Don't believe a word of it

Well no tonking, but a reasonably satisfying last minute incident at White Hart Lane, as well as Old Alex losing it (again!) over yet more officialdom incompetence. Five points the gap now, so keep it coming please. Now on to fucking Stoke again. How utterly boring. I bet at least if you dared to kick a ballboy at the Britannia stadium, you would be nursing a very nasty injury as a result. FWIW, and I still don't really like the FA Cup much, I think we will probably get a draw up there and then - perhaps - beat them in the return leg.

Last night to my daughter's parents' evening at the sponsored academy which is providing her with the ammunition for a tough life ahead. Very pleased I was too, with forecast A or even A* grades in almost all of her subjects (maths excluded, but that was never my strong point either. Not that that means I don't want her to succeed in the dark arts of number crunching, which is a subject I still don't understand, but now love in a sort of murky way) and very glowing reports from the teachers. My school days were certainly not peppered with such praise, and I only hope that a) the upward trajectory continues and b) that there are jobs of any kind for her to do when she reaches working age.

It seemed odd to be sitting there listening to the teachers saying all this good stuff while Michael fucking Gove continues to spew his regressive, reactionary bullshit (can one spew bullshit?) from his ivory tower at the Department for Education. Will her A* grades (should she get them) be arbitrarily downgraded to Bs? Will she then be assessed on her A Levels (subjects - Kings and Queens of England, Poetry Rote Recitation and Being English) only at the end of a two year study period? Will the cost of a university education be so prohibitive that only people like Captain Wales can afford it, and then after this gruelling struggle, will she end up executing innocent civilians through a space age monocle because the only jobs going will be to keep the natives' hands off their own fossil fuels?

Answers on a postcard please.

Minding my ps and qs

Funny how I don't swear in front of my father. I have sworn in my mother's presence, but not very often; hardly ever more than a bloody or two - perhaps the odd bugger - and almost always felt awkward once I did so. Especially that time I said 'cunt' as an experiment. Having been informed that there is a new audience for this drivel, I will ensure that I display more caution with my language in future writings.

Just returned from a very brief trip to Oswestry, cut short by a combination of snow (which could possibly have prevented us travelling, and which would certainly have meant staring out of a Morda window for a day. Not really recommended) and a rotten head cold (now thankfully on its way out) which has left me with a red raw nostril and a sore eye. The bracing walk to the top of the hill fort on Wednesday morning may not have helped much, even though I am skeptical about cold causing colds. Anyway, as often happens, Oswestry always brings home to me the true brutality of the current political dogma.

I pointed out in a Guardian CiF article once that the town (and I do realise it's not the only place in the country suffering) is an economic basket case. Certainly, recent unhappy events in the retail cursed earth cannot have helped the situation much. Some people I know are currently availing themselves of whatever they are deciding to call sickness benefit these days (DLA, ESA, NFI... Who knows?) and it is salutary indeed to hear them talk about the risk of being filmed by the DWP walking up a hill, which would mean instant loss of the payment because it doesn't meet the criteria of not being able to walk more than 50 metres. My Dad believes that certain pubs are full of the unemployed, who somehow manage to stay in them all day despite only bringing home £45 a week. He may be right, but I think I might end up that way myself if faced with the alternative of watching daytime telly and waiting for signing day to come around.

In addition to that disgraceful state of affairs, I hear that online activity on the new DWP Universal Jobmatch website is now monitored by staff. Failure to conduct enough job searches leads to sanctions of one sort or another, ultimately I suppose leading to the 156 week ban recently introduced. Now, I don't agree that this kind of thing is in any way defensible even in a vibrant job market. The way things are - especially in Oswestry - it is no less than inhuman. Surely there must be some human rights or privacy legislation which can prevent this? How little dignity do you want people to have? All in all it was a rather depressing return to the old haunts, and gave me much food for thought.

To cheer myself up, a routine and slightly disappointing easy win over Fulham after Stoke beat Palace to face us in the next round of the FA Cup. Then it's on to 'Arry's lads at Fortress Loftus Road. No disrespect, but I don't think we'll be feeling too much pressure in these matches. Let's just hope that (snow willing) Spurs give the Rags a good tonking to open things up a bit.

