The Texas Link Repository

It's Friday night and I'm feeling lazy, so here's a quick look at the rest of the internet this week.

- After what I can only describe as "too long", the venerable magazine When Saturday Comes has finally given its web site a much-needed lick of paint. There will be daily daily blog posts on there, to go with their spiffy new weekly newsletter. Heartily recommended.

- The FSF are still pretty angry about the Premier League's Game 39 proposal, and they appear to have chosen my piece on it as a link from their website. I am flattered and surprised in roughly equal measures (and I haven't gone back yet to see if all of the spelling and grammar was okay - for all I know the wider football public now knows me as "that bloke that occasionally types 'and' three times in succession in the same sentence and uses way too many commas"). More on this next week, by the way.

- A quick appeal, here. If you know of any decent, independent web sites that are specific to one club, let me know and I will add them to the links on the right-hand side of this page. I think that the list is looking a little sparse, but I really don't have time to go looking at the moment.

- Just Like My Dreams has an excerpt from the absolutely outstanding "The Damned United", based upon Brian Clough's attempt to buy Bobby Moore and Trevor Brooking. A worthwhile taster to an excellent book, which you can get from here.

- Joining AFC Liverpool is cheaper than MyFootballClub or saving for a £5,000 share through Rogan Taylor's scheme (although they have apparently been pledged £82m, not a bad sum, all told).

- And finally, a few pieces by the Wing Commander. Essential reading.

Football Shorts 3

After all the excitement of the weekend, it's nice to have a sit down, relax and take in a little of what has been happening in that parallel universe that we call Footie World (Actually, I don't call it "footie", but if it's a parallel universe, then it has to have a different name, doesn't it? I should probably stop reading those booklets about philosophy that they've been giving away with The Independent for the last few days). Anyway, here are a few bits and pieces for you to chew over while you're supping your coffee tomorrow morning.

Keeping The Home Fires Burning Some of you may remember that, when the plan was put forward by Wimbledon's owners, a few years ago, to move the club to Dublin, the plan was quashed by the Football Association of Ireland, who banned it because of the potential damage that Premier League football in Ireland would have done to its already fragile domestic league. Skip back to the present day, and very similar problems could be facing the (surely, surely doomed) plans of the Premier League to play matches abroad. Their plans for global football colonisation are already running into problems, with the USSF and the AFC already stating in no uncertain terms that they are very unhappy at the proposals. Ultimately, any challenges to this would probably have to go through FIFA, but it is difficult to imagine circumstances under which they would be happy to let this go unchallenged. Whether the Premier League could press on with Asia and the USA knocked out of their global market is very much open to question. I get the feeling that this story will run and run.

3-0, And You F**cked It Up More pleasing news from League Two this evening, where Franchise's slow disintegration at the top of the table is continuing apace. Amid continuing rumours about where Paul Ince is going to decamp to (I heard Sheffield United mentioned today and they haven't even offloaded Bryan Robson yet), their league form has utterly collapsed. They were at Shrewsbury Town tonight, and raced into a 3-0 lead before being pegged back to a 3-3 draw. This result means that, should Rotherham, Darlington and Peterborough all win their games in hand, they'd be out of the automatic promotion places altogether. As it is, they've won just one of their last seven league matches. Meanwhile, in the Championship, West Bromwich Albion's lacklustre 0-0 draw with Sheffield United at The Hawthorns tonight meant that Bristol City, who won 1-0 at Scunthorpe United, jump into the automatic second promotion place, with Watford pulling clear at the top of the table after a home win against Leicester City. I'm all in favour of the Championship being an open league in which anyone can beat anyone else, but there's a decent chance that, should they go up, Bristol City would be even worse than Derby County have been this year, isn't there? I still want to see them do it, though.

