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The Importance of Sport (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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Liverpool Striker Crisis

You pay £85 million, the geezer's making his home debut so on his best behaviour. He misses a few chances, the centre half gives him a bit of grief, yer man turns round and head butts him sweet as a nut. The centre half does a lovely reverse poleaxe and 85 million pound man is able to try out Anfield's ablution facilities without all his new team-mates giving him the traditional initiation rites.

I don't know whether that's why he did it but I do know every Premier League centre half will be giving him grief for the rest of the season unless Man Utd buy him in the winter break and stick him in the reserves.

a Mr Jurgen Klopp wrote:
We never sell to our direct rivals. Oh go on then, if you twist my arm.

PS Liverpool should have been out of sight by then anyway because Alexander-Arnold was sticking it on the end of a striker's head or foot constantly. I mean every damn time. Please, Gareth, I know you won't play him at right back but for chrissake stick him somewhere. He'll do the rest, you'll see.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
Liverpool Striker Crisis

You pay £85 million, the geezer's making his home debut so on his best behaviour. He misses a few chances, the centre half gives him a bit of grief, yer man turns round and head butts him sweet as a nut.


Excellent signing. Duncan Fergusson redivivus. Another forehead in the teeth for Everton fans.
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Mick Harper
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My most treasured memory of Scottish fruit and nutcases is when self-styled hardman Gennaro Gattuso slid into Joe Jordan who was helping out on the touchline in an away euro-tie. After a brief entanglement, the G-G man threatened to head butt this middle-aged toothless cone-shifter but realised just in time he was facing the man they call The Glasgow Kisser Other Glasgow Kissers Buy A Bevvie For.
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Mick Harper
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I'm a bit behindhand (indexing) but England are 55-4 so I need a break from both. What I want to talk to you today is the question of England openers. Just to give you some background, we define a failed test batsman as someone who usually fails but occasionally puts an innings together vis a vis a successful test batsman who normally puts an innings together but occasionally fails. I've put it in a catchy haiku so you won't forget

usually fails, sometimes succeeds; usually succeeds, sometimes fails.

Well, never mind, these things take time. Anyway, the two England openers. Now I think Mr 'Zac' Crawley or Zac 'Crawley' as his family knows him, has now qualified as a failure more times than I have had ants in my pants (that's on old Indexers joke because there are always so many of them. Here's mine

Anthony 8 10 60 96 196 323
Anthony Rolls 96
anthropology 34 372
antidisestablishmentarianism 309
antiquarian 62 86-7 169 172 208 226 253 285-6 298
Antiquaries Society of 57 62
antique shop 226-7 229 230 234
Antiques Roadshow 76
Antiquités Roadshow 225
antiquities
    BM 212 243
    collecting 230 244 246 285-6
    dealers 227 246 247 253
    Greek 9 254
    Medieval 241 391
    number of 239
    Roman 31 254
    trade 218
antiquity 135 205 254 374
anti-Semitism 188
Antoninus Pius 253

Blimey, I'm only up to the A's, I'll have to go. More about Lees when I return.
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Mick Harper
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No, I'm really going but I had to share. Why don't we forget all this stuff about 'he's got to be given a fair crack of the whip' (which produces Crawlies and Leeses) and replace it with "you get one crack at the whip and that's your lot." His turn will come round again if he fails but at least we won't have openers that decide the first morning of the first test is just the time to make an airy off-drive and when this goes over the slips, try again so it goes into second slip's midriff. And does it predeterminedly. That's what's so weird.

Damnit I was going to leave Lees for later. Now there won't be a next time. Except for him obviously. And Crawley.
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Wile E. Coyote


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There is no English opening batting problem. There is an English fast bowling problem. We haven't got one that can bowl really fast except for Archer who, due to inept captaincy, we managed to over-bowl and is now always out injured.

Other nations regularly produce very fast bowlers, so their opening batsmen get regular practice at folks slinging it down at 90 mph. Our batsmen simply do not have the benefit of facing very fast bowlers from a young age as, whether it's school, village, first class or test, we reduce pace and pride ourselves on "good line and length". Our openers therefore are great at defending against fast medium, we just cannot handle bounce and pace.

It's only going to change when we start preparing different types of wickets, and encourage bowlers from the age of seven to use real cricket balls and then try and bounce it, with a view to taking the batsman's head off.

That way the opening problem will be slowly solved.
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Mick Harper
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I entirely agree but it's a bell-the-cat solution. We have to solve it now with what we've got. Do you remember what's his face back in the seventies when the West Indibums were blasting us away? He was in his thirties and had never done much on the county circuit but he turned out to be our saviour (o.n.o.). 'Course you do. Everyone does. He's unforgettable. I'm surprised you can't think of him offhand.

Anyway that's my solution. We just keep calling up new openers (following adoption of my two-innings-and-you're-out policy) until one of them happens to have the technique to survive long enough for the shine to go. And then we find someone for the other end. They'll be 23-2 by lunch, and the crowd will all have gone home, but we'll be 223 for seven by stumps.

