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The Importance of Sport (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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Since Arsenal moved in from Woolwich

How bitterly I regret that day. Our beloved Woolwich Arsenal wrenched from our bosom. Yes, we made do with Charlton, but our bosoms were always with the team across the water.
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Mick Harper
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Now we have landed on the moon perhaps we can turn our attention to coming up with a whitewash that disappears in a day or two so when a pitch is used for one sport it is not spoilt by the previous sport's markings showing through and messing everything up. And on to Mars!
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Mick Harper
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Pochettino has two games to save his job.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Koeman lost his job, after spending 140 million, but not buying a replacement for Lukaku, who had sought a better deal elsewhere.

"I looked at it and saw that five of our first nine games would be against clubs from last season's top six: Chelsea, Tottenham, Man City, Man United and Arsenal.

"I looked at it again and I said to myself, 'Phew! That is not going to be an easy run, in particular with a Europa League run at the same time'. And, most of all, because I had lost my striker Lukaku.''


Koeman was brought in to get Everton into the top six and play European football. Lukaku was no more his striker (he was signed by Martinez) than Koeman himself was Southampton's manager, before, that is, he Koeman had engineered a lucrative move to Everton.

Put simply Koeman is out like many a manager for being unable to replace a goal scoring striker. Most teams now only have one up front. You might have thought he would have spotted this.
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Mick Harper
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Did not Pochettino himself face the same syndrome after Bale was sold and couldn't, for a season or two, be replaced? These things are hard to judge because of the AE factor I am, by no coincidence at all, presently describing in another sphere

Historians (and Americans, and human beings) judge by association rather than analysis, a tendency no better illustrated by historians’ (and Americans’ and human beings’) judgement of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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aurelius



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Mick Harper wrote:

Next, how to watch one game and avoid the BT dickhead telling you what the scores are in the other two matches. A hand on the remote ready for the pregnant phrase, “And news from the Etihad is...” usually does the trick but watch out for Jermaine Jenas still maundering on about it several minutes later. The problem will sort itself in six weeks when Spurs and Liverpool go out.


Brave hostage to fortune...
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Mick Harper
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We daren't have four English teams in the semis during the Brexit negotiations so the most junior team, Spurs, are being asked to go out at the last sixteen stage. Quarters would make it too obvious. That is all.
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Mick Harper
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I love it when they turn down fifty million and a month later he's on the bench.

Or shell out ninety million in the case of Lukaku.
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aurelius



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In its piece on the 'double-barrelled' surname (English tradition) I couldn't help noticing how behind the times Wikipedia is. Yes, it briefly mentions heritability and the even more precious triple and quadruple versions plus an observation on ambiguously double barrelled names like Lloyd George (concatenation of middle given and surname) and Bonham Carter (father and mother lines without the hyphen) but there is no mention whatsoever of the class shift. It's no longer the preserve of the toffs...

Take football for example. I was quite bewildered by the number of hyphenated participants playing in our recent World Cup and Euro successes.

Under 21s
Alexander-Arnold
Clarke-Salter
Walker-Peters
Maitland-Niles
Calvert-Lewin

Under 20s
Buckley-Ricketts

Under-18s
Oakley-Boothe
Smith-Rowe
Hudson-Odoi

Under 17s
Dixon-Bonner

and of course our seniors Oxlade-Chamberlain and now Loftus-Cheek. I haven't even mentioned the 'three names but we are not sure if they are double-barrelled' variants.

Just as well quadruple hasn't caught on yet, I don't know how they would find the space on the back of the shirt.

Cricket doesn't seem to have attracted 'em so far.
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Mick Harper
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As usual, Aurelius, you are knocking on the door without battering it down. I'll leave you to do the maths but I am willing to predict that all or most of these people are black. Two possibilities:

1. Black fathers are notable absentees so taking a mother's and a father's name makes sense. There is a white variant of this phenomenon. Feminist mothers are reluctant to take their partner's name themselves but are careful to give it to their children.

2. In America there is a considerable vogue for black children to be given made up, very weird but rather beguiling Christian names. This is not happening in Britain (it will, it will) but I wonder if double-barrelled surnames are not our pro tem sociological equivalent. This again has its white counterpart in, as you say, toffs' former affectation for multiple names. Though it is noticeable they have been dropping them like flies for many, many decades.

signed
M John Harper not
L Ron Hubbard
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Wile E. Coyote


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All of those Arsenal fans who think that ditching the manager and spreading the chocolate wonga was the answer.....will be no doubt disturbed to find out a) they had secret reservists to try all this out and b) it came to a sticky end........
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Mick Harper
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An Arsenal fan writes

This is good news! One of the problems Arsenal are suffering from is that the battle between the 70% owner (Kronke ) and the 30% owner (Usmanov) is preventing the spigot opening. It is clear from the Paradise Papers that Usmanov not only bought Everton but misled the Premier League about it. This is the operative paragraph from the Guardian's account. [My square brackets]

Appleby [Isle of Man law firm who handled all the sales and whose files have been leaked] seems to have found some confusion surrounding how separate Moshiri’s [the geezer who officially bought Everton] money was from Usmanov’s [Moshiri is an employee of Usmanov’s]. The files record the firm’s compliance department, explaining the source of Moshiri’s wealth in 2007, saying he would be receiving a “gift” from Usmanov

Well, that might satisfy Appleby’s compliance department (pretty much anything does) but even the Premier League won’t wear this one. Usmanov can hardly avoid ‘a fit and proper person’ charge which will mean he’ll have to go. From Arsenal certainly, from Everton presumably. The spigot can be turned on. Except Kronke has no intention of doing so but that’s for another day.
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Wile E. Coyote


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The Impotance of Sport thread is starting to get us noticed.


The Arsenal ladies team have recently employed Mick as a goalkeeping consultant.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41893604


Wiley was originally offered the West Ham job on the ground that they wanted "continuity" but then they discovered that David Moyes was available.
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Mick Harper
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Talk of Theresa May stepping down in favour of Loftus-Cheek is premature.
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Mick Harper
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Turns out I was right about Harry Kane being Jewish. But Auro was right too!

Marion's particular friend and mentor was the charismatic young physicist, J D Bernal, a Jewish Italian from Tipperary [Anthony Powell, by Hilary Spurling]

I am not saying Kane doesn't deserve to be thought of as English now but clearly his footballing prowess is out-and-out Italian. Nat Lofthouse he is not.
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