South American Beauty The Copa Libertadores, South America's sprawling equivalent to the Champions League starts in the early hours of tomorrow morning, and it's pretty much required viewing for anyone tired of the predictability and staleness of UEFA's most sought-after trinket. I'll be doing my best to keep you up to speed with it all (though I know that no-one will thank me if I ease up on the Sussex County League coverage in favour of it), but I'm not going to make any promises, and would advise you to head over to Hasta El Gol Siempre for full updates, starting with this outstanding preview and brief history of the competition. For those of you in Blighty with the appropriate digital bits and pieces, you may be interested to know that there will be liver coverage and highlights on Setanta Sports 2. For those of you without, the seamier side of internet streaming technology may turn out to be your friend.

And Finally... Keep an eye on the links on the right hand side of this page, because there are new ones being added on a daily basis at the moment. Football & Music is almost worryingly interested in football music (and football and music, and... well, you know) and is well worth getting lost in for a couple of hours (I emerged, disorientated, the owner of two new Chas & Dave songs), whilst Treasons, Stratagems & Spoils is clearly written by someone far cleverer than I. I will raise my own personal intellectual bar soon, I promise.

Football Shorts 2

Gah. I was full on enthusiasm for going to a match this afternoon but, when push came to shove, an hour and a half up to Middlesex to see AFC Wimbledon play there and the same journey back was just too much for me after so many weekends away already this year was just a bit too far for me to travel. I've stencilled in their home match against the divisional whipping boys, Leyton, as a definite for next weekend, though. So, here I am, sitting on the sofa, watching Chris Kamara trying desperately to get as excited as Sky evidently feel that we should all be about Sunderland vs Wigan Athletic. Time enough, I think, to round up a few bits and pieces that having building up under my fingernails over the last week or so.

Ch-ch-ch-changes You may have noticed a new list of links on the right hand side of this page. I have decided to try and round up the very best of the independent club blogs and sites, so that you can find out what's going on anywhere at the touch of a button. If there are any independent club sites or blogs that you feel are worthy of our attention, let me know with a comment and I'll have a look at them. I've also had a clear out of the normal links section on here and have got rid of some sites that hadn't been updated in a while and added a couple which have grabbed my attention, so I'd suggest taking a gander at Dave's Football Blog (which covers every code of football), From A Left Wing, Midfield Dynamo and Soccerlens if you get a spare five minutes.

Vote For Me! (Part 136) I promised you constant reminders to vote for me in the Soccerlens football blogs poll, so here is another reminder. You can, should you be so inclined (and not have done so yet) vote for me here and here. Just close your eyes and think of how happy my little face would be. On second thoughts, don't do that.

To The Manor Reborn We touched on the subject of Ruislip Manor and the bleak outlook for their future way down at the bottom of the football pyramid here last week, and things have been moving on there apace ever since. The club, as you may remember, had reached such a state that, with their entire back-room staff having resigned, but a couple of developments there over the last few days seem to have offered them a temporary reprieve, after it looked as if their fate had finally been sealed. As this report in The Londonist confirms, the club were initially bailed out by their President, John Barnett, who had offered to fund them until the end of the season. Having been allowed to restart their fixtures, they played one match before Barnett offered the Spartan South Midland League the club's resignation. Fortunately, though, another new chairman has stepped in and taken over, and the club has confirmed that they can start their fixtures again. They're by no means out of trouble (another meeting has been arranged to discuss the thorny issue of funding), but their condition can probably be described as "stable but poorly" rather than "critical" now.

Is Adidas Having A Creative Nervous Breakdown? Take a moment, if you will, to take a moment and peruse this photograph. Quite asides from the ball being used (this is the ball that will be used at Euro 2008, and appears to be covered in the same small dimples that those footballs they used to give you to use at school were) looks like is has been exceptionally badly superimposed onto the pictures, take a look at those kits. That's a photo, believe it or not, from Wednesday night's match between France and Spain, with France in the red and Spain in yellow. We'll be rounding up all of the kits that you'll be able to see in Switzerland and Austria on here before the start of the summer (and, I have to say, there will be some absolute shockers on display), but I will say this - if these two monstrosities are anything to go by, you might be best off buying a second hand black and white television before it all starts.

