Sports Category
Sports news, commentary and scores with wit and added value. We compare and contrast the best and worst sports reporting in the mainstream press, blogs, TV and online. We love the English Premier League (Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs, Manchester United and Manchester City) and all things football but we cover cricket, rugby, the Olympics, tennis, golf, F1 and highlights of the sporting year.
Manchester United Balls: Newspapers Agree That Moyes Was Right To Be Paranoid
DAVID Moyes is on his way out of Manchester United. The man who made a complete hash of managing the Premier League Champions is out of Old Trafford.
When back in August, Moyes observed, “I think it’s the hardest start Manchester United have had for 20 years”, we thought it odd for the man managing the country’s biggest club to be complaining about United’s first five fixtures – home to Chelsea, Swansea and Crystal Palace, and away to Liverpool and Manchester City.
He added: “I find it hard to believe that’s the way the balls came out of the bag, that’s for sure. I hope it’s not because Manchester United won the league quite comfortably last year that the fixtures have been made more difficult.”
Moyes had made his point. We’d always thought that every team played every other team home and away over the season, that the season – all in all – is pretty much the same for every club. After the start, October brought an away game at Sunderland and home matches against Southampton, Stoke and Norwich.
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Posted: 21st, April 2014 | In: manchester united, Sports | Comments (2)
Manchester United Balls: David Moyes ‘Sacked’ Just As Season Ticket Renewal Notices Got Out
JOIN the dots, Manchester United fans:
April 13 – Manchester United’s twitter page announces season tickets for next season are on sale:
UNITED. Be part of the story. Join the Season Ticket Priority List for 2014/15
Manchester United owners, the Glazers, offer cut-price tickets for ties in Europe next season at Old Trafford – Glazers sanction 25 per cent cut in ticket prices for Europa League ties at Old Trafford if David Moyes’s team qualifies
April 20 – Everton 2, Manchester United 0
April 21, 2014 – Jamie Jackson, writes in the Guardian:
David Moyes facing the sack at Manchester United – Manager a dead man walking at Old Trafford
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Posted: 21st, April 2014 | In: manchester united, Sports | Comment
Arsenal Balls: Lukas Podolski Instigates A New Kind Of Handshake
ARSENAL’S Lukas Podolski yesterday enacted one of the best pre-game handshakes of the season, greeting referee Jonathan Moss with rare affection.
The pre-match handshake has been mired on controversy. We’ve wondered whether or not Anton Ferdinand would shake John Terry’s hand before or after wiping his nose on his own palm? Would Rio Ferdinand shake Ashley Cole’s hand, or simply hand him a choc-ice? Would Luis Suarez eat the hand of Patrice Evra; would Evra, wise to the possibility of cannibalism, coat it in hot mustard or black boot polish? Would Wayne Bridge be invited to sniff a smirking John Terry’s fingers?
The handshake had become so complex, so political, that we had led calls for the pre-game handshake to go.
But then along comes Poldi to remind us that more handshakes are what are required.
Liverpool Balls Easter Miracle: ‘Nailed’ Luis Suarez Rises Again At Carrow Road
LIVERPOOL Balls: And on Easter did the Messiah of Anfield rise again on the Carrow Road pitch. It was a miracle:
Liverpool Balls Photos Special: Luis Suarez Wins The Title For The Reds
LUIS Suarez on toward the title for Liverpool!
Chelsea Balls: Mourinho’s Assistant Rui Faria Throws A Tantrum After Sunderland Score
CHELSEA lose 2-1 at home to bottom-of-the-table Sunderland, and Jose Mourinho’s assistant Rui Faria lets a long day in the sun and the excitement of being allowed to stay up with the grown ups get the better of him.
It’s all tremendously entertaining, of course:
What a bad sport, eh. Wonder where he gets it from?
Liverpool Balls: Luis Suarez Interviews Everton Fan Paul McCartney
IT’S a Liverpool love in as Paul McCartney meets Luis Suarez.
On the eve of the former Beatle’s show in Montervideo’s Centenario Stadium, Uruguay, loveable Luis Suarez appeared on satellite to chat with McCartney about his homeland, football and music.
Well, sort of chatted. It’s pretty clear that Suarez recorded his questions well in advance. And one-time enemy of the State Macca might not be the biggest Reds fans, unable as he is to name the club’s manager, referring him to as “coach”…
Liverpool Balls: Threatening Luis Suarez Puts Bite Into The PFA
LUIS Suarez should be crowned this year’s Professional Footballers’ Association Player of the Year.
