Sea of Tears

If the connoisseurs had been salivating at the prospect of Fulham V Birmingham City, they would now be disappointed. It wasn't a bad game, but the game was not characterised by the silky skills of the participants (Hleb apart).Blues looked quite lively in the first half, as did Fulham, actually, but, Fulham looked very vulnerable every time Blues attacked with malign intent……. and there's the rub; Blues were not malign enough, often enough.

Blues took the lead after some fucking superb, high class work by Hleb who put Larrsson in to score. YES!!!! was my first thought. My second  thought was, shit, we are going to close up the shop now, and invite them to try and burgle us. The obduracy of our defence is rightly lauded, maybe I'm a philistine, but I prefer to watch the beautiful game. This was an occasion when Blues could have given us a treat, Fulham were there for the taking, but no, onto the back foot we went. The mantra seems to be "what we have, we hold"

Fulham looked much livelier in the second half, but only because we allowed them to. Whereas we were passing the ball forward in the first half, we resorted to lumping it aimlessly up the field, or in the general direction of Cameron Jerome, which has the same effect as an aimless punt up the field, as the ball immediately comes back. And there we were: a practice game, attack v defence. Until we got burgled.

From there on we huffed, they puffed, but no one blew the house down. It was a fair result in the end and a point for us, away from home, is not to be sniffed at. I am convinced though, that with a bit more ambition, a bit more heart and effort in going forward,  we would have scored more. Mind you, we were much more adventurous than last week, doubling the number of shots we had on target. Still, we have gone above the Villa, and that will do nicely. Very nicely.

The England cricket team sailed off to the antipodes with the expectation that they would murder an Australian team which is in disarray. The players were full of it, ex coaches were full of it, the media was full of it, social media was full of it. Even the Aussies waded in. 3 days in, Australia are, predictably, murdering us.

I shouldn't like boxing, but I do and I will be searching for a stream of the Froch fight later on (I don't like it enough to actually pay for it!) Meanwhile, here is a brilliant report of the Pacquiao v Margarito ruckus

God: a divine North Korea

Transcript of the Blair  / Hitchens ding dong.

I'm struggling to find a decent book to read. I've tried the new Jonathan Coe and couldn't get on with it, A John Connolly which had promise but failed to keep the promise and not one, but two Alan Fursts, which were both horrible. I have just started Haileys War, but have no great hopes for it. It is freezing cold out there; one of life's pleasures is to be in the warm, snug as a bug, immersed in a book. I am fed up. It seems like a waste of a beautiful winter.