The Importance of Sport (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

Canada is finding out what Australia found out re China. If you blurt out the truth about Big Bananas, you will suffer for it. Hypocrisy, that's the banner to march under if you know what's good for you.

[Mick Harper]

Premier Notes

* Chelsea remain competitive in the West London league with Brentford and Fulham.
* Liverpool continue to bung their way to the top. The ref kept extra time going until a spurious dropped ball allowed them to grab a 101st minute winner.
* A Mr ten Hag wants his lads to be 'noisy neighbours' to disturb Man City. First I've heard about another club in the Manchester area.
* Brighton have responded to critics who claimed their motley-pastelled away strip was a gay stereotype. They now play in one colour, pink.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Haaland's mistake (miss of the season) was not to head it in like Andy Gray would have done. Health and safety gone mad.

[Mick Harper]

Arsenal 2 Brentford 1 Liverpool 1 Man City 1

So that just about wraps up the Premiership for us. It's important we don't get all cocky. Humble is the attitude to strike. Gee wizz, fancy little old us. You know the drill.

[Mick Harper]

Arsenal 1 Porto 0 (1-1 on aggregate, 4-2 on pens)

Interestingly this was the first Champions League shoot-out since 2016 and is a paean to the abolition of the away-goals rule. Though this would not have been applicable in this case. Or would it? Perhaps both legs would have been played differently if it had been in force. Hard to say.

Arsenal were the better side in both legs but not sufficiently so to make any outcome acceptable to the neutral observer. Which might include myself since I didn't bother to watch the second half last night but caught up with it this morning. I knew there was no chance of another goal so I got some shut-eye before the second half, added time, extra time and pens.

Why, it has to be asked, did a mighty Premiership side have so much difficulty dispatching such relative minnows? It is perhaps the same reason why Newcastle and Man Utd did not progress -- Premiership football seems no longer effective in Euro-games. I do not know why. Let's hope we draw City in the quarters.

[Mick Harper]

Did you know Twickenham is the fourth largest stadium in Europe and seats 110,000? I didn't but it may clear up a few things that have always bothered me about it. (This is the modern iteration not the one I used to go to and which seemed quite ordinary.) Every rugger bugger complains that the stadium has been constructed with such a low angle of pitch that nobody can see the rugby. You're just too far away from the action. Like those Euro footie stadiums that have a running track but without the running track.

Presumably the bean counters told the RFU that playing three games a year in it plus a coupla friendlies, a Baa-baas game and Oxford vs Cambridge (and with a capacity kept down to 70,000 so everyone could make out something) wouldn't pay for the upkeep so they had to build it for rock concerts. How's that going? I remember the Stones sold it out that time but I can't recall much else.

I predict it will become the home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers when, as is regularly mooted, they become the London Bay Buccaneers.

[Mick Harper]

Israel 1 Iceland 4
Bosnia 1 Ukraine 2

Sometimes there is justice.

[Mick Harper]

Moral Maze

It is the last day of the group stages, A plays B and C plays D. The A/B game is playing out as a tame nil-nil draw when A take advantage of being given the ball back after an injury to score a goal. All hell breaks loose, managers and all sorts get involved. After a lot of kerfuffle, B restart and A allows them to go down the park and score an uncontested goal. Ref blows final whistle, it's a 1-1 draw.

It turns out, when the ref blows the whistle at the simultaneous C/D game, that a 1-1 draw in the A/B match means both A and B go through whereas a 0-0 draw would have meant C and D going through. Over to you, Mr Administrator.

[Mick Harper]

England 0 Brazil 1
England 2 Belgium 2

I like this England team. Energy with art. They were comfortably better than both these Great Powers (without either result being specially unjust). Harry and Sally up top (with Foden on the left) and perm two from six at the back should complete the job, with only the identity and role of the defensive midfielder holding us back from being crowned EuroChamps. Gareth will know best. [Though I'm not sure if Man Utd do if, as reported, they are considering him as a replacement for ten Hags. I think a return to Middlesborough is nearer the mark for the now Lord Southgate.]

It was good to see Belgium in their traditional sky blue and chocolate, and us kitted out in our familiar mauve shirts and mauve shorts. I couldn't see what colour the flag was, perhaps because it was a mauve cross on a mauve background. But whatever colour the flags we'll be waving, it will be the open top bus down the Mall, knighthoods aplenty, a reception at Number Ten with Rishi in red and white stripes, a snap general election and it's next season already. "You lucky people," as the Fulham chairman used to say.

[Mick Harper]

It says so much about Channel 4's new found love of international football (four hours in total last night) that they couldn't be bothered even to mention that Wales were going out on penalties to Poland. I can't say I'm too fussed. Scotland will be quite enough cluttering up the Euro-studios with professional Jocks without Robbie Savage and Gareth Bale putting their oar in. (No pun intended, Ryan.)

[Mick Harper]

Let's say you're a burglar in Birmingham and eventually they catch up with you and you get a year in the can. But meanwhile you've moved to London, continued your life of crime, and now you've been caught for this fresh set of downs. You're up in front of the beak but this time you've got a fancy dan brief with an innovative proposal when it comes to crime and punishment

[Mick Harper]

Man City O Arsenal 0

It's all very well them saying what a marvellous defensive performance but titles are not won by marvellous defensive performance. Ya gotta score a goal which they never looked like doing and not just because they had Jesus and Havertz up front. It was bad enough buying them, it's worse picking them, but picking both of them and playing them in tandem up front is a sackable offence.

If you're playing a team that is squeezing you to death it means you're going to be hoofing the ball up the park quite a lot. But if you're going to hoof it up the park when they're not squeezing you as well, you'd better have Nat Lofthouse and Ivan Toney playing in tandem.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Eh? You pick up a home win, draw away against your big rivals, and then you play attacking football home and away against the rest, has got to be the way to go.

[Mick Harper]

I am not denying that is, or may be, a sound strategy. In what way is hoofing it up the park (voluntarily) part of the strategy you are advocating?

[Wile E. Coyote]

It's the strategy of a side that is content with the current score line, and is confident that the opposition have not got the ability to score from outside their box from open play, that is providing Arsenal were not going to get drawn into end to end play by launching their own significant attacks. Ok, they also had to be careful not to concede free kicks by rash challenges.

"You can have possession, you can't hurt us if we are organised, we will draw".

It turned Man City strength into a weakness.