Aaah! I cannae feel ma legs...

It's as well humans type with fingers because I can assure you that, had we evolved such that our feet were the more dextrous, and we'd developed computers accordingly, I would not be writing this entry.

Last night I made the all-too-foolish decision to accept the kind invitation of some local lads to play a bit of five-a-side on the village's splendid artificially surfaced and floodlit football pitch. Now I'm always wary of accepting invitations to play football - it can be a bit of a minefield. People can take it too seriously, expecting everybody to play to the same standard, and woe betide the clumsy grey-beard who turns up 'just for fun'. Oh I look the part alright - I've got the necessary footwear, various bits of sports clothing and, of course, several club and national shirts. I look the part right up until the moment I actually have to kick a football, when any impression of competence that may have been adopted based on that appearance will instantly be disavowed.

To use the game's technical terminology, I'm crap. The great levels of enjoyment I get out of playing have never even vaguely been tinged with anything resembling any talent. At secondary school, the games teachers would select a captain of each of the opposing sides, who would then alternate to select their team from the remaining pupils. I was never in the very last group, the lads who couldn't actually kick a ball at all and would rather have been anywhere else, but I was certainly in the group picked shortly before those kids.

I gave the chap who'd been kind enough to invite me to play plenty of warning about this lack of quality. And I mean plenty. But he seemed inexplicably keen that I join in, and I've done basically no exercise for at least a year, so against my better judgement, along I went. Now it's not like in Britain, where courts/pitches etc have to be booked in advance, paid for etc. We turned up, went into the council building to ask for the key to the pitch, switched on the floodlights ourselves and agreed to leave the key in a bar after the football. That's pretty much how things work here - you can always leave something in a bar for somebody to collect in the certain knowledge that a) that person will pass through the bar in due course and b) the bar will know exactly who you mean when you describe who's coming for said item.

So, as I said, we switched on the floodlights and it was then that I realised my mistake in agreeing to play had been two-fold. Despite the kind assurances that the standard would be fine, I could see at least one and possibly more of the lads who play for the village team getting their boots on. Way, way too good for me. And if any one of them was fewer than 15 years younger than me, I'd be surprised.

I was, dear reader, run ragged. I've long got used to watching players breeze past me with contemptible ease, and scoring off my mistakes, but this may well have reached new levels last night. It was five-a-side in name only. I'd say it was effectively five against four, but that would be to understate the enormous drag factor my own 'efforts' had on my side's quality. More like five against net-three-and-a-half.

Through the game I could hear my team-mates ragging each other for missed chances, misplaced passes, failure to save a 100mph shot which burned through the net as it went in, and let's say I've learned enough Gallego to know that they were using the full force of their vocabulary. I, by contrast, was given a very, very easy ride in that respect, and strongly suspect that some of the opponents went easy on me on the rare occasions I had the ball. They probably saw my 'qualities' as we warmed up and pitied me.

For the last half-hour or so I was even more of a spectator than I had been, before mercifully a halt was called, we locked up and then went for a beer. This post-footy ritual at least seems like a universal constant, as one of the greatest things about football after work in London was the opportunity to have a pint and a pub dinner with my brother and mates afterwards. The Spaniards are clearly no different. In any case we had to go to the bar to drop the key off, didn't we? So we pretty much had to go to the bar.

I must report that today my legs feel like they died overnight and rigor mortis has set in. They clearly got something out of my presence, though - perhaps helpless mirth - because I've been invited back. It turns out they play at least three times a week. So that's youth, ability and regular practise - just those three tiny things that separate me from them. Notwithstanding that this is a really good way for me to get to know a few lads that I know by face only, and pick up a bit more Gallego, I must be a glutton for punishment because, to my own slight disbelief, I've agreed to go and play again tonight. I really hope there's beer again after.

4-0, 2-0, 3-0, 3-0

Our last four results, all in our favour! A frankly easy win against Exeter last night with some lovely football played. It's a bizarre feeling, heading toward Brighton for home games lately expecting to win, and then having those expectations justified by the players! I'm not quite used to it yet.