But can other professionals overlook the repeated racist abuse of Manchester United’s Patrice Evra, the diving and the biting? We should all of us admire Suarez’s abilities, but how much do his disciplinary offences weigh down opinion?
Suarez has so much baggage he could not afford to fly Ryanair.
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Posted: 19th, April 2014 | In: Liverpool, Sports | Comments (11)
1973: Arsenal Hooligans Ejected From The FA Cup Third-Fourth Place Match With Wolverhampton Wanderers
FLASHBACK to August 18, 1973:
At the short-lived annual FA Cup Third-fourth Place Match (mote here) between Arsenal and Wolverhampton Wanderers at the Gunners’ Highbury Stadium, a small group of ‘hooligans’ are escorted out of the ground by the Police prior to kick off.
It was all about the boots.
1970-1975: The FA Cup Third Place Playoff Experiment
BACK in the Pre-Premier League days, the losing FA Cup semi-finalists competed to see which one of them qualified for a non-existent bronze medal and the other nothing. The match lasted just five years, played between 1970 and 1975.
Initially, the game was played at a neutral ground, lending it the aura of a real Cup Final. At the inaugural Cup, played one day before Chelsea and Leeds United contested the final at Wembley, Manchester United beat Watford 2-1 at Highbury. The crowd was 15,105.
Was that encouraging? Footballfansite has transcribed the Arsenal programme notes from that, which explain how the match came to happen:
THIS is the eleventh occasion we have staged a match for the Football Association on the eve of the F.A. Cup Final, and this time the fixture takes a new form. The idea of a match on this particular date on the football calendar first came about in 1954, it being felt that with people descending in thousands on London en route to Wembley the following day, many of them would welcome a game at which to spend the eve of the Final.
So, 16 years ago, England met Young England here on this corresponding night, and a crowd of 43,000 gave full justification to the experiment. The following year the title was changed to Old England v Young England (the old ‘uns cheered to a 5-0 victory by 38,000), but except for 1963 when the match was styled England v The Football League the fixture became permanently one between England and Young England. On five occasions it switched to Stamford bridge, but otherwise it remained at Highbury.
Inevitably what was basically a friendly representative match could not retain all its early novelty appeal, and after last season’s 0-0 draw at Stamford Bridge, watched by just over 18,000 spectators, the F.A. decided the time had come to change the style of the fixture. Among suggestions thrown up was a North v South match – that particular argument seems to have been going on among football fans since the game began! – but the idea to gain favour was to stage a “play-off” to decide third and fourth places between the two beaten F.A. Cup semi-finalists.
Tonight’s game is the first such fixture, and with it we have, in any case, a North v South clash, just as there will be another at Wembley tomorrow between Leeds United and Chelsea. Whether this becomes a regular fixture will, presumably, how well the fans turn out to support it……
Everton’s Alan Whittle (r) beats Stoke City’s goalkeeper Gordon Banks (l) to score Everton’s first goal of the night. Stoke City went on to win the match 3-2 in front of just over 5,000 fans.
One year on and Stoke took on Everton. To further entice paying punters, the game was played one day before Arsenal played Liverpool on May 8. The footy-starved neutral and fans of the two finalists would surely lap it up. Well, that was the plan. But only 5,031 turned watched the game at Selhurst Park.
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1978: Weapons Seized Before West Ham Against Millwall At Upton Park
FLASHBACK to October 7 1978:
On display at Scotland Yard are some of the weapons believed to have been abandoned by supporters attending the West Ham against Millwall game at Upton Park. Six policeman were injured and 70 people arrested after fans clashed in the street after the game.
Chelsea Balls: The Daily Mail’s Attack On Andreas Christensen Is Based On A Hunch
HOW football reporting works: The Daily Mail obliges its promise to feature one story a day on the big clubs. It tweets: “On £20,000 a week…and he plays for Chelsea’s youth team.”
He’s Chelsea’s Andreas Christensen, signed from Danish club Brondby in 2012.
The Mail writes:
“Meet Andreas Christensen, the 18-Year-Old Chelsea defender who is on £1million a year but has never played for the first team. Andreas Christensen, described as a ‘gazelle’ by pretty much anyone who has ever watched him play, turned 18 on April 10. He earns £20,000 a week and has not made a first team appearance. Something, somewhere, is going wrong when youth team players are walking around with that kind of money.”