Stealth

I attended a health & safety briefing which was all about Fees For Intervention (FFI). This is a measure put in place by the Health & Safety Executive to charge companies for their inspectors' time (and other things, such as any expert reports, etc.) which are required after discovery of a material breach of health & safety legislation. As with many of the areas of modern life, this is part of the current agenda of everything having a price, while nothing has any value. Of course, there's the usual ill-thought out justification for gradually stripping away those areas of the state which are actually of any use, but precious little thought of how this might affect those who a) work at the HSE and will undoubtedly lose their jobs and b) ordinary workers in other businesses who are sure to see a decline in safety standards as a result of this privatisation.

We must all remember the bleating about red tape Britain, supposedly strangling those brave entrepreneurs who are pushing back the frontiers of trading and so on and so forth. My fear is that stealthily cutting away at the hugely important - and extremely hard-won - legislation erodes protection for the individual worker. We may hear about the probation service being contracted out; we are all too painfully aware of the commoditisation of the health service, but there are so many other things going on beneath the news radar which are steadily hacking at this country while it is already on its knees pleading for mercy.

However, lest anyone think: 'Hey, this is not a football blog!' I will update on the City situation. Bad news that Kun's injury comes at a time when Yaya is in Africa, and that it is more serious than first thought, as well as (I suppose) Nasri not being available. Bad news that these events coincide with a visit to the Library, but we must keep positive. I think the word is #believe, but I do struggle with some of that stuff. I fear at best a draw against the Gooners, and we could well end up losing it. Still, there's the FA Cup to look forward to, and if Palace can see off those pesky Potters, there might be a chance to go and see City again towards the end of the month. Only time will tell.

Paper World

A happy 2013 one and all.

It's quite instructive to try and imagine what it must be like to be inside the mind of a Daily Mail journalist (or should that be 'Editor'?). I've been searching for something to rant and rave at since the Guardian changed the settings for its reader feedback, and the IE browser I use became redundant for many of the Comment is Free features - such as actually reading the comments. It's been a bit of a struggle, and I realise now how much I actually rely on what's BTL for my news enjoyment. The comments for Mail online articles are still visible, and I 'enjoy' reading the insane spluttering views of some of the readers, while also relishing the anger excited in me by the repulsive tripe of Peter Hitchens or Richard Littlejohn.

As a part of my sado-masochistic experiment, I've been indulging in one of the paper's obsessions: the decline of the country due to the dissolute nihilism of our alcohol-fuelled youth. Interestingly, a policeman from Shrewsbury decided to tweet his experiences 'on the beat' in the town as the New Year festivities really got underway. I declare an interest, and so could not resist looking through the piece. Now, take just these couple of sentences from it:

"Across the country, it was the night revellers brought shame to the nation at the end of its most glorious 12 months for decades. After Diamond Jubilee patriotism and Olympic triumph did the country proud, hordes of alcohol-fuelled party-goers turned the clock back to show the world a familiar, sickening portrait of modern Britain...."

Clearly, the writer (quite possibly at the behest of the proprietor) is inviting us to join him in feeling a bitter-sweet sadness at the way in which the young pissheads of Broken Britain have let us all down with their loutish behaviour. The image created by these drunken hooligans and slags* is 'familiar' and 'sickening'; and the tweeting Superintendent wistfully asks us to consider the moral dimension of this hellish bacchanal, his inane ejaculations milked for every sensationalist headline possible by the breathless journo. No matter that the pictures used are not from Shrewsbury, but are taken in Newcastle, Liverpool, Cardiff... and no matter that one of the pictures is captioned 'the Shropshire town centre', which is wilfully moronic in that a) Shropshire is a county for fuck's sake, and b) the picture is of a quiet street in Bridgnorth with a van parked on it. Of course, the Mail doesn't care for such details, sticking admirably to the old adage of never letting the facts get in the way, etc., etc.

Ultimately, this is what Paul Dacre's organ is all about: young girls salaciously pictured - camera lenses pushed like snouts up hems - with skimpy party dresses riding up their legs in grotesque parodies of the celebrity shots which plaster almost every corner of the site, accompanied by the most hypocritical moral outrage. Compare and contrast the bit above with a piece of fluff about Tamara Ecclestone elsewhere:

"Dressed in her usual blingtastic style, the daughter of Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone looked in need of a few pints of water as she headed home to rest her aching feet and no doubt sore head. Tamara is one person who must have been glad to see the back of 2012. The socialite's relationship with businessman Omar Khyami imploded after the discovery of a leaked sex tape."

