Ah Nottingham, so much to answer for. Wrong city - it was Sunderland - but you get my point. It's not the best of days, in many, many ways, but the one to share is the fact that I'm on medication and thus not quite at the peak of my powers.
I have an infection. In fact I've not felt myself - ho and furthermore ho - since before Christmas when I was poisoned by some rogue fish'n'chips. My drug cocktail is a vicious combination of kickass antibiotics and pain killers which apparently cause headaches if you take them for more than three days, thus transforming their very raison d'etre. The good news is that I can drink alcohol, the bad news is that I don't feel like it, since I feel horrible. It's a kind of low-rent headache, coupled unceremoniously with old man's backache and a young man's ache just above the groin. Rather than telling me to stop being so self-indulgent, the doctor told me what it was and I forgot instantly. Even driving hurts; driving to Nottingham Forest especially.
Still, I have parking, I haven't forgotten anything in my stupor and even though the tablets make me feel cold, I've wrapped up warm. It's a funny place, the City Ground. Photos of the Clough era are everywhere, presumably intimidating every subsequent manager from David Platt to David Pleat and there's a feeling the hackroom hasn't been touched since Trevor Francis signed. The pies are OK though and I kind of like the exaggerated politeness of the staff. Add some cigarette fumes and whisky breath and you have football journalism in the late-'70s.
Who's here? Nobody I know - there's a very good reason for this but we must move on - except for Tony Rushmer, once of he News Of The World, now flying solo and resplendent in a three-piece suit like the chief clerk of a Victorian shipping company and someone else who I'd estimate was present for about 20 minutes of the game.
nd continuing the theme of not-being-touched-since-Clough's-era, the sole hacktoilet is disgusting. Later, I will open rhe door and discover an elderly hack sat there in full bowel-evacuation mode. I will find it hard to shake that particular image. Until I die.
The press box is half-empty, or if you want to look at it another way, half-full. Naturally there are no replays, but it's spacious and easy to work from. Forest are having a torrid time of it and they're up against Southampton who're up for it. It's pretty obvious how things are going to go from the first few minutes. Forest's Luke Chambers gets himself sent early in the second half, but Souhampton are already cruising. With 10 men or 11, Forest are truly awful. Even Lewis McGugan, never Billy Davies's favourite but whom I'd never seen have anything approaching bad game, is a one-man shambles.
They're efficient, exuberant and even without Rickie Lambert, full of goals, but I suspect Southampton couldn't quite believe their luck at being right here, right now. They win 3-0, but for some late Lee Camp heroics, it could have been six. Afterwards, their manager Nigel Adkins looks and sounds like a Premier League manager, not least when I ask him if he thought it would be that easy.
In contrast Steve Cotterill looks like a man who moved to the wrong job at the wrong time and not for the first time in his career He blames the referee, but admits his team were outclassed. I ask him if he's ever regretted coming to Forest. He looks me in the eye and says "no". I'll ask him again next time we meet.
I slug some painkillers and shuffle off home. All being well, I'll make Borgen...

Playlist
Doll By Doll
Gypsy Blood
More proof of Jackie Leven's near genius. Those who know, know. That's a disappointing rather than elitist point,,,

As history has recorded at dreary length, going to Chelsea was a scary experience in the '70s and '80s. I'm sure I'm not inventing a faux folk memory vis-a-vis shared turnstiles and having to sprint around the back of the baying hordes to reach the away corner and I'm certainly not deluded about that time hundreds (ie dozens) of Tacchini-clad urchins invaded a tube train and caused all sorts of carnage, but not to me or my friends. We could smile in a Cockney accent you see.
But even as they were attracting just 6677 hardy souls when Carlisle United visited in 1983 (Paul Canoville scored twice), there was always something special about Chelsea and about Stamford Bridge. The grandeur might have been delusional, but it was sustained them from Bentley to Abramovich, so the team of Peter Rhodes-Brown, Phil Driver and Bob Iles had ideas way above their station. Now, Chelsea have ideas in line with their station. Outside Fulham Broadway they’re giving away bottles of Karl Lagerfeld Diet Coke. This wouldn’t have happened in David Stride’s day. It tastes like Diet Coke by the way.
Chelsea's past hasn’t died, it’s just been parcelled up and left in a corner. If you look for it, you don't have to be Donal MacIntyre getting a method tattoo. There are hints of the former simmering cauldron everywhere, but for the most part, Chelsea 2011 is a cuddly experience. It’s hardly a new observation, but the new Chelsea have priced the working class (do classes still exist? Probably) out of Stamford Bridge - there's talk of a move to a new ground which is obviously a sensible move whatever the revanchists claim - and at times in their game against Everton it’s so quiet I can hear the players. The Middle Class don't shout. There isn’t intensity, but there is expectation.
I know it’s going to be one of those days when I stride up to the door, smile boldly and discover they’ve forgotten to put me on the list, despite their having sent confirmation of accreditation. They think I’m a chancer, they might be right, but they still let me in.
Inside the press room, it’s like some kind paradise of hackery. There’s a collection of Barclays, Rudds, Stammerses, Hopkinsons, Lawrences, Folleys, Szczepaniks, Collinses etc etc to keep me entertained (or at least to nod to) and the food is a delight. Richard Rae has sent a tweet lauding Carrow Road’s cauliflower cheese. It’s almost too cruel to reply. But he's a man of the world, so I do.
The main course is curry, which I‘m not having. No problem, because I can have more smoked fish, Caesar salad, ordinary salad, herbal teas, ordinary teas, assorted cheeses, cakes of many colours, assorted breads and cracker-esque biscuits, even before the jar of Smarties. I’m sorry about a food list, I really am, although I am quite interested in what you had for lunch. Don’t worry, I get my frankly undeserved comeuppance later in the day, but that's not for here.
I talk rubbish and read the programme, which has tumbled downhill faster than Stephan Eberharter with the wind at his back. On a personal level, obviously I’d prefer that they spent their money on extra anchovies for me rather than Where Are They Now? features on Kevin Hales, but they do themselves a terrible disservice. It’s a shoddy effort - sub-Stoke except they can spell ‘focused’ - and not just because they give Johnny Vaughan a full page, although that's a decent litmus test. Manchester United produce a near-book every game and Manchester City’s is perfect bound and has opinions. It used to be brilliant. Ho hum. I wonder if Roman Abramovich can read English...
The game is for connoisseurs, ie it's a bit chess-like. Everton are cagey but efficient. Chelsea take a little while to get going but once Juan Mata flexes his muscles there’s no stopping them. At half-time, I dispatch my words, sample the gourmet pea soup and help myself to a dessert that involves apricots.
There's more of the same in the second half. Chelsea cruise home, Mata looks terrific and you wonder just how they can find room for Fernando Torres, even if they wanted to. Afterwards, I get my first look at Andre Villas-Boas, who spent most of the match impersonating an overly theatrical dervish. He doesn't exude the electricity of Jose Mourinho, but he has a similar aura. Not one for loquaciousness yet, he won't be drawn on how great Mata is, so we'll have to do it for him. Let's not judge him here.
Everton, though, look in trouble. There's a lack of spark that only the knowingly doomed understand and David Moyes forever banging on about how slender his resources are is - for all its truth - becoming counter productive. He trots out the "I couldn't have asked for more" cliche, but if he believes it I'm the ghost of Drew Brand. They won’t go down but they need to do better than this.
I slope home, worried for us all.