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Manchester City Balls: In the Rush To Bury The Citizens An Error Occurs
THE Manchester Evening News was as one with the mainstream press in lamenting City’s 2-2 home draw with Sunderland last night.
But something got lost in the rush for hyperbole:
Bale & Ball: Real Madrid Star And Adidas Brazuca Crack Another Case Of Desperate Marketing
GARETH Bale scored a terrific goal last night to win the Copa Del Rey for Real Madrid. But he never thanked God, as many players do. Bale thanked the ball. He thanked the Adidas Brazuca for obeying his foot and not behaving like a beach ball on a windy day on a Bridlington beach.
The former Spurs and Southampton man tweeted:
“Luv u babe lol xx”
And then the ball tweeted Bale back:
Chris at Pies calls it “a brand spanking new low in the commercialisation of football”.
But is it. Football’s have gone out of fashion as objects of desire. Back in the days of pre-Premier League England, kids would gather round the Christmas tree as wonder what was inside that round parcel that wouldn’t sit still. Was it a big black bomb from a comic? A giant fat-ball to hang above the bird bath? A soap-on-a-rope for Giant Haystacks?
No, it was a proper leather football.
Once upon a time a ball, like a dog, a football was a treat, an object of wonder what you nurtured for years. They cost an arm and a leg, and that wasn’t the half of it: when it rained they were heavy and hard enough to break the other arm and leg.
The Encyclopaedia of British Football summed up the impact of a regulation Size 5:
“On wet days the ball grew increasingly heavy as the leather soaked up large amounts of liquid. This, together with the lacing that protected the valve of the bladder, made heading the ball not only unpleasant but also painful and dangerous.”
Stan Cullis of Wolves and England was knocked out and seriously injured twice during matches as a result of heading the ball and having it fired into his face, and retired on the advice of doctors. Like many players of his era, he suffered dementia, often attributed to heading the old-style balls.
If there was no proper ball, children in the Sixties and Seventies made do with a plastic substitute. A youngster would have trouble getting a corner into the box using the leather ball, but these black-and-white plastic baubles would fly into the air at the slightest touch, making it impossible to score from any range further than three yards.
Better by far was the Wembley Trophy – a heavy orange ball with fake panels embossed upon it. It came in a special presentation box, and could do almost as much damage as a leather ball, especially on cold days, when it would sting the thighs, smash the testicles and bring tears to the eyes of any boys foolish enough to block its path.
Help was on its way. In the 1970s balls were coated with polyurethane to stop water retention. Today’s versions have a latex bladder and a synthetic leather casing, while Adidas World Cup balls are thermally bonded and machine-pressed.
They are soulless. But thanks to Bale, the football could once more be sold as part of the player. We’d investigate the ideal of Bale and the ball further, possibly though the Saturday morning comic strip Bale & Ball, available in all newspapers.
What’s that you say. No-one buys newspapers anymore?
Sounds like a job for Bale & Ball… Gareth! Crank up the maketingometer, it’s gonna be a long day!
BackPages: Manchester City Lose 2-2 And Sunderland Are Invisible
BACKPAGES: Manchester City draw 2-2 with Sunderland at the Etihad and the talk is of City’s crisis. What about’s Sunderland’s inability to hang on and win at the ground where not to long ago the talk was of a 100% home record?
Didn’t Sunderland blow it? Just seven minutes from time, the league’s bottom side were 2-1 up.
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1930 Grand National: Jockey G Goswell Is Helped To An Ambulance As His May King Flounders In The Beecher’s Brook Ditch
FLASHBACK to March 28 1930:
Jockey G Goswell being helped into the ambulance, whilst his horse May King still flounders in the ditch after getting caught at Beecher’s Brook during the Grand National horse race at Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool, England on March 28, 1930.
No ambulance for horses.
Manchester City Balls: Daily Mail Creates The Weakest Back Page Story Ever
IN the race to produce a new story on every leading club every day of the week, the Daily Mail does not flinch. Today, the paper of record leads with news that Manuel Pellegrini has visited a cashpoint machine.
The Mail bought and published a picture of a grown man using his bank account.
This from the “Sports Newspaper of the Year’. And that’s this year.
