september 15th
08.55 – Morning all. Time for a quick look around the Sunday papers and see what’s going on.
The Sunday Mirror is reporting that Robert Pires will not be making his return from injury until he goes through the same gruelling fitness program as Freddie Ljungberg, who reveals he could barely walk during the World Cup and needed pain killing injections to get him through the England and Nigeria games. Mmmmm…..morphine.
Also, in the Mirror (oh, the irony), a pension scandal has hit the Dutch FA, who have been managing the pension funds of Dennis Bergkamp amongst others. Apparently they’ve managed to lose somewhere in the region of £40m of players money, prompting over 400 Dutch players to resign from the union with immediate effect. Who was running it, the ghost of Robert Maxwell?
AW talks of europe, and how the next step for this Arsenal team is to win the Champions League. While personally I would prefer the domestic title over the CL every time, it would be a fitting achievement for the quality of this squad and manager to bring home the one major trophy Arsenal have never won (leaving the Zenith Data Systems trophy aside of course).
All those who accuse Arsene Wenger of selective myopia might do well to turn their optical criticisms to “Sir” Alex Ferguson who said of David Beckham’s elbow on Lee Bowyer “I said with Roy Keane that we don’t have players who do that. I would be surprised if David did that.” Watch the video Fergie, I guarantee you’ll get a surprise. Fabian Barthez is facing a police investigation for kicking a water bottle which went through his net and hit a disabled fan. Maybe he should spend some time with his strikers and show them exactly how to hit the target. Seriously though, it’s all a bit stupid, I’m sure he didn’t mean to hit anyone….unlike David Beckham.
Man Utd supporting Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern might find his fortunes mirroring his favourite team, as his plans to build an 80,000 seat super-arena in Dublin (nicknamed ‘The Bertie Bowl’) run into serious trouble. Sure, all he needs to do is go round elbowing members of the opposition if they give him any grief. Seems to work for …er….David Beckham.
Also, well done to Irish boxer Wayne McCullough who made a sucessful comeback to boxing with a win over some bloke last night. Wayne says “I owe it all to David Beckham and his ability to throw in the sly elbow without the referee seeing”
Finally for today, a new feature. Headlines you’ll never see. For example “George W Bush isn’t a posturing warmonger” or “Michael Owen says something interesting shocker”. Today’s headline you’ll never see “FA to investigate England captain over elbowing incident”.
