David Kelly

It's the pitch that every other team in the country plays on so it probably is the same one as the national team plays on.

Citeh love to spend fortunes on central defenders who aren't good enough don't they. Three seasons in a row this will be. I suppose if it goes through we'll see Everton coming straight in for Gini.

After seeing Fish say that he had 7 assists to his name last season (which surprised me), I went slightly Happy Face and looked further into the stats. He was joint 14th in the league in assists which is pretty respectable for someone playing in a relegated team. But he played quite a bit more than a lot of the players above or around him in that list. If you looked at his assists per game, he drops down to 26th out of the top 50. Thats only slightly above Shelvey and lower than Wes Hoolahan (Norwich) and Jordan Veretout (Villa). If you look at his assists per minute played he drops further to 33rd out of the top fifty which has him behind Shelvey and a lot of other players who aren't rated nearly as highly. Unsurprisingly he comes out much worse in terms of goals per game being 47th out of the top 50 assisters (scoring only one goal I didn't comparing to the top goal scorers). For me the stats don't come close to backing up his own assertations that he should be playing in the champions league.

Yes boss. Some good people in it. Bodie and Omar from the Wire as well as Turturo. Looks really promising.

The Night Of. New HBO series with John Turturo about a young Pakistani American who's perfect night out turns into a nightmare. I'm trying not to spoil this too much for fear of Gemmil's wrath but it's difficult. This is less than synopsis I read so hopefully it's ok. Only the been the first episode so far (second is Sunday) but I really enjoyed it. Hopefully it carrys on in the same vein.

You can always rely on the jocks to go one worse than us. England get beat off Iceland, Scotlands best team loses to a pub team.

Got the email through to renew my england supporters club membership for £65 for the year. With fat Sam as manager? Erm nah your alright.

That's kind of what I meant. Just in a harsher way.

I really don't believe that there's any way that Rafa believes he will be playing for us next season. But he's doing exactly the right thing sayiing in public that we don't need to sell him and we don't want to. It's a much better approach to trying to get the most from selling someone than the way Pardew went about things. But then again it's in Rafa's best interests to bring in the most amount of money possible so that he can spend it on the squad. The king was never concerned about that.

Already been dismissed. Thought he'd retired tbh.

Says he's a defensive mid but can play right or centre back.

They're all too soft these days like. I think that comes from the academies and having everything done for them. Used to be that young players had to clean the pros boots and the like. I really can't see that happening now.

The leaders thing might be a bit of a dirrent issue. When England did well in 90 and 96 we had players like Pearce, Butcher, Adams, Ince etc who were leaders. I'm not sure any of them were particularly educated, but they lead by example. I'm not sure you could teach what made them leaders.

Not so sure that uni isn't an option so much any more. When I was at school it seemed like hardly anyone went on to uni but I've got mates from the same area who are about ten years younger than me and most of them went to uni. I think it's a much more common thing these days. That said, combining a football career with uni would be very difficult I'd imagine. The clubs should be doing a lot more to educate young players coming through though.

I watch a lot of sport on Tv and it always occurs to me that the commentary on Football is much worse than it is on other sports. Cricket and rugby being two sports where I find the pundits are much better than their football counterparts. Personally I think this is because most footballers in this country are just like Steven Taylor (ie thicker than whale spunk). I was discussing this with a mate and he suggested that it might just be that that sports like cricket and rugby are more complicated so that the comentators seem better because they know much more about it than I do. I do think this is right to an extent but I think at least part of the reason they know more about these more complicated sports is that they're just better educated people. Generally speaking, football is one of the most simple sports there is and that's why it's the most popular across the globe. You don't need to be intelligent to play it and most of the players don't seem to be particularly clever or cultured individuals. I don't know whether there is a culture of stupidity like that article suggests but you do sometimes get these stories about certain players who have other interests as they are unusual cases so it wouldn't surprise me. And that might in turn follow through that the England team is made up of people who generally can't think for themselves. Given the size of our country and the level of our leagues, there must be some reason why the national team has generally done poorly in tournaments.

There's not been many from the big European countries went to China so far. It may be that we're going to start to see more and more doing it. On a semi related note, did anyone see Rameries going mental after getting sent off in China the other day?

This is why I can't for the life of me understand why they are talking about an English manager. Plenty of national teams have foreign managers.

Could you imagine German, Spain, Italy or France considering someone with similar qualifcations.

It usually works out that way. Of course then we just end up getting the money in without getting a replacement in. Mind you, we arguably dont need one.

The man's an absolute mess unfortunately.

That must be every owners dream.

It was a shite tournament with few (if any memorable games). For England fans it's likely to get even worse if Big Sham gets the job. That he's even being considered shows how few good English managers there are out there. In fact it shows there simply aren't any top level ones.

The Chronicle saying that our valuation of him is £35m now. Given the fees going about that seems fair given how he seems to be rated. Personally I still think he's massively overrated even when he is sufficiently motivated. His touch and final ball are both shite.

It's just Cozy Joes in the Bigg Market man. He's trying to make it sound like more than it is.

He's talked in the past about Viera being the player he modelled himself on so it looks like defensive midfield his is main position. Hearing mixed messages about whether it's right or centre back he can also play. Possibly it's both.