Coyler

I'd happily idolize Keane if he made a similarly glorious return to his former club as a manager. Gary Neville was getting booed wonderfully as well, which was nice. What [specifically] for, anybody know?

All well with the mother & the sprog?

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There was a mad programme last year about theft in the Royal Mail. You'd have to think that whoever organized this would be easy to find, f.f.s., bleeding eejit.

(Or booking Gerrard )

7 lb 11 oz "Seductra"

Superfluous.

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Don't know how much of this has been in the English papers already, but Graham Hunter was on the radio here this morning saying that van N. and Ronaldo have been at each other's throats for months. Van N. is pissed off with Ronaldo's selfishness and the crap deliveries to him that make a mockery of his beautiful movement in the box and the way Ronaldo's Quieroz's pet, he's even boxed him in the face before. Anyway, Saturday morning in training Ronaldo fecks up another cross or something and van N. goes spare, calls him a waster, every other name under the sun, and then -- ho ho ho -- tells him to "go on now crying to Daddy", meaning Quieroz. :lol: Oops. Ronaldo bursts into tears and says, "I have no Daddy, he died", storms off into the dressing room. Fergie takes Ronaldo's side, van N. 99% sure to leave the club, United down three goals every four games next season.

Anny Road Honoré...

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I have a hunch that Rafa'll get it in the neck if he signs Bellamy.

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Sssquitssssssssssssssssssssss.

Deffo Ronaldo, so.

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Tom Humphries's take on the appointment, for the benefit of those of you without access to The Irish Times: Blazers of English FA prove true to type Tom Humphries LockerRoom: Not sure if it's true that gentlemen don't make passes at women who wear glasses, but football officials always amaze us by loving other men who wear blazers. Bobby Robson is a nice man who gives good blazer, and, while Steve Staunton is in the pre-blazer stage of his life, the FAI are reassured to have an elder blazer acting as Staunton's mentor in football and wardrobe. One might have thought an international football consultant would tote a better reference than that given by the PSV full back Berry van Aerle, who played for Bobby Robson for two years. Berry noted that "Robson's a nice man, really a very nice man. But the only thing he taught me in two years was English." Bobby was hired to bring a very successful PSV team on to the next level. The European level. His struggle to adapt to anything but 4-4-2 in the cerebral atmosphere of Dutch football made him something of a figure of fun in Holland, however, and Dutch journalists liked to bait him with tactical questions which he would often answer with the words "none of your business". The best moment, apparently, came when Bobby jumped from his chair one day and declaimed, "Listen fellow, British coaches are the best in the world". Back then, the claim was just about supportable by virtue of there being an active and successful Scottish cohort to prop up the thesis. Now the claim seems palpably ridiculous. British coaches aren't even the best in Britain. No surprise, therefore, that the English FA have settled for a man who gives good blazer to be their next manager and their most substantial sacrifice yet to the malign gods of the tabloids. Ditched by big Phil Scolari, who suddenly found himself frozen like a deer before the headlights of the tabloid juggernaut, the FA, who should never have made the appointment before the World Cup anyway, turned to the first blazer they could find. Steve, we've always loved you. No, really. The thoroughly cack-handed nature of the process designed to find a replacement for Sven Goran Eriksson has placed Steve McClaren in a difficult position from the outset of his tenure. Your kids catch you with your rather matronly new mistress before you have told them that you are splitting up with their mother. McClaren must endure every movement being parsed and analysed for the next few months, and then he must see the results compared not just with those of Eriksson but with those of Scolari and any other international manager who comes free in the clear-out sales which begin when the competition ends. Already McClaren has had to put up with the tabloid exposition of the details of an extra-marital affair, a personal catastrophe which he hired Max Clifford to help him deal with. Not just that, but there has been a most conspicuous lack of lamenting from Middlesbrough about news of his departure. "How much do we get?" was the most concerned response from Teesside. Ditto the English football public and punditry, who seem as underwhelmed as it is possible to be. England look like treading off to the World Cup without Wayne Rooney and possibly without Michael Owen, raising the nightmare (but lyrical) prospect of a Crouch-Bent strikeforce. There is some brave talk to the effect that England's stout midfield and traditional defence can compensate for Rooney's absence, but even two years ago, in Portugal, when he was a precocious teenager with too much expectation loaded on his shoulders, Rooney was the difference between England and ordinariness. England could well come home from Germany choking in a toxic cloud of vilification and recrimination. There is already a well-defined weariness with Sven and his irritating abstractions, and a disappointing World Cup will taint McClaren by association. Sven's response to the Rooney Metatarsal Crisis has been comically inept, ranging as it has from exaggerated expressions of woe to dumb assertions that he would bring Rooney to Germany if only for the final. The former is not what the rest of his players need to hear. The latter, remote as the contingency is, undermines every other striker whom Sven might pack in his luggage. Of course, just because Steve McClaren gives good blazer doesn't automatically make him the wrong choice for England. Part of the damnation with faint praise which has dripped out of Middlesbrough, even from the mouth of the fantastically generous Gareth Southgate, has been that McClaren has a willingness to learn. From the dressing-room. Undertones of player power have been emanating from the Riverside stadium for several months. It's all very distressing for believers in the fundamental values of the English game. That traditionalist faith has been shaken in recent years by the arrival of the Wengers, the Jols, the Benitezs and the Mourinhos. English football has become a testing lab for hungry continental managers. The benefits to the English game, which might have been substantial, are in fact slight. Even with English teams in the Champions League final this year and last year, the English influence down on the field of play and in the bootrooms is quite marginal and the benefit to the English game even slimmer. And so the FA (after a long and moderately successful association with a foreign coach who, if he couldn't quite teach English players how to enjoy anything but the beef-and-roast potatoes lineout of 4-4-2, at least tried) have reverted to type and employed a man whose career as a manager has been five years long and whose haul of silverware has been a modest League Cup. His Middlesbrough side have won 12 games in the Premiership this season. The most glowing testimony so far delivered to Steve McClaren is that he is well organised. The greatest excitement surrounding his appointment has been in Middlesbrough where, despite having reached a Uefa Cup final, they are now looking forward to a more inspiring era. The most depressing aspect of McClaren's accession, however, is that he might just turn out to be the right man for the job. Ireland had a manager recently who had a genuine and informed interest in the way football is played on the Continent. He tried to transfer some of his cerebration and tactical awareness to his players. They were bored. They wanted to play with their phones and fiddle with their iPods. They played in that listless, teenage way - like, the manager is wrecking our heads, you know? So we replaced him with Steve and Bobby. Good guys who play to traditional virtues. When Bobby went from PSV to Sporting Lisbon, the only player he brought with him was Stan Valckx, the most British of the lot. Valckx was a bloody-minded stopper in the old mould. Bobby made him captain of Sporting even thought he hadn't a word of Portuguese. For some managers, though, football is war, and Valckx was a plucky sapper. The way we play football in these islands is limited by our addiction to passion and hardness and graft. On the other hand, those are the very qualities that get bums out of seats and guarantee big homecomings. Under Eriksson, England's exits to Brazil in Japan 2002 and Portugal a couple of years ago were ignominious in that they lacked thunder and defiance. It seems that you can have the thunder or you can have the technique. One will buy you time, the other represents the long haul, the road to a place where you might win something. Men in blazers like to buy time. That's what they do. Steve McClaren might not win anything for the blazers, but just as his Middlesbrough team's comebacks have been passionate of late, so his England team's quarter-final exits will be defiant. And above all the shiny buttons and crests, the thin smiles will radiate. A good man. Safe hands. Nice blazer. © The Irish Times

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Cringe. "White lie", shirley.

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