Amazing - Chelsea vs Liverpool. In Nigeria. If anyone has the full film, we’ll swap you our life savings and children.
Watford’s Jay DeMerit is out of action after suffering an injury that made The Spoiler cringe for about half an hour. And it’s not a broken leg.
[Daily Mail]
Unsurprisingly, it’s not worth taking anything Ian Wright says in those rubbish adverts for the The Sun seriously.
[The Times]
Want to sound knowledgeable at the office watercooler during the next (inevitable) Calciopoli scandal? Click on…
[Juventus.The Offside]
Evil Ronaldo bobblehead haunts our dreams. We’re sorry for calling you fat! (Not really)
[Dirty Tackle]
Darren Bent twitter update: He’s not visiting Tiger Tiger again, as he got ‘pure hassle’ from Newcastle fans last night. Also, Fraizer Campbell is back on XBOX Live. Hurrah!
[@dbthetruth]
Arsenal youth prospect Mark Randall’s alleged WAG poses NSFW-ishly
[ZOO Today]
The players who fell from grace but refused to quit
Such is their love of the game, a number of former Premier League stars have forged managerial careers in the ever-so-slightly less glamorous world of non-League football: Luton’s Mick Harford and Newport’s Dean Holdsworth are notable examples. Some however, are still plying their trade on the pitch in the lower echelons of the football pyramid.
Spoiler correspondent Russell Greaves brings us ten former top flight heroes who have swapped the international acclaim of the top flight for the bumpy pitches and humble attendances of the grass roots game…
Paolo Vernazza (4 Premier League appearances for Arsenal)
Once a promising youngster at Arsenal, Paolo even got a run out in the Champions League, but has since worked his way down the leagues - way down. Having scored the winning goal against Coventry City in front of 37,000 fans at Highbury in 2000, the midfielder’s most recent goal was for Conference South giants Woking, and 2,000 people were fortunate enough to see it. A cautionary tale for the current crop of Arsenal youngsters. Credit where it’s due, though, his supporting lady is top-class.
Jason Lee (69 Premier League appearances for Nottingham Forest) If you recognise the name, it could be because he scored over one-hundred career league goals, but it’s more likely to be because he was relentlessly lampooned on Fantasy Football League. He’s now banging them in for Corby Town in the Conference North, minus the pineapple.
Alan Wright (Over 300 Premier League appearances for Blackburn Rovers and Aston Villa)
Perhaps best remembered as the shortest player in the history of the Premier League (a pocket-sized 5’4’’), Alan Wright is now best known as the shortest player in the Blue Square North. Aston Villa once paid £1m for his services, but Fleetwood Town recently secured his signature without a fee and gave the 38-year-old his non-league debut in a 2-1 victory at Solihull Moors.
Another claret-and-blue team break Sheffield United’s hearts
Sheffield United chairman Kevin McCabe laughably claimed before the Championship play-off final that they would be a top-half Premier League side now were it not for only picking up 38 points in 2006-07 Carlos Tevez.
However, Burnley were the team who showed top-flight quality at Wembley and deservedly won with a brilliant 13th minute goal by Wade Elliott. Having beaten Fulham, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham and West Brom this season and seen Sunderland and Hull stay up despite being dreadful, Owen Coyle should be confident that the Clarets can survive their first Premier League campaign.
Kevin Blackwell, as you would expect of a former assistant of Neil Warnock, struggled to be gracious in defeat and insinuated that Mike Dean’s performance
Doyley’s assist brings new meaning to the term “nuts”
An extract from the match report on the Watford FC website following their FA Cup defeat to Chelsea on Saturday:
“Watford did well to play the ball out of defence to Doyley and he played a magnificent ball with the outside of his right ball to put Priskin clean in behind the Chelsea defence and the substitute kept his head as Cech advanced, and although the keeper got part of his body to it he was unable to prevent the ball looping in.”
We’ve studied the video of the goal several times, and still can’t see how Doyley threads the through ball with his junk…
UPDATE: Boo! Watford have now changed the match report.