Playlist
Coldplay
Mylo Xyloto
Parlophone
You know what to expect - although not necessarily sampling Brain May and quoting Leonard Cohen in the same song - but there are none more uplifting. The bigger they sound, they better they are.

Ah, international week. Always a chore, never a joy (unless I'm doing something interesting; then it's benison extraordinary) and even less so since they moved internationals to Friday evening. Call me a blind and deaf fool, but I don't recall seeing or hearing anyone call for that particular timetable adjustment.
In London, those who battle through the North Circular and the tube system were crying out for c70,000 people trying to reach Wembley during Friday rush hour, not to mention the extra time off work people need to take to see England make an exhibition of themselves. I'm not trying to be populist, it's just blindingly obvious. Is it FIFA or UEFA we should blame, allied to the FA for doing their customary FA about it? It can't be television: surely all the networks would prefer Saturdays... And why did Liechtenstein get an exemption last Saturday? As did Scotland - surely not co-incidentally Liechtenstein's opponents on Saturday - the other month?
Anyway, such thoughtless idiocy means neither Premier League nor Championship matches for a weekend (this racket must cost those clubs a packet) and it means a peep into Division 1, which is actually fine. I'm a pop-to-Barnet-on-my-day-off kind of guy anyway. On a Saturday with no Match Of The Day, the match of the day is Charlton Athletic v Tranmere Rovers.
Oh Charlton, how you've changed, except, of course, in being hard to reach. Way back when, going to Charlton was a mini-joy. They had the friendliness of a small club (nb: this isn't actually true, since small clubs are no more or less likely to be friendly than big clubs), allied to the scale of a big one. This time, apart from the nice view from the stand, it's like observing a match from a park. Or Hereford. They're still fairly friendly, but there's no wifi, no replays on the televisions (mine isn't working anyway), no food and, at half time after I've trekked down several flights of stairs, gone out of the ground and back in via Erith or some ghastly place, there's no tea either.
Feeling my pain, my esteemed colleague Richard Rae sends a wry tweet pointing out that, as I gnaw my shoulder off and sup my own bile, Sheffield Wednesday are serving a banquet for hacks. Including mushy peas. It's the mushy peas that break my soul.
Anyway, there's a selection of pleasant hacks to chat with and I learn one thing that makes my heart leap (be careful what you secretly wish for though) and another that makes my blood run cold. Funny business, learning things.
Anyway, what, weirdly, we're not talking about is Ramiz Alia's death, which is a shame. What a fascinating man he was. He rose without trace, survived many a murderous purge, got the top job and escaped from prison ('walked out' is the more prosaic truth, but it technically still counts as an escape) while a pensioner.
And he's one of the last - perhaps the last; it's certainly getting closer - who knew the truth of that great 20th Century mystery: how Mehmet Shehu met his end in 1981 and whether the rumour Enver Hoxha personally shot him is true. after all, PLA leaders didn't have to die as unnaturally as Beqir Balluku or Koci Xoxe, hence Hysni Kapo's surely natural demise.
The official version - that Shehu committed suicide in the midst of a mental breakdown - is certainly possible, undermined only by the convenient fact that suicide was a criminal act at the time. The PLA's tale that Shehu was a western spy is highly unlikely to say the least; that he was a Soviet and/or Yugoslav dupe marginally more plausible. Either way, it all happened so very quickly - presumably so he couldn't mobilise his PLA faction - that being taken out and shot is surely the most likely possibility. Alia, a man who knew where so many bodies were buried, knew though about this one and he knew why...
Anyway, much as I'd been looking forwards to it, the game is pretty poor. Charlton never get going and once a confident Tranmere go ahead just after the half-hour, they start time-wasting.
Charlton equalise with a penalty and that's that. All pretty subdued in fact. And speaking of subdued, Chris Powell looks like his world has come to an end, despite talking of the "fantastic achievement" of an unbeaten start. I like him. He's sensible.
In contrast, Tranmere's Les Parry players the comic sScouser role, joshing gently at himself for being fat and certain to get the sack at some point. It's a tad contrived, aided immeasurably by some people feeding him questions who seem just to have dropped by for the crack. I lob him a simple one about his team's mid-table position being false (in fairness, it looked it) and he tells me how unlucky they've been all season. I reckon he's smarter than he's letting on. And you can't help but like him.
Getting home is easier than getting there. I'm home in time for a Wallander I haven't seen. It's the one where he accidentally beds a prostitute and destroys his relationship in the process.

