Afternoon:
9°c
In the midst of this spectacular sporting summer, with Euro 2008 and Wimbledon behind us and the Olympics still to come, a brief hiatus offering the chance to catch the breath is no bad thing.
What is a bad thing, however, is that the only breathtaking aspect of the unending saga about Frank Lampard's Chelsea future, or lack of it, is the queeny selfregard of its central character.
No one can be shocked by the story itself. It has been a very, very slow motion replay of many others during the Premier League's Klondike era, when the charade of a player swearing undying fealty to his club one minute, and the next instructing his agent to blackmail the board with threats of departure unless outlandish requests are met, has become so wearyingly familiar.
This is why Pascal Chimbonda is such a hero to anyone who finds the hypocrisy more nauseating than the avarice. At least the Spurs full-back had the candour, when a transfer to Newcastle was mooted, to state that his only loyalty was to the highest bidder.
Frank, meanwhile, has contrived to remain the most relentless badge-kisser in the game throughout a contractual dispute so ancient that historians insist it began the day Dad's Army's Private Godfrey bought his first tube of Clearasil.
Now there are those who will view Chelsea's current offer of £140,000 per week for four years, albeit less than the £150,000 a week for five years he prefers, as rather lavish for one already turned 30. Frank disagrees. Much like his colleague Ashley Cole before him, indeed, he is driven to frothing indignation at what he regards as a grotesque show of disrespect.
But if he, like Cristiano Ronaldo, regards himself as a Spartacus figure in Sepp Blatter's deranged world of contractual slavery, waging just and noble war for liberation, others will see it as a toddler tantrum worthy of Tesco on the day the nursery school outing coincides with a dearth of sweeties in aisle nine.
What follows is so clumpingly obvious that I blush to write it, but this is not a spiffing moment for a wealthy young man to seethe with outrage at being offered £28 million over four years.
Exactly when the economic realities will strike football no one can know, but there must be a fair chance holes will soon be visible at Stamford Bridge as people become unwilling or unable to spend £48 on an East Stand seat.
Loyalty to a club and their fans is an outmoded notion, as Chimbonda sagely observed. It belongs to an gentler age when teams relied more on local lads than old rush raiders, and Frank Lampard doesn't owe Chelsea that. What he does owe the supporters is the awareness and decency not to taunt them at a time when many are fretful for their jobs and mortgage repayments.
Bamboozled by the maturity and courage he showed on the pitch in the aftermath of his mother's death, I had imagined he had outgrown such exhibitions such misplaced self-importance.
But apparently not, and you wonder whether he has finally passed the point at which the fans want rid of him, regardless of his talent.
If Lampard believes the only worthwhile expression of respect comes from a slightly longer, fatter contract, he is an egomaniacal fool beyond all redemption. If that is the case - and given his long, distinguished and indeed inspired service to Chelsea, one would wish to give him every benefit of the doubt - there is only one solution. He must rejoin Jose Mourinho at Inter Milan without delay. The two are made for one another.
Castle showed silence can be golden
The misplaced taking of offence at items broadcast on the BBC has long rivalled angling to be regarded as Britain's favourite participation sport, and until yesterday I rated the following as the most absurd complaint ever made.
"Countryfile," as the Beeb's log book for one evening in September 2003 recorded. "Man: Felt that it showed bats in a negative light."
This has now been displaced by the scores of complaints, presumably from Federer worshippers, that the commentary on the Wimbledon final was biased in Rafael Nadal's favour.
Far from it, Andrew Castle's commentary was superb. As Giles Smith has noted in the Times, this journeyman tennis pro turned morning-telly sofa lizard intuitively grasped that the greatest tennis ever played would speak, by and large, for itself.
Richie Benaud himself would have been proud of him. When Castle did speak, he made no futile attempt to embellish the godly perfection arrayed before us. Even Tim Henman was oddly engaging, chortling with disbelief after one particularly astounding point, and muttering: "What can you say about that?" Nothing was the answer to that one, what with TV viewers generally being sighted.
Castle led the way superbly. No doubt revelling in the rare freedom from the self-reverential verbal dysentery of John McEnroe, he established himself at the absolute apex of his profession.
Paltry consolation for all the years spent listening to Lorraine Kelly's drivel about Wee Rosie in the TV-AM studio, perhaps, but better than nothing all the same.
Murray shouldn't be fazed by the full monty
Not since Alan Mullery suffered a shaking fit when Eric Cantona fly-kicked that Selhurst Park idiot has a pundit succumbed to shock like Sky Sports' Ewen Murray. So distressed was he by Colin Montgomerie's latest eruption that he described it in print as "unacceptable", which is brutal stuff from such a mildman.
I can't think why. All Monty did was turn on a Sky cameraman, after finding water, and inform him he was only there for the purpose of filming him. This kissing cousin of "Do You Know Who I Am"? may be a symptom of Winnerial Disease, but Monty's been blowing up at innocent bystanders for years, and he'll be still be at it after leaving golf for his new career as a Rigby & Peller mannequin.
Ewen wants toughening up. A transfer to the BBC post of Peter Alliss's valet, vacant since Alex Hay's departure, might do it.
Kevin is a real steal
If the South African cricket selectors who overlooked the young Kevin Pietersen and thus drove him into the rapacious arms of England haven't tortured themselves before for this carelessness, it's gratifying to imagine that his sparkling century at Lord's finally did the trick. What were they thinking?
There are those, the highly opinionated South African Test captain Graeme Smith seemingly among them, who regard the sequestering of other country's sporting talent as an undignified and demeaning habit.
Let them think what they may. We English, or British, may be abundantly useless at producing world-class sportsmen of our own. But if there has been one clear lesson from recent days, in which Greg Rusedski was in the Wimbledon commentary box while Australian-born Laura Robson was storming to glory, it's that we are almost as skilled at stealing other countries sporting talents as we once were in nicking the countries themselves.