Chelsea’s new interim governor Raymond Wilkins knows all about Big Phil, but what of Big Kevin?
This, from scurrilous gossip outfit Popbitch, not a couple of weeks ago…
>> Butch teabag and the sunlounger kid <<
The life and times of a top football coach
This week we saw news that Chelsea boss Felipe Scolari was sending his assistant Ray “Butch” Wilkins out on a charm offensive. “That’s funny”, we thought. Our football contacts suggest Wilkins is not the best liked man in football. It reminded us about a story we heard from Wilkins’ days as Gianluca Vialli’s assistant at Watford. Vialli’s style of management of this struggling, cash-poor club used to involve as many expensive lunches, washed down with fine wines, and “training” trips abroad. On one such trip to Italy. The manager and his assistant maintained their usual commitment to man-management and rigorous training sessions with a long lunch, followed by a nap on the loungers by the hotel pool.
The players decided to have a little fun at their expense. Goalkeeping coach Kevin Hitchcock was known at the time for having one of the biggest wangs in football. He was persuaded to teabag Butch. Hitchcock stood behind Wilkins’ lounger and unzipped his cock. He then, from behind, laid it out across Wilkins face so that his plums flopped across Butch’s face and the tip of his penis rested in his assistant manager’s open mouth.
Brother-in-law meets brother-in-law tonight at Vicarage Road, as handsome former West Ham management duo Harry Redknapp and Frank Lampard Snr find themselves on opposite sides of the dugout. Last season’s Carling Cup winners Tottenham are the favourites, but Watford have already taken one Premier League side out of the competition this season.
The chaps at chickendinner believe there may just be an upset tonight…
PREMIER LEAGUE 0 CHAMPIONSHIP 2
The first two Carling Cup quarter-finals saw Championship sides Burnley and Derby overcome Arsenal and Stoke. With Blackburn and Manchester United facing off in the other last eight clash there is definitely going to be one Premier League representative in the final four, but will Watford win to replicate last season’s FA Cup, where three of the four semi-finalists were from the second tier?
QUARTER-FINAL RECORDS
Since 2002, Watford have won all three quarter-finals that they have participated in. Even more significantly, those campaigns - FA Cup 2002-03, Carling Cup 2004-05, FA Cup 2006-07 - have been on a two-year rotation system, meaning that they are due to reach the Carling Cup semi-finals in 2008-09. In comparison, Tottenham have lost six of their eight over that time, including two
West Ham legend returns to work after seven-year hiatus
Frank Lampard Snr has started work as a “football consultant” at Watford, his first job in football since being axed by West Ham in 2001 after spending seven years as Harry Redknapp’s assistant.
The father of Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard (apologies if our cheeky headline gave you the wrong impression!) will assist the Hornets new boss Brendan Rodgers, who got to know Lampard Snr while managing Chelsea’s reserves.
Premier League referee prone to the occasional error
After Newcastle became the latest team to be denied important points as a result of a mistake by referee Rob Styles, The Spoiler decided to look at who else have fallen victim to his calamitous decision making in recent years.
In goal is Shay Given, who made what deserved to be a match-winning save from Stephen Ireland last night but wasn’t because Manchester City were afforded another opportunity to break down Newcastle’s ten men and scored.
Our left-back is Jlloyd Samuel, whose great tackle on Cristiano Ronaldo last month was punished when Styles pointed to the spot. Accompanying Habib Beye, who is a makeshift centre-back due to Styles’ habit of making costly errors against right-backs, is Stoke’s Ibrahima Sonko, who was adjudged to have fouled Obafemi Martins in Reading’s 3-2 loss at St James’ Park in December 2006, a decision his boss Steve Coppell labelled “a guess-timate”. Steve Finnan completes the defence after Rob Styles famously pointed to the spot last season when Florent Malouda ran into the Irishman with Liverpool beating Chelsea 1-0.
Loading ...