Playlist
Kathryn Calder
Are You My Mother?
2011
I keep recommending this deep, dark album, but nobody takes any notice, perhaps because of the misleadingly twee title. Their loss.

The Merseyside derby is a strange beast indeed. Since Sandy Brown achieved a certain kind of immortality with his own goal in 1969, the natural order of things, aided by cameos from Glenn Keeley Nicky Tanner and Graham Poll, is for Liverpool to have the upper hand and for Everton to win less often but more memorably. That's about the scale of things.
This one is a lunchtime kick-off, which means I'm up before the larks. Not that I see any larks of course. Presumably they're all asleep, unless they're extinct. I'm not sure if I'd recognise a lark anyway. Bit like sparrows are they?
The roads are clearish, the sky is blueish and the air is freshish. What can possibly go wrong. In truth, nothing. Tempting fate doesn't always have to end in tears.
I ignore the unseasonal heat and take my coat. I'm a fool. No matter, there's a traipse across sunny Stanley Park, a watch of the Liverpool team arriving on one of those Ellisons that looks like it's equipped for space travel and a "good morning" to and from everyone guarding the nice rooms where directors chew the cud (possibly literally) pre and post match as I clamber up the stairs up, up, up and away to the press room, with the loose-limbed alacrity of Tenzing Norgay gone to seed.
In there, it's ridiculously, uncomfortably hot, even though the windows are open. I hide my coat in a cloakroom, have a very hot pie (not bad actually), a hotter still cup of tea and feel better for both. There's a bucketload of nice people to swap horror stories with, I have a seat on the front row of the press box (built for dwarves of course), the wi-fi works a treat and I'm raring to go.
As it turns out are the teams. It's blood and thunder, hammer and tongs, muck and nettles, Hinge and Brackett and other meaningless phrases. And while it's hardly Millwalll/West Ham there's a bitter, spiteful edge on and off the field. As David Moyes later notes, referee Martin Atkinson - one of the better ones usually - spoils the game by sending off Jack Rodwell for a challenge on Luis Suarez that was neither fishy nor foul.
After that, Liverpool miss a penalty and take over without swamping the 10 men. The hitherto invisible Andy Carroll brilliantly peels off Leighton Baines to score their first with the sort of handsome finish that reminds you he's not just a big lummox. Parading his delight in front of the Everton fans proves to be one of his less good ideas - he really is no rocket scientist, unlike Iain Dowie - and he's pelted with various missiles for his trouble. At the same time, sporadic fighting breaks out - hardly Swansea/Cardiff to be fair - with the misplaced Liverpool fans discovering just how true the friendly derby myth is.
In the end, Liverpool deserve their win. Stewart Downing seems oddly off the pace, but Dirk Kuyt plays a blinder after missing a penalty and Lucas Leiva gets better with every game. Champions League? Possibly not, but it'll be close.
Everton, meanwhile, never recovered from Rodwell's expulsion. This isn't the moment to judge them, but they were infinitely less subdued than they were against Queens Park Rangers a few weeks ago. They won't go down, but they can moan all they like about financial straitjackets, but they have to recruit more astutely than Royston Drenthe.
Afterwards, Moyes only wants to talk about the sending off, but the heat is unbearable so he says his piece and goes. Meanwhile Kenny Dalglish is in one of those moods he last displayed at Celtic: mumbly, evasive and suspicious. He says he didn't see the red card, thus ensuring he doesn't have to talk about it properly. And so it goes.
I'm home in time for that Italian detective series I've never seen, but looks interesting. I forget to watch it.

Playlist
Leonard Cohen
Live In London (Columbia, 2009)
Magnificent of course. I wrote the sleevenotes. I didn't get paid. That's "didn't get paid" by very possibly the nicest man I've ever interviewed. Bah.