And Finally... This is what Manchester United will be wearing for the match against Manchester City tomorrow in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Munich Air Disaster. Kind of makes you wonder why they can't keep football kits that simple all the time, doesn't it?

Voting On Super Tuesday

I'm not, it has to be said, particularly good at "blowing my own trumpet" (stop sniggering at the back). However, in the true spirit of 2008 being The Year In Which I Start Whoring Myself, I am honour-bound to draw your attention to the Soccerlens Blog Awards, nominations for which are now open. To my enormous surprise, I have been nominated in two categories (to my even greater surprise, neither of these categories are "Blogger Most Likely To Put Too Many Commas In One Sentence" or "Blogger Least Likely To Have Anything Valid To Back Up His Insane Conspiracy Theories".

I am, of course, delighted and honoured to have been nominated in both categories - Best Blogger and Best Blogger You've Never Heard Of (which could, theoretically, be described as being damned with faint praise, but actually stands up as being more or less true for the majority of people) - and obviously urge you all to vote for me in both of these categories, even if you don't actually think that I serve any useful purpose. There'll be live minute-by-minute action here this evening from tonight's friendly match between England and Switzerland on here tonight, too, by the way. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have acceptance speeches to write and I have booked a fitting session for a crown later on this morning.

End Of Week Round Up Re-Visited

I've been exceptionally pressed for time over the last few days or so, so I thought that now would be as good a time as any to bring you all up to date with a few stories that featured on here over the last few weeks or so.

- I mentioned briefly on here the other day that the tabloids were having a field day over Manchester United's players' Christmas party, which ended in an accusation of rape. Well, this story is the Christmas present that keeps on giving. Firstly, Alex Ferguson is reportedly none too happy with what was going on, and has called Rio Ferdinand to account over it. Also, The Sun is this morning reporting that these weren't the only shenanigans going on that night. Makes you proud, doesn't it?

- On the flip side of the same coin, FC United of Manchester have a somewhat different battle on their hands. They're turning their ire towards Invision, the company that run the Northern Premier League's broadband TV station, after comments made by the company on the BBC's non-league radio show on Monday night. Really, Invision have chosen the wrong people to pick a row with, there.

- The draw for the Second Round of the FA Trophy was made on Monday and, following on from a tremendous 2-0 win away to Conference South side Maidenhead United last Saturday, they were given what looked like would be an away match against Oxford United. Oxford had to win their First Round replay first, but, you know, they were only playing Ryman League side Tonbridge Angels, so it would be a walk-over, yes? Well, no. Tonbridge won 1-0 and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Oxford's fans aren't too happy about it. More on Oxford's crisis season over the next couple of days.

- Finally, the Home Office appear to have been shamed into allowing Watford's Al Bangura into being allowed to at least apply for a work permit. It's not much, but it's a start.

Back Of The Net

It's Friday night, and it's the Second Round of the FA Cup. I'm watching the match between Horsham and Swansea City as we speak, so here are some choice highlights of other stories that have grabbed my attention.

- The Guardian's "Six Of The Best" series takes a look at commentators, which has reminded me that this little blog is long overdue some mournful reminiscing about Barry Davies.

- Gramsci's Kingdom on the challenges facing Italy's ultras.

- The Baker & Kelly Website has been expanded (and about time, might I add).

- Hobo Tread goes to York for the First Round of the FA Cup.

- Oh bloody hell. How can this end well?

- Alyson Rudd of The Times looks at Liverpool TV.

You May Notice...

