The Importance of Sport (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

I looked at the team Spurs had put out against Alkmaar. Most of the regulars were there but I looked at the subs listed alongside to make sure and--you won't believe this--every single one of the first team had a brother on the subs bench! As Barry Davies used to say, remarkable.

Memo to TNT: you've just shown all the English matches in full so, if you decide to show the highlights later--and we're very glad of it because nobody wants to watch three whole matches in one evening -- don't spend an hour on each one. You might as well have watched the live match in the first place. Make it half an hour like those nice deposed people over at Sky. They might not shell out the dosh any more but they still know their business. Now it's your business.

And don't say "Spurs have got it all to do" when they're only one nil down from the away leg. The idiom is only used when a team has got no chance and in conjunction with Ally McCoist saying, "They've got a mountain to climb."

[Mick Harper]

Does anyone know which street guide sponsors AZ Alkmaar?

[Wile E. Coyote]

What sealed it for Liverpool against PSG was coin flips, it was the dreaded away end and going second.

Before a pen is taken, you are already down to 60-65% chance of losing.

[Mick Harper]

Perhaps a fairer system would be A, B, B, A, A or something along those lines. I'm sure AI would be able to work it out. Anything to reduce the lottery element of the toss. Even AAAAA, BBBBB if that turns out to be fairer since, at this stage, fairness is far more important than drama.

Alternatively it could be known in advance e.g. the away side gets the choice or whatever. That way there would be a sense of urgency for at least one side since when it is genuinely 50/50, as it is at the moment, there is a tendency to coast during extra time.

One idea that does occur to me is to introduce a new lottery element. Players to be chosen by lot to take each pen. Another alternative is to change it from 'who misses' to 'who scores' by, for instance, taking the pen from the edge of the area not the spot.

[Wile E. Coyote]

When you are winning 68-14 away against Wales you have to consider if it is a paradigm change. It's not that we have got better. They have got worse. I mean it's like a West Indies cricket type of decline.

[Mick Harper]

This is indeed serious. Rugby is off my personal agenda but I'm assuming it is England doing the winning. The British sporting nations have always contained a 'paradigm anomaly'. England ought to win every game and every yearly tournament by dint of a massively superior population but this has never been the case.

It should be even more anomalous in Wales' case (as it used to be in the football Home Nations with Northern Ireland). But somehow the shortfall was always made up. In the case of Wales and and the Four/Five/Six Nations it was because rugby (union) was the national sport with every village having a team. It sounds as if that era is over.

PS The situation has a parallel in the world with rugby (union and league) and cricket.

[Mick Harper]

Cocklecarrot Corner

The Man City goalie keeps his spare shin guard (or whatever it is) outside his left-hand post and behind the line. Only not far enough behind to prevent interfering with a ball that is over but not fully over the line. Look out for it in the first half.

PS I do like Jérémy Doku. In fact I quite like Man City now they are relative duffers. Not that judges play favourites. Unless we're paid to.

[Mick Harper]

Tips for Strikers No 147

When you are shaping to shoot and you see a defender intending to block the shot with a slide, don't shoot. Put your foot between the ball and the defender instead. You are certain to get a pen when he hits your foot and that is far more likely to result in a goal than your shot, whether it is blocked or not.

[Mick Harper]

If I had my time again I would opt to be a set-plays coach. An ideal combination of my fecund mind and hands-on experience as a goalie for Sandhurst Road. But only for attacking set-plays. I can't make head nor tail of all this zonal and man-for-man mullarkey. I'm not sure if even top Premier League sides could run to two set-play coaches and obviously I wouldn't work for anybody less.

Talking of executive careers in football, do you find yourself rooting for both teams on account of feeling sorry for both managers? It was like that for me with Everton vs West Ham. I was glad it was a draw in the end. Despite, now I come to think of it, both managers dropping two points.

[Boreades]

Are you feeling sorry for Ange Postecoglou?

[Boreades]

You may mention Ossie Ardiles in mitigating circumstances.

[Mick Harper]

Postecoglou's countenance meant I half-wanted them to snatch a draw in both north London derbies despite my fondness for one side. (Which one? Clue: my favourite band is The Four Skins.)

Ardiles is an interesting case. One of my pet theories is that English teams are always behind the tactical eight-ball because rugby creams off middle class sport freaks at school. Ardiles, a trained lawyer, being a case in point. They don't play rugby in Argentina... er, I'll get back to you.

[Mick Harper]

Caribou Cup

ITV don't show much top-level football and it showed when they were match broadcaster for the Wembley final. They had chosen the main camera frame at an absurdly wide angle meaning it was like watching a game of Subbuteo. The Diddymen were of course originally from Liverpool so Newcastle took full advantage of the lack of stature.

It has been decided at the highest levels of the AEL to extend official congratulations to the Toon for 'winning their first piece of major silverware since the 1969 Fairs Cup' (no smirks at the back). Despite our general hostility to Saudi Arabian catspaws in general and anything from the north-east in particular.

And I'm not referring to Walthamstow. AE-ists are not permitted to be Londoncentric.

[Mick Harper]

Hugh Grant caught cottaging. One is not surprised after that business on Hollywood Boulevard and anyway what can one expect from the cloth cap brigade? We have asked for his credits to be removed from Notting Hill.

[Mick Harper]

Here are the season association coefficients so far: