Let's start with a 'definite penalty'. West Ham lump it into the Stoke box, Andy Carroll smashes Marc Muniesa in the face, and while he's being smashed in the face the ball hits Muniesa's arm. Well that's definitely handball, just like if I buy some crack and plant it on someone I don't like and call the police they should definitely put that person in prison.
With definite penalties out of the way let's turn to Antonio Nocerino, he's that stocky Italian midfielder who used to play in the San Siro with Mario Balotelli and who now plays at Upton Park with Kevin Nolan, Carlton Cole, and Sam Allardyce's tactical ingenuity, which probably won't be a completely bewildering experience. Not so much pass and move as punt and smash. In fact watching West Ham United go toe-to-toe with Stoke City is a bit like watching glorified Sunday league (or the SPL as some people like to call it).
Another player going through an interesting time (presumably) is Luciano Becchio, once a hero at Elland Road, now that guy who can't get on the pitch behind Ricky Von Wolfspenis and goalshy iceman Johan Elmander, which is like being told your job application has failed because they've given the post of head of accounting to a cubicle door or a pineapple.
Roy Hodgson spent Saturday afternoon watching the team he'd most love to manage, as he paid a visit to St Mary's to keep tabs on as many of England's starting XI as he thinks he can get away with. Jay Rodriguez impressed, and Rickie Lambert continued to be Roy Hodgson's favourite player, not all fancy and talented like them Cristiano Ronaldo's and Lionel Messi's, but someone who is almost as good at football as he is at stacking shelves, who fits in well when what you're trying to create is a team that's about as fluid and mobile as quiche.
At Goodison Park David Marshall continued to be the only reason Cardiff City have any points at all as he pulled off about 97 saves to limit Everton to just 2 goals, while Ole came about as close as he's ever Gunnar come to actually getting a point away from the Cardiff Shitty Stadium.
Now I've put it off long enough but let's talk about Chelsea. I wonder if Willian will get sent off when we show this independent highlight of him receiving a yellow card amidst no other action. Will he? Will he? Oh yes, look, he has. Well done Match of the Day, watching your show blind it wasn't at all easy to predict what I was about to see.
Chelsea lost on the road, Jose got sent off, Willian got sent off, Ramires tried to kill Karim El Ahmadi's leg, Chelsea lost their 'grip on the title' and Fernando Torres continued to be slightly less useful on a football pitch than a box of matches, a cheese grater or Emile Heskey. This is a guy being paid millions of pounds every year to look as interested in football as blind people look interested in art galleries. Let's count the ways he could be more useless; if he was actually physically dead, or in a coma. That's about it. Being a useless sack of shit should become a sackable offence.
There was good news for Sunderland as they didn't lose (or win), bad news for Swansea as they did somehow manage to lose, while Bayern Munchen are now 50 games unbeaten in the completely competitive Bundesliga.
In this next segment we reflect on Match of the Day, so we're calling it Watching Match of the Day and Commenting on Bits of It...
The show started by referencing something I hadn't previously been aware of. MOTD 'pundits' Alan 'I'm as interesting as warm water' Shearer and Robbie 'I'm noisier than a flock of geese and half as insightful' Savage, for Sport Relief, sat on some chairs. They went to a stadium, it might've been Wembley, and then went into the MOTD studio and complained that moving round a stadium sitting on all the chairs was really really difficult. Maybe we should just give all the money they raised to them both as compensation. Better still let's give it to the viewers, as compensation for the mental trauma of being able to remember what it was like when Robbie Savage wasn't on the television.
I'm just going to recap quickly, to raise money for Sport Relief, Alan Shearer and Robbie Savage sat on some chairs. Who thought up that ingenious money-raising strategy? It's the sort of thing one of your stupider friends would suggest in the pub that would get him denounced as a daft cunt.
On chairs. Sat on some chairs. For charity. Oh forget it. Dear humanity, I give up on you.
Chairs, for fucks sake. They went to a stadium and sat in all the chairs. What the fuck even is that? What kind of a world is this in which people think that is any kind of a way to behave? What the fuck? I really want to know, what the actual fuck? They sat on all the chairs. Not building a new school for the disadvantaged kiddies so they can learn to read, sitting on chairs. But not just some chairs, all of them. That makes all the difference.
Chairs!
For the love of Christ what is happening to the world?
Alan Shearer. Robbie Savage. All the chairs. Going round, sitting on all the chairs. Sitting down, getting up, moving to the next one. For charity. As if it's not totally mental. As if you aren't all asking 'what in the name of fuck?'.
Later in the program it asked fans to pointlessly vote on whether George Boyd's pointless dive in the City-Hull match should have had the consequence of a penalty. Voting has now closed and the verdict has come in and it seems that not only was the incident slightly less debatable than a debate on whether there is or isn't rain, but also it has happens to have turned out that nobody gives any kind of a shit and the vote could only have had less consequence or meaning if it hadn't actually happened at all.
