The war against Clichy

The pundits are too busy milking themselves dry over Fabregas and Hleb to realise the actual reason Arsenal have improved this season is due to their unheralded left-back, who leads all defenders in the EPL in both passes intercepted (58 - 10 more than the next best) and tackles won (71 - an astonishing 20 more than anyone else in the league)

Mostly though, I've had the titular pun in my head for weeks and I've been looking for an excuse to use it.

Come on

There are dire warnings in the press that Fabio Capello won't have faced anything quite as intense and critical as the British media, that he'll get a shock at how harsh and ruthless our sports journalists can be.

What a lot of self-aggrandising bollocks this is.

Fabio Capello has won titles and been sacked in Spain at a club that has a newspaper dedicated exclusively to it. And in Italy he conquered first Serie A and then Europe under the sly, interfering, nastly little eye of the filthy great crook who runs the biggest commercial media organisation in the country, and in latters years, the country itself, thereby taking control of state media too.

Fabio Capello doesn't need lectures on handling the media from the likes of Brian "Woolly" Woolnough.

A Narrow Escape

I gave up on the English national team a few years ago: I stopped watching their games and hey, the world kept turning. The only development which would tempt me back would be a wisdom-of-crowds-style internet-chosen team coached by Derren Brown.

And then this Mourinho thing... I was unsettled. I was asking myself difficult questions.

Luckily his withdrawal, and the resulting certainty that the England will not win the World Cup in my lifetime, has made things easier - I am again indifferent.

Until... Until...

Fighting Talk: just not good enough

It's a nice idea, Fighting Talk, a forum for contrarians and controversialists to cut through the cant surrounding sport, and football in particular, but it's almost always disappointing. They do just enough to keep me coming back, hoping that it's going to catch fire, but it's so cosy, so safe, so reliant on the same reference points (Wayne Rooney fancies old ladies, Drogba dives) in lieu of perspicacity and invention.

To really work it needs a less conventional and egomaniacal host, and a smaller pool of guests to pick from: Brady can stay, so can Mills, Bunce, Anderson, Watt and Watson. Park, Buckley and Kelner should never be heard from again.

The Magic of the FA Cup

Was it just me, or did Ray Stubbs look like he wanted to physically injure Carlton Palmer during yesterday's woeful pitchside punditry at halftime of Harrogate Railway v Mansfield? I mean, the boy's shit, but you're supposed to be on the same team there.