This place being a bit quieter over the next few days or so. I will still, hopefully, be posting every other day, and this will be alternated with "The Box In The Corner", which I have noticed has fallen into a state of disrepair (thanks to my own neglect) - the other place is to be expanded, too, to take in music and what I can only describe as "flights of fancy". If this is all too complicated for you, I've given the original Twohundredpercent site a spring clean, as well - you can get to here and there from here, and I hope to add a few more bits and pieces to that over the next few weeks or so, too. Also, I mentioned a couple of days ago that there was an excellent site about the history of regional football broadcasting on ITV that appeared to have fallen off the internet altogether. Well, it turns out that it hasn't (my Google skills are clearly not what they once were), and you can see it here. It is definitely worth an hour or two of your time. Fortunately I have a day off work today, so I should be able to update both of my blogs tonight.

A Couple Of Quick Points

I meant to put something massively self-indulgent up here the other day to celebrate the 500th post on this little blog (I've been wearing a party hat for the last three days, in case you were wondering), but I forgot. So, I thought I'd quickly mention it here, and take the opportunity to thank all of you that occasionally stop by here. As ever, your comments and suggestions are most welcome. Suffice to say, I don't have any major changes planned, though we did, a couple of months ago, briefly discuss sitting up all night drinking tequila and then recording a podcast which would consist of us talking over the Sunday morning repeat of "Match Of The Day". No part of this could conceivably be a good idea. Coming up this week, a full review of the weekend's action (I've been rather slacking on that front, haven't I?), yet more Baker & Kelly and, out of recognition that football kits aren't very often of a quality that could be considered "haute couture", the six worst kits of all time. Meanwhile, here are some other titbits that have crossed my radar over the last few days or so.

Sepp Blatter vs The European Union: Ho hum. I don't know whether he's been at the sherry or not, but FIFA's apparent current plans to challenge the EU over introducing quotas of foreign players. On the surface, there is something initially appealing about the idea (particularly in England, at a time when you can barely build a twenty-four man squad of English players), but it's not going to happen. The EU are being asked to consider that players are "artists" rather than "workers", but I can't see them bending on it. Even Michel Platini, Uncle Sepp's protege at UEFA, has gone on record as saying that it would be unworkable. It could, theoretically, be introduced voluntarily, but since the Premier League is basically run by, well, the chairmen of Premier League clubs (and the last time I checked, turkeys still don't vote for Christmas), any voluntary scheme would be quietly pushed onto the back burner. Maybe everyone should be focussing on building strong youth systems and coaching children properly so there are more top quality English players coming through. After all, so far as I'm aware the ability to trap and pass a ball properly isn't entirely genetic.

Surprising Crowds: Sometimes I look at the results in the newspaper and something in the statistics column will grab my eye. Last weekend (and I meant to mention this at the time but, you guessed it, I forgot), it was East Fife, who might have been forgiven for thinking that, at half-time during their Scottish League match against Stenhousemuir, that they had a hard job on their hands, having been held for a goalless forty-five minutes. They shouldn't have done. They scored seven goals in thirty-two minutes and won the match 7-0. My magnificent midweek statistic of the week is this: the crowd reported for the European Cup match between Steaua Bucharest and Arsenal was 21,000. The crowd for the Championship match between Norwich City and Scunthorpe United was 23,600. Congratulations are due, therefore, to Scunthorpe, who can justifiably claim this week to be "a bigger draw that Arsenal".

A Possible New Competition: I think I've noted on here before that, in my humble opinion, this year's Derby County team are out of their depth in the Premier League to almost unprecedented levels. At the time of writing, they have managed to concede twenty-one goals in eight Premier League matches, and they could be on course for a record. Swindon conceded 100 goals in 1993/94, but this was over the course of a forty-two match season. Derby are on course to manage this well before the regulation thirty-eighth match. When, though, will they do it? If I can find something appropriate to offer as a prize (and, to be fair, this shouldn't prove to be too difficult), we should be running a sweepstake on which date they'll do it. I'll get back to you all on how I'm going to do this, but I would suggest taking a look at their fixture list.

And Finally... The Baker & Kelly web site is starting to take shape. I will expect to see at least some of you over there, should they ever get around to enabling comments on the blog section.