I mean seriously, what is it for? Why would you even bother? Why would you vote? He did dive, it's not up for debate. And what does it change? What is the effect of the vote? What is it actually for? It's just voting for voting's sake, because that's where we've got to as a species. It's like going into a football stadium and pointlessly sitting on all the chairs. As if that's a thing people do. As if that's a normal endurance challenge.
Also on MOTD we found out that Tony Pulis has spent 22 years as a manager, and 'over 200 hundred of them as a Premier League manager' which officially means that if you manage Stoke it doesn't actually count.
Right, that's enough of that, I'm not mentioning chairs again, or Match of the Day, or how intolerably useless Robbie Savage is at everything.
We now turn our beady eye to tomorrow's soccer. Arsingham face Tottenhal, and Liverwank play Manshitster. We'll start with Arsingham...
I think we've all been shocked to see that Tim Sherwood's incredibly sophisticated managerial masterplan of not coming up with any tactics and just shouting quite a lot doesn't seem to be working out quite as planned. I for one was impressed with the way he recognised, quite correctly, that Nabil Bentaleb is actually the best player in the world and not an intensely average waste of space. I've also been impressed with how he manages to manage a team competing in European competition as if he was actually managing Swindon or Farnborough.
What is interesting is that tomorrow it will be straight-talking Tim against anything but straight-talking Arsene Wenger. Expect, regardless of what happens, Arsene Wenger to deny that it ever did, and Tim to blame it on character rather than a hopeless lack of tactical awareness.
You'll have noticed how, in the build up to the Bayern game, Wenger asked for the referee to 'give Arsenal a fair chance', and he did, in fact, he did all he could to give them any chance whatsoever, like by not penalising Lukas Podolski for shoving over Philip Lahm and by only giving one penalty against them. It wasn't like Arsene Wenger was trying to coerce decisions out of the ref and it definitely didn't work (he said to cover himself against highly improbable legal actions).
Arsene Wenger also built up to the game by listing all the decisions that have stopped Arsenal from winning any silverware at all since 2005. He referred to the Jens Lehmann incident in Paris in 06 when Jens got a red card when in fact what he should have got was a red card, and he referred to the Wojciech Szcecczzezsney red card which should only have been a red car...well, actually, only having one decision go against you in 8 years is actually pretty reasonable. That didn't stop Arsene Wenger from using his post-match press conference to blame the Sczczesnezsny red card, Arjen Robben, Twitter and Russia for Arsenal's latest failure to make any progress towards their ultimate goal of not being shit anymore.
But seriously, it is all a massive conspiracy. It's not the lack of any kind of back-up tactic, it's not the fact his lone striker can't control a football or that his main centre-back looks like he carried Merry and Pippin on his shoulders in Lord of the Rings, it's not Arsene Wenger's fault, it's the conspiracy. UEFA, FIFA, WHOEVA, all of these organizations, and more, are involved, and their sole aim is to stop Arsenal from collecting the silverware that is rightly theirs (and which hasn't just eluded them solely because they don't fucking deserve it).
I'm not gonna get bogged down in rambling on about who did (or definitely didn't) do what to who. Let's just agree that Arsene Wenger is a cunt and have that be the end of it. Let's agree that his plan of not bothering to come up with any kind another plan, of being tactically outwitted by refrigerators and car alarms, is absolutely fucking genius.
Now, in a to-be-short-lived segment it's time for news from countries which do play football but which aren't England...
German national hero and Bayern Munchen Presidente Uli Hoeness has
admitted defrauding the German tax authorities out of 'shit loads' of
money, saying that he 'would do it again', that the entire country is
'wank' and that the prosecutors could stick the case 'up their arse'.
Though in hindsight I did those translations myself and, on reflection, I
don't actually speak German.
Also in Deutschland, Werder Bremen's
Aaron Hunt has been praised for owning up to a dive and stopping his
side being awarded a penalty in game they'd already won. HOWEVER, using
my extensive German vocabulary and my amazing lip reading skills I can
tell you that what Aaron Hunt actually said to the ref was 'your mum is a
filthy crack whore', the ref then subsequently reversed the decision in
a symbolic gesture believed to be in support of his mother who, he
says, is not filthy but just misunderstood.
Aaron Hunt did
basically, and without me needing to translate it, say that if it hadn't
already been 2-0 to Werder he probably would have let the penalty
stand, but that's not important. He only dived in the first place, and
then confessed, now he's a hero. It makes perfect sense to me.
And, for those of you who have been attempting to induce nausea, this
happened in Israel at some point before now, and is one that Michael
'turn your pants' Brown would probably call 'a bit racey'. While in
Greece people get away with a yellow card for this. And that's enough of this week's people kicking the shite out of each other segment.