'Nightmare at London Road'

So sang the massed Albion fans behind the goal at Peterborough as Posh's self-styled 'Cup Final' went horribly, horribly wrong for them. I'm just running out of superlatives for the way the boys are playing at the moment. I've been going for 25 years and it was the best performance away from home I've ever seen. But fans who have been going since the 50s were saying the same thing. We utterly, utterly thrashed them. Their goalkeeper, who was their man of the match by a country mile, and who made a string of saves, including a penalty, to stop the score becoming an absolute embarrassment, had been quoted as saying that Albion played 'total football'!!!

It's an absolute, unbridled joy to watch at the moment. Passing, movement, goals in the side, three clean sheets in a row, 8 points clear at the top of the league which is otherwise bunched up. I can't remember enjoying it so much. Not even when we won back to back titles and we had Zamora, the best player I've ever seen in a Brighton shirt, did we go to grounds like Peterborough, the top scorers in the entire country and averaging 3.5 goals per game at home, and completely dominate them.

Some comments from their podcast: "Men against boys," "They dominated from minute one," "Some of their short, quick passing was superb." A Posh fan came up to me at the station afterwards, shook my hand and said we'd 'shown them how to play football'.

It makes us Albionites want to burst with pride, frankly. What an absolute pleasure it is to watch them and write about them at the moment. We're at home to Exeter on Tuesday night. Surely, surely the wheels have to come off at some point, don't they?

This may well be the must unexpected post ever...

It is, to say the least, rare indeed that you'll read any praise on these pages for the PLC that is Manchester Utd but credit where it's due - they've done a good thing this week. Nobby Stiles, a man who managed to combine the twin achievements of winning a World Cup Final and proving that men should not dance, is such an unassuming chap that, according to his son, you'd never know what he achieved during his career on entering his house. No medals, shirts, caps, trophies on display. His medals were, apparently, in the bank and it was a matter of time before they were sold, and ill health has brought about that sale. Well Utd have bought them, and paid handsomely for the privilege, benefitting Mr Stiles' family in the process.

Stiles won his trophies while a Utd player, a European Cup for example, so the fact that they'll probably end up in the museum at Old Trafford means they're going to the right place if he cannot himself keep hold of them. I've been to the museum at Old Trafford and it's a place redolent with their history, with the Munich disaster section done movingly and tastefully, so it's a suitable home for his mementoes.

I can't of course, leave it without a bit of a dig at them, so here it is. As heartening as it is that there's clearly somebody in authority at Man U who's still got a connection with their past, it also serves only to place how far away they've come from that sense of history under the Glazers into sharp contrast. The recent 'Rooney-gate', to use a term the press might, is the best possible example of exactly that. Perhaps he should be led around the museum and shown Nobby's medals as a reminder of exactly what it is he's playing football for.

This is getting ridiculous

Most Albion fans had a bit of a bad feeling about today's game, if the web chat was any barometer. The sort of game we've cocked up in the past when we've been expected to win. Well, we brushed Yeovil aside today. 2-0 and comfortable. 78% possession. 78%! That is outrageous. Another clean sheet, a cracker from Calderon, and six points clear at the top.

To say Peterborough looks like a good game on Saturday would be a considerable understatement. Thousands of us going again, a covered terrace, and first against third. Bring it on!

Once a blue, always a mercenary

It'll be difficult to keep a note of glee out of this entry, given the news coming out of Old Trafford that Rooney wants away. This is not just because of my usual anti-Utd tendency, though I freely admit there's an element of that involved, but also because of my experiences of the Utd fan base's attitudes to their players, and other clubs' players, in the past.

I've been to Old Trafford about 20 times, about half a dozen of which have been to see United play Liverpool. During a period when United had Alan 'I'll never join Man Utd' Smith and Wayne 'Once a blue, always a blue' Rooney in their ranks, they nonetheless took great delight in singing a song aimed specifically at Steven Gerrard which alluded to him 'kissing the badge on his chest' and putting in 'a transfer request', to quote them directly, after his alleged near-move to Chelsea. The clear implication from this song and the general demeanour of their fans when you talk to them was that only United's players had loyalty and integrity, and United were so great a draw that any player, no matter how loyal to their club, could be prised out of there by the glamour and allure of the biggest of the big boys.

