FAREWELL Robbo, it's not the fans' fault you can't manage football teams


KEANE leads Spurs on a merry dance making them look like a load of vicars


AND will the swearing of Terry, Rooney and the rest of football's hoodies be taken in context

(Hint: the answer's No, Bryan)

• Read yesterday's Hatchet job here

Once again, great player doesn't make great manager. And please, please, someone tell him to stop saying it's the fans' fault. The trash talking may have been disproportionate but their anger was a response to his shortcomings. In particular, they were never going to forgive him for the manner of their defeat against Sheffield Wednesday last month.

• VIDEO: Lest we forget

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Well done, you new slimline Spurs - and jolly sporting of you to keep your UEFA Cup tie alive when Slavia Prague ought to have been buried. As they were when Arsenal put seven past them earlier this season in the grown-up competition.

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While we're at it, do Spurs fans cringe along with the rest of us when Robbie Keane leads those 'jockey' goal celebrations? It's like a load of vicars romping around one of Cynthia Payne's Luncheon Voucher parties. Yuk.

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There's been a lot going on this week, what with me - and everyone else - sliding hard, high and true into Richard Scudamore's flawed GAM£ 39 plans. I think one can therefore be forgiven for forgetting the regular Thursday peer through the window of WAG.

Apologies to all, better late than never - here's former Leicester City and England hero Gary Lineker's very own fox, Danielle Bux.

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The retro look has been all the rage this week, what with those virginal blue and red shirts at Old Trafford and Everton's understated attire in Norway, where regulations on advertising alcohol put the kibosh on Chang.

Those of a certain vintage will recall that the Seventies were marked by rampant fashion crime, but the corruption of the football shirt was one of the more heinous offences. A little tinkering with cuffs and collars soon gave way to drunken stripes and lurid colours, and before you knew it our heroes looked as if their gall bladders had exploded all over their shirts. Advertising was just the rancid little cherry on top of a thoroughly unpalatable cake.

Not every club can do it the Barcelona way - they actually pay more than £1million a year to sport the Unicef logo on their iconic shirts - and I know it's not particularly fashionable to care about supporters or listen to what they have to say, but please...could we have our old shirts back?

• The way it was - the kits of yore

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Clearly the crackdown on overly fruity language will be a difficult beast to enforce. Players need to be discouraged from acting like hoodies in football boots, but will referees take context into account? What if a defender concedes an own goal and likens himself to Rafael Scheidt? Or a striker misses an open goal and calls out in anguish to Kenny Lunt? And woe betide the man in black who turns the air a little blue and fails to send himself off.

But you know the FA aren't serious about this initiative because as far as the Hatchet is aware, tails are pretty poor when it comes to wagging the dog. Surely it's your 'role models', not just the amateur game, who need this sanction. Besides, imagine the comedic potential in watching the likes of Rooney and Terry struggling to string a few impassioned words together without including a sweary.

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It's difficult to understand Javier Clemente's reluctance to go and live in the country whose national team he has agreed to coach. I mean, what does Spain and its 21st century notions of freedom, democracy and equality have that Iran doesn't? And why accept the job while making it clear you'd sooner attach starving lampreys to your soft bits? Unless you're hoping to smoke out other, more suitable potential employers...

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Word of the day (from Webster's Dictionary) :

Blatter - To prate; to babble; to rail; to make a senseless noise; to patter.