No need to ask who had the squeakiest bum this weekend.
where poor old Wenger's desperate need for something resembling a goalkeeper continues. This time it was Manuel Almunia's time to flap around like fruit bat in a wardrobe, as Kevin Phillips' equaliser robbed his under-performers of all three points.
At Stamford Bridge, Aston Villa went in at half- time and stayed there while Martin O'Neill sent out 11 traffic cones in their stead.
I got home from the pub on Wednesday night fully expecting my Sky+ thingammy to have recorded a Match of the Day covering the five midweek fixtures. Lo and behold, there's nowt. Five games! That's more than you get on a Saturday these days.
One of the regular posters on here, operating under the name 'followingborohurts' so it's clear he is (a) an intellectual and (b) a masochist, asked whether anyone remembered
Remember it? It was the highlight of the week, mate, 'cos that was when my miserable Mam and Dad used to let me stay up. In fact, when it was highlights of a big England fixture, they'd dig me out of bed at 10pm and carry us down in my dressing-gown.
OK. I've combed the fixture list - first thing I've combed since me wedding day - and I reckon I can announce who is going to win the Premier League - and how (with a little help from the ). (And if you want to see Match of the Day 2's effort,
Wednesday 24 March
Pompey 1 Chelsea 2. Didier Drogba's early opener is equalised when the tiniest man in Portsmouth gets above Paulo Ferreira to score an equaliser. Drogba is on the floor, but the physio brings on a dummy and just when it looks like he's going to spit it out, Frank Lampard sneaks in for the winner.
United 69 Chelsea 68 Arsenal 67
Saturday 27 March
Birmingham 0 Arsenal 2; Bolton 1 Man Utd 3.
and
Stephen Carr remembers why he retired, as that cat Andrey Arshavin treats him like a ball of wool. Easy win. United recover from the shock of a Bolton Wanderers team employing the sides of their feet to shift the ball around the park, and a late brace by Wayne Rooney seals it.
It's been one of them weeks when the great and good of British football conduct a kind of continental love-in... a kind of Europhilia, if you will.
There are still some people who'll tell you the French are the best cooks (untrue: too much cream and I prefer to have my meat a bit closer to death before I eat it); that the Italians are the best lovers (untrue, unless Teesside is full of Romans and Neapolitans and beyond Dad, I can't think of any); that the Swedes are the most beautiful (true: I went to Stockholm a while back and frankly the wife was rolling me tongue back into me gob like a every five seconds.)
When it comes to footy, there are other statements we hold self-evidently to be true:
1.
2. Didier Drogba holds the world record for getting toys out of prams.
3. Barcelona are mmm... beautiful, luscious, mmm... so delicious... And they have Unicef on their shirts, so they're nice too.
Whoopee! I've won the Blue Bell sweepstake for next Premier League manager to bite the bust.
Frankly, Messrs Mancini and Benitez had me worried. (But then again they say sacking Rafa will cost Liverpool 16 million quid. Talk about the price of failure.)
Mind, if I lived in East Yorkshire, I'd be steering well clear of the karaoke bars of Humberside for the next couple of weekends. for an all-night gig or two, no doubt covering some of his favourite tracks:
Well a bloke called of having the worst season in recent memory. Eden? Hazard? That'll be the snake then. The one that made Eve bite the apple and realise that she and her fella were starkers and ashamed.
Which begs the question: 'Where's the fig leaf for Rafa now?' What's he going to use to cover the shame? The twin clumps of foliage that are Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard seem to have withered and crumpled in the frosty mists of winter. The true feebleness of his Dirk and Yossi, his Maxi, and his flimsy Aquilani are there for all to see.
Gerrard, in particular, has looked utterly powerless recently. The lad is like Samson after the short back and sides. Here's a fella who's been carrying the aspirations of half a city and a manager on his back for nigh on six years. It looks like it's telling. He mooches around these days, shoulders slumped like Chris Waddle in an Eeyore costume.
Well you just can't keep John Terry out of the news, can you?
I'd been waiting for the next trademark headed goal and subsequent celebration and old JT didn't let us down, did he? Passionate, veins bulging, and with absolutely no appreciation of how it might be received in a wider context.
All right, -and I'm all for that - but scoring and standing still with your arms aloft is probably better than pointing at your armband in an act of self-justification.
then, but I was reminded why I'd rather watch the Beeb for me footy - I can't stand commercial breaks
During , you always get adverts for false teeth glue, stairlifts, baths for backs that don't bend any more and more often than not, ways to speed up and/or slow down what my mother-in-law would call 'your intimate functions'. Fair enough.
Put the footy on and you get to hear a sentence like 'We think it's the best 4-door coupe in the world'. Hold on! We're not all wannabe Clarksonettes. Some of us have never worn a jacket with jeans in our lives and I don't give a flying key fob what the candidates for best 4-door coupe are, to be frank.
As for chunky crisps, men's toiletries and covering up your grey hair like a flaming woman - get lost the lot of you!
Where was I? Yeah. The footy.
Anyone who watched will remember what a load of nonsense it was: preposterous, shoddy, lowest common denominator entertainment. (I mean how could someone born in the early 1980s have a name like Chardonnay? If you were naming a lass after a drink back then, you'd have called her .)
Still, based on the events at Stamford Bridge on Saturday, I'd say Footballers' Wives was way too naturalistic.
John Terry (the baddie), little Chelsea cherubs in mascots' garb accompanying him, trots out on to the pitch with his jaw set firm. Wayne Bridge, the goodie, head down, getting on with his work like a real honest John. (Thank goodness Cashley's unfit or we'd have had 'Nation's Darling's Love-Rat Husband' to focus on too.)
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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.
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