Happy, happy days, then, that they're now seeing the mercenary nature of that same Wayne Rooney, seeing him for what he is and experiencing the potential loss of one of their star players. But where to? Now, putting aside the fact that I genuinely believe he'll end up staying there anyway, in the end, and just for the joy of indulging in some ABU fantasising, let's speculate for a moment. They'll never sell him to Liverpool, who in any case have neither the money nor the cachet to get him at the moment. They'll never sell him to City either - Ferguson would surely resign in protest if that happens. He won't go back to Everton, however romantic that may seem, as he's taken some fearful stick there, Everton are not a Champions' League regular, and they don't have the money. Arsenal? No chance - Ferguson again. Sell him to Wenger? Not bloody likely. Chelsea? Just maybe, but I'd be extraordinarily surprised if Ferguson sat by and let that happen either. Spurs? Hmmm. Just possibly, if the money could be found. But no - it's got to be abroad.

Only two realistic possibilities. Real Madrid seem to have limitless cash, certainly have the allure, and have already shown their ability to get virtually anybody. But during the protracted sale of Diving Cheat from United to there, Ferguson said he 'wouldn't sell that lot a virus'. So he'd probably be apoplectic if Rooney ended up back alongside the Winker - it'd be quite amusing to see his face going purple with fury if that happened.

Barcelona? Maybe. Got the cash, got the team, got the Champions' League chances. A definite contender. But I'd be very, very happy if a certain Mr Mourinho continued his glorious habit of getting the better of Fergie and did indeed get him to the Bernabeu. What larks.

The usual platitudes are of course being trotted out by fans - 'no player's bigger than the club' being the main one, to convince themselves everything's OK and the old order is not changing. But I rather fear (fear? That is to say, I rather hope) that Ferguson's legendary temper, mind games and general ill-grace are finally getting the better of him and damaging his club, as top players in this era may well not be prepared to put up with it. It's also a possibility he thinks he is bigger than the club, and behaves accordingly, having run it like a private fiefdom for so long. But the reality facing Utd under the Glazers is that when sufficient money is dangled for even the very best players, even they are now a selling club. They're having to face the same realities that have faced plenty of clubs, plenty of big clubs, whose players they've cherry-picked so easily in the past.

That's why I'm enjoying this situation so fully. I suspect, as I say, that all this will blow over and Rooney will stay put, but the discomfort it must be causing within the Old Trafford walls, and in their support, gives me warm, fuzzy feelings.

Edit: See? The very next day it emerges he's signed a five-year extension, no doubt on even better money. It was fun while it lasted but I knew he wouldn't go - that would just have been too good.

Reasons to be cheerful - 1, 2, 3, 4

Oh my giddy aunt, I wish I'd held that Henry V quote back for the Charlton game. What I witnessed this afternoon was the best Albion performance, certainly in an away game, since I can't remember when, frankly. Passing the ball beautifully, defending resolutely, attacking with verve and invention and basically completely outclassing a Charlton side on their own turf, and all in front of over 3500 Brighton fans. The lads even had the common decency to stick three of the goals into the net at our end. Coupled with Palace losing (again) it was just about the perfect Saturday.

We really are looking like a decent side now. If you pay much mind to these things, the statistics will show you one league defeat all season, 8 games unbeaten in the league and 63% possession today, away from home. The Charlton fans, those of them who stayed to the end at any rate, knew what they'd seen. All credit to them for applauding our lads off as they left the field, they were in no doubt as to the quality of our performance either.

We're blossoming under Poyet. The belief in the side is evident, his tactics working, the squad sufficiently deep and containing enough quality to be able to rest players when he sees fit (Elphick and LuaLua both benched today, for example), and the football is an absolute joy to behold, especially on days like this. One of those rare ones today, where you're rewarded for loyalty and commitment during times when things are, frankly, a bit shit. What happy blue and white striped bunnies we all are this evening.

The linesman's an onanist of the first order, chaps...

I promised mention of the apalling theft of two points by an absolutely diabolical officiating decision at the very end of the game on Saturday, and here it is. First, I'll apply the caveat that I absolutely understand that if we'd have taken any one more of yet another string of chances which went begging during the preceding 89 minutes, it would have rendered the officiating inompetence a broadly irrelevant irritant. No more, no less.