But oh wait, I haven't mentioned Ramires' placid and reasonable attempt to splinter Karim El Ahmadi's shins. There you go, segment over. Actually if you're into that sort of thing I just accidentally found this, this, this and this. The first is Wes Brown trying to pretend he's still a professional footballer, the second is Michael Brown narrowly missing the ball, the third is gentle ITV pundit Roy Keane ending Alf Inge Haaland's career, and the fourth is nice guy Roy Keane's response to ending Alf Inge Haaland's career completely deliberately. And now it's over. Lovely bloke is Roy. Not a psychopath. Not at all. Lovely bloke. Lovely, lovely bloke. Just wouldn't want to meet him down a dark alley. Or at all. Because he's a prick. If I hadn't already made that clear. One of the worst human beings who has ever lived. It goes Hitler, Pol Pot, Roy Keane, Adrian Chiles, Stalin, Heinrich Himmler.
And if anyone tells you he didn't end Haaland's career, that's bollocks. That injury did for him, and without Roy Keane inflicting it, that injury wouldn't have happened. That's how stuff works.
To quote a legal expert 'prison is there to keep people who are mental away from people they might attack', and I am warning you all now that Roy Keane has the psychological profile of a cold-blooded killer. So don't say you weren't warned. It's time to take the precautionary measure of locking him away forever in some sort of specially made chamber, before he murders people. If we do nothing, then aren't we complicit in his forthcoming murderings? When he flips out and stabs Lee Dixon in the throat with some scissors, then aren't we to blame for not dealing with Roy when we had the chance?
Some of you are thinking 'he won't definitely kill someone', but I'm here to promise you that he definitely will.
Saturday, 15 March 2014
Thursday, 6 March 2014
References to the Boer War, Gengis Khan, Simon Davies and Cluedo
First off...
Roy Hodgson has recruited a psychiatrist, as if that could haul Adam Lallana up to international standard. This is a guy I saw playing in the Championship and thought 'yeah, he's pretty good' and now he's only slightly better. Roy, meanwhile, is a guy you might've seen managing cavalry regiments in the Boer War (which is a sort-of joke about the fact he's almost as old as time itself); Roy is a guy whose about as up to date and in touch and with the times as Gengis Khan or Alexander the Great (both of whom he tried to sign when he was manager of Thrace United); you can give someone as terrifically ancient as Roy the resources of Jordan Henderson and Dan Sturridge, who are having the best drained out of them by Brendo Rogers, and all he'll do is carry on managing them like he's still managing Fulham and they're Steve Sidwell and Simon Davies. This is a man who would utilize Lionel Messi like he was Zoltan Gera.
In other Roy-related news there's an online petition to ban Tom Cleverley from the England squad, set up by people who really really don't think England gave Gareth Barry enough of a chance to screw everything up four years ago and think he should be allowed another go at being the team's official World Cup dead weight.
In other other Roy-related news, England beat Denmark. Yeah! Take that Denmark! Good to get a win under the belt against a World Cup side...alright not a side from this particular World Cup but they've been in other ones...
And finally, many newspapers have picked up on Morten Olson's comments that England would need luck if they were going to succeed in the World Cup, because apparently someone thought they wouldn't. I can only assume that's why it's considered news.
Elsewhere on the international scene there was joy for Northern Ireland as they didn't lose, and against a team as mighty as Cyprus. Expect today to become a national holiday. Germany, meanwhile, got booed off after only beating Chile one-nil, while elsewhere Scotland won a football match and the Republic of Ireland didn't. Scotland's win was made all the more impressive by Poland not having any of their star players. Did I say all the more impressive? I meant significantly less impressive...
Away from the international scene upstanding pillar of the community Massimo Cellino is facing ANOTHER trial, separate to the one he's facing next year and irrelevent to the two he's already gone through. He's done nothing illegal, ever, it's just a coincidence people keep charging him with stuff. Could've happened to anyone. Anyone who invented a company to own a yacht for him so he wouldn't have to pay tax on it. I did that last week. Well, not that exact same thing...something similar, with beans, I'll explain it to you sometime, it's the sort of story that really deserves a post of its own.
Championship comedy club QPR, meanwhile, have narrowly exceeded the Financial Fair Play limit on losses that Championship clubs are permitted to make. The limit is £8 million, and hold on I'll just check if they've gone over that...one second...they lost...hmm, let me see, ah, here it is, £65 million. Yes, I think, I think that's slightly more than 8...yes, my calculator is telling me that 65 is definitely more than 8. Tough break there Tony.
Elsewhere there's bad news for United fans as Federico Macheda announces he'll leave the club when his contract is up at the end of the season. Yes, I know, it's shocking, I didn't realise he was still there either. He's said that ideally he'd like to stay in the Premier League, and he deserves it after categorically failing to prove himself in the Championship it's only natural that another top tier side will come knocking for the services of someone who is both quite tall, very skinny AND Italian.