It's Oh So Quiet

First of all, something of an apology to any of you that might have lumped your money on OM to take a hiding at the hands of Besiktas last night on the strength of how awful I said they were last Saturday. They were really dreadful, I promise. Still, as I've said before, anyone that takes my opinion on anything in the slightest bit seriously should really reconsider their general world view in the most profound of senses. Meanwhile, Liverpool coughed and spluttered their way to a lethargic looking 1-1 draw at Porto (repeat the mantra after me: "No team will ever win the European Cup with Jermaine Pennant in its team"), whilst Chelsea... well. Held at home by the mighty Rosenberg - a club whose entire financial turnover throughout the whole of their history would barely cover the cost of one of John Terry's ivory back scratchers. Marvellous stuff. Of course, the format of the European Cup as it stands takes into account the possibility of richer clubs dropping points against the likes of Rosenberg. Expect them to grind their way through to the next round with five successive 1-0 wins. Honestly. I just don't get what people see in it. In lieu of having much else of enormous interest to say (insert sarcastic retort here), here are a few more nuggets that warrant mention in passing.

New Blogs For Your Delectation: I probably shouldn't be encouraging even more of you to desert me (seriously, the viewing figures around here have plummeted recently), but here I have recently added some more to the links that warrant your further attention. Sam Kelly's excellent Hasta El Gol Siempre should be your first stop off point for all things Argentinian (and Argentinian domestic is brilliant - one of these days I will write something furious about how scandalous it is that we see so little South American club football in this country). I came across Gramsci's Kingdom by accident, but I'm jolly glad that I did. I don't know whether it's a North American thing, but they seem to do this football & politics thing a lot better than us. Maybe we're just too immersed in it all to be able to detach ourselves and see the broader picture. Finally (and if you haven't been mentioned it's probably because I'm an idiot), I would point you all in the direction of Early Doors. A marvellous way to waste an evening (or three), it's a collection of vintage football clips from YouTube, with the accent firmly on the 1970s and 1980s. If you know any more links that should be on here, let me know.

Wednesday Blues: It's a pretty complex situation, politically speaking, but Sheffield Wednesday have joined the ranks of clubs taking legal action against their supporters. The club still has deep rifts between supporters' groups and between supporters and the current board of directors after what I can best describe as a chaotic set of circumstances over their ownership of late. However, it seems again as if a football club is acting in a ridiculously heavy handed manner. It's a thin line between "protecting the brand" (as I believe the modern parlance would have it) and being seen to try and silence any criticism of the way that a club is being run, and I am not completely convinced that this isn't the latter. We live in sad times, in some respects.

Revie & Clough Go Head To Head: Apologies to anyone from One Touch Football that has already seen this, but this extraordinary recording has surfaced on the ITV website of a special edition of the Yorkshire TV show "Calendar" from the night that Brian Clough was sacked as the Leeds United manager after just 44 days in charge of the club in 1974. YTV reporter Austin Mitchell (later, of course, to become a Labour MP) not only managed to get Clough into the studio, but also his predecessor at Elland Road, then slightly eerie then-England manager Don Revie. They manage to say more about football clubs and how they run themselves in the first five minutes than anybody connected with the Premier League (managers, players, chairmen or media) has managed in the last fifteen years. You can only watch this on Internet Explorer, by the way, and possibly only in the UK, for all I know. With this in mind, I have snaffled an MP3 of it for your perusal. Really, it's quite special.

Marching On Together?

I've had an evening off from this place, but you can see the fruits of my labours on Pitch Invasion. It'll be up on there at some point in the near future (providing it's not judged to be too libellous or whatever - although, my word, I'd like to see Ken Bates take my thoughts on him to court). Meanwhile, here's a little YouTube compilation featuring some of their happier times.

The Times, They Are a-Changin'...