However, the fact remains that the single most frustrating thing, for me at least, as a football fan, is when the result of a game is influenced or changed by the refereeing team. Great if it works in your lot's favour but it never bloody does, does it? First, it appears that pushing your elbow into the face of a centre half, in direct contravention of the clear instruction in the law, now warrants a yellow card, not a red one. So we should have been playing ten men for a significant chunk of the game. But we'll let go the clear implication that the ref and linesman had absolutely no idea what had gone on and therefore settled on some sort of compromise that they thought would please everybody, to concentrate on the utterly bewildering decision they made in injury time to award Bournemouth a penalty.

A free kick for handball, which may or may not have struck a Brighton hand in the first place, was given by the ref outside the penalty area. The linesman then intervened to tell the ref, wrongly, that it was inside the box. So we had the extremely rare sight of a ref changing a decision he'd already given, ultimately to deny us the win. As I said, I recognise that we should have had the game won by then anyway, but the fact is that without the officials giving this penalty the score would have been 1-0. The process by which that score had been arrived at, in terms of how many chances each side had created to arrive at it, is broadly irrelevant. Only the fact of the matter remains - it was 1-0 and therefore the decision was absolutely crucial and result-changing.

It's bloody frustrating and absolutely typifies the standard of officiating at our level, which is, frankly, shocking. Again, I realise they have the hardest job in football, and I wouldn't want to do it for all the money in the world, but why is it that when they make mistakes like this it's always, always a mistake which ends up changing the damn result?

Sky's powers need a limit

This caught my interest yesterday: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11452434

You'll see, if you read the piece, a reference to this case potentially being the Bosman of broadcasting. That may not mean anything to you if you don't follow football but it could mean a complete freeing up of broadcast consumers' right to choose, with pub landlords such as Ms Murphy being able to buy their satellite football coverage from suppliers based overseas. Personally, I wish her the best. I realise that it's the Premier League who have brought the action, not Sky, but we all know who stands to benefit most. Sky's water-tight relationship with the Premier League, and their resultant dominance of football coverage in this country, is so overpowering that they're changing the face of the game, and not necessarily for the better.

I'd like to know which other business limits your right to choose so zealously - if you want a Mini, for example, you can buy one not only from any Mini dealership but plenty of other sources. The good people who make Minis are not going to come after you for failing to buy them from a single outlet, nominated by them, who charges you ten times the price of the bloke down the road.

Ms Murphy is not even stealing intellectual property in my opinion, because she's been paying an authorised supplier of the images, merely one that's authorised in another territory. She describes Sky as 'greedy' and argues that they run a zealously guarded virtual monopoly, free to charge pubs for example, almost what they want for their coverage in this country.

I realise it's not as simple as that - I know that Sky supply a lot of the infrastructure and bandwidth on which many other satellite channels rely, for example - but anything which prises open Sky and the Premier League's vice-like grip on football can only be a good thing for me.

Sandaza way to do it

6th minute of injury time. 1-1 in a game we'd largely dominated and missed plenty of chances, against good oppos. Step forward Senor Sandaza, on his home debut, hitting the net with almost the last kick of the game from sufficiently close in that the media would usually joke 'he's deadly from there', sending us top in the process. Cue bedlam in the stands. The sort of thing that you see against you all too often, but very rarely seems to happen in your favour. What a moment.

I've heard people worrying that we've 'gone top too early'. What??! We're top! Top! It builds confidence, gives the players something else to play for (ie staying there) and it's where you want to bloody be. Some people can find negative things even in being top of the league.

Home to Brentford tomorrow night and a chance to consolidate, if we don't balls it up. It's all rather fun at the moment.

Eating up the Greens

Make that three clean sheets in a row, second in the table and off the top on goal difference only. A thoroughly professional win at Plymouth in what seemed, looking at the stats and the post-game comments, like a deserved and dominating one.