In other news, Dermot Desmond (AKA the man who thinks he's Colonel Mustard) says that in two different ways Celtic is the top performing club in the UK; first in terms of the balance sheet (we'll have to take his word for it) and secondly on the pitch, where they regularly avoid defeat against Aberdeen, Inverness, Dundee United and the mighty Motherwell. Heaven forfend they should be troubled with playing anything more sophisticated than glorified pub football.
Manchester United, meanwhile, are apparently willing to make Luke Shaw the best paid teenager in the Premier League, because if you can't beat them then you can at least make sure you have the best paid everything in the Universe, because that somehow might feel like winning.
And in other news, Christian Benteke did this at the weekend, and then did this on international duty...
Now, for the second time in as many weeks, let's have a look at what's happening OUTSIDE of the soccerball universe (also known as the universe)...
In games console sales news it seems the PS4 is outselling the Xbox One by two to One. These figures prove that when entering a competitive industry it isn't necessarily an advantage to offer basically the same product but for quite a lot more money, a business lesson we can all learn from when we're flogging our used crap on eBay. And whilst we're on pointing out the obvious flaws in business plans, where did HMV expect to get selling the precise same products as you could get online or across the road for thrice as much?
In 'lifestyle' news sugar could be addictive. Sally Davies (I don't know who that is) wants to introduce a tax on sugar to combat obesity, which is clever because what will happen then is people will say 'yes, on the one hand I'm addicted to sugar, but on the other hand this Mars bar is 29p more expensive, so I think I'll just stop being addicted to it now...'. Here's the way I see it - heroin is addictive, and heroin users notoriously beat up old people and steal their pensions, so what Sally Davies is proposing is that we force fat people to work off their excess flab going on the rob to fund their sugar habits.
In other news the dark fire will not avail you (worst luck). Elsewhere I saw the phrase 'Twitter error' and was disappointed to learn that it wasn't an error which had terminally infected absolutely everyone who uses it. And in other news I love Jesus and Jesus loves me (which makes it consensual).
Finally I just tried to do a search for Alex Ferguson and accidentally did a search for Alan Ferguson, who is an American Music Video Director who probably hasn't ever signed Juan Sebastian Veron or been knocked out of the F.A. Cup by Leeds.
Anyway, so when I actually get to Sir Alex I discover this from Piers Morgan; 'Bumped into Sir Alex Ferguson at an Oscars party in Hollywood tonight. We shook hands, I said 'Thank God you're gone', he laughed. End.' - Well, that certainly was unmissable. How have I failed to get into this Twitter phenomenon when it contains fascinating 200-word treasures such as this? I mean, how could anyone find an entire website dedicated to such thoroughly entertaining and informative insights suicidally infuriating?
On which note, we're going to start the next segment, which I am provisionally calling 'Twatter' which is a mix of 'Twitter' and 'Chatter' and is basically ingenious...
To make this segment fair and even I'm going to put in a random search item such as 'Andre Schurrle' and then examine the results...
Someone named Rob says "Chelsea midfielder Andre Schurrle has revealed how he followed the advice of manager Jose Mourinho and worked on his body strength": well I never. Body strength? You're kidding me. I not only needed to know that, but I am fascinated by the intricacy of this fascinating news item. A manager gave a player some advice, the player followed it. You know people have often wondered how the enormous complexity of everyday existence could be expressed in however many characters you're allowed on Shitter, seems they needn't bother.
Someone named Jose Mourinho Fans says "André Schürrle saying that Mourinho told him to change his game style and body, "that's what I have worked with in the last two months."" this is what I love about Shitter, it takes things that wouldn't normally be news and makes them shorter and less informative.
Now, leaving Andre Schurrle alone as the law says I must, it's time for a new segment which I'm not going to bother giving a name to. Using Twitter's strictly enforced character limit I will now review literature...
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) - Could've been worse, can't imagine how. Lots of shouting, lots of incomprehensible rambling, lots of bollocks.
Survivor (Chuck Palihaniwanninanichuk) - Imagine if Fight Club was less good but still written by the same bloke.
Given the success of my 'Twitlit' section, I will now, with the same character limitation, explain some stuff to you...
Azerbaijan - Borders with Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Iran; almost Asia but not.
Gravity - everything sucked into the middle of the earth except for space which is too far away.
Chairs - things for sitting on which aren't the floor and have legs but aren't people or animals.
Ice Hockey - men in hats with sticks hitting puck around frozen oval, mainly in Canada.
World War II - Germans grr grr grr, france surrenders, blitz, barbarossa, stalingrad, kursk, berlin, holocaust, victory in europe, hiroshima, etc etc.
I think that went well. Take my description of World War II, it was vivid and extensive, and apart from missing out absolutely all of the finer details, it was brilliant and useful.