But only because the egg-and-bacon brigade have rejected my policy of turning the batting order on its head and getting the bowlers to do it. They're not good enough to get a touch so the shine will have gone by the time they're caught at fine leg. It will be 85-5 at lunch and 223 for seven by stumps.
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Mick Harper
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The Transfer Show (Sky Sports)

There is a woman called Melissa Reddy who is a regular on the show. Ms Reddy is heart-stoppingly beautiful, is a one-man footballing encyclopedia and provides endlessly authoritative and original commentary about current or proposed transfers that puts everyone else to shame. Yet I can't stand her. She just doesn't have it.

But that's not important. The news that Jim Ratcliffe is buying Manchester United is important. After the disaster he made with the Sky cycling team after buying them, we can only welcome the news.
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Mick Harper
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Our man gets into a strop with Aubameyang and in a fit of pique lets him go for a free to Barcelona in the winter. Now Chelsea want to pay Barca twenty million to bring him back. What's the Spanish for "It's coming out of your wages, sunshine"?
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Grant



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Jim Ratcliffe is clearly a very clever businessman, but it’s true he’s hopeless with his sporting ventures.
America’s Cup bid - fail
Sky bike team - succeeded first year but failed once he started to change things
Mercedes F1 - became principal sponsor just before they went bad
Nice FC - still waiting
New Zealand rugby - became main sponsor just when they started losing

I think his failing is that he buys when teams are doing well. There’s no way to go but down.

Man U is a different proposition. Maybe his astonishing ability to turnaround under-performing businesses will come to the fore.

First thing he must do is ban Ferguson from the club.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Grant wrote:
First thing he must do is ban Ferguson from the club.


First thing ten Hag had to do was to take the captiancy off Maguire. Maguire is no doubt a "tryer", he wants to win, and so on, but Harry has really convinced himself that he is a way better player than he actually is, he continues to get caught in possession and his distribution isn't great. He also is actually a bit of a moaner when he spots others making exactly the type of error he often makes himself.

Whilst Harry is good at set pieces, it should surely have been the case of, ..... "Harry" "I am afraid you are simply not good enough".
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Mick Harper
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What about England? I don't think it is the captaincy that is at issue only that the senior centre back must set the offside line, high or low, must cajole everyone into 'doing their job' at set pieces and (maybe) dictate the play it out/hoof it up balance. To do this he must be 'looked up to' by those around him, whether he formally holds the armband or not. You can't be making soppy mistakes and retain that for long.

If you compare Maguire to, say, John Terry, you get the impression of, as you say, a certain brittleness, bombast maybe, an intermittent anxiety state but also, dare one say, a desire to be popular even while acting the bully. But, hey, what do I know, we're still only in the early months of therapy and the transference has yet to take place.
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Mick Harper
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David Steele.
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Mick Harper
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They'll probably persist with him [Crawley] for the rest of the series.

Sorry, I know you're the expert and have the ear of the selectors, possibly sleep with half of them, but I refuse to believe this can happen in any universe of which I am presently aware. But if you say so.

And he [Lees] is out for a hard-fought thirty-five.

No, he wasn't. He was dropped, his nicks went through the gaps in the slip cordon (why are there any, South Africa?), he played and missed, he scratched around. All he did was spread nervous malaise among the rest of the batsmen. So he'll be back too.

But at least they're getting practice against the fast ball which is more than their possible replacements are getting according to Wiley's Law. Talking of which I could swear the commentator said, after a ball was clocked at 95 mph, "Of course he can go much faster than that." Now call me Thommo, but in the universe I live in, ninety is fast, ninety-two is supersonic and ninety-five is a malfunctioning speed gun. Unless Lords is at altitude. I'm beginning to think it is in a different universe to mine so it may very well be.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
What about England? I don't think it is the captaincy that is at issue only that the senior centre back must set the offside line, high or low, must cajole everyone into 'doing their job' at set pieces and (maybe) dictate the play it out/hoof it up balance. To do this he must be 'looked up to' by those around him, whether he formally holds the armband or not. You can't be making soppy mistakes and retain that for long.

If you compare Maguire to, say, John Terry, you get the impression of, as you say, a certain brittleness, bombast maybe, an intermittent anxiety state but also, dare one say, a desire to be popular even while acting the bully. But, hey, what do I know, we're still only in the early months of therapy and the transference has yet to take place.


It's a case of Gareth's "I will stick with him until he lets me down".

Which roughly translates into Fringlish (Footballing Engish) as 'we can get away with Harry, that is Maguire not Captain Kane, as long as we deploy our two very fine defensive mildfielders (Phillips, Rice) in front of him'.

Back to Man United, they have Fred and Mctominay. There is your problem, put Harry, an over-confident tryer, behind those two, and also expect him to initiate attacks in the style of Beckenbauer, and you have struck gold. Comedy gold.
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