The Importance of Sport (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

Am I really going to pay £19.95 to watch Bellew vs Haye II? Yes, but don't push it.

[Mick Harper]

So this week it's Wenger's last game at the Emirates and next week Mourinho's last game at Old Trafford. How the giants are all departed.

[Mick Harper]

Dear Burnley

Yours sincerely

M J Harper

[Mick Harper]

The AEL is well represented in the play-offs this year. Scottie's Middlesborough are playing Prince William's Aston Villa and my own Charlton Athletic are playing Shrewsbury (pronounced 'Shrewsbury'). I think we can all comfortably assume that Charlton will be playing Middlesborough next year.

[Mick Harper]

Keep those England team-sheets coming. Ruben Loftus-Cheek is one person, Hatty.

[Mick Harper]

Chris Froome, King of the Zoncolan. He may be a Kenyan druggie but he's our Kenyan druggie. Simon Yates? Get your knees brown, son, and then re-apply.

[Mick Harper]

Simon Yates! A great, Great Briton. Tore 'em apart before the RD and the TT. If only we could clone him. A few words of advice, Froomie: get a passport, stop taking the salbutamol and prepare for life as a domestique.

[Hatty]

Why is the Giro d'Italia taking place in Israel?

[Mick Harper]

They're pushy?

[Mick Harper]

Sorry, wrong stereotype. The Italians are pushing the Giro into fresh territories because they are in fierce competition with the Tour de France and the Vuelta d'Espagna for world-wide supremacy. The Tour for instance has started in Berlin, in Amsterdam and in Yorkshire in recent years. There is even talk of New York in the near future.

This is a sport-wide phenomenon. There are to be two Yankee-Red Sox baseball games in London this summer for instance. Every true sports fan will tell you these foreign forays are always a bunch of bollocks. The Wembley gridiron matches are always a monumental bore despite everybody being obliged to be hysterically enthusiastic. Froome got injured because of the state of Jerusalem roads and, despite being paid several millions by the organisers to take part, has been mostly a cipher.

Foreigners, butt out!

[Mick Harper]

Froome has just captured the maillot pink after the most sensational breakaway in cycling history. Yates has lost it in the most sensational fall from grace in cycling history. Those of you worshipping at the altar of youth must be feeling pretty silly now.

PS There's a battle for control of various Murdoch assets by a coupla US biggies. This means Sky News will soon be in foreign hands, a disaster for this country because Team Sky is a vanity project of one of the Murdoch children and will obviously not be continued after the new owners move in. I may kill myself, I may not kill myself. I just don't know.

[Mick Harper]

Liverpool were playing Real Madrid off the park for fifteen minutes by playing it out from the back. Then Salah gets injured, they start hoofing it up the pitch and Real Madrid play them off the park for the rest of the match.

Now Salah's presence or non-presence makes no difference to Liverpool's ability to play it out from the back, but it does make a difference to their overall confidence. This points to confidence being the central factor in playing it out from the back. But why weren't Real Madrid suffering from it in the first fifteen minutes? Because they know no other way. It's not a matter of confidence for them they don't know any better (or worse). They have to play it out from the back.

The point about English teams--and above all the England team in Russia--is that they can do the right thing under certain circumstances but not others. Confidence may be one, but being pressed will be another. Actually playing it out when pressed is itself a matter of confidence. The better teams will make sure the circumstances they apply will dictate England hoof it up the park.

[Wile E. Coyote]

To target the opponents' strongest and weakest player are the oldest tricks in the playbook.

[Mick Harper]

Not in the World Cup where nobody knows who will turn out to be strong and who weak. Least of all the teams themselves about their own players. Can you even tell us what players were singled out by Zidane and Klopp? "..er... Salah, two of you had better sit on him... one of you clog him if things get out of hand" "...er..Bale, two of you had better ... er... no wait, he hasn't been picked, so no need to bother."

Over to you, Wiley, for the weak links.

[Mick Harper]

Headingley Test

Why do we bother playing these Third World numpties?