Harry's Blog

So the World Cup ends today. Boo. I've watched almost all the games this time around thanks to my former employer (confusion of Boo and Hurrah here) and I'm really going miss all the action.

Though to be honest I enjoyed the group stages much more than the knockout round. Why? There's something rather special about those first few weeks of the competition, getting to watch three matches in a row day after day.

Once the knockout stage begins, with whole days without games, it feels like some air has been let out of the World Cup balloon. So my suggestion for improving the World Cup is to change from a knockout tournament to a league system.

Mad? Of course. But here me out. How about two groups of sixteen who play each other once each with the group leaders playing a final on the last day. We make all the teams play once a day too - it'll be a war of attrition for over-pampered millionaires.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q80wfAzeRKA

Now this is one great sports video.

Crikey that came around fast didn't it? This is one of the problems of being a parent to twins, life outside the house often passes you by rather quickly.

The community shield came and went without notice and now the Premiership kicks off today.

All the pubs around here seem to specialise in heroin over football so there's nowhere really go watch the events.

Perhaps when wifey comes back from work this afternoon and I need to copy our son's always convincing puppy-dog eyes and whisper about my need to add Sky Sports to our Tiscali TV package.

After all, I don't think I could stand another season with my main source of football being the whinging old blimp Alan Green.

Update: £22 to add Sky Sports. Not on your nelly Rupert.

Because on BBC Five Live it seems to be 1924. I could understand if the commentary from a match in Uganda sounded like it was being recorded with a Fisher Price "my first karaoke" kit, but not one from Moscow.

Well Manchester United certainly aren't off to a flying start. We've ground out two crap draws now in two games - pretty miserable considering the opposition has been Reading and Portsmouth.

Obviously it could be worse, it's not like we've had an absolutely tonking at home by Everton, but these first two games hardly inspire confidence.

Still there's some ray of sunshine in my footballing existence and this is the progress of Morecambe - a club I've followed since I used to live next to Christie Park in the early 90s.

Morecambe's victory of Preston in the Carling Cup was a phenomenal result and shows a team punching ably above its weight, unlike my home team in red.

Bollocks.

Some interesting matches here then, the draw has just been made for the FA Cup quarter finals.

Middlesbrough/West Bromwich Albion v Manchester United/Reading
Arsenal/Blackburn Rovers v Manchester City
Chelsea v Tottenham Hotspur
Plymouth Argyle v Watford

Conspiracy theorists might wonder how Arsenal, Chelsea or Manchester United managed to miss each other.

The actor Sylvester Stallone attended this afternoon's match between Everton and Reading today (honours even at 1-1). An entertainment journalist from BBC Five Live managed to have a few words with him and he struck me (as he did during his brilliant AICN Q&A series recently) as a funny and smart guy.

But my goodness, his visit to Goodison Park brought out the winging bitter side of Alan Green, well, his even more winging bitter side. I'm sure most listeners to Five Live's football coverage are familiar with the bloated old moan machine, but today he surpassed himself.

Towards the end of the match, spitting bile with every word, Green gave us his thoughts on Stallone's presence at today's match. It's bad enough having to hear Green whine about footballing matters, but he sounded so desperately pathetic going on and on about Sly and whether he was going to leave early, what he might know about football and his bodyguard.

Sad desperate stuff really.

It looks like Steve McLaren doesn't have a clue. He's dropped David Beckham from his first England Squad in a lazy move to show he's a totally new man and not following Sven's old plans. So far so good you might think, David hasn't been on the best form for England of later.

But then you take a look at the squad as a whole and wonder what the hell McLaren has been drinking.

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Here’s an entertaining little piece I saw on the BBC earlier today. It happened during the Twenty20 Cup match between Glamorgan and Gloucestershire yesterday. The ball was hit for six and smashed through the commentary box window. Alas there’s no video footage, but you can hear the radio footage including “It’s coming towards us” here at BBC Online.

In his previous post Jimbo asked why i'd not posted about the World Cup defeat yet. The reason is simple, it's just been too depressing to mention.

I don't blame the players. I blame Sven. He made such an appalling job of picking he squad, leaving the team awash with midfielders and lacking any bite up front. He also left Rooney isolated, a player that works best with someone to play with.

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Yes the World Cup is still ongoing, but the opening fixtures of the 2006=2007 have just been announced. Here are the Premiership games:

Arsenal v Aston Villa
Bolton v Tottenham
Chelsea v Man City
Everton v Watford
Man Utd v Fulham
Newcastle v Wigan
Portsmouth v Blackburn
Reading v Middlesbrough
Sheff Utd v Liverpool
West Ham v Charlton

Some nice easy games there for the big clubs then. Bad luck City.

So there is a coach at the World Cup who knows how to make decent tactical substitutions. Shame England doesn't have one of those.

England’s second half performance against Paraguay was lamentable. The team couldn’t keep hold of the ball and had no outlet when it did manage to break against the increasingly potent South American side. But if you’d expected the TV coverage to take Sven to task you’d have been disappointed.

The big problem though was Sven’s continued ineptitude when it comes to making tactical substitutions. Removing Owen from the equation left Peter Crouch alone up front as a lone target man. It was an embarrassing spectacle as Crouch’s lack of heading skill and many passes too high even for the giant Liverpool strike made depressing viewing. The team was pushed back and the gap widened between the midfield and the lonely Crouch.

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