Blingtastic? It is, let's face it, a bizarro world with which we are presented, and the realities of this world are indeed stranger than fiction. Armies of paps are stationed around Caribbean islands with ultra long lens cameras, capturing (millions of) images of sometimes famous, always rich, women in bikinis while hacks sit at computers typing screeds of meaningless drivel to accompany them; indignation about gay people, and education, and immigration, and benefit recipients; and drugs and knives; catty sniping (no doubt from male hacks, shamefully repeated by the paper's readership) about women's wrinkles or body fat, or other imperfections. Shut it down now.

And now, sports news. A surprisingly routine win for us over the Potters, but once again trumped by Van Persie and his Rag army. I thought Tony Pulis would squeeze a bit more out of his boys, but he didn't. Kun is such a marvel, and could have had a hat trick, so will be sorely missed v Arsenal, if not so much against the Hornets, while Yaya is already in the Veldt with Kolo. After Chelsea were surprisingly stung by Sweep and Harry's Hoops, their threat is diminished somewhat, but there are still a testing few weeks ahead if we are going to keep United in our sights. Let's hope Ed and Carlos (and dare I mention Mario?) can step up to the mark.

* Ironic usage

In Review

Rape? Not a lot!

Everybody's doing it, so why not me? The year in review now follows.

In the UK, it was a year defined most starkly by Savile and the Olympics, with the former being much more of a marathon than the latter. Quite staggering, with the recent de-classification of the correspondence with Thatcher, and the unbelievable access granted to the white haired tracksuit man to so many organisations. So much more is yet to come in this story, I think we can safely say, and it beggars belief at every new revelation. For me, the Olympics had a personal touch, thanks to my duties on the front line of customer services for the travelling public. It was a good couple of weeks in all.

Huge amounts of revelations up to and through the Leveson inquiry, with no discernible outcome other than mild embarrassment for Cameron because he thought LOL meant lots of love. Nothing was done to remedy the sickness at the heart of the relationship between HMG and Rupert Murdoch; nothing will be done to regulate the worst excesses of press intrusion. And we'll all sing along like before.

The fiscal cliff atop which we are all apparently standing has never been very far away. Greece burning, Spain floundering, France posturing, Italy imploding, Germany dictating and Japan stagnating. Obama's victory over the lunatic Romney - though only 7 weeks ago - now seems lost in the distant past, overshadowed by the apparently endless (and pointless) gerrymandering of the US political machine. I've been reading about deficits, public debt relative to GDP, etc., and I have to say that I can't really understand a bloody word of it. I'm not the cleverest man alive, but I'm not completely illiterate, and can struggle through most subjects given time, but this is all a mystery to me. If somebody could explain it in clear terms, then I would be very grateful. It seems to boil down to the basic fact that we are all fucked, but that it is not possible to levy higher taxes on the wealthy in our societies.


It was a year when City's billions finally clinched the champions' spot, in truly stunning fashion. A fantastic way to end the season, followed by a largely very enjoyable European Championships (England's dire displays notwithstanding) as a welcome antidote to the depressing spread of receivership and collapse among clubs large and small. A bit like United this season, Fabrice Muamba died, refused to roll over, and came back to life. Racism has been everywhere, infusing everything, and again I'm not sure if we have really made any progress in sorting it out.

Do I feel, as Mr Cameron says I should, optimistic about 2013? In short, no.

I can see nothing in my (admittedly somewhat confused) view of the economic situation to make me think that there will be any way out of the morass we're in. We seem paralysed and unable to do anything about even the most egregious examples of political graft and downright criminality. The environment continues to deteriorate at a truly terrifying rate, and nobody even wants to talk about it. Floods and misery descend on the poor benighted folk of this strange land with alarming regularity; farmers - their livestock pumped full of hormones, anti-biotics and god knows what chemicals - are struggling to survive like everyone else. Children are living in increasing numbers in B&B accommodation while luxury hotels sprout up and the value of houses continues to rise.

As far as the beautiful game goes, I think there is cause for some springing forth of Pandora's greatest gift. It has been an enjoyable season, with some great matches already played, and a lot more to come. The Norwich match was thrilling right up to the 7th minute (!) of added time, although we do have the bloody Potters up next. Now, at the halfway point in the current season, it could still go any way. Spurs are putting together some good play with some encouraging results, and Arsenal are doing all right. Liverpool looked set to tumble down a mediocrity hole, but have scrabbled back to the lip again, led firmly by the marauding Suarez. Not to mention Everton, who of course couldn't quite do Chelsea when it mattered most. At the moment, I would definitely say that the top 3 will be: City, United and Chelsea - though not necessarily in that order.

