Morning:
9°c
Tevez finds the gags can be grim up north
Two years after Bernard Manning's death, Manchester learns to laugh once again thanks to droll skirmishing between the two big clubs.
Manchester City have erected a city centre poster, not from their Eastlands ground, featuring Carlos Tevez above the legend "Welcome to Manchester" - a reference, locals believe, to Old Trafford lying outside the city limits.
In side-splitting counter-strikes, United supporters have not only splattered the billboard with red paint, but also circulated an email featuring Tevez - not cast by nature as a poster boy - as papier-mache headed comedy character Frank Sidebottom although it makes him look more like Betty Boo.
How Bernard will be chortling as he glances up at the merriment.
Marquez left high and dryer in Fawlty farce
A warm hola! to the players and officials of Barcelona, who are over for the warm-up tournament styled as the Wembley Cup.
The chaps are staying at Danesfield House, a country house hotel and spa in Berkshire, and a less Fawlty-esque enterprise than the following might suggest.
Chief victim of communication problems is Mexican centre-back Rafael Marquez, who appeared at reception with both an enquiry and the club translator. Mind you, when you hear the question, you'll see why he needed the interpreter.
It was: “Where is the hairdryer?” Avoiding the bleedin' obvious reply (“Why, are you off to Old Trafford?), the receptionist politely explained that the implement, curiously enough, was in his room. And still people paint top-flight footballers as pampered halfwits.
Clarke in the dock over Pietersen injury blow
On the off chance that Kevin Pietersen's absence costs us the Ashes, Giles Clarke might want to begin work on his answer to this one now.
What was his ECB thinking, or smoking, in allowing Pieto to play in the World Twenty20 when his Achilles injury was already apparent, and he would have been ready for the First Test had he had the operation before that feast of McCricket?
If you imagined the humiliation of Sir Allen Stanford's arrest might have tempted the ECB to rethink its money-fixated prioritising of Twenty20, then you'd better think again.
Clarke has very little talent, it seems, for learning from his mistakes.
Legal precedent led Sven to Notts County
All the sneering at Sven for pitching up at Notts County is depressing. What people don't understand is that the Swede, alone in football, is guided by the “taxi rank” principle more familiar from the law.
Jobbing barristers, like Horace Rumpole, simply take the next case that comes up, be it a juicy murder down the Old Bailey or a spot of flashing before the Uxbridge Magistrates.
It's an engagingly democratic way to do business, especially when mega-rich middle eastern football club owners are involved, so well done Svennis!
Not, of course, that Ulrika would have gone to bed with cigar ash-laden Rumpole.
