The Ongoing Hardship Of Poor Carlos Tevez

It had to happen sometime. After months and months of whining, sniping 'mistranslations' and generally showing himself up to be a bit of a dick, Ol' Scarface Tevez finally appears to have burned all his remaining bridges at Man City, and you'd think, in England. This seems to have met with just one reaction, from fans of all clubs, even City, and that is that Carlos Tevez can basically fuck off.
Now, I work in a department store. Imagine one day i was just there to hang about the place in case anyone needed a rest, or couldn't carry on working. (Also, i would be being paid a lot more than i should be to be there) and then, when asked to do the one job i was being paid for, I'd say no and that I'd rather carrying on sitting down for a bit. At best, I'd be docked a lot of my wages and probably told to go home. At worst, and what would probably happen, is that I'd be fired, and as a consequence find it pretty damn hard to get another, similar job. Whats encouraging is just how quickly Roberto Mancini was to condemn Carlitos's actions and declare that he was 'finished' at City. This was refreshingly honest in today's game and gave no credibility to Tevez's protest that it was all a misunderstanding (which was a pretty desperate move that met with general bemusement) However, the depressing fact is that soon enough some other team (Real Madrid is reports are to be believed) will sign Tevez and pay him a shitload of cash to moan and whine and be good at football once every three or four months. And that's not what should happen. Carlitos has bitched about wanting to retire every time he doesn't get his own way, so why doesn't the world of football, which so many people would give several much-needed body parts to get into, band together and decide that players like Carlos Tevez just aren't welcome. Nobody would miss him, not now, thats for sure.

The Bruce Venn

The Furious Anger of Moe Szyslak and Mrs Doubtfire

So, at first glance, Saturday's Premier League results were a fairly innocuous bunch of routine wins and mundane draws. But to think that that was the end of it would be a bit of a mistake, because if this past weekend's games seem to have provoked one thing, in the manager's at least, then its anger. Lots and lots of lovely red-faced, fist-shaking anger. Firstly, David Moyes had a nice little rant about all the thing that David Moyes normally has a nice little rant about. Basically, in Moyes' yellow-cartoon man-bartender head, all referees get together on a Friday evening and decide how they can screw Everton over. This week it was centred on a Vincent Kompany tackle that put Tim Cahill out of the game. The tackle, to be fair, a pretty bad late stamp on Cahill's shin and Kompany probably should have been sent off. Moyes' eloquent description of events was that 'the lad's done him there' and he insinuated that the tackle was purposeful. Now, as i said, it was a bad one, but to me, suggesting that a professional footballer set out to intentionally hurt or injure another player is a pretty serious allegation. So its just as well that most people seem to have dismissed Moyes' comments as the enraged rantings of a man on the edge, which is understandable really.

Most humorous among the hot-headedness (its a word now) was the dismissal, on Saturday, of one Fernando Torres. 10 minutes after opening the scoring against Swansea, Fernando decided he was better off deployed as a Roy Keane-esque midfield general  and went in with both sets of studs up on Swansea's Mark Gower. The best thing about this moment of madness was that it happened not in a danger area, it didn't prevent a goal scoring opportunity, but it took place on the touchline, by the halfway line. An area of the pitch that should definitely see more potential shin-breakers.

Rant of the weekend, however definitely goes to Neil Warnock, not for his attack on ref Michael Oliver for turning down two penalty claims, but his take on the sending off of his own left-back, Armand Traore for a pretty reckless tackle. Along with accosting Traore as he left the pitch for a motivational chat, and branding him 'thick', 'naive' and 'a disgrace' in a post-match interview, Warnock has vowed to hijack some of his defender's hard-earned thousands and 'fine him as much as I can'. Ouch. As much as he annoys the piss out of me, I wouldn't want to be Armand turning up for training this morning.