That concludes my review. I wish all my readers a happy new year, and hope that 2013 at least treats them a little better than 2012 did. I will be back with my meanderings to cheer you all along.

Forward

Well, the Hillsborough drama continues, eagerly watched, and yet we all must move on to the next fixture. Before the Bernabeu trip next week, we have the little matter of sodding Stoke away again. I'm never comfortable with the trip up there, and it's always a tough assignment. I have a recurring daymare of Michael Owen scoring against us, and keep remembering that Crouch volley from last season with a shudder. The Graun is wondering whether Bobby will rest Yaya and others for the Champions League game, and whether he will pay the price if he does. Frankly, it's a match I could do without, especially at this time, but that is not an option. I'm hopeful of a 2-0 victory, and it will be nice to see some of the new buys get a run, but I fear a low scoring draw or worse.

As for the Madrid match, sorry to say that I'm not overly optimistic about that one either. They always look very strong, even though as a Barca fan when it comes to the Iberian peninsula I hate them, and Mourinho (you have to say) knows what he's doing. Perhaps that little twat Ronaldo really is unhappy there, and won't be arsed playing at his best, but I'm not holding my breath. Agüero is on his way back, and didn't play for the Argies even though he went out with them, so where there's Kun there's hope. Word is that he will be back in the team in time for the Champions League tie.

It was difficult to guage from the England games what sort of form our players are in. Hart is giving me a bit of the collywobbles, though he wasn't terrible. He seems to be making some strange decisions when it comes to crosses. Milner was I thought one of the better players for England against the Ukraine, but it was hardly a scintillating team performance. The one positive was that Cleverly was so utterly shite (I stand by my pre-season prediction that Arsenal will do better than the Rags this season) even if I'm not sure where that leaves us in World Cup terms. Up shit creek, I suppose.

Crouching Tiger

I'm afraid I will not be telling you who has been to dinner with me. That is a private matter. In no way, however, did any of the people who came to sample my soya chunk surprise influence any of the important decisions I have taken. If they did, that would be unacceptable. So now that's out of the way, let's move on to the wonderful Britannia Stadium. If we must.

Stoke have (as anyone who know me or this blog will testify) a special place in my heart. I will not employ any of the clichés so evident in any of my 5 previous posts tagged with Stoke (one of them doesn't appear to have anything to do with the Potters, so for the life of me, I can't figure out why I tagged it. Never mind) and will simply offer a deep sigh. No matter what anyone says, and at the risk of coming across a bit like Mancini at handshake time, the Crouch goal was a fluke. He was, I think, trying to get the ball somewhere towards goal, and somehow managed to put his foot through it in just the right way. So, it was sort of intended, but not to the degree where he thought: 'Right, this is going to glide across and over the keeper and then curl into the goal, just by the post.' To demonstrate that I am nothing if not scupulously fair, I will admit that Yaya's thunderbolt also had more than a touch of jam on it as it nearly tore the net off its stanchions from that deflection. Otherwise, it seems as if this was a fairly even match, not too troubled by any lengthy periods of quality. Stoke could perhaps have won it, so we should be grateful for a point. City are looking jaded, as I've said before, and in particular the dips in form shown by Silva and Agűero (I know Kun wasn't playing Saturday. Hopefully, his foot will repair soon, because we offer significantly less of a threat without him) are a major concern.

As is Bobby's attitude at the moment. Newspapers have said, and I have to concur, that he must have been the only person who wasn't aware of the physical nature of Stoke's game before bringing the team up to face them. In any case, by the rugged standards set by the warriors of Staffordshire (sorry, but clichés are so hard to avoid) it doesn't seem as if this was a particularly bruising display. And then for him to refuse to shake old Pulis's paw before sending Platty out to the cameras seems to betoken a psychological defeat on his part. I said in a previous post, coming out with crap like 'we didn't prepare properly' or 'we under-estimated them' is really not good enough, and the attitude of the man risks sending us over the edge in terms of the will to win. After praising him for his performance against Chelsea, I do wish Nasri would shut up as well.

Now we need Fulham to put on something of a show against the Rags, but I am most definitely not holding my breath for that to happen.

Up for the Cup!