Ah, Wigan. We were such fast friends last year. This year, we haven't seen quite so much of each other. Oh well. Still, it's good to be back. Perhaps we can make a go of things again?
If Wigan are to progress they really need to start taking home points from sides so obviously their betters. And if their visitors Tottenham Hotspur at to establish more than a toe-hold in the Top 4, they really should swat Wigan with gimlet-eyed determination.
I'm worried about Wigan though. Obviously not with the same intensity I worry about getting cancer; a loved one dying or even why Tesco's Hoisin duck flavour crisps are more addictive than crack, but I worry nevertheless. They didn't go down last season by the skin of their teeth (this cliche assumes teeth has skin; we move on...) but already it's as if they've been relegated and given up. The programme's riddled with errors (Tom Huddlestone isn't that hard to spell correctly); the hackfood is a kind of lukewarm potato pie with potatoes on the side and they cheekily still charge for wi-fi.
Charging for wi-fi is one thing - they're not really meant to - but apart from five glorious minutes circa 3.06, it doesn't work. And they don't have a technical person to help. One club employee suggests - ignoring the fact a password is needed - that it doesn't work because too many people in the ground are using it. Even Crystal Palace have working wi-fi and even sitting next to the blessed Mark Ryan of the Mail On Sunday - who was forced to review the match on his Blackberry - doesn't stop the afternoon from being a little bit stressful, even with my blessed dongle. He argues Gary Caldwell is the worst player in the Premier League. Inexplicably forgetting Heidar Helguson for a moment, I plump for Steve Gohouri...
Unhelpfully, the game is terrific and needs a careful eye. Tottenham are streets - and two goals - ahead by half-time. They're excellent. Gareth Bale is unplayable, Luka Modric is unstoppable and even Emmanuel Adebayor looks engaged.
In fairness, Wigan are so spectacularly awful they'd have made Totteridge & Whetstone look like world beaters, let alone Tottenham Hotspur. They surrender possession too cheaply too often. Without the injured Emmerson Boyce and Antolin Alcaraz, their defence is more feeble than Priti Patel's intellect. Without the departed Charles N'Zogbia and Tom Cleverley their midfield lacks a hint of Premier League quality. Without the injured Hugo Rodallega they won't score. Ever.
Surprising even themselves Wigan pull one back early in the second half, but when Gohouri get himself sent off for a tackle on Bale so stupid even Harriet Harmon wouldn't have contemplated it, the game's up, much as Tottenham almost fall asleep. My neighbour acknowledges I might be right about Gohouri. Tellingly, I couldn't express an opinion on how well Brad Freidel is playing since there was nothing to judge him on.
Afterwards, Roberto Martinez is at his most Micawber-ish, ignoring the first half and concentrating only on the second. I put it to him (ooh, get me, Bernstein and Woodward) that his team are worse than last season and haven't replaced Cleverley or N'Zogbia.
In the nicest, most charming way, Martinez is having none of it. He admits they can't afford to replace those players, but bizarrely claims the squad was better than it was last season. I can't believe it. He just can't, but then again he spurned Aston Villa's advances. Obviously they'll be better when the injured played come back and obviously he was right all along when he said Wigan wouldn't go down last season, but there's something different about them this season on the field as well as off. Something more resigned...
Harry Redknapp is in one of those moods where he feels he can admit his side coasted after the break and be generous to the opposition and so he is. He praises Adebayor and Bale and says Jermain Defoe was sent home suffering from a virus. The next England manager? I can see it, but that doesn't make it right.


Playlist
The Clash
This Is England
on Cut The Crap, CBS, 1985
The Clash's last stand.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Millwall and West Ham United isn't the one they call the friendly derby. It's, cough, British football's most vicious rivalry. God only know why they can't all get along. There's some vaguely argued point about Millwall dockers scabbing during the General Strike while West Ham ones stayed out, but who cares? Really?
Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley can sit around a table together; Vietnam is one nation; South Africa's problems aren't all race-based and that Augusto Pinochet died peacefully in his sleep (unlike his victims, etc etc) meant Chile had transcended its past. So why can't some people who wouldn't recognise a dock if they lived in Tilbury (and some of them probably do) come to terms with a probably mythical past? Easy. Because they like it that way; they like the notoriety; they like outsiders calling it "football's most vicious rivalry" and they like the theatre of what usually, although not always, turns out to be shadow boxing rather than cage fighting.
Millwall entertaining West Ham is how England would be if Oswald Mosley had come to power: gangs of hard-looking - crivens, even their necks have grown coshflaps - white men looking for other gangs of hard-looking white men with a view to fighting. They're there at London Bridge when I get there, shaking hands like business colleagues, looking as though they eat motor bikes for breakfast and checking to see that those they don't know (ie me, assorted old ladies with shopping trollies and a gaggle of German tourists) aren't the other side in disguise or incognito.
And then there's the police, who would have run things under Mosley just as they do here. They're everywhere from the moment I exit the Northern Line. These are a different type of copper, not the sort who wear glasses, who joined to put “something” back or who proselytise for community policing. No, these are the big ugly bruisers, unsmiling faces as unyielding as their boots. Like those they're here to police, they’d quite fancy a fight and unlike everyone else they have truncheons, handcuffs and the courts to hand.
After the evening kick off for the 2009 West Ham v Millwall Carling Cup tie gave everyone the whole day to load themselves with drink (result: genuine mayhem and a stabbing) this one starts at lunchtime. At South Bermondsey station, two hours before the game, the police are waiting. They stop and search at what looks like random. Nobody complains, it’s part of the fun unless you’re carrying drugs or machetes.
"Hello officer," says one fan.
"Fuck off," replies the officer.
The West Ham team coach (a Clarke's like QPR; it doesn't look especially luxurious; Hallmark seem to have lost a lot of football club business of late) snakes its way through the car park, escorted by a platoon of policemen on foot, to the soundtrack of massed jeers, but nothing stronger. At the players’ entrance, there’s a pack of hungry police dogs and a pack of gum-chewing policemen to welcome the players, who look terrified to a man, apart from Sam Allardyce who smiles that knowing smile of his and John Carew who just smiles.
Predictably, Millwall are a club of extremes. I haven’t been for a few years and the press entrance has moved. Some stewards are more than helpful, some are more hostile than is necessary. There’s no food (soggy sandwiches do not count), but there’s space to work, some robust tea and a smattering people I know and like. What’s to moan about?
In the stands, the atmosphere is horrible. Apart from something about Chlamydia which confuses me, Millwall fans’ chants get to the point (“Noble you’re a cunt... Nolan you're a cunt" etc) and, cocooned in their end, the West Ham fans pretend they’re not worried about what probably won't (but still might) happen after the match. Tellingly there are so few replica shirts it might as well be the ‘70s. More than a few people here wish it were...
The real problem is the match. As if scripted by the police, it’s a damp squib which ends 0-0. Nobody gets sent off, nobody gets hurt. West Ham are better, Millwall are more plucky and I've forgotten it before the teams have reached their dressing room sanctuary.
There are sirens outside, but inside Kenny Jackett - the unlikely lovechild of Glenn Quagmire from Family Guy and Penny Pockett from Balamory - is full of beans, while Allardyce, as ever, rests his head on a hand and mumbles at length. He's never like this on television, so something's an act.
By the time I emerge blinking in the light, it's cold and a deserted. On the way to the station there's some broken bottles, a sign of trouble or just a sign of Bermondsey? There's a queue at the station where police are preventing access onto the platform. It starts to rain, really heavily (again more good news for the police: it's hard to riot in a deluge) and the drenched, dispirited queue tries to break through the surprised police. The natural order of things soon reasserts itself, but twitchy for some action, the police apprehend a few. There's a lot of grappling on the wet floor. The one who screams "you fucking bastards" at them is taken into a van; the one who flicked a policeman's helmet after being pushed out of the way is let off, as is the one who says "look, I'm really sorry". There's some sort of moral there.
The train to London Bridge is packed with plainclothes Millwall (presumably the West Ham fans allowed themselves to be escorted en masse) fans. They're all wet and deflated. It's a wet and deflating kind of day.