So, pretty routine wins for Chelsea, City, Spurs and Liverpool then, a turning point/stay of execution for Arsene, and a point away at Stoke for Man Utd which really isn't the worst thing in the world what with Rooney and Chicharito absent. And just the 39 yellow and 5 red cards over the 9 games. Oh and I nearly forgot to mention a first win of the season for the sleeping giant that is Plymouth Argyle. 2 points off safety now, not bad for a team with a midfielder and goalie as the management team.

The Luiz Venn

My 5 Favourite Robin Friday Stories

Recently I discovered a story about an old footballer called Robin Friday. He never played at the top level, or for England, although he was talented and good enough. Friday spent most of his career at Reading and is something of a cult hero there, mainly due to actions off the pitch. Robin Friday smoked, drank, took drugs, stayed up all night and just generally didn't give a shit, but was still an amazing footballer. He was a massive hero, in other words, and he died in 1990 aged just 38 of a drugs overdose. Having read up on Robin, and being most of the way through a biography of him, here are my 5 favourite stories about the great man.

5. 'The Elephant'
As mentioned above, Friday loved to go out drinking, and according to his friends from Reading at the time, he'd often go out to clubs wearing little more than an overcoat and a pair of boots. He also enjoyed a dance he'd invented called The Elephant. This involved him turning his trouser pockets inside out and getting his wanger out. Then simply dancing about a bit. Unsurprisingly, he got barred from places a lot. Oh and he also liked to jump off 20ft balconies to the dancefloor below. What professional footballer doesn't?

4. The Policeman
Seemingly, Friday was as amazing on the pitch as he was off it and scored some pretty brilliant goals in his time. In April 1975 he scored the winner for Reading in a game against Rochdale, and as a celebration, ran over an kissed a policeman, who was on duty by the side of the pitch. Robin's explanation? "The policeman looked so cold and fed up standing there, so I decided to cheer him up a bit"
(A year later, he also scored what sounds like an unbelievable goal by taking the ball on his chest, with his back to goal and volleying in over his shoulder from 25 yards. When the ref told him at the end that it was the best goal he'd ever seen, Robin replied "You should come here more, i do that every week")

3. The Swan
Almost inevitably, Robin loved a joke at the expense of his team mates/opposition/anyone in the vicinity. My favourite of the ones I've read about involves him finding a group of Reading players outside their team-mate's hotel room, where he was with a girl. While the others knocked on the door and shouted various 'hilarious' insults, Friday simply kicked the door down with his hobnail boots. He then went down to the bar, had a few beers, went outside to the hotel grounds and wandered back into the bar with a swan under his arm. He then just carried on drinking, with a swan. Brilliant.


2. The Wedding
As well as everything else, Robin Friday was, by all accounts, a pretty nice guy, and at 16, married his black girlfriend, at a time when most people where he lived wanted them all sent home. They divorced and in '76 he got married again in what seems to be the greatest wedding football has ever seen. From Wikipedia: "The wedding was filmed by Southern Television, before whose cameras Friday, wearing an open-necked tiger-skin-pattern shirt, brown velvet suit and snakeskin boots, sat on the steps of the church and rolled a joint. Friday had invited about two hundred people, mostly friends and relatives from London, who joined in the drinking and drug-taking and ending up fighting each other and stealing the couple's wedding presents, one of which was a large quantity of cannabis. Liza later called the wedding "the most hilarious thing ever". "I have been to a few weddings," recalled Rod Lewington, "but never one like that."
Worth it just for the outfit he wore alone, i think.

1. Mark Lawrenson
Anyone who's ever wondered how the hell Mark Lawrenson gets away with being quite that much of a boring, miserabilist prick on TV every week will see why this is my favourite.
By 1977, Robin was playing for Cardiff. During an away game with Brighton, he was marked by Lawrenson. Robin got so fed up with Lawro's close marking that he waited for him to attempt a sliding tackle, then simply kicked him in the face. Which is good enough on its own. But there's more. Before he left the ground, while the game was still going on, he, by all accounts, broke into Brighton's dressing room, found Mark Lawrenson's kit bag...and did a shit in it. Beyond brilliant.

