blair’s claim that he used to stand behind the goal at St James’ Park and watch Jackie Milburn, a claim undermined only by the little matter of Milburn having retired before the Prime Minister was yet four.

Will it never end? We can but hope. The Beckham “brand” might now, we are told, be damaged beyond repair. Mazeltov! One day, but one day, we might be able to watch Beckham the footballer and forget about Beckham the icon.

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Marvelous example of football rubbish from Jamie Redknapp, one of the more thoughtful players:

"Hopefully Europe is within our reach and we have got to keep pushing on," said Redknapp.

"Sunday was a big result for us because we are five points behind Newcastle now, but we have got a tough run because we play Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal - but I think we have proved we can beat the big teams."

Since Spurs have lost to Man U, Chelsea and Arsenal, I'm wondering how exactly it is that we have "proved we can beat the big teams".

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Wonderful sports dictionary by Simon Barnes in today's Times.

My favourites:

ATMOSPHERE: noise. “Tremendous atmosphere in the Millennium Stadium.”

AVERAGE: nothing to do with figures of any kind. “Average” is a euphemism for “poor”, as in “he had a pretty average game”. See also ordinary.

BACK OF THE NET: in the goal. Note that the expression “front of the net” does not exist. At a recent televised match, the ball rebounded off the advertising hoarding, hit the goal from behind and made the net billow. The commentator said: “They think it was a goal, but the ball just hit the back of the net . . . but not the back of the net they wanted it to.” In other words, the net has two backs, but no front.

EXPERIENCE: as in, he used his experience to win a free kick. It means that he cheated.

LITERALLY: not to be understood literally. The word is used as an intensifier for any metaphor. “In 30 seconds, the players will come out of the tunnel and this magnificent stadium will literally explode.”

OVERNIGHT: a period of time in which — in the face of much contradictory evidence — it is considered impossible for a good team to become a bad team.

PHYSICAL: a team that has a taste for quasi-legal violence is said to be “very physical”. Opposite terms such as “very spiritual” or “very cerebral” do not exist.

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UEFA have decided that tonight's Cup matches involving four Spanish sides will go ahead, despite the request of the clubs concerned.

As the Valencia president, Jaime Orti, put it: "This is a tragic day for Spain. It's a day when we can hardly be thinking about football and we believe that neither the players nor the clubs are ready to play these games."

So it's not just the English FA which operates in a moral vacuum. UEFA's decision is so mind blowingly warped that I simply cannot believe it will stand. It can't, can it? Can the football powers-that-be really be that deranged? Given UEFA's description of the murder of 182 people as "difficult circumstances" then the answer looks like yes.

(via Harry's Place.)

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How can you not warm to this man?

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I have been on this planet for 39 of your earth years. In that time, I have witnessed some pretty dire/ humiliating/ pathetic (choose your own word from a long list) performances by the Lillywhites. But until tonight, I had never heard, let alone witnessed, anything as grotesquely awful as this.

I hereby resign* as a Spurs fan. Life's too short to watch or even care any more about the tossers who shame the Spurs shirts they wear.

*My fingers are crossed behind my back; I'll be there on Saturday, God help me...

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This isn't a tipping site; I've only given one so far (Fondmort, last year, who won and was 7/1 when I tipped him).

Here's the second: Fredi Kanoute is 4/1 with Hills to score the first goal for Mali against Kenya on Monday in the African Nations Cup. Looks a stand out bet to me.

(3)

Sky Sports interviewer to the Sacrborough manager, moments after his team have gone 1-0 down to Chelea:

What do you need to do now?

To which he replies:

Well, score a goal, obviously.

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Kudos to Barry Davies, the 'veteran' BBC commentator, for recognising reality.

One of the most artifical, albeit understandable, aspects of televised football is that the commentators - this applies equally to Sky, ITV and the BBC - never make any reference to the audible crowd chants, which are often the most entertaining aspect of a match. That's because they are usually, as one friend of mine put it once, 'fxxxing rude'.

So all credit to Bazza for breaking the golden rule, and acknowledging a chant which every viewer heard during today's Yeovil v Liverpool match. After a particularly fine rendition from the Yeovial fans of 'you're shit, and you know you are' to the Liverpool players, Mr D remarked: 'One would have thought the Yeovil supportes could come up with something a little more original than that.'

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The idea may be regarded by many as heresy but, amongst my acquaintances, I know of no one who disagrees with the notion that Spurs and Arsenal should share a ground.

I can't put it better than Patrick Barclay does in today's Sunday Telegraph, not one word of which would I dissent from. He even suggests my own pet idea, that the ground should be in King's Cross:

When the Tottenham chairman, Daniel Levy, recently spoke of extending the ground's capacity to 48,000, he must have known he was flogging a horse that was not only dead but dog-food; there are simply not enough council-tax payers in London to pay for the infrastructural improvements required to make a journey to or from White Hart Lane pleasant. In this sense, Spurs have indeed been left behind. Any fan who fits the footballing definition of ''middle class''- in other words who is capable, when sober, of rising marginally above the savage - will know that a car, due to congestion, about as much use as a powerboat in the Sahara and that, once you have been disgorged by public transport, there is nowhere to dine or browse or engage in any recreation other than trying not slither on discarded trays of pale,fat chips. Down the side streets there may be cosy homes, but the face of the Tottenham High Road scowls.

Much as I like the stadium, I do not think Spurs can afford stay there. Meanwhile Arsenal, though their environment is more congenial, are already planning to leave Highbury for a 60,000-capacity place nearby. So is this another instance of Arsenal getting it right while Spurs, who will next year effect their fifth change of management since Arsene Wenger moved into Highbury, get it wrong? I am not so sure.Arsenal have a deserved reputation, based on developments such as the new North Bank, for doing things properly and the scale of the Ashburton Grove project reflects this. Their sense of style is admirable. Yet,every time we hear how the figures stack up, I am reminded of that game in which you keep carefully adding to the stack wooden blocks until eventually the whole thing topples over. Football is almost as risky an affair and,when clubs budget for continued success, as Arsenal seem to be doing, they are gambling.

So how do Arsenal play safe while Spurs progress? You may have guessed the answer by now. Move in together. It will not happen in the foreseeable future. It may never happen. It truly should, and I cannot think of a more suitable method of invigorating the desolate, seedy environs of King's Cross railway station than by giving the North London neighbours a more central home, a showcase for the game, logistically convenient, architecturally imaginative and perhaps capable of adaptation to a variety of the capital's other needs. Arsenal and Spurs could then grow separately; all they would need a joint property company to create and administer an edifice that might command the respect of even such distinguished visitors as United.

This would be infinitely preferable to their sharing the new Wembley. But even that might be preferable to their separate prospects. Certainly Tottenham's. So let Spurs and their fans start the thinking afresh.The alternative is to stay small - but stop moaning about it, because it is just the price to be paid for tradition.

Meanwhile, I'm off this afternoon to watch Spurs beat Man U (without the nauseating cry baby Rio Ferdinand, it seems) 3-0.

UPDATE: A man can but dream...The northerners won 2-1. Drug assisted, doubtless.

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