Playlist
The Cars
Let's Go
(on Just What I Needed: The Cars Antholoy, Rhino, 1995)
The great lost Cars single. Impossibly catchy, brilliantly sung and there's hand-clapping.

Lin Biao was the most interesting of his generation of Chinese rulers. Scared of clouds apparently. Was he murdered? Or did he really die in that plane crash, showing he was right to be afraid of clouds after all?
Ah, we're back. What a strange season it's been already. The season's a fortnight-ish old, I've reported on a fistful of games, but haven't actually attended any until now. The reasons aren't quite as straight-forwards as you may imagine, but it's mainly been down to a row between the newspapers (except for the Expresses who march to the beat of their own drum) and football authorities.
Simply put, rather than handling press accreditation themselves (no rocket science, this) they've franchised it out to a company who need to make a whopping profit and they tried to toughen the terms of the archaic deal done before social media had been invented. Naturally terms were stiffer. The newspapers baulked and found themselves locked out. Doing matches from television/radio doesn't mean you can't be insightful, witty and shark-eyed, but it's not the same. Hopefully the readers notice, much as I'm trying to make them not. At 3am on Saturday they had in their hands a piece of paper, we had peace in our time and as the sun rose I was off to Anfield, petrol in tank, spring in step, able to Tweet during games.
It's impossible to park around Anfield now - then again since I didn't know I was coming I couldn't ask for a space, but they're not as accommodating as Everton - so it's a long slog from car to ground. There must be a better way, but I can't think of it. Where do all those Liverpool-supporting cars I see on the motorways come to rest?
Anyway, there's an overcrowded press frooom, there's scouse pie, manly tea and there's a few people to nod to if not chat to. We're back in the swing of things.
The game is a treat. Having treated Roy Hodgson shabbily (maybe Liverpool were too big for him, but we'll never know will we?) and been treated shabbily by their previous owners, Liverpool are in the throes of a glorious revolution. They spent heavily in the summer, although not in their problem centre-half area and their purchases look mostly inspired, especially the brilliantly simply notion of Stewart Downing putting in some crosses for Andy Carroll to head some goals. And for the first half with Luis Suarez dehumanising Kieran Richardson they look unplayable. 1-0 is a travesty of a scoreline.
Then, something happens. Sunderland are going through their own revolution. Steve Bruce's summer purchases have improved them immeasurably, but the strangest thing was that apart from the injured John O'Shea, he chose to start with only a couple of them. After the break, they take the game to Liverpool, score a terrific equaliser and had Asamoah Gyan and Stephane Sessegnon been more interested, they might have snuck three points.
Afterwards, Kenny Dalglish is at his most Sphinx-like. There's a new smiley, patient aura to him. He's untouchable and he knows it. He said it's early days (argue if you dare; I couldn't) and that, less surely, his players were nervous. They didn't look nervous in the first half. But, hey, it's early days.
Steve Bruce, on the other hand, is delighted. Whether he believes he's a tactical genius, the Lin Biaio of football management, or he thinks he's got lucky I know not. He seems to have forgotten last season's dismal ending and argued that he didn't want to squelch the hopes of those who'd done so well last term so he didn't pick his new signings. It doesn't make sense of course, but his team's performance made a whole lot more sense. On this showing, they'll do just fine, although nobody can quietly implode quite like Sunderland. But hey, it's early days.

Playlist:
David Bowie, Absolute Beginners
Further proof that it's not been a complete washout since Let's Dance. Stately and graceful, but anxious and moving. Why don't I know any cover versions of this?
ON THE BEST OF DAVID BOWIE, 1980-'87, EMI, 2007

