OK, Mancs - and you citizens of Cornwall and Kuala Lumpur - I concede. . And the 4-3 wasn't bad either, to be fair.
I don't know whether to be hacked off that United have reached another final, or quietly pleased that the newly-minted Man City have been denied.
Mancini has been a civilised sort since arriving. I'm mildly diverted by his appearance. How long does it take him to look like that?
And when I say 'Beast' I don't mean that wandering outhouse - whatsisname, Parkin? I mean
The counterpart being, of course, the choreographed herd of gambolling lambs that Wenger put out on the pitch on Sunday.
Now there's a lot of Gooners I've heard who have lambasted that game on two counts: firstly that it's a long way to Stoke-on-Trent (and a lot of money, too) and it'd be nice to see a team put their backs into it; secondly, that Pulis's team would line up in front of the mighty Pele and laugh right into the great man's face if he ever used the phrase 'the beautiful game' in their direction.
may sound like a headline from a Spanish newspaper on the winner of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sports Personality of the Year 2009, but it's actually a puppet mouse from Argentine kids' TV.
I've had a look at it and the character looks like some half-wit Mickey Mouse, but nevertheless he is a character very dear to little Carlos Tevez's heart. That's why, when , he chose to remember the bumpkin rodent by cupping his hands behind his ears. It is the Mickey Mouse Cup after all.
Of course only those with an intellect as dim as a TV screen in a third umpire's referral box could think that the gesture was actually a reminder to the United board members that he didn't get listened to while he was there.
There's almost a sense of normal service resumed after the weekend's Premier League matches.
Chelsea still look like the team to beat, even if Malouda like breezing by some knee-knocking stormtroopers.
There's nothing normal about Ashley Cole doing a half-decent impression of Dennis Bergkamp, mind. The lad's a class left-back that's for sure but that finish was about as likely as a touching rendition of Lady Macbeth by
Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that whoever I slag off, I get accused of having a persistent bias against.
On Tuesday I posted a blog suggesting United don't have it in them to win owt this season. I am therefore rabidly ABU. I only have to hear the name Ferguson and my shirt rips open, my biceps inflate like over-watered marrows and I start tearing telephone directories in half like they were tissue paper.
Mind you how the Greatest Manager in the History of Mankind escaped punishment after his is a bit beyond me. (See, I can't resist, can I?)
Undersoil heating - what's the flaming point, eh, if some over-protective numpties decide that the routes around the ground are too treacherous for people to use?
The pitch is perfect, but full-grown, free-thinking people will only fall on their backsides, fill up the local A & E's with their cracked coccyxes (dammit what's the plural for that?) and probably, in this litigious age of ours, find someone or other to sue.
OR
Your average footie fan will tiptoe down the glacier streets like a lass in her first stilettos and slither into his favourite seat 'cos quite frankly that's what a football fan does. He'll take his chances with the darned ice 'cos he loves to see his team play. In all weathers.
. And yet everywhere I look, I see footie.
Snowmen stand with arms outstretched like Greek goalies watching a Beckham bender fly past them. Snowballs lobbed in my direction are hammered into an imaginary top corner with a neat pivot and a flick of me shotgun right peg.
There are Boro scarves everywhere but no inept 1-0 home defeat to witness; no post-Christmas ginger elf to talk off another pile of slush.
Good day to all you skivers!
Sorry - the roads are a tad slippy and it's a bit more than a sniffle and you don't want to be spreading that round the office do you? Plus the cricket's pretty tense and your Sky Sports subscription might be up soon after you blew all that money on useless fripperies over Christmas.
And to be honest it's so damn cold that even self-respecting Teesside women are looking around for a knee-length skirt , while the menfolk have been seen rooting around for a cardy. No gloves, mind. You don't need gloves unless you're one of them namby-pamby Mediterranean lads who's never had to scrape the ice off a windscreen.
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I'm Derek Robson. People call me Robbo. Legend has it I was raised in the furnace and smog of Teesside. Some might say I took the hard road. I like to tell folk I had trials for Middlesbrough, for Hartlepool and for burglary (not guilty). I've always loved sport. My job is to say it as I see it - whether it's in the bar of the Blue Bell or on this blog. You won't find me calling a spade a soil-redistribution implement.
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