I didn't put anything up on here last night because I was fiddling about doing geeky things. Unforgiveable, I know. I have to say that I've never been enormously impressed with Blogger and the templates and CSS, and since I've been using Wordpress I've found that it's much more intuitive, better to look at and easier on the eye. So, last night I ported the whole of this blog over there. You can see it here. Now, the decision is down to you. Take a look at it and post your comments on here - then I'll take a decision over whether to keep this place running on here or call it a day with Blogger and keep going on Wordpress. To make this all a bit easier, I've even gone to the trouble of creating a little online poll. I'll leave this at the top here for a couple of days, so please take the trouble to click on one of the answers below.

Should I keep 200percent here, or shift it over to Wordpress?

Yes. I fear change. No. Move it over. Blogger is rubbish, Can't you just keep them both running at the same time? What are you talking about? I only came here for pictures of ducks dressed as footballers. (Sorry - had to change the poll to somewhere less infuriating)

Birthday Birthday Birthday!

In all the excitement of the play-offs and the anniversary of Heysel, I forgot to mention that this little blog passed its first birthday on Monday. Time, I think, to thank you lot for bothering to read it. It has been, I have to say, quite a year. Your votes helped to send me, of course, to Japan (for which you will all have my eternal gratitude), and this place has turned up in some fairly unusual places - The Sun (and they even managed to mention what a massive geek I am) and The Guardian (no picture of that one, but I'll dig it out at some point) amongst others, and I get an average of just over five thousand people reading this at some point each month. How rare.

I would like to express my gratitude to everyone that links to and reads this place, but I would also be interested to know what you want more of and less of on here. I like to think that I try to cover stories that aren't being covered elsewhere on here, and that will always be a feature of this particular site, but I'm always trying to think of ways in which to change this blog to suit you guys, so your input on this subject would be most welcome. Also, I'd like to take the opportunity to extend an invitation to you that I offered several months ago - if any you would like to contribute to this blog, just email me, and I'll get straight back to you. The same goes if you want to be linked from the right hand side of this page - I'm going to have a root through the links over the next few days and pull out all of the dead wood, so anyone that I have overlooked (and I have to say at this point that this is almost always accidental on my part) can feel free to leave their links in the comments or mail them to me, and I'll put them up as soon as I can. Anyway, briefly to business. Here's a quick round up of the news over the last few days.

Transfer Fever - To be absolutely honest with you all, I very seldom notice the performances of individual players when I'm watching a match. I don't know why this is - I've always assumed it to be some sort of blind spot that I suffer from - but one player that I did notice earlier this season was Gareth Bale, during a Southampton match on the television that I happened to catch. The press have made quite a lot of him over the last year or so, and when I did finally get around to seeing him play, he was at a different level to everyone else on the pitch. I am, therefore, delighted to be able to confirm that Spurs have signed him for £10m. Spurs, usually notorious for buying completely the wrong players in the transfer markets, finally seem to be getting these decisions right. Bale reminded me of nothing less than the young Ryan Giggs, which is high praise indeed.

Quitting Gigging - After just 64 caps in sixteen years, Ryan Giggs announced at the start of the week that his appearance for Wales against the Czech Republic on Saturday will be his last for the national team. Giggs has always been pretty transparent about his feelings towards the Welsh national team, and his regular absences from their line-up because of suspicious "injuries" have almost become a cliche in themselves. He has, of course, been a fantastic player for Manchester United over this period of time, but he never really cut it on the international stage and, if I were a Welsh supporter, I wouldn't be missing him that much. The middle of a qualifying campaign seems, even if it's a disastrous one, seems like a strange time to quit, and I have seen whispers that the whole thing might even be a ruse to get a boost to tickets at a time when crowds for matches at the Millennium Stadium have plummeted through the floor. I wouldn't be surprised to see him back in a year and, if I was to be honest, I wouldn't much want to give a big send off to someone who always seemed to put his club before his country, and who didn't do much for them when he did deign to put in an appearance for them.

