march 22nd
21.35 – Today was a fine day. Sunshine, a book, the terrace, some beer. Not thinking so much about football, although I am looking forward to getting up tomorrow, having some breakfast in the sun and then watching the match.
Anyway, you’ve probably all heard the Urban Legends that go around – for example, Richard Gere and his gerbil related antics, Marilyn Monroe’s six toes, Glenn Hoddle hates cripples ….oh, hang on…anyway, you know what I mean. Well, here’s a site to have a look at over the weekend, some myths dispelled and others confirmed.
09.30 – Now, you might know we at A R S E B L O G have criticised ITV over the last month. I’ve sent them countless emails to try and verify the Peter Brackley’s legs story and received no reply. We’ve said that we think The Premiership on ITV is a load of old goat’s piss, and we’ve tried unsucessfully to browse the ITV football website, but that’s a drop in the ocean.
After agreeing a deal with the Nationwide league for the TV rights to the games for their white elephant of a digital service, they now say they don’t want to pay the full amount and are trying to renegotiate the deal so they pay less money. However, clubs have been banking on the money and simply cannot afford to do without it. It’s estimated that up to 50 clubs could go bankrupt. You can read about it here and here.
The Milwall chairman says “Granada and Carlton have a business plan from the Ali G school of business”. So congratulations to ITV, you’ve outdone yourselves this time. Crap coverage, biased commentary and useless pundits aside, putting football clubs out of business is some achievement. ITV should be made honour the deal, and threatened with legal action and a good beating if they try and wangle their way out of it.
So it’s onto Newcastle this weekend and the FA cup replay at Highbury. Bobby Robson fears an Arsenal backlash after the disappointment midweek, I hope gets it. Keown and Jeffers both played in the reserves 4-1 win over Spurs reserves last night, so maybe they’ll be in the frame.
I heard a great story about Bobby Robson a while ago. He was doing a book signing for his autobiography and one chap came up and spoke to him while he was signing his copy of the book. “You must have signed loads of these today” yer man said. Bobby replies “Oh aye lad, hundreds”. So the chap takes his book and leaves the shop. He has a look at it when he gets outside and it says “To xxxxx, all the best, Bobby Hundreds”.