 Unfortunately, after he retired from the professional game in 1977, aged just 25, Robin went properly off the rails and did time in prison for, quite brilliantly, impersonating a policeman so he could 'confiscate' other people's drugs. He is, however, consistently voted both Reading and Cardiff's greatest ever player by their fans.

This is the only footage i could find, but it gives you an idea...

So if that's not enough to make Robin Friday your new favourite dead ex-player, there's something seriously wrong with you.

The Warnock Venn

Stuff that happened this weekend (or how Torres made a whole pub cry laughing)

So finally, after weeks of trying to outdo each other and basically making everyone else look a bit rubbish, Manchester United went two points clear of City after a pretty good Sunday of football.
The United v Chelsea game was really quite entertaining. Chelsea seemed to raise their game pretty well and had some decent chances...although their creaky defence creaked and leaked and United took full advantage. Both Smalling and Jones seem to have some kind of positional schizophrenia, which makes them think they are both defenders and strikers/wingers all at once. Whats great is they seem to be able to do both at once pretty brilliantly too. Nani also decided to have one of his good days, scoring a quite amazing goal and generally showing why it makes it so frustrating when he inevitably then falls over or puts a free kick into the car-park or turns up with his boots on the wrong feet. Hopefully those days are behind him, and he seems to have developed nicely. Still looks like a shit Thriller-era MJ impersonator though. The best entertainment in this game though, came in the second half when Fernando Torres showed where the millions went, by not just missing an open goal from about 2 yards, but putting it about 8 miles wide of the post. I have honestly never heard a whole pub full of people (supporters of several different clubs as well) applaud and cheer a fuck-up before during a game and it would have been made even sweeter had he not scored quite a good goal earlier in the half.

City had earlier dropped points by throwing away a two goal lead at Fulham, provided of course by Aguero, who, along with Silva, seems to be the sole reason City have had the start they've had. It seems to have been overlooked that these two have been responsible for nearly everything good the team has done so far. And also, every time I watch City, its striking just how many really really boring players they have. Barry, Milner, Lescott et al are all talented, perfectly good players, but they're just so fucking mundane and dull looking that its impossible to imagine them ever having any real success. They've even dragged Adam Johnson down with them, at Middlesbrough he looked genuinely exciting, and in his first few England games too. Now he's just another bland City midfielder, who looks like a composite of every man you've ever seen. Oh well, fair play to Fulham for getting a point though, they must have been expecting an arse-kicking and had a game last Thursday in the Nohoper League.

Elsewhere, Spurs also shrugged off any lethargy and stuck four past what was left of Liverpool's team after Adam and Skrtel decided they couldn't be doing with trying to keep Bale and Modric at bay and fancied a pint or something instead, so tried to take a big chunk out of some Spurs players' legs.

Also, on Saturday, Neil Warnock's hastily assembled team of rejects and misfits seemed to finally come good and won 3-0. Now, as much as i dislike Warnock, and the way QPR have thrown cash about, they are, or were, a pretty big team and boasted some great, and interesting players. Wright-Phillips, the other Ferdinand, and of course Barton seem to fit there, especially Joey Barton, who now sports a haircut that makes him look like he should be on death row in Louisiana for doing something nasty and racist (ironic really) But good luck to them, and i'm starting to hope they stay up. Barton's not a patch on Stan Bowles though. A good result too for David Mo(y)eSyslazk's remnants of a football team, and a very very bad one for Arsene Wenger (look out for that name on the appointments list at your local job centre pretty soon), as ArsenLOL shipped 4 goals, mainly due to their own flailing limbs and lack of any co-ordination whatsoever.
This week sees the competition we've all been waiting for kick into gear with the third round of the Carling Cup. My money's on Brighton to pull off not-much-of-a-shock and dump Liverpool out, if the Scousers can finish the game with the required amount of players on the pitch.

This week's football-based reading: 'The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw" all about Robin Friday, who is quite possibly my new hero...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Friday