Best Of Both Worlds

So here's my dilemma.

What should I devote my attention to this afternoon?

It's billed as the best end to a Premiership season ever. So much to be settled;

Who wins the Premiership?
Who will go down?

My predictions, for what they are worth, are The ManUre to win and Birmingham and Reading to do down (sorry lover!)
On the other hand my daughter is in a dance competition in about an hour and I would like to see her. Experience tells me that it will be a very hot sticky and crowded experience, although I do love watching her dance.

Shame I can't have the best of both worlds.

I think in the end maternal feelings will prevail.

And surely no-one will really notice the tiny lead trailing from my ear, under my hair to the little radio tucked in my thong...................................

When Push Comes To Shove

Did you see the referee, Mark Clattenburg, push that Birmingham City player yesterday?

There was some rubbing of foreheads and squaring up going on between the City player and an Aston Villa player and the ref just ran over and gave the City bloke a hard push away backwards.

I was pretty surprised when I saw it. Not least because had he stumbled the bloke could have had a really hard fall.

It is of course technically Common Assault.

Mr Clattenburg may of course argue that he was acting to protect the safety of others, which might offer a lawful justification.

One possibility is that he took a pragmatic (although not very PC) view of the situation and assessed that a bit of bog standard, common sense manhandling would be the appropriate course of action.

I might even have been prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, had I not found out one or two other things about him.

Derbies are clearly not an area of strength for him.

And he certainly seems a bit 'trigger happy' with the yellow and red cards.

Maybe the clue is in that last one. Perhaps referees are only given a limited number of cards per season and he has been so gratuitous with his, he has used them all up.

So now, instead of issuing cards he is resorting to summary justice.

I can't wait until the start of the bare bottom spankings.

It Ain't Necessarily So

Someone said to me the other day "I wonder if you'll end up like Karren Brady, the woman who broke the football glass ceiling by becoming managing director at Birmingham".

My response now would be "I hope not".

I don't know what to think of all the corruption allegations. Logically, given how much money is in football these days and how much is at stake, you could almost expect there to be some dodgy dealings. The question is how much and who is involved.

If some of the people that have been put in the frame so far turned out to be guilty that would be truly shocking, simply in terms of how high profile so many of them are.

It certainly seems to be a massive operation and investigation that is going on. All goes quiet for ages then a high profile arrest or two then all quiet again.

Of course simply levelling allegations does not make them true.

Just ask the owner of Fulham.

Hold Your Nerve

It's a big night tonight for some. Namely Newcastle and Birmingham.

Newcastle, apparently, do not have Thierry Henri playing for them, but do have Michael Owen, who apparently needs his team mates to do their bit in order to score. Presumably then Henri could win games on his own.

I'd be down at my local watching it for sure if I didn't already have tickets to see this lot.

At the moment I feel as if I am surrounded by people who support teams under the looming threat of relegation. Me and all my fellow Foxes fans. My lover and Reading. Mosher (you feel like an old friend already) and Newcastle. I guess those of you who have been around for a while would say that is what being a football fan is all about - living with the downs as well as the ups.

I do wonder what will happen if Newcastle lose. Although I am not a big KK fan and feel Big Sam was badly treated, I also recognise that when the rot has set in it takes a while to turn things around (as at Leicester City). You wonder if the Board will feel they have no choice but to take action if tonight does not yield the desired result.

As for the Foxes, I hope Steve Howard's view that we are finally on the up is borne out in our performances over the next few weeks. The alternative leaves me with a sort of sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I must hold my nerve though. Imagine if I lost it and it drove me to this.