Roy Hodgson has recruited a psychiatrist, as if that could haul Adam Lallana up to international standard. This is a guy I saw playing in the Championship and thought 'yeah, he's pretty good' and now he's only slightly better. Roy, meanwhile, is a guy you might've seen managing cavalry regiments in the Boer War (which is a sort-of joke about the fact he's almost as old as time itself); Roy is a guy whose about as up to date and in touch and with the times as Gengis Khan or Alexander the Great (both of whom he tried to sign when he was manager of Thrace United); you can give someone as terrifically ancient as Roy the resources of Jordan Henderson and Dan Sturridge, who are having the best drained out of them by Brendo Rogers, and all he'll do is carry on managing them like he's still managing Fulham and they're Steve Sidwell and Simon Davies. This is a man who would utilize Lionel Messi like he was Zoltan Gera.
In other Roy-related news there's an online petition to ban Tom Cleverley from the England squad, set up by people who really really don't think England gave Gareth Barry enough of a chance to screw everything up four years ago and think he should be allowed another go at being the team's official World Cup dead weight.
In other other Roy-related news, England beat Denmark. Yeah! Take that Denmark! Good to get a win under the belt against a World Cup side...alright not a side from this particular World Cup but they've been in other ones...
And finally, many newspapers have picked up on Morten Olson's comments that England would need luck if they were going to succeed in the World Cup, because apparently someone thought they wouldn't. I can only assume that's why it's considered news.
Elsewhere on the international scene there was joy for Northern Ireland as they didn't lose, and against a team as mighty as Cyprus. Expect today to become a national holiday. Germany, meanwhile, got booed off after only beating Chile one-nil, while elsewhere Scotland won a football match and the Republic of Ireland didn't. Scotland's win was made all the more impressive by Poland not having any of their star players. Did I say all the more impressive? I meant significantly less impressive...
Away from the international scene upstanding pillar of the community Massimo Cellino is facing ANOTHER trial, separate to the one he's facing next year and irrelevent to the two he's already gone through. He's done nothing illegal, ever, it's just a coincidence people keep charging him with stuff. Could've happened to anyone. Anyone who invented a company to own a yacht for him so he wouldn't have to pay tax on it. I did that last week. Well, not that exact same thing...something similar, with beans, I'll explain it to you sometime, it's the sort of story that really deserves a post of its own.
Championship comedy club QPR, meanwhile, have narrowly exceeded the Financial Fair Play limit on losses that Championship clubs are permitted to make. The limit is £8 million, and hold on I'll just check if they've gone over that...one second...they lost...hmm, let me see, ah, here it is, £65 million. Yes, I think, I think that's slightly more than 8...yes, my calculator is telling me that 65 is definitely more than 8. Tough break there Tony.
Elsewhere there's bad news for United fans as Federico Macheda announces he'll leave the club when his contract is up at the end of the season. Yes, I know, it's shocking, I didn't realise he was still there either. He's said that ideally he'd like to stay in the Premier League, and he deserves it after categorically failing to prove himself in the Championship it's only natural that another top tier side will come knocking for the services of someone who is both quite tall, very skinny AND Italian.
In other news, Dermot Desmond (AKA the man who thinks he's Colonel Mustard) says that in two different ways Celtic is the top performing club in the UK; first in terms of the balance sheet (we'll have to take his word for it) and secondly on the pitch, where they regularly avoid defeat against Aberdeen, Inverness, Dundee United and the mighty Motherwell. Heaven forfend they should be troubled with playing anything more sophisticated than glorified pub football.
Manchester United, meanwhile, are apparently willing to make Luke Shaw the best paid teenager in the Premier League, because if you can't beat them then you can at least make sure you have the best paid everything in the Universe, because that somehow might feel like winning.
And in other news, Christian Benteke did this at the weekend, and then did this on international duty...
Now, for the second time in as many weeks, let's have a look at what's happening OUTSIDE of the soccerball universe (also known as the universe)...
In games console sales news it seems the PS4 is outselling the Xbox One by two to One. These figures prove that when entering a competitive industry it isn't necessarily an advantage to offer basically the same product but for quite a lot more money, a business lesson we can all learn from when we're flogging our used crap on eBay. And whilst we're on pointing out the obvious flaws in business plans, where did HMV expect to get selling the precise same products as you could get online or across the road for thrice as much?
In 'lifestyle' news sugar could be addictive. Sally Davies (I don't know who that is) wants to introduce a tax on sugar to combat obesity, which is clever because what will happen then is people will say 'yes, on the one hand I'm addicted to sugar, but on the other hand this Mars bar is 29p more expensive, so I think I'll just stop being addicted to it now...'. Here's the way I see it - heroin is addictive, and heroin users notoriously beat up old people and steal their pensions, so what Sally Davies is proposing is that we force fat people to work off their excess flab going on the rob to fund their sugar habits.
In other news the dark fire will not avail you (worst luck). Elsewhere I saw the phrase 'Twitter error' and was disappointed to learn that it wasn't an error which had terminally infected absolutely everyone who uses it. And in other news I love Jesus and Jesus loves me (which makes it consensual).