Between A Rock & A Hard Place - It's not really necessary to read too much into the headline of this article in The Times the other day - it's mere conjecture and I can't find anything from FIFA to back it up. John McBeth's comments have an element of truth in them, but were cloaked in the sort of language normally reserved for old colonials and the Daily Mail. There is widespread corruption in the handling of ticket sales. Jack Warner, the president of CONCACAF, the Central and North American FIFA confederation, is no stranger to taking a back-hander, but to single out associations from the Caribbean and Africa as being corrupt, when these sort of antics are endemic throughout the game on a world-wide scale. How do you think that so many tickets for major matches end up in the hands of ticket touts? Warner is not afraid to play the race card when criticism is thrown at him, and this sort of comment only adds fuel to his fire.

Web Round-Up

I'm somewhat glad that we're through with the European Championships for a while. It's too much football and not enough football at the same time. If you missed all of it this week, you'll be able to catch it all on Saturday, on "Football Focus". The next couple of days will give us all a few days to catch our collective breath, so I thought that now would be as good a time as any to catch up on my football picks from the internet. First and foremost, I should apologise to anybody that doesn't appear on the list below - there are plenty of excellent sites and blogs that won't be listed below because, to be honest, there are too many to list. I've also left out links related to specific clubs. These are in no particular order, and are all taken from the links section on the right (with a couple of exceptions).

Culture Of Soccer: So, you think that Americans can't write intelligently about football, hmm? Wrong, and "Culture Of Soccer" is proof of that. The American perspective on the world game is an interesting one, and deserves more attention that it gets. MLS is an intriguing league - far more egalitarian in its structure than the major European league - and I will attempt to post something about it before its season starts. Highly recommended.

The Subbuteo Page: I mentioned this page in here a long, long time ago, but it's more than worth a reminder. These days with kids, of course, it's all Pro Evolution and knifing each other, but long ago, it was all about accumulating bits of plastic and trying to assemble something that looked like the Bernabau in your loft. The sheer breadth of equipment made by the various companies that have manufactured it are staggering, and if you can't waste an afternoon looking at this and cooing, I'm fairly certain that you haven't got a soul.

Goalkeepers Are Different: Brian Glanville said it first and, my word, he was right. Goalkeepers are different. This site isn't updated half as regularly as I'd like, but the custodians of the nets deserve their own page, and this is as good as there is on the subject. The Quirky Facts page alone contains enough useless information to render you friendless after just a couple of nights in the pub, and this is the highest praise that I could give.

Historical Kits: If, like me, you are obsessed with the paraphenalia and minutae of football, this should be in your list of bookmarks. You have to do quite a bit of delving to get you to the things that make you nod your head sagely whilst stroking your imaginary beard, but it's more than worth it. Also, there are a few blanks, so have a look for your favourite team and you might even be able to help them out, if you're that way inclined. An invaluable resource, as they say in the trade.

101 Great Goals: This site hardly even needs any introduction from me. 101 Great Goals has all the important goals, lovingly prepared and shoved onto YouTube, and usually available barely twenty-four hours after the end of the match.

Hobo Tread: Here's a small confession for you: Hobo Tread is, more than anything else, responsible for making me go to random non-league football matches over the last few months. If I feel as if I should go to a football match on the Saturday but suspect that I won't much feel like getting out of bed, I have a read of it and suddenly I'm in the mood. It also allows me the fantasy that I am doing something worthwhile, rather than merely being one step away from having a bobble hat and a mug of Bovril.

Some People Are On The Pitch: Do you ever get the feeling that you're looking at yourself in a parallel universe? I get that feeling when I read "Some People Are On The Pitch", only the people in this parallel universe have more and better ideas than me. And they're better writers. But it's not like I'm jealous or anything.

Spangly Princess: Okay, so it's not completely about football, but this blog is well written enough to justify your regular attention. If you're looking for confirmation on this subject, check the archives for her articles on the crowd violence at the Catania-Palermo match earlier this year. It was good enough to get her published in "When Saturday Comes", no less.

