The World Cup draw, then

It’s just a matter of hours before the order of proceedings for next year’s World Cup are set in stone, so it’s the perfect opportunity to pointlessly guess what might happen. We have guessed England’s group draw thusly:

Jonathan
Australia
Ivory Coast
Portugal

Seb
USA
Cameroon
Serbia

Ian
New Zealand
Algeria
Switzerland

It’s worth pointing that those are the teams we’d all like to be drawn against. Only Seb bothered making the distinction between that what he thinks might happen (which, for the record, is England being drawn with North Korea, Ivory Coast and Switzerland.)

There’s currently a great deal of anti fate-tempting going on in the England camp, with the likes of Beckham and Capello actively willing on a tough draw. The reasoning being that we need to get past tough games to win the thing, anyway, so we may as well get some in the early stages. It’s an attitude I sympathise with, hence my want for Portugal. I’d like the group stages to be something more than a casual progression, and given past events there’s no better team than Portugal to prove our worth against early on. Plus, there’s more chance they’ll be beaten in the knock-out stages before we have a chance of playing them again, the fuckers.

I love draws.

“Wait a second… these are FAKE HANDS!”

No, Ireland. No. You cannot turn a 32-team tournament, with a clearly defined structure of groups and knockout rounds, into a 33-team tournament. Would you care to explain to us how that would work? And even if you could, could you also explain why you think you deserve it?

I feel sorry that the Republic failed to qualify thanks to an act of instinctive cheating, I do. But the point is… they failed to qualify. And they weren’t in a winning position when it happened. If they’d been leading on away goals at the time, meaning that a single French goal turned the game from “Ireland qualify” to “France qualify”, then there might almost be a case (although it would rank among the most worrying precedents in football history). But the scores were level – it’s simply not technically true to say that Henry’s goal prevented them from qualifying. They had time after the goal to go and get an equaliser – the fact that they couldn’t suggests that they wouldn’t have got a winner, either.

I know there’s not even really a debate here, because anyone with half a brain knows that – although France don’t really deserve to be there and we all want them to go out in the first round – Ireland don’t have a divine right to be there either, as much as their performance might have made them worthy qualifiers. But every time a new instance of complaint emanates from the FAI (and I thought by now they’d have quietly given up on the whole thing), they just make themselves look stupider and stupider.

In defence of Mike Ashley…

I never thought I’d see myself typing those words. Let me state from the outset that I’m not a Newcastle fan (I’m Wycombe), nor have I ever even been to the city. And like many people, my view of the rotund owner of Newcastle United FC has always been that he doesn’t have a clue how to run a football club. Yet the events of the past 48 hours have gone some way towards changing my opinion, and I think Ashley’s latest actions suggest he’s no worse an owner than Hicks and Gillett, Abramovich or the Glazers.

The League Cup is important, you SHITS

As much as I love the boys in the Guardian Football Weekly pod, they can bloody well infuriate me, too. Let’s set aside the fact that they constantly ignore and/or belittle Villa and get straight onto the real nub of the matter which is the way they dismiss the League Cup as if it’s just some petty annoyance stopping them from talking about the Premier League.

It’s a massive, important part of English football history, to win it is a great achievement and it should be treated with the appropriate amount of respect. Even the ‘big clubs’ have learnt this in recent years, so why can’t the fucking pundits?

Although if Villa lose to Sunderland tonight it’s shit and I hate it.

“If you don’t want to know the score…”

We’ve been a bit too busy/lazy/forgetful to post recently, which doesn’t bode hugely well for the state of this thing, but still. I’ve had one of those “And what’s the deal with?” style rants festering in my head meaning to post it for a little while now, so this seems as good a time as any.

Here’s the thing. You all know how it used to go – news report before Match of the Day, sports bit. A full complement of Premier League (or, if you want to go back further, Division One) games just waiting to be shown to viewers who’ve faithfully “done a Likely Lads” and avoided the scores. But you’re The News, you can’t pretend the games didn’t happen – so the newsreader states the old standard “If you don’t want to know the score(s), look away now”, and they flash up onscreen for about five seconds. Those who are waiting for MOTD close their eyes or look away until with their freely open ears they can hear the announcer state “And you can look again now”. Easy.

Only, at some point – and I honestly couldn’t tell you when, it might be within the last year, it might be the last five – that’s changed. Now, rather than show consideration for faithful MOTD viewers, the news will feature a full audio-visual report on the day’s matches. But it’s okay – “if you don’t want to know the scores, you can go out of the room”.

WELL, HOW’S THAT SUPPOSED TO WORK? IF I’M NOT LISTENING TO YOU, HOW DO I KNOW WHEN IT’S SAFE TO LOOK AGAIN?

Idiots.

Sure, I’ll pay a fiver to watch a meaningless England match…

…or maybe I’ll wait and pay the full £11.99 for it.

Don’t get me wrong, internet distribution for football is a great development. God knows we all watch dodgy streams of our team’s away games anyway – a legitimate and reliable way of doing it is more than welcome. But the pricing is all wrong. People just aren’t prepared to pay that much for internet content, not when you consider that you can get a whole month of Sky Sports or ESPN for the same price. If it was a crucial match, then maybe, but who wants to pay more to watch a dead rubber on the internet than they’d spend watching it in the pub?