Finally I just tried to do a search for Alex Ferguson and accidentally did a search for Alan Ferguson, who is an American Music Video Director who probably hasn't ever signed Juan Sebastian Veron or been knocked out of the F.A. Cup by Leeds.
Anyway, so when I actually get to Sir Alex I discover this from Piers Morgan; 'Bumped into Sir Alex Ferguson at an Oscars party in Hollywood tonight. We shook hands, I said 'Thank God you're gone', he laughed. End.' - Well, that certainly was unmissable. How have I failed to get into this Twitter phenomenon when it contains fascinating 200-word treasures such as this? I mean, how could anyone find an entire website dedicated to such thoroughly entertaining and informative insights suicidally infuriating?
On which note, we're going to start the next segment, which I am provisionally calling 'Twatter' which is a mix of 'Twitter' and 'Chatter' and is basically ingenious...
To make this segment fair and even I'm going to put in a random search item such as 'Andre Schurrle' and then examine the results...
Someone named Rob says "Chelsea midfielder Andre Schurrle has revealed how he followed the advice of manager Jose Mourinho and worked on his body strength": well I never. Body strength? You're kidding me. I not only needed to know that, but I am fascinated by the intricacy of this fascinating news item. A manager gave a player some advice, the player followed it. You know people have often wondered how the enormous complexity of everyday existence could be expressed in however many characters you're allowed on Shitter, seems they needn't bother.
Someone named Jose Mourinho Fans says "André Schürrle saying that Mourinho told him to change his game style and body, "that's what I have worked with in the last two months."" this is what I love about Shitter, it takes things that wouldn't normally be news and makes them shorter and less informative.
Now, leaving Andre Schurrle alone as the law says I must, it's time for a new segment which I'm not going to bother giving a name to. Using Twitter's strictly enforced character limit I will now review literature...
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) - Could've been worse, can't imagine how. Lots of shouting, lots of incomprehensible rambling, lots of bollocks.
Survivor (Chuck Palihaniwanninanichuk) - Imagine if Fight Club was less good but still written by the same bloke.
Given the success of my 'Twitlit' section, I will now, with the same character limitation, explain some stuff to you...
Azerbaijan - Borders with Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Iran; almost Asia but not.
Gravity - everything sucked into the middle of the earth except for space which is too far away.
Chairs - things for sitting on which aren't the floor and have legs but aren't people or animals.
Ice Hockey - men in hats with sticks hitting puck around frozen oval, mainly in Canada.
World War II - Germans grr grr grr, france surrenders, blitz, barbarossa, stalingrad, kursk, berlin, holocaust, victory in europe, hiroshima, etc etc.
I think that went well. Take my description of World War II, it was vivid and extensive, and apart from missing out absolutely all of the finer details, it was brilliant and useful.
Sunday, 2 March 2014
Alan Pardew goes all Dion Dublin
We open today with a new segment called 'the Opposite of What I Think'...
David Moyes is doing really well, Arsenal are going to win the title, Mesut Ozil has lived up to his price tag, David Meyler was asking for it, Peter Crouch is just excellent at football, Alan Pardew's not in any trouble at all, Luis Suarez is rubbish at football, and Tomas Rosicky's hair is fantastic.
Oh, did Arsenal lose away to Stoke? No way. You're kidding. I don't believe you. I made Arsenal favourites to win the league all along and I am just amazed that they're crashing out of the Champions League and have now lost at Stoke of all places. Jack Wilshere (the genius behind these 'comments') thinks Arsenal deserved to win, and they did, just about as much as I deserve the Nobel Prize in Physics and Jeremy Kyle deserves a knighthood.
Elsewhere Alan Pardew is in 'huge enormous massive massive trouble' (Jeff Stelling's own words) after nudging David Meyler's chin with his forehead. Savage thinks it makes his position untenable, and I actually kind of agree with him. In other words, reinforce the windows, take the kids into the basement, the apocalypse should be coming to a town near you in the not too distant future.
Dan Sturridge, in the meanwhile, didn't get to show off his modern, more refined dance style as Liverpool cruised to victory over Turdhampton at St Margaret's (this isn't really a news item, it's just an excuse to watch this again and again and again; he's so happy he's forgotten how to dance).
One of the goals of the weekend came from the boot of Dave Jones; the jug-eared, baldy headed former Manchester United youth player who looped a perfectly judged volley in off the bar to open the score in the big Championship clash between Burn Lee and Darbee Countee (naturally I wouldn't let you down by not providing a clip - so here it is - I can only apologise that it's not a clip of the goal I'm talking about, but I couldn't find that on Youtube so I just substituted one David Jones for another, hoping you wouldn't notice but now I'm just going to assume you will notice the absence of fans, the presence of houses in the background, the absence of pitch markings and the presence of a fat man in orange lumping a ball across a recreation ground).
This next segment is called while we're on Youtube and will only really work if you can follow the links...
