Seeing like a neatly-shaved ape on Tuesday night made me aware of one thing that's getting me really riled about footie players these days.
All this badge-kissing is pretty hard to swallow, isn't it, from a bunch of well-moneyed no-marks who show as much loyalty to the cause as a tabloid-hogging-celebrity-one-night-stand bimbo.
If you're John Terry or Paul Scholes or Jamie Carragher or Ian Ashbee then maybe you've got a point. Trouble is, if you're a confirmed one-club man, you don't need to convince the fans - or yourself - that you're a faithful standard-bearer for your team.
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Or as it turned out after a sleepless Saturday night, Harry No-nap.
It must have been like the old punk song. Daniel Levy phones up the Redknapp residence and says 'C'mon! C'mon! 'Urry up 'Arry come on! We're goin' dahn the Lane!'
Cos when you're in the deepest doo-dah who you gonna call? 'Arry 'Oudini. He'll get you out of the tightest scrape. I'm surprised the Cumbrian Police weren't calling him up for a bit of advice on
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First of all, apologies to anyone who's expecting jokes this week. (Yes, I can hear some of you spitting out your cappuccino froth all over your computer screen and smirking 'No change there then.') Thing is, I'm right miffed this week. Anyone else get tired of the hypocrisy of sportsmen? I bloody do...
Fergie gives a matchless response to the fact that Berbatov's two goals v Celtic were offside. Something to the effect that it was nice for his team to get a decision for a change. I mean can't this man button it? The bloody nerve!
Anyone else suddenly go back in their mind to a few weeks back? Don't be such a whingeing ninny, Ferguson.
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Interesting, wasn't it, that the two Sunday fixtures featured the - only a freakish fourth-dimensional space-time slip had swapped the two of them over so that Hull were jostling with the big lads and Spurs proving their tremendous strength by holding up the rest of the Premier League.
If Newcastle's situation is a farce ('Chirpy cockney geezers meet and misunderstand gruff North-Eastern blokes, with hilarious consequences'); and West Ham United is one of them one-off special Eastenders where it all goes wrong ('Gawd 'elp us! Ain't it enough that I've lost me 'olidays wiv XL? Nar it looks like we're gonna 'ave to fork aht for Carlos after all and worse 'n' that, I can't even get at me dosh cos they've only gone 'n' frozen me bank accahnts!' 'Leave it aht! Worra you expect from a bank called IceSave, you toilet!');
....then Tottenham Hotspur is like a brooding Spanish tragedy, with Juande Ramos smouldering away as the desperate hero.
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, 14 goals for, three against, five for Rooney, three for Walcott, none for Heskey (but then again he has established himself now as international football's first ever out-and-out non-goalscoring centre-forward).
But the most interesting contribution to the chat around Capello's first few games in charge came from Rio Ferdinand. Capello is business-like, professional and there was a around the players during previous regimes.
If he means there were three lions everywhere but they were tamed and toothless then I see his point. There was a lot of juggling in the midfield too, the tumblers were all Portuguese..and there were plenty of clowns on the pitch.
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Fabio asked the fans dead nicely to be patient and polite at Wembley on Saturday and by half-time the stadium was full of supporters jabbing rusty nails into the palm of their hands like - just to stifle the desire to moan their bleeding heads off.
The Blue Bell was the same. In fact we had a Golden Moan competition, much like the Golden Goal but you won free booze for the week if you held the correct ticket for the timing of the first outpouring of bile.
There were also five quid on-the-spot fines for the use of any expletives in tandem with the words 'prima donna', 'Calamity James' and 'They can't play together, for *@!"*@ sake!'. After half an hour I was £30 down.
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Ah, Monsieur Platini. I almost wish he'd never taken up an important job then we could all remember when his feet did the talking...and them feet could make a speech by Martin Luther King sound like the grumblings of a chav with seven ciders down his gullet.
and wondering how he might stop it. What's his job again? Head of Uefa? And he can't do anything? What happens to people when they get these jobs? Does some sneaky surgeon lop off your jewels even as the ink pours from the platinum tip of your fountain pen?
I'm being hard on Michel 'cos I utterly sympathise with his position on foreign owners but unlike him, I'm not really in a position of influence.
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Fabio Capello's latest squad isn't even there to keep the bench dry and warm for when Defoe comes off having done nowt.
People are saying it's the end. They said the same about Beckham when he was dropped but that was when McClaren was in charge and he had more changes of mind than my missus has changes of shoes. (They can't need all that bleeding footwear can they? You need a black pair, a brown pair, a pair of trainers and some sandals that look good with socks for the summer. Job done.)
But Capello's not for turning. I'm a bit torn about the decision meself. On the one hand, he's nothing like the kid who scored 10 years back. His Achilles heel was his Achilles heel, really, and since those ops he doesn't have the pace.
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Here's a bloke who has taken a club of pretty limited resources and got them well up the table almost every year he's been there.
He's been one of them managers that every other club craves - the exact opposite of his - cos he's hard-nosed, makes the most of what he's got, and doesn't take any nonsense from anyone.
Now, suddenly, he appears to be less in touch with reality than a
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I'm Derek Robson. People call me Robbo. Legend has it I was raised in the furnace and smog of Teesside. Some might say I took the hard road. I like to tell folk I had trials for Middlesbrough, for Hartlepool and for burglary (not guilty). I've always loved sport. My job is to say it as I see it - whether it's in the bar of the Blue Bell or on this blog. You won't find me calling a spade a soil-redistribution implement.