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Hillsborough In Photos: A Lone Liverpool Fan Sits On The Broken Terraces
FLASHBACK to April 15, 1989:
A lone supporter sits by the damaged fencing at Hillsborough Stadium, in Sheffield. Twenty years after the Hillsborough disaster, English football is enjoying a golden age with multi-millionaire players starring in modern stadia, reaping the rewards of lucrative TV deals. But in the aftermath of the disaster at the Sheffield ground in April 1989, that saw 96 Liverpool fans crushed to death at an FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest, things never looked so bleak.
Posted: 15th, April 2014 | In: Flashback, Liverpool, Sports | Comment
Someone Has Made A Great Video Of The US Masters As Crazy Golf
WE love crazy Golf. But we don’t much like sensible golf. YouTuber Simon Connor has found a way to make sensible golf crazier. CAn golf be improved with a miniature castle and moat? Is crazy golf the TV-friendly short format golf has been looking for?
Is it a case of ‘Today Blackpool, tomorrow, the world”?
Can Tiger Woods get the uniform 1983 putters – great levellers – to guide the 1982 irregular ball – ditto – up the clown’s leg and through the mermaid’s mouth into the hole that full of leaves and a broken bookmaker’s biro? Will Tiger design his own crazy golf course and through it finally reveal the depraved and frightening images that form in his inner mind as he lines up a putt at Augusta?
Much to ponder:
Liverpool Balls: Funny Foreinger Luis Suarez Is Good For A Giggle
THE hacks spending their days discussing Luis Suarez have yet to create a single word as entertaining as the man himself’s actions. The racism and cheating and biting have all been terrible, just terrible. But – boy – has he kept us entertained.
Luis Suarez his wife Sofia Balbi and their children, Benjamin and Delfina, arriving for Disney On Ice at the Echo Arena in Liverpool
Everything the hugely talented and unpleasant Suarez has done has been clouded by his status as filthy foreigner. He has given the elite a chance to engage in some cheap moralising about enlightened England. His fearsome bites were worse than Jermain Defoe’s nibbles. His dives are worse than Gareth Bale’s slips. His cheating is so much worse than Team GB’s efforts in the cycling. When he spits, he does so because as a filthy foreigner he knows no better. But we – says Gary Neville – can teach him.
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Liverpool And Manchester United Balls: It’s Like 2013 All Over Again
LIVERPOOL Balls: The very big-spending, foreign-owned Reds are at the Top of Premier League. Having beaten very very very big spending foreign-owned Manchester City 3-2, Liverpool are two points above very, very big spending, foreign-owned Chelsea. All three clubs have
To the Daily Mail’s Martin Samuel this is a triumph of the English spirit.
These days, to rise from seventh last season to become champions is the equivalent of Nottingham Forest winning promotion, and then the championship a year later. To do so with a predominantly British starting XI is equally a feat from a bygone age. We had accepted that champions were foreign entities now. A title-winning team with an English spine? We thought its time had passed.
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Posted: 14th, April 2014 | In: Liverpool, manchester united, Sports | Comment
Hillsborough: Arsenal And Wigan Fans Remember The 96 At The FA Cup Semi-Final
AT today’s FA Cup Semi Final between Wigan Athletic and Arsenal at Wembley Stadium, 96 seats were left empty as a tribute to the 96 Liverpool fans that lost their lives in the Hillsborough disaster of 1989.
And at the Sky Bet Championship game between Sheffield Wednesday and Blackburn Rovers at Hillsborough, 96 blue seats at the Leppings Lane end of Hillsborough were replaced by 96 white seats to represent the innocent who lost their lives at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.
Leeds United Balls: Who Placed Secret Cameras In The Toilets And The Boardroom?
LEEDS United’s shiny new owner Massimo Cellino is a thorough sort. Before moving in at Elland Road he ordered a security sweep of the club stadium, which turned up hidden recording devices in both the boardroom and the toilets.
Cellino ordered the sweep after seeing the Football League’s decision to block his Leeds takeover overturned last week, with a private security firm finding several covert cameras dotted around the stadium which no-one appears to know anything about.
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Posted: 12th, April 2014 | In: Sports | Comments (2)
Arsenal Balls: World Cup Striker Stickers Shocker
IS the Sun turning into Viz?
The Arsenal “ace” is “FOOTIE ace Joel Campbell”, on loan from the Gunners to Olympiacos.
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