Most encouraging. A Plymouth fan apparently noted that we played 'tippy-tappy' football but still scored two 'agricultural' goals. I find this particularly encouraging - the passing game has not been, and will not be, abandoned by Poyet, but they're also obviously hitting the right ball at the right time. Our second goal involved Bennet outpacing his man to get to a ball into the channel, a quick cross and goal. So we can mix it up, clearly.

We've also, oddly, scored our goals lately thus: 2-0-2-0-2-0-2. So we're due a zero, if that sequence is to continue, at home on Saturday. However, a) I don't believe these sequences are any more than statistical quirks which have no bearing on the actual outcome in advance and b) even if I did, we've not yet failed to score at home in a league game. So you can prove anything with statistics. The only number that really matters is the one alongside your position in the table.

This is all going worryingly well. Dismal defeat on Saturday will surely follow, to give the naysayers who so love their fishing on the internet something to crow about. But I've said before, I'll take 12th in May if we play decent football every week, and so far I've got no complaints at all.

Back to the important stuff

A flurry of negative stuff on NSC recently requires a bit of redress. People starting threads like 'What's the point of Ashley Barnes' and 'Poyet is a clown', even if done solely to get a rise out of other fans, cannot go entirely unanswered.

A few simple facts will suffice:

3 points off the leaders' total, with a game in hand.

One league defeat so far this season, at then top Sheff Weds, tight and unfortunate.

Only five goals conceded, behind only Carlisle as the tightest defence in the division so far. Quite why so we're focusing on the perceived shortage of clean sheets is beyond me.

Unbeaten at home in the league so far, and above all, we're playing football. The ball is on the floor most of the time and even though we're not always fluent in doing so, people would do well to remember that we're a League One team, not bloody Barcelona, so that's inevitable.

Poyet's doing well, the players are behind him, the start to the season has been positive. I realise it's just a start, we should not get too dizzy at this stage of the season, but we have plenty of reasons to be cheerful.

And I thought I was negative...

So a tight and, by all accounts, unfortunate defeat away at Sheffield Wednesday, one of the teams most fancied to challenge for this season's title. Not good enough for some of our fans who clearly seem to think it's vital to be top of the table in the first month of the season. There's a thread on Northstandchat in which the author claims we should 'write off the season' and that our squad lacks depth and 'we won't challenge with a bench like that'. Well do me a favour. When I was a kid, you never even saw a league table until six games in, and even then you got a quick look at the top six, nobody took them too seriously. But now in the new era of instant gratification and shortening attention spans, success and failure must be weighed and measured immediately.

Well, not for me. It's utterly, utterly ludicrous to make any comment whatsoever about the entire season in August, for God's sake. AUGUST! There are nine months ahead of us. A transfer window, yet to open because the current one hasn't even closed yet, dozens of managerial changes, injuries, suspensions, who knows what drama to be played out yet, but some soothsayer within the Brighton support is sufficiently prescient to make a declaration on the season already? I'd venture a guess that this 'sage' is in his early 20s at the absolute oldest, and his jaundiced view is just another symptom of the culture of immediacy that surrounds us now (it's all the fault of mobile phones, I tell you...)

I might run a book on when the first call for Poyet's head is made, in the likely event that we're not 20 points clear at the top by Christmas, with over 100 goals scored already and Barcelona knocking on our doors with desperate bids to prize our footballing super-Gods from the ostentatious luxury of Withdean to the prosaic functionality of the Nou Camp in the January transfer window. Some people would do well to remember that it's not a bloody computer game.

Things I don't understand

I thought that I basically understood the football fan as an animal, thought the same way as pretty much all of them. We're fond of saying that the things in football which divide us are far outnumbered by the things which unite us. However, the support at the England game have left me baffled. It's currently half time. The crowd were (largely) supportive when the team came out, and got behind them with the exception of John Terry and Ashley Cole, who came in for some mild barracking. Then, having watched a greatly improved first half performance in a more fluid system, they lustily booed them off at half time.

Go figure.

To boo or not to boo? That is today's question

Listening to TalkSport this evening, they were questioning early arrivers to Wembley for tonight's England game as to their response to the players this evening. Are they going to boo? The response was mixed. Some saying definitely yes, some saying definitely no, some saying it depended on how pissed they got before kick-off. (Good luck with that - you can't buy a beer inside the stadium, apparently us footie fans are all such atavistic reprobates that we can't be sold alcohol, oh no...)