You know what they say, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. They're wrong: I know. I was in the pub with Bob Geldof the other week (I know, I know: just shoot me: I've asked family and friends not to press charges posthumously) and he explained how a tide of melancholy sweeps over him when darkness falls of an evening. He still needs to put the lights on to ward it off.
Some people might scoff, but I can see his point. I used to feel that way whenever summer came. I think it was a combination of the end of the football season and the morbid fear of family holidays. Today, it's not quite the same, but it's still there: there's still that sense of mourning as the football season comes to a close. More importantly, I really don't want to pass my dislike of holidays on, so I have to grow up a little and re-evaluate both beaches (ugh, all those grains, billions of them) and sun. I estimate I will once again experience the joys of a city break (you can pretend you're not a tourist in a city) in roughly 13 years. I may be incontinent by then.
This season I felt the loss of football so early there were about six games to go, but that sense of loss went away early too, before the season actually ended in fact. I'm really not sure why. Anyway, who could be maudlin at the prospect of Swansea, where they have a 35mph speed limit between the M4 and the Liberty Stadium? It's the press day, pre their play off victory over Reading.
They can't do it it at the training ground because they haven't got one. Last time I was down here. I spoke to Rory Fallon in a leisure centre canteen. Everyone's as pleasant as pleasant can be. There's hot drinks and some kind of unidentifiable food I can't bring myself to sample - I'm not ready for solids since I was on the road at 8 - and a rum selection of hacks to talk entertaining rubbish with.
Brendan Rodgers is truly fascinating. There's no shortage of ego behind the gentle demeanour, there's a chip on his shoulder about not having made the grade as a player ("I came from nothing," he tells me more than once; but he's talking about playing career rather than his NI catholic background), but like the great managers - he may not be great in the end, but he's got something - there's that mix of hubris, charisma and an ability to understand others more than himself. The consensus seems to be that Swansea will easily survive in the Premier League. That may be premature, but I hope not. Let's hope too that Rodgers doesn't start to believe his own hype. It happens y'know...
And thence - is this going to be the world's clumsiest segue? Perhaps - to Old Trafford for my last match of the season, Huddersfield Town v Peterborough United for a place in the Championship Swansea were so desperate to leave behind. God, I love the play-offs. Alas, the people of Peterborough seems less interested, but it feels like half of Huddersfield is here.
Weirdly, there's hardly anybody I know well - and not the person I really wanted to see - and I'm the only one who seems genuinely excited by the whole afternoon, but no matter. The game is too strange for words. In Twitter form (Aizlewood1, thanks for asking: the same gibberish, but shorter): "Huddersfield all over Peterborough. Peterborough score three. Peterborough promoted". I swear nobody in the ground saw it coming. I didn't. In my runner, there may have been a sentence about the inevitability of Huddersfield scoring. I wasn't alone.
Afterwards, Lee Clark is so bereft, he's almost inaudible. I ask him about team selection, but only gently. He bats it away gently, but he has a point: their defensive away formation had meant they'd been unbeaten in 2011. He'll be back, but it's going to be a struggle for him. If they don't do it next year in a tougher Division 1, as Jim Reeves once said, he'll have to go
Darren Ferguson takes an eternity to join us. I feel sorry for him, having to deflect questions about his dad all the time and I do wish he wouldn't slouch like some recalcitrant teenager, but he's the real deal as a manager, despite the misstep at Preston. Going back to Peterborough speaks volumes about his attitude. Going back to Peterborough and taking them up speaks volumes about his ability.
He won't stay there forever and already his side is looking like it's breaking up with the terrific Craig Mackail-Smith and George Boyd surely sure to flee. Then they'll be struggling again. Then things will get tricky again. Then he'll be off again.
I drive home slowly, wanting to drag the season out for a little longer. Just like I used to hang around the ground after the last match of the season. Some things can never change.

You know what they say, about chickens counting and eggs hatching... Foolishly, I thought I'd escaped going to Watford this year. But then QPR decide to win the Championship there (or do they?), there’s a rum story emerging, and off I go. I don't know why I dislike Watofrd so. It's up the road, which makes it less of an event although I never think that when I pootle off to the Emirates, jaunty spring in step. But it's horrible to get to, there's no parking and no wi-fi (I'm advised not to use the pay-for wi-fi since it's said to be unreliable) and, well, it's Watford isn't it?
The problem with all that whining - and, sensitive soul that I am, the prospect of Watford slightly undermined my week - is that it's not even fair, although every hack I speak to feels the same way. The people are friendly, they do a mean chilli, plus moist cake at half-time and the weather's so clement that I sit on the empty terraces stuffing my fat face thinking life is quite good. Actually. All things considered. It's alright at Watford: there, I've said it.
Moreover the main stand might be condemned, but it's not condemned for her majesty's press. We have it to ourselves, so there's a lot of quiet and a bit of space. And the hackbox is full of people I like, even if my view of the goal at the Vicarage Road End is obscured by a stanchion. When I come back a gentleman sporting a Watford tie offers me a bottle of beer. I take it and save it for later.
Anyway, what should be very simple is now very complex. QPR ought to win the title, indeed mathematically Tommy smith and Adel Taarabt‘s goals means they do. The three points may have been run of the mill but there’s trouble at t’mill since the upcoming Football League investigation into the excellent Alejandro Faurlin's signing might cast them into the play-offs pit if The Sun is to be believed. Or have no bearing whatsoever if QPR are to be believed.
I've no idea and there are reasons for believing both parties, but surely the wheels of justice could have turned slightly quicker. Look at it this way conspiracy theorists: at least the Football League knows how many points to deduct to save face, if not save themselves a legal challenge.
This cloud of precedent-free legal bile means it's a slightly surreal, slightly downbeat afternoon. Watford have nothing to play for, so they're in frisky mode, QPR just want to get the job done, so they're in efficient mode. It's not pretty, but they get the job done with a little to spare. The table says they're the best team in the Championship, so they must be, but I've only seen them here and at Leeds and they look a little short of Premier League quality.
Taarabt's obviously the real deal, Paddy Kenny still has it and Faurlin will be a star in the top tier, but Heidar Helguson? Matthew Connolly? Wayne Routledge? Are they going to terrify Stoke City or Bolton Wanderers? They're not, are they? Still, there's money there and I understand that money talks, even if it rarely speaks to me.
Foolishly, Watford have announced their plans to celebrate a year of mid-table mediocrity by doing a lap of honour. QPR’s hoards want to celebrate, so some of them invade the pitch. The slightly hysterical announcer ups the ante by haranguing them in the manner of an irked but worried parent and a few saunter down to the Rookery End to have a look at the Watford fans. Some police horses on the pitch make what is in fact a fairly good natured romp seem slightly more dramatic and sinister than necessary. Nobody gets hurt, quite a few people get arrested.
Afterwards I hide my beer, speculate about QPR's fate and guess that Neil Warnock won't say anything of note. He doesn't really, bar having a pop at The Sun, which more than ever makes me think their source was genuine. He won't even commit himself to expanding on "I like what my barrister's said" means his barrister has said things will work out, ie they‘ll still be promoted. Presumably it must. Ever the chipper beagle, Warnock fills in the time that we'd all rather he spent wildly speculating by praising first himself and then his players. And why not? He's done a fantastic job. And so have his players, whatever happens.
I’m home in half an hour.