As Patrick the Holloway Blue said to me before the match, it didn't matter if we won or not, because we've already had our final - against the Rags at Wembley. But on the day, there were few fears that a disappointing Stoke side would manage to get anything out of us. I was a little surprised that they rolled over quite as easily as they did, but that's the way it goes sometimes. At last, that fucking banner can come down and the Project can move on to bigger and better things. The way the Gooners are playing at the moment could well mean that we won't even have to play one of the qualifying rounds in the Champions League, but it's Stoke again tonight before anything else, and then the awful emptiness of the summer months without footy beckons.

Every voice I've heard in the game - and not just Alan Green - has said that staging Premier League games on the same day as the FA Cup final was an inexcusable travesty, and so it was. But that didn't stop those dickheads from doing it, giving the Rags an unnecessary fillip before our kick-off at Wembley. No doubt Rupe and his boys are pissed off that they didn't have a piece of the action (What's the beef? They've got every other sodding game on the planet - football or not, ffs!) and greased a few chairmen's palms in order to take the lustre off the grand old competition. Next season will be just the same, you'll see. Another nail in the coffin.

And yet this is not the time for being curmudgeonly.

City are FA Cup winners, 2011 and it feels good. The Spurs supporting mailman at one of my offices is well within his rights to opine that City are the worst team in the top 4, but it won't make their season any better. Sorry, John.

Slightly premature I know, but here are my nominations (one for each position on the field) for our player of the season this year:

Hart
Kompany
De Jong

Tevez

Overall winner has to be Kompany, partly because of Tevez and his nonsense about transfer requests and the like. Honourable mention, for entertainment value, goes to Balo, and another to Zaba, who has given his all for the cause.

Players I wouldn't mind seeing the back of:

Lescott
Kolarov
Barry

I still reckon Dzeko will come good and look forward to the signing of Alves among others for next season.

Wrong 'un

I'm always happy to admit it when I'm wrong. All of my friends will tell you I'm magnanimous to a fault. And how wonderful to be wrong on this occasion. Gloriously, beautifully, rip-roaringly wrong. There were a few omens, such as the young scally lurking outside the chip shop at midday in a Tevez shirt ('Is he 32 years old, Dad?' asked my daughter. He wasn't) asking how much for a chip muffin, clearly unaware that such things are not known in north London. As he left the shop, I asked him:

'Who's gonna win?'

He didn't turn towards me, just sauntered off, and all he said in reply was:

'City'

Then, I discovered that the match tickets I had turned down were for the Rags' end anyway, so even that little downer was not really a downer after all. My fears in the first 25 minutes were not to be realised as we gradually began to boss the match. Kompany was again the all-action hero, and Hart was playing his Shropshire best to deny Lord Berba his goal.

And then there was Yaya... nutmegging Van Der Sar. Rio was clearly getting leggy, and Vidic was looking punch drunk. Who needs Tevez, eh?

But things - as Professor Brian Cox and his mates used to say - could only get better, and the truly beautiful sight of ginger seeing red was laid before me, topped off by Balo's fabulous bit of baiting (yet again, the morning papers are reproducing Ferdinand's bloody tweets. What a sack of fucking shit that is) made them look like the bunch of tossers they are. All in all, a feast fit for a king.

COME ON CITY!

Rownd a Rownd

So the year turns and time marches on. Last Saturday, while City were labouring in the Arctic melting pot (see what I did there? Oxymoron and historo-cultural reference all in one. Stoke have got to be one of the worst teams to take on at their ground in the winter - especially when your players are so mollycoddled that they get to drive home at half time in order to avoid the traffic...) of the Britannia Stadium, I marked the anniversary of losing my job at Defra/Interserve by watching Football Focus.

It is now 8 months that I have been working for Olive, though for only just over a week as a member of 'the family' and not as some expendable service or good, to be discussed (in my own presence!) and discarded as if I was a broken domestic appliance. It may be possible to detect a slight note of bitterness in my tone as I look back on those days, and this is of course coloured by the lengthy period I spent out of work after I was let go, but is also the result of memories of the boss at the time.