What they should have done is given the match away for free, and made their money through advertising. It would have been huge – they’d have got about ten times more viewers that way, and probably more revenue with ads in every spare pixel space. Then maybe, if a free match was a success, turn it into a more regular service and charge for a monthly ad-free subscription. That’s how you launch an online video service – not by expecting people to pay a tenner for ninety minutes of nothingness.

Besides, by charging people so much for a specific one-off service, just imagine the shitstorm that will ensue if the server crashes during the match…

Fat Sam’s Grand Slam

4th October 2009

Arsenal 6 (SIX) – 2 Blackburn Rovers

Sam Allardyce, manager, Blackburn Rovers :

“I don’t want to detract from Arsenal but it was a blatant penalty. There is no doubt in my mind that the position of the referee was excellent. He just didn’t, unfortunately, give the decision in our favour… That decision wasn’t good enough for me today and it had a major effect on the course of this game.”

I think I missed the FIFA directive that stated that a penalty is now worth four goals.

Coincidence, or something more sinister?

Aston Villa league games in which Emile Heskey has played for less than 45 minutes:
Played: 4, Won: 4, Drawn: 0, Lost: 0, For: 8, Against: 1

Aston Villa league games in which Emile Heskey has played for 45 minutes or more:
Played: 2, Won: 0, Drawn: 0, Lost: 2, For: 1, Against: 4

And the one goal that we scored in the latter category went in 42 minutes before the lumbering fucker came on.

The TEP Pools Panel – 26th-28th September 09

It’s Saturday morning once again, and thank goodness one of us is awake in time to get these posted prior to the lunchtime kick off. Yes, it’s time once again for the Tout Est Possible scribbled-on-the-back-of-an-envelope-on-a-slow-Friday-afternoon-in-the-office predictions! Guaranteed to be at least four times as interesting as Lawro’s predos, if equally inaccurate. Still, let’s have a look at how we did last week.

				TEP	Actual
Burnley	v	Sunderland		2-0	Home
Arsenal	v	Wigan		2-0	Home
Aston Villa	v	Portsmouth		3-0	Home
Bolton	v	Stoke City		0-1	Draw
Hull City	v	Birmingham		1-1	Away
West Ham	v	Liverpool		0-1	Away
Man Utd	v	Man City		3-0	Home
Wolves	v	Fulham		1-2	Home
Everton	v	Blackburn		3-0	Home
Chelsea	v	Tottenham		3-0	Home

Ooh, seven out of ten for the second week running. Add to that the prediction of a late Owen winner in the Manchester derby, and we’ll very much take that. We’ll ignore the fact that Chelsea didn’t come from behind, Defoe didn’t score, Arsenal kept a clean sheet and Benayoun didn’t score. Still, let’s press on to this week’s fixtures. And remember, we’re not predicting the actual scoreline. That would be ludicrous. These scores are just an arbitrary indication of how we think the result is going to go – if two of us think the home team will win and two of us think the away team will win, that’ll be 2-2. And so on. Don’t you even know that yet? I do.

Premier League matches for Saturday 26th, Sunday 27th and indeed Monday 28th September 2009
This week’s panel: Capps, J., Eisenhauer, K., Patrick, S., Symes, I.

Portsmouth	0	-	4	Everton
Birmingham	0	-	2	Bolton
Blackburn	0	-	3	Aston Villa
Liverpool	4	-	0	Hull City
Stoke City	0	-	2	Man Utd
Tottenham	2	-	0	Burnley
Wigan	0	-	4	Chelsea
Fulham	2	-	0	Arsenal
Sunderland	3	-	0	Wolves
Man City	3	-	0	West Ham

Miscellaneous Predictions

Now in exciting bullet point form!

• Fulham could well do Arsenal at home, which is made all the more likely by Seb switching Schwarzer and Hangeland out of his fantasy team, and Jensen and Vermaelen in.
• This weekend will see the last game in charge for either Paul Hart, Phil Brown or both.
• Notts County to keep a clean sheet
• Thirty seconds of injury time will be added for each and every one of Rory Delap’s long throws
• Should Villa win, no one in the media will either notice or care because they’ll be too busy talking about Craig Bellamy’s goal celebration consisting of dropping his trousers and tea bagging Robert Green, or something
• Karl’s assorted rambles: it’s looking a tight weekend with the chance of A LOT of away wins. I could see Stoke maybe making things difficult for United. Burnley perhaps grabbing one at Spurs.  I’ve gone Home win because of Burnley’s poor away record, but I wouldn;t be surprised if they snatched something.  I think we could be looking at a goal for Diamante at Eastlands as he’s looked pretty lively. I can see Eduardo grabbing one, if not more.

That concludes the predictions from the TEP Pools Panel. Back to Des in the studio.

Derby Day Traditions

This was something I was talking about with Ian the other week, immediately after we beat The Scum 1-0, we beat The Scum 1-0, we beat The Scum 1-0.  We were talking about jinxing games by making predictions and it got me thinking about derby day rituals and the curious power of certain colours, symbols and action in relation to local rivalries.

I have it on good authority that certain Sheffield Wednesday fans refuse to eat red meat on derby day, for example, lest they be forever infected with United disease.  In fact, I got myself into genuine bother for wearing a red tie to a good friend’s Sheffield Wednesday themed wedding.  Besides the fact that it was FUCKING CLARET(ish), it’s curious how seemingly meaningless things as that can take on such huge importance.  So, with that in mind let’s take a little trip in the curious (and, I must admit, massively spurious) world of derby day rituals…