You know what they say (and they said it in the theme to the BBC's Seaside Special): get a little sand between your toes. Ah yes, Blackpool. What joy. Sorry, dear reader, not to have blogged in a while...
I leave really early, just in case there's holiday traffic - there isn't - and being on the M25 at 8am when the day is unsoiled has its own special pleasure. And coming down the M1 and M6 the other way is seemingly most of Manchester - United and City fans don't seem to share coaches oddly enough - there's hold ups everywhere for them, poor lambs.
As I secretly hoped, I'm there and parked up before midday. This means there's time for some fun. I haven't been to Bloomfield Road for a decade or so (a night match if I recall) and, not that I am now, I haven't stayed in Blackpool for maybe 20 years, since a friend's family took pity on me and took me on holiday with them. It hasn't changed. It doesn't look like the holiday season is about to begin: the Tower is shrouded in mist (does anything other than mist shroud?); the trams aren't running and the seafront is drenched in roadworks.
I spend exactly £2 in the slots. That takes a minute or so. I walk onto the beach, and if not quite getting a little sand between my toes, get a little water in my shoes. I walk to the end of the south pier and back. It could be 1976, but for one of the rides playing Marillion's Kayleigh at ear-mangling volume. Had I known there'd be no food at the football, I'd have had fish'n'chips. Next time, next time... All is well with the world.
Bloomfield Road has changed. They've finally taken down the I'd Like To Knife A Preston Bastard graffiti from the early-'70s (that I can remember it shows how much it troubled me at the time; it was both the word "like" and the seeming absence of lesser violence such as punching I found so unsettling). I wander round, wonder if it's the only ground to have a council creche in its bowels and, never having reported from here before, fail to find the press entrance. A not wholly diligent steward lets me in, points vaguely to the opposite of where I thought it would be and leaves me be.
Already I sense trouble. The people are lovely, but the wi-fi doesn't work and they don't have an IT person; there's no food beyond some straggly sandwiches and the hackseats don't have numbers. Uniquely perhaps, we're literally the buffer zone between the two sets of supporters, in the very spot where other clubs have, say, police. Still at least it's not raining, which since there isn't much in the way of cover is a blessing indeed.
And I'm sat next to someone who refuses to acknowledge my winning smile (not that bloody winning obviously) or even speak to me. But he has taken my laptop plug socket. Cheers. Let's go for a drink afterwards. Actually, let's not.
Reporting on the match has its troubles (admittedly correspondents holed up in Mogadishu may take issue, but these things are relative). The sun is in my eyes, which means I can't see my laptop screen or the video screen, moving the cursor is trickiness itself and my new dongle won't let me send e.mail (anybody know why?). To keep up the sensory deprivation theme, since we're in football's equivalent of the 38th Parallel and it's a sold-out local derby, the noise is, shall we say, quite loud. I get hit on the head by a beach ball. God knows how the radio people cope.
Still, I manage. That's what I'm there for . Wigan Athletic win 3-1, but it might, should even, have been more. Blackpool have run out of ideas, Wigan are starting to realise they have some good one. Afterwards, Roberto Martinez almost tap dances into the room. He's always said they'll come good and they're coming good at the right moment to stay up. I'm really pleased for him and there are few Premier League players more underrated than Mohammed Diame.
In contrast, Ian Holloway is in an understandably foul mood. His world his crumbling around him and his responses are atypically snidey and begrudging. I chance my luck wondering whether he saw stuff in Friday training that made him think they'd be so dreadful on Saturday. Maybe it's not Paxman on Howard, but it's not in the "how important is it to you..." line the sloppier hacks push every week. A proper answer would be quite revealing.
He spends rather too long proclaiming what a stupid and daft question it is. Jesus. I explain to him that it's not and why it's not, but he talks over me so I give up. I've never seem him behave so boorishly before, never seen him so rude: he's always wrestled with my questions are illuminating length. Let's let him off this time; after all he's one of the good guys and he's under a lot of pressure. Then again, aren't we all?

