Chelsea have announced that they’re looking at plans to build a new stadium on the site of Battersea power station. A relief for John Terry & Ashley Cole who got slightly mixed up and feared they were being moved to Battersea dogs home. To be neutered. The club doesn’t have its on-field troubles to seek at the moment, having lost 4 of their last 5 matches. At Porto, Villas Boas won 4 trophies in one season and led the team on a 36 match unbeaten run. That’s the trouble with appointing managers who’ve only known success, you don’t know how they’ll react to things going wrong. Expect Abramovich to correct that mistake soon by appointing Gary Megson instead. Or just hitting the speed-dial to Avram Grant.
Sticking with the Premiership, Tottenham’s 40 year-old goalie, Brad Friedel, has said that he could play on for years to come. What a lesson he is to all young players in the game. That lesson being – go bankrupt, it’ll really focus your mind on the need to keep playing.
Real Madrid have apparently let it be known that they’re prepared to let Kaka leave for £30m in the January transfer window. Pretty sure this story is nonsense. Surely it should have read “would absolutely LOVE to get £30m for Kaka in the January transfer window”. It does present a fantastic opportunity for a swap deal with Carlos Tevez…something that should really be expanded to take the format of an episode of Wife Swap. In ‘Husband Swap’ we could wait for the look on Carlito’s face as Mrs Kaka explains that it’s time to hand over 10% of his wages as a tithe to the Evangelical Church. Watch on, engrossed, as Tevez pleads with Kia Joorabchian to negotiate with Jesus to get it down to 8%.
As has been widely reported, David Beckham enjoyed a “fairytale ending” to his time at LA Galaxy by lifting the MLS Cup. What that phrase fails to take into account is that fairytales do have happy endings…but usually after the rest of the story has been pretty dark and miserable. Yes, Sleeping Beauty woke up at the end…but only after spending years pissing off to play for AC Milan or to go to royal weddings. I may have misremembered that fairytale. Still, Becks only has another 2 kids to go and he can play Snow White instead. I’ll leave the other crucial bit of casting in that to your imagination.
Neil Lennon has confirmed that Celtic did hold talks with Gordon Strachan over the former Celtic boss taking on an ‘advisory role’ to Lenny, and that he’d backed the move, but unfortunately terms couldn’t be agreed. Despite this, Lenny says “I can still pick up the phone to him”. Yes, but now he knows there’s money in it, at what point does Gordon turn on the meter? At “Hi, how’s the family?” or does he have the decency to wait until the first tentative “Aw f*ck, let me tell you what Majstorovic did this time…”?
Paddy McCourt has suggested that he’s not satisfied by life on the bench at Celtic, and pointed out that, “I don’t think I’d struggle to get another club”. He might struggle to get another club that don’t expect him to play for 90 minutes. To be fair, McCourt has turned in some excellent 90-minute performances for Celtic. In 15-minute installments. His ball skills aren’t in doubt, but he is a player for whom a “pay as you play deal” would mean living below the bread-line.
Inverness Caledonian Thistle were successful in their appeal against Greg Tansey’s red card (as predicted yesterday on Scottish Comedy FC by our qualified ref, Rob Kane), though the club only confirmed their decision to appeal when a local businessman came forward to offer to cover the costs of the appeal… and Terry Butcher’s travel to Glasgow for the hearing. Butch was lucky to make it, after hitting some delays on his route that took him South on the Orient Express to catch a flight to Barbados, cruise back to Southampton, fly via helicopter to Edinburgh, then get the train first class to Glasgow. On the plus side for the generous businessman, Terry did buy his own crisps for the journey. He wasn’t taking the piss.
Ex-Rangers striker James Beattie has signed for his old club Sheffield United until mid-January. Beattie had made it clear that he was prepared to “take a wage cut” to join the Blades. Apparently not having realised that it’s pretty difficult to take a wage cut when you don’t have a job. Beattie hasn’t scored a goal in a first-team match since October 2009, and, on the evidence of his spell at Ibrox, what pace he had to start with in his career has now evaporated completely. United’s best tactic may be to just keep putting in cross after cross…in the hope that by the time he gets into the box for the first one, he arrives at the perfect moment to nod in the next one.
St Johnstone’s new boss, Steve Lomas, got off to a good start with a 0-0 draw at Ibrox. After the match he did betray his inexperience by suggesting that he’d only sell Murray Davidson to Rangers for over £1m. That’s not the way things are done in Scotland. If you want £1m off Rangers, please have the decency to take out a court order like everybody else. Rangers, meanwhile, have signed Sone Aluko after his family agreed to pay Aberdeen £150000 for his ‘career development fee’. Given that Aluko had been without a club for 6 months… it’s a career the Dons developed in much the same way that they ‘developed’ Mark McGhee’s and are on the verge of ‘developing’ Craig Brown’s. Negotiations over the fee were awkward…as you’d expect when the members of Aluko’s family putting up the money are based in Nigeria and their initial emails requesting the Dons’ bank details kept being knocked out by the spam filter.
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About the Author
Twice runner-up in Scottish Comedian of the Year finals, Teddy was named ‘Best Up and Coming Comedian’ at the Scottish Variety Awards in 2010. He’s written for two BBC Radio 5 ‘Unsporting Reviews of the Year’, and has also worked as both writer and script editor on the BBC1 Scotland football shows ‘Offside’ & ‘Only An Excuse?’. He’s been a Rangers season-ticket holder for the past 17 years, but he’s all about the football not “all that other shite”. Also has a fondness for Dynamo Kyiv that can be traced back to an unhealthy obsession with Alexei Mikhailitchenko (or Oleksiy Mykhalychenko if you prefer to transliterate from the Ukrainian rather than the Russian. That’s the unhealthy obsession we’re talking about.)
“brilliant Scottish comic” Kate Copstick, Scotland on Sunday
“Head, shoulders, knees and toes above the rest…mighty stage presence and impressively high punchline ratio” Brian Donaldson, Scotsman
“freshly minted topical gags…pin-sharp lines…great routine…a class act” Steve Bennett, Chortle.co.uk
“has flourished…cracking lines” Jay Richardson, Scotsman
“there are few of his Scottish-based contemporaries that can spin the same high standard of punchlines” Brian Donaldson, Scotland on Sunday
You can follow Teddy on Twitter: @ComedyTeddy
Check out Teddy’s website: http://comedyteddy.com/
Just loving this blog.