I have heard that he was removed from the contract about 4 months after I left, and that he has now found employ (gainful or not, one could hardly say) at another. I have met some arseholes in my time, let me tell you, but this guy was right up (or should that be down?) there with the worst of them. I firmly believe that managers should re-define themselves as leaders, and as such should display some of the characteristics necessary to inspire people. These may include - though will not be limited to - saying hello; showing a modicum of interest; listening; saying goodbye, etc. He displayed none of these traits. It may have been of course that he was carrying a terrible burden, in the knowledge of the decimation that was to come, and that the only way he could survive was to cauterise his humanity and behave as an automaton. But to assume that would be way too charitable a gesture on my part, and I sincerely hope that the guy is twisted up inside, like Stan wishes on Eminem at the end of the song:

"I hope you can't sleep and you dream about it
and when you dream I hope you can't sleep and you scream about it
I hope your conscience eats at you and you can't breathe without me!"

This one's for you, Pat.

Out of the blue

No more Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads at 9 in the morning. No more Top Gear re-runs. No more 'Pop down to Waitrose for me if you've got nothing else to do.' Despite my feelings of self doubt after yesterday's second interview, I have been successful in obtaining employ. Hooray for me. I start on Tuesday morning, and I promise I will be a good boy, especially now that I know what it's like on the outside. I will not need the Nurse Ratched treatment in order to toe the line, and that's a promise. Yes sir. I also apologise for anything beastly I may have said in previous posts. It would be a real doozy if I got fired for a dooce before I even started work, eh?

This has been the longest period since I left college that I have been without a job, and though fun when it started, it has definitely begun to wear thin. So with a spring in my step, I will return to daily shaving, daily commuting and daily grumbling at the water cooler. I will let you all know how it goes. What lies before me is a few days of genuine rest, where I can get up without thinking about application forms or daily email prompts from online employment services, where I don't have to check my bank balance against the calendar (birthdays, Mother's Day, my eldest daughter's first school trip - these are all coming up) while biting my lip.

It all starts (where else?) at the Brittannia Stadium (yet again, fucking hell!) with the replay against the sodding Potters this evening. I have a bad feeling about this, is all I will say. But at least - even if we did win - Chelsea away would be the prize, so that makes it all better. Then it's, er, Chelsea away. Bah. No matter, nobody can piss on my bonfire today. I'm a minger!

To the 5 Towns

Somebody recently asked me to name the 5 boroughs of New York. Off the top of my head I only managed 4, mistakenly citing New Jersey as one instead of Queens. I later discovered that NJ is sometimes known as the 6th borough, so that was all right.



This evening, for the 3rd time of asking, the Blues face a team from somewhere almost as romantic, edgy, vibrant and intoxicating as the Big Apple - Stoke City. A team whose history easily rivals our own, especially when it comes to mismanagement and under-achievement. They did have to endure Alan Ball (did I ever mention that he - as a young boy - once kicked my grandmother when she was cleaning at the pub where his family lived? I have never forgiven him for that, nor for what he did to City, and I'm beginning to wonder if I will ever achieve closure) but were never cursed with Malcolm Allison.

Aside from the granny kicking, I do have other ties with the '5 Towns'. I used to have a great Aunt who lived in Hanley, and it was not uncommon for us to go and visit her for a weekend. I realise that I'm talking about Stoke, but it used to give me quite a feeling of excitement (we would always arrive at night) as we came over the hill to see the lights laid out in a carpet below, this being the nearest thing to a metropolis my Oswestry eyes had clapped themselves on. The excitement was fairly short-lived, as I would be forced to endure bingo night at Hanley Workingmen's Club, complete with the choking fumes of a thousand Senior Service, sustained only by a packet of cheese 'n' onion and a blackcurrant cordial with no ice. The next day my Auntie Annie (who I remember as smoking roll-ups made with liquorice paper) would send me to the shop for a pint of milk, her thick Potteries accent made even thicker by the countless Old Holborn, issuing dark warnings about some of the kids in the area. It wasn't a pleasant place by day, with the spell of the street lights taken away.

One of my oldest friends is a Stoke fan, and I have endured more than my fair share of watching them play. The pinnacle (though I prefer nadir as a description) being a New Year's Day match at Griffin Park (a terrible ground to get to and from) in horizontal rain. It ended, I believe, 1-0 to Stoke, though I made my excuses and left before the goal, not having been adequately fortified by my half-time snack of a giant Mars bar, and conscious of the 30 minute walk and 40 minute tube ride back home.

Sadly, I don't hold out much hope for us tonight. The Britannia Stadium is a hateful place to play football, and we hardly passed them off the park at Eastlands the other day. My prediction: a draw if we're lucky, but more likely they will beat us.