There's this legendary piece of reporting from Kammy, the endlessly brilliant 'nobody wants to be a Gary Neville', and then there's this which I just can't stop watching.
The Carragher-Neville MNF clip is the reason I always give out to the BBC's 'punditry' team. Carra & Nev have chemistry and character, getting Carra & Nev together to analyse football is like getting Hitler and Stalin together to analyse wars, it's like getting Richard Dawkins and the Archbishop of Canterbury together to analyse the bible, whereas getting that Chapman bloke, Kevin Kilbane and Danny Murphy together to discuss anything is more like sitting your teddy bears around the kitchen table for a tea party - only with a lot of imagination is it ever going to resemble entertainment.
Elsewhere it's the League Cup final this afternoon and I still couldn't tell you why we have one. Germany doesn't have a second, crappier cup competition - neither does Italy or Spain or any decent, civilised nation. Why on earth we think we need something that is slightly worse and finishing in March to pointlessly occupy teams is beyond me. We have a premier cup competition, and then a second one that nobody wants to win. Someone seems to have just said 'lets play more football' and then come up with this shit way of managing to do that. Besides, if we scrap the shit one there's only one domestic cup left and people might give more of a shit about that once you force all their eggs into a different, smaller basket.
I've decided to rush this out before kick-off, so let's have a look at the line-ups: City are in good shape apart from hampering their own chances by shoving Costel PantyLemon in goal. Sunderland demonstrated last week that they're there for the taking, and rather than learn their lessons from last year (or as we shall now know it 'that Wigan debacle') and not getting complacent, City have decided to start with a circus freak instead of a professional goalkeeper. Pellegrini also manages to make what should be a comfortable win slightly less predictable by selecting ticking shitbomb Martin Demichelis, a defender whose only flaw is his inability to defend.
Sunderland, meanwhile, seem to have gone with tiny Italian Flabbio Borini as a lone striker, and so actually probably will get spanked worse than what Bradford did when they visited Wembley at this stage in last year's equivalent futile kickabout to see who gets to take home the prize fund of an office chair and a muffin basket.
'What people have been saying' : in this segment we look at exactly what it says just there in quotations...
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has said that he makes the footballing decisions at Cardiff, he's been advised, however, to take credit for some less deplorable decisions like deciding to maim some farm animals or burn a bunch of schoolchildren.
Tory MP Robert Halfon has labelled Sunderland fans 'scumbags' on the social networking site Twitter, and while this might be highly complimentary the man is a Tory MP so it is, essentially, a spade labelling a spade a spade
This next segment is about money...
Leeds are, FL approval permitting, going to be took over by twice convicted Italian fraudster Massimo Cellino. The word is that MC is pretty minted, whereas GFH are the only Arab banking house to have ever invested in football without having any money to invest with, the alternative is some people who've done nothing but prove they can't afford to service United's apparently mounting debts. So, to put it simply, Leeds fans don't have a choice, and they've accepted that. They've acknowledged that it's better to have some random nutter with loads of money in charge than to be vying for promotion out of the Skrill Premier with Nuneaton, Alfreton and Salisbury. Now Cardiff City, they have their own nutter, who thinks that putting £100m or more into Cardiff is worth it for all the revenue he's going to get from changing the shirts to red, and it is only a matter of time before all of Asia is cheering on Peter Whittingham. Now this particular nutcase has not only saved the club, he's financed promotion and he's bankrolled the signings of Gary Medel and Steven Caulker, he's pumping money into the club like Harry Redknapp (allegedly) pumps money into offshore banking ventures, and yet I saw men at a Cardiff match holding a sign inviting their savior and financier to go home. That's like someone giving you bags full of cash and loads of nice stuff in exchange for you occasionally having to cook dinner or wear a jumper you don't really like much, you could tell him to fuck off, but then you'd have to go back to living without heating or electricity. What I'm saying is either you can keep Vincent Tan, or you can stop being in the Premier League, it's up to you.
David Moyes is doing really well, Arsenal are going to win the title, Mesut Ozil has lived up to his price tag, David Meyler was asking for it, Peter Crouch is just excellent at football, Alan Pardew's not in any trouble at all, Luis Suarez is rubbish at football, and Tomas Rosicky's hair is fantastic.
Oh, did Arsenal lose away to Stoke? No way. You're kidding. I don't believe you. I made Arsenal favourites to win the league all along and I am just amazed that they're crashing out of the Champions League and have now lost at Stoke of all places. Jack Wilshere (the genius behind these 'comments') thinks Arsenal deserved to win, and they did, just about as much as I deserve the Nobel Prize in Physics and Jeremy Kyle deserves a knighthood.
Elsewhere Alan Pardew is in 'huge enormous massive massive trouble' (Jeff Stelling's own words) after nudging David Meyler's chin with his forehead. Savage thinks it makes his position untenable, and I actually kind of agree with him. In other words, reinforce the windows, take the kids into the basement, the apocalypse should be coming to a town near you in the not too distant future.