Anyway, this made me wonder whether I'd boo them. The fact is, I've always thought that it's about the shirt. In one respect, if you're booing an England player, you're booing the shirt, the England team entity, which is blameless in all this. And if you boo, you're booing the also blameless 13 players who were nowhere near South Africa and cannot be faulted for the dismal performances out there.

However. And it's a big one. Certain members of that team, I'm not going to name names but it's Ashley Cole and Wayne Rooney, deserve to be told exactly what people think of them. Cole for his ill-mannered and graceless comments about the support after the tournament, Rooney for his during the tournament, on which I've already commented here.

I think, on balance, I'd probably refrain from booing, personally - it's probably not going to bother the mercenary sods anyway, and can only help the opposition. But I have no words of reproach for those who do boo them tonight. They've earned it, on balance.

Oh to see ourselves as others do

A fairly horrible realisation dawned on me this morning, thanks mainly to a perspicacious observation from a house-mate. (I don't like that word as it has connotations of Big Brother, but can't think of a better one). It further dawned, on reflection, that this is something which may well already have occurred some time ago to anybody who's bothered reading these posts from the start.

Somehow that fine institution of sporting news and speculation, Sky Sports News, came up in conversation. She described it as 'That mind-numbing thing with all the text running along the bottom'. I was of course defending it but rather undid myself with the case I used for its defence. I pointed out that yesterday I was able to let the Villa fans at work know that Martin O'Neill had resigned because SSN almost invariably gets there first and I had it on one of the screens. Kudos, whether real or imagined, follows for being the first with the story.

House-mate then says "Isn't that just like reading Heat magazine and having the gossip first?" I coughed and spluttered of course, but this was a hammer blow. The only response was to meekly 'lay down my king'. She's right, of course. For all my bluster and raging about the vacuity and superficiality of the gossip mags, caring about Martin O'Neill leaving a club I don't even support and then gossiping about it with workmates is basically exactly the same thing. A lengthy period of self-examination will follow, at the end of which I'll no doubt emerge transformed, butterfly-like, into exactly the same animal I am now.

Plain fact is, even with this new self-knowledge, and probably accepting that I'd secretly known this all along, it's not going to stop me watching Sky Sports News. Oh no. Sky moving it to pay only channels in a few weeks, that's what's going to make me stop watching Sky Sports News.

What a start

Well, you can forget all that negative stuff I may have posted this morning, or over the last few days, or ever, in fact. A magnificent away victory at Swindon to get our season under way, with new boy Matt Sparrow bagging a brace. One of the great joys of football support (and one of its curses, as I've readily acknowledged in previous posts) is its gift of making up for all the rubbish and disappointment you have to go through on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, season-to-season basis with tremendous results which leave you bouncing.

Well done, lads, well bloody done. This without new skipper Greer, and main frontman Murray, both suspended. Regrettably, work prevented me attending, but I've read that we did it playing football too, as pledged by Gus.

A great start to the season. I will of course look back on this post a few months from now and laugh at my naivete, my wide-eyed enthusiasm for a single result, but just at the moment, even in that full knowledge, I simply don't care.

Not even the Beeb can get their facts right

The verbosity inherent in many of my postings here is probably borne out of my desire, years ago, to be a sport journalist. That not having happened, this is therefore my outlet for writing about it. I still come across examples, though, in the professional broadcast or print media, of either gross inaccuracy, poor writing or research, or such badly formed pieces of writing that I'm convinced that there are plenty of people out there who could do at least as good a job as many of the pros. Two examples within about 30 seconds on the BBC, no less, this morning. Apparently (using the Beeb's own numbers) England's overnight position of 101-2 in the second Test represents a 40 run first innings lead over Pakistan, who scored a paltry 72. Now I realise that journalists need to be better with words than numbers, but that's pretty rudimentary maths even for me. An easy mistake, though. We'll let that one go. Much worse followed.