If This Is Football: I've left my favourite until last, actually. Written by an ex-Brightonian now living in America, it offers the sort of insight that only someone that has experienced the culture of the game in two completely different countries can give. A mixture of culture, politics and players with ridiculous hair - in other words, everything that this blog aspires to be. If you bookmark only one site as a result of this article (and I have the distinct feeling that I'm going to lose what few readers I have as a result of this piece), it should be this one.

And that's your lot. As ever, I'm on the lookout for more good football links to put on the right-hand side of this page, so feel free to put your own suggestions in the comments. I like to think that I'm democratic, if nothing else.

Coke Is The Real Thing

So, Shaun Newton... busted. The biggest surprise of the whole story to me wasn't that he'd been caught having taken the old Bolivian Marching Powder, rather that he was playing at West Ham when he was. Most Wolves fans will tell you that he spent much of his time at Molineux as if under the influence of a very heavy dose of mogadon. That he was in a Premier League club's squad having spent a few seasons singularly failing to be Wolves' long-term replacement for Steve Bull was something of a shock, I can tell you.

I'm struggling to see how a seven month ban is proportionate, especially when compared with the recently-retired Zinedine Zidane's three-match ban for head-butting someone for insulting his mother in the World Cup final. Zidane is, of course, an icon. A role-model to millions. To see him commit such an act of violence on a football pitch was shocking. He'll spend three days (yes, that's three days) doing community service, because his international career is over. Newton, according to tabloid rumour, isn't even much of a role-model within his own family at the moment. If the authorities (and, presumably, the clubs) really wanted do something about recreational drug use in football, presumably they'd be better advised to not pay their young players thousands of pounds a week for a couple of days work, and then leave them to their own devices for the rest of the time. This, though, is the paradox of the harsh sentencing of drug offenders. It tackles those unfortunate enough to get caught, without actually tackling the problem itself. Just like in wider society, funnily enough.

It's difficult to see how cocaine could be regarded as a performance-enhancing drug in any case, of course. If football required players to talk too much, sweat profusely, gurn and grind their teeth, then I can see how it would be performance-enhancing (and it would also explain something about Paul Gascoigne's problems - how did they not spot that earlier?), but I can see no real benefit to him disappearing for the whole of the half-time break with a rolled up twenty pound note. Steroids are a different matter, but coke? Pull the other one.

In other news, Spurs will pull off the transfer coup of the summer if they can prise Damien Duff away from another season on the bench for Chelsea. It's a sign of how far they've come in such a short period of time that they can be seriously linked with a player of his calibre. They're the favourites to get Pavel Nedved in the great Juventus fire-sale, too. Meanwhile, Quinton Fortune has got got to suffer the indignity of playing a trial match for Bolton against Burnley at the weekend (this amuses me for a reason that I can't quite put my finger on), and, finally, Liverpool are set to pay £6m for Jermaine Pennant from Birmingham City. Hopefully they'll take more care of him than they did of the "Spice Boys" in the 1990s.

Finally, because I can't leave a post on here without a link, I'd recommend that you all take a look at this blog about the MLS in America. It's rather good. The owner of it, for reasons that I haven't fully fathomed yet, also supports Ipswich Town. It takes different strokes to move the world.

The Spirit Of Football

I've spent most of this evening looking around for geek-tastic things to put on here after the World Cup has finished. You may well all die of excitement. Under normal circumstances, I would have put this on afterwards, but it is World Cup related. Whilst taking a look at Technocrati earlier this evening, I noted a link to The Great Gubba Fiasco on a blog called "The Spirit Of Football". Well, I kind of got sucked into it, and it's brilliant. Best of all is this post about their visit to see St Pauli play Trinidad in Hamburg. There's no other club in the world like FC St Pauli. You can read more about them here. It is one of my life-long ambitions to see them play at the Millerntor, and I am enormously, enormously jealous. More gubbins at some point tomorrow, including (time permitting) a definitive guide to how to make football better. I'll do my utmost to resist the temptation to say "make them play in clown costumes".