Still Following the Trawler

As those shiny, plastic balls lay patiently in the Euro dome of destiny, is anyone else getting that tingling feeling in their crotchal region in the build up to today’s Champions League Group Draw? No? Umm...me…neither. Anyhoo, as an esteemed member of the highly prestigious ‘Pot 1’, we’re thankfully avoiding Champions Inter, last seasons finalists and lucky cheating bastards Bayern Munich, Barca, Milan as well as Arsenal and Chelsea. We also avoid CL debutants Tottenham until at least the Quarters So here’s a quick butch at the '4 toughies' we could potentially be paired with... Real Madrid : Euro Pedigree: 9 European Cups, 3 Runners-up. Star Player: Cristiano Ronaldo CL Last Season: Last 16 How they qualified this year: 2nd  in La Liga to Barcelona . 2009/10 top scorer:   Higuain, 29 goals Legends:   Raul (who has just left after 16 seasons for Schalke 04) holds the record for most appearances (741) and Champions League goals (66). Di Stefano and Puskas have 13 La Liga ti

The thought going into yesterdays game at Craven Cottage – a place we haven’t had a League win for three seasons – was that avoiding a repeat of last season’s debacle (0-3, Scholes had a shitter etc) would have been ideal. But that naïve view would have altered immediately after a glance at the top of the table that read ‘6 points’ and ‘For: 12 ;  Against: 0 ’ next to Chelsea ’s name. A win, against our most prominent and contemporary bogie team, was therefore nothing less than essential. Well Scholes, the current darling of the Premiership, didn’t have a shitter and continued in his rejuvenated ways by scoring an ‘early-Noughties Scholes’ beauty. But as it was, and how it so avoidably shouldn’t have been, the curse of the cottage (copyright ‘When the Seagulls Follow the Trawler…’ 2010) struck again. And more pressingly, the ‘curse’ of last season’s consistently average brand of football has, at such an early stage, struck again. The immediate and all too obvious post-match criticis

This might seem a tad random, verging on plain inappropriate, but BASICALLY it recently occurred to me while upgrading my phone that I took a copious amount of photos during my year at Old Trafford last season (my first season as a ticket holder). Anyway, they're late, but I don't care. Here are my pics from 2009/2010 ... My Seat - vs Birmingham City (1-0) . August 16th ...and view. Pre-match. The Game. Manc derby (4-3) . September 20th vs Everton (3-0) . 21st November In the North Stand for the Leeds Cup game (0-1) . January 3rd vs Hull City (4-0) . January 23rd Beckham's return (4-0) . March 10th Post-match. After the City game. vs CSKA (3-3) . November 3rd Last game of the season . May 9th

£7million for an unknown playing in the third tier of Portuguese football? Scott at Republik of Mancunia spells out exactly what we all think of Fergies claims that their's ‘ no value in the market ’ now. Read Mike Norrish at the Telegraph's claim that Wazza’s on the decline (for England , anyway), and that Capello’s focus should be on ‘fixing’ him rather than falling out with Becks. After Giggsy’s beaut against Newcastle on Monday – confirming this as his 19th  consecutive season scoring in the Premier League – the Telegraph look back at Ryan’s 5 best goals . Another Scott one here. I was literally creasing my pants at the responses  to this picture in RoM's competition: Personal favourites: daveob82   says: I need an adult! vika09   says: Shh Shh. Where you’re from, this is legal. shabadu84   says: Smith: Oh Chicharito, my precious, I am so happy that you have joined me in England. I’ve been watching you in the World Cup you know. You were magnificent. I always knew…one

Ah the opening game of the season…it was…good? Wasn’t it...?? …Look, if I’m being perfectly honest, I didn’t go because of work commitments (apparently "it’s the first game of the season you c*nts!?"  doesn’t  fly too well with some employers). And to add to my lack of loyalty, I had the missus round (I know, major faux pas)…so inevitably, one thing led to another…and then before I knew it: game paused, balls deep, freezing cold dinner and for a good 10 minutes after, I had no idea what football was. But when I finally came round and resumed the beautiful spectacle on the telly that I had been without for 3 long months, I hit play and remembered just how much I loved and missed United. And as splendid as the intercourse was, I had to chuckle to myself at those fools who claim so flippantly that sex is better than football (no offence, love)*. They are clearly not United fans. Because quite frankly, nothing is better than watching United play. Good result, bad result...the exc

Chelsea look… annoyingly exactly the same as they did at the end of last season. 'I LOVE being a twat' They scored 38 goals in their last 10 games of the previous campaign (including the 8-0 win at home to Wigan in the last match). So if their overall form throughout the season – 6 defeats, 5 draws and 86 points – didn’t fully justify being crowned Champions in some peoples eyes, then 103 goals surely did. And it will again this season if they carry on like they’ve started in the 6-0 win (Drogba hat-trick and all) against West Brom . ‘Scoring for fun’ is something that is fast becoming synonymous with Ancelotti’s Chelsea, however whether they can add consistency to that is still, on the basis of one solitary win, completely unproven. Yet already, after that solitary win, we are playing catch up! Well thank f**k we love scoring against the Geordie's. Liverpool look… better? '...tit!' Well the obvious and highly unoriginal response to that would be ‘not hard, is i

Well my fellow pathetically besotted reds? The time has finally come. After 98 days/14 weeks of waiting patiently for the start of the new season (being slightly distracted for a month as we watched the worlds best players embarrass themselves in some international tournament)…the Premier League  has officially kicked off  in the form of the typically disappointing Charitable for the Community Shield. A good game and even better individual performances from the  young (Rooney, Fabio, Hernandez) and  old (Scholes and Van der saar) of United sealed a usually amazing result against the 'best team in England'. However it’s hard to a nalyse yesterdays game  and in turn almost pointless getting excited over the result (even if it did bring home this season's first piece of silverware) because of the constant levels of realism that overpower it. In any tournament that the two biggest teams in the country meet – whether it be in the early stages of the Carling Cup or in the Champio