Trailing the first Football Focus of the new season, the presenter described Leeds v Derby today as 'one of the key games of the opening weekend'... What the fuck? I'd like to know what gives him even the slightest indication that this is a 'key game' over any other? What possible criteria can he have used to decide this? We have absolutely no idea where these two sides will finish NINE MONTHS from now. They could be 13th and 14th, and this game could have had absolutely no significance in the grand scheme of things whatsoever come May. It's just bloody lazy. They've looked at the two clubs, decided they've got decent levels of support, and on that basis alone have called this a 'key game'.

I realise that his is a very small matter to get worked up about, especially on a day when I'm having to work during the opening Saturday of the football season for the first time in my life, but I'm a relentless pedant, and we have a rich and varied language which throws up any number of words which could have been used in place of 'key' here, many of which are subjective and therefore couldn't be argued with.

Anyway, have a nice weekend, all. I don't know about you but I'm getting really excited about the big Forfar v Dumbarton clash in Scottish div 2. I reckon that could be a key game...

World Cup antipathy hasn't dissolved yet

A couple of faintly depressing things this morning. Firstly a chap posting on Northstandchat, the Albion fans' most active forum, that he has four tickets for England's game with Hungary at Wembley which he bought months ago. He can not now attend, so is trying to sell them on at below face value. Initially £20 each for £35 face value tickets, now £15 each. No takers and a string of invective aimed at England players, the wounds from the World Cup clearly still raw. I hope the players and the FA (and the Premier League) don't ignore how strongly people feel about this as the new season gets under way. I suspect they'll have a fairly vocal reminder of people's feelings when the teams run out.

I'm not holding my breath though. The realities of Premier League thinking in particular where brought into sharp focus by an expert football commentator guest on Sky Sports News this morning. (Yes, I know, I know... That's the sort of telly I watch.) He was speaking specifically about the proposed Chinese take-over of Liverpool. (Don't even get me started on that. The club with possibly more sense of tradition and the old football values than any other is already in the wrong hands. Being sold on again to a different example of the same type of entity is another symptom of the worrying direction it's going.) But anyway - it's emerged than Kenny Huang may possibly be backed by the Chinese government. When asked 'Where do you see this going?' the commentator responded that he saw Premier League games being played in other continents in future.

Now my girlfriend would probably be delighted to read this, but the day that happens is the day football has forgotten its history, heritage and soul so completely that I give up on it. I don't say that lightly, but I mean it. It's bad enough that our clubs are being franchised already, moved from their home and their fan base to Milton Keynes for example, but the day the game itself is franchised is the day I want nothing further to do with it.

Baz in boots

My first game of the new season yesterday, a friendly with Aberdeen and a day spent in the company of Aberdonian mates down for the day. Well, what a pleasant surprise - we outplayed them from the start, kept the ball on the floor as promised by Gus, and generally looked encouraging. Another screamer from Bennett, he doesn't score tap-ins, as they say, and a good time had by all. Apart from over 500 Aberdeen fans I suspect, a superb turn-out, they deserved better. I don't know if their side are any indication of an utter paucity of quality in the SPL, or if they simply didn't take it seriously, or what the problem with them was, but it could have been a cricket score.

We missed an absolute hatful of chances, which should worry me I suspect, but the truth is, if we finish 12th this season but play football like that all year, I'll be happy. We won't, of course, be allowed to play football like that all year. League One teams will close you down in three tenths of a second and kick anybody trying any fancy stuff up in the air at the first opportunity. But it'll be nice watching a team try to play football of a purity and fluidity which is often sadly lacking in England.

I am a bit worried for the oddly-prosaically named Argentinian new signing, 'Baz', who came on as a sub, sporting bright yellow boots, and proceeded to twice connect with bicycle-kick volleys which would no doubt have screamed into the net, setting it aflame, had they not both been blocked immediately. The germane point here is that he connected with them in the first place. If he thinks there's any place in League One for that kind of outrageous exhibition of technical abilities he'll be disavowed of such delusions pretty quickly by some of the more, er, 'agricultural' players in the division.

It's nice to feel so encouraged going into what will, praise be, be the last season at Withdean. As is always the case, and as I said I'd be guilty of falling victim to in an earlier post, the depression and rancour of the English World Cup failure is dissipating rapidly as the optimism and enthusiasm for the new campaign takes over.

Bring it on!