Dan Sturridge, in the meanwhile, didn't get to show off his modern, more refined dance style as Liverpool cruised to victory over Turdhampton at St Margaret's (this isn't really a news item, it's just an excuse to watch this again and again and again; he's so happy he's forgotten how to dance).
One of the goals of the weekend came from the boot of Dave Jones; the jug-eared, baldy headed former Manchester United youth player who looped a perfectly judged volley in off the bar to open the score in the big Championship clash between Burn Lee and Darbee Countee (naturally I wouldn't let you down by not providing a clip - so here it is - I can only apologise that it's not a clip of the goal I'm talking about, but I couldn't find that on Youtube so I just substituted one David Jones for another, hoping you wouldn't notice but now I'm just going to assume you will notice the absence of fans, the presence of houses in the background, the absence of pitch markings and the presence of a fat man in orange lumping a ball across a recreation ground).
This next segment is called while we're on Youtube and will only really work if you can follow the links...
There's this legendary piece of reporting from Kammy, the endlessly brilliant 'nobody wants to be a Gary Neville', and then there's this which I just can't stop watching.
The Carragher-Neville MNF clip is the reason I always give out to the BBC's 'punditry' team. Carra & Nev have chemistry and character, getting Carra & Nev together to analyse football is like getting Hitler and Stalin together to analyse wars, it's like getting Richard Dawkins and the Archbishop of Canterbury together to analyse the bible, whereas getting that Chapman bloke, Kevin Kilbane and Danny Murphy together to discuss anything is more like sitting your teddy bears around the kitchen table for a tea party - only with a lot of imagination is it ever going to resemble entertainment.
Elsewhere it's the League Cup final this afternoon and I still couldn't tell you why we have one. Germany doesn't have a second, crappier cup competition - neither does Italy or Spain or any decent, civilised nation. Why on earth we think we need something that is slightly worse and finishing in March to pointlessly occupy teams is beyond me. We have a premier cup competition, and then a second one that nobody wants to win. Someone seems to have just said 'lets play more football' and then come up with this shit way of managing to do that. Besides, if we scrap the shit one there's only one domestic cup left and people might give more of a shit about that once you force all their eggs into a different, smaller basket.
I've decided to rush this out before kick-off, so let's have a look at the line-ups: City are in good shape apart from hampering their own chances by shoving Costel PantyLemon in goal. Sunderland demonstrated last week that they're there for the taking, and rather than learn their lessons from last year (or as we shall now know it 'that Wigan debacle') and not getting complacent, City have decided to start with a circus freak instead of a professional goalkeeper. Pellegrini also manages to make what should be a comfortable win slightly less predictable by selecting ticking shitbomb Martin Demichelis, a defender whose only flaw is his inability to defend.
Sunderland, meanwhile, seem to have gone with tiny Italian Flabbio Borini as a lone striker, and so actually probably will get spanked worse than what Bradford did when they visited Wembley at this stage in last year's equivalent futile kickabout to see who gets to take home the prize fund of an office chair and a muffin basket.
'What people have been saying' : in this segment we look at exactly what it says just there in quotations...
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has said that he makes the footballing decisions at Cardiff, he's been advised, however, to take credit for some less deplorable decisions like deciding to maim some farm animals or burn a bunch of schoolchildren.
Tory MP Robert Halfon has labelled Sunderland fans 'scumbags' on the social networking site Twitter, and while this might be highly complimentary the man is a Tory MP so it is, essentially, a spade labelling a spade a spade
This next segment is about money...
Leeds are, FL approval permitting, going to be took over by twice convicted Italian fraudster Massimo Cellino. The word is that MC is pretty minted, whereas GFH are the only Arab banking house to have ever invested in football without having any money to invest with, the alternative is some people who've done nothing but prove they can't afford to service United's apparently mounting debts. So, to put it simply, Leeds fans don't have a choice, and they've accepted that. They've acknowledged that it's better to have some random nutter with loads of money in charge than to be vying for promotion out of the Skrill Premier with Nuneaton, Alfreton and Salisbury. Now Cardiff City, they have their own nutter, who thinks that putting £100m or more into Cardiff is worth it for all the revenue he's going to get from changing the shirts to red, and it is only a matter of time before all of Asia is cheering on Peter Whittingham. Now this particular nutcase has not only saved the club, he's financed promotion and he's bankrolled the signings of Gary Medel and Steven Caulker, he's pumping money into the club like Harry Redknapp (allegedly) pumps money into offshore banking ventures, and yet I saw men at a Cardiff match holding a sign inviting their savior and financier to go home. That's like someone giving you bags full of cash and loads of nice stuff in exchange for you occasionally having to cook dinner or wear a jumper you don't really like much, you could tell him to fuck off, but then you'd have to go back to living without heating or electricity. What I'm saying is either you can keep Vincent Tan, or you can stop being in the Premier League, it's up to you.
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