You know what they say? Television makes you look bigger. Strangely it's the same with football grounds.
Much as I like a late night drive, I love an early morning one, when the sun's a-rising (that "a" makes it so much more authentic don't you think?) and the day hasn't been ruined by whatever's about to ruin it. So, I'm pootling along the M25 at 7am and off to Swansea for a morning kick off. Obviously this isn't wholly good news, but it's far from bad either. There's that early morning drive and the concomitant reduced likelihood of hold-ups; there's the magnificent steelworks a-belching (that "a" makes it so much more authentic don't you think? I'll stop now) at Port Talbot (is my memory playing tricks or did football coaches used to glide right past it before the M4 was extended?). And, whoo hoo, there's a new ground at the end of the road. I've never been further west on the M4 than Swansea. What can it be like?
Since Swansea City's away support was traditionally small, the violent intensity of them at home was always a surprise. Going to the Vetch Field was like spending the afternoon at Fort Apache, The Bronx, with a swimming lesson at the end of the day if you'd come from Cardiff, near London). As Jill Sobule once said, things here are different, although, not I suspect, when Cardiff visit. As it is, one the one hand Leeds fans wander around the Liberty Stadium in their shirts, wholly unmolested; on the other they're advised by police not to go "up there", wherever "up there" might be.
It being a new stadium, I'm contractually obliged to walk around it. Usual stuff, bit like a mini-Reebok. I knew I was going to like it here since the nice PR man allocated me parking. Better still, the woman at the door's lovely and the kind man who looks after the hackroom spends ages explaining everything including the wifi to me. Bless.
And like it I do. There's the sense the inevitable march of history is going their way and that the fans really ought to take the offer of buying next season's away ticket early.
Less friendly are the local hacks and I don't blame them. Swansea being in the Championship is fine for them because they can file their stories to everyone because nobody sends anyone. Alas, the more successful City are, the more people such as myself will arise at 6.30 am and head west to take work out of their mouths. If Swansea reach the Premier League, they'll be crowded out even further and there won't be room for the scowly person next to me - no laptop, no pen, no paper - who leaps up when Swansea score and nearly takes my laptop with him. It's the same on the Ipswich/Norwich, Sheffield, Bristol and Torquay/Plymouth/Exeter circuits: locals who freelance for several nationals don't want their teams promoted.
Anyway, as I said the ground is much smaller than it looks on television, the hackbox isn't bad, but its views are fantastic. The game's a cracker too. Leeds are spectacularly poor: Their holy trinity Robert Snodgrass, Jon Howson and - admittedly less so - Max Gradel have off days; they're feeble in attack and terrified in defence where George McCartney defends like he's surely never defended before, but not in a good way.
Whether Leeds make Swansea look good or they simply are good remains to be seen, but they're a joy, scoring two wonderful goals and a penalty. The superlative Nathan Dyer creates fear like I've not seen a winger do in years.
Afterwards, Leeds's Simon Grayson argues his side should have had a penalty - he was right too - but he admits his team were wretched. I suggest his side hadn't under-estimated Swansea's passing game, but they had under-estimated their strength and energy. He's having none of it and details how often Swansea have been scouted, etc, etc and ends with "we're not a bad team, you know". I like him more each time I see him.
Brendan Rodgers seems inherently decent (although Watford fans may not see him as a great human being) and I'd quite like to talk football with him, although the benefits of the conversation would be one-way. He knows he's stuck gold here and I think he's trying not to let on. I switch off when he starts saying how humble two-goal Scott Sinclair is though, thinking it's a bit like Tony Pulis saying what a nice lad Ryan Shawcross is after he's decapitated someone.
Half an hour later when I've finished (the website's report is twice as long as the printed version), I spot Scott Sinclair and his wife/girlfriend driving off. Unbidden, he gives a cheery wave to the Sky television folk who're packing away (they look flabbergasted and there's much 'did you see that?' type discussion to follow) and not only that, but he's driving off in a mini. A humble footballer. Whatever next?


Playlist
PJ Harvey
Let England Shake
Those reviews which seemingly go over the top about its brilliance? They're the ones to believe.

You know what they say? If you're building a theatre, you might as well make it a theatre of dreams, because sometimes dreams are all we have. Ah, Old Trafford. Always a special joy - they're always at the centre of things - unless of course you expect wi-fi. Still, they don't have it at the San Siro either.
Manchester United's FA Cup tie with Crawley Town is an evening kick off, so it's a civilised start, a late finish and the opportunity to discover that Toddington services northbound now has not one, not two, not three but four branches of Costa. There may be a greater concentration of company stores in a smaller setting anywhere in the world, but it would break the laws of physics.
Coffee still swishing, I get to Old Trafford early, feel momentarily sorry for those poor BBC employees who're being forced to move to Manchester - house prices being what they are, they'll never be able to afford to move back - and have 20 minutes to read a book. Antony Beevor's Stalingrad since you ask. It's a bit blokily boy's own, his writing could be less clunky, there's much too much detailing of military tactics, but it's an astonishing saga, it's often beautifully sold and could it really be over 50,000 Soviet citizens helped the Germans? The evidence is compelling.
I know people sneer at United and their fans in, um, Crawley, but much as I could never actually support them, I have soft spot for them. Right now, there are big clubs - Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, at a push Tottenham Hotspur, at a bigger push Newcastle United - and then, several steps up the ladder, there is Manchester United. And they aspire to swashbuckle, it's in their DNA. Like it or not, they're the standard bearers for British - not even just English - football and when you think of "United" who do you think of? Southend? Leeds? Sheffield? Oxford? Exactly...
And Old Trafford is fantastic. It's more cathedral than theatre, for all the rebuilding you can still sense the presence of the Munich dead, of Busby and of Best. It dominates the region like Ceausescu's Palace Of The Parliament and there's the unmistakeable sense that something important happens here, a sense you don't get at, say, the Reebok. Except when Manchester United are the visitors.
And, you'll doubtless be saddened to know that the hackfood is awful: some kind of curry-based slop I couldn't bring myself to taste and a grim choice of pie: chicken balti or cheese and onion I also spurned. I don't know much about anything but I do know about pies and neither chicken balti nor cheese and onion are suitable to be regarded as pie fillings. I console myself with tea.
And just when you're thinking that United and her majesty's press may not be the easiest of bedfellows (although God knows why given the easy ride Sir Alex Ferguson gets during and after his media briefings), the wifi-free (as opposed to free wifi) problem is annoying, not least since getting a mobile signal out is dificult and the hackbox itself is too small. Between visits I forget this, but it's built for Nobby Stiles rather than Jim Holton. And the TV screens are on the blink. Pah. I don't care. Bring it on.
Ridley of the MOS and Tongue of the I/IOS are here, but it's not a chatty day. Late kick offs mean early deadlines. This means I'll do 880 words on the final whistle; another 800 including managerial quotes for the second edition, which in itself is difficult since Ferguson as ever doesn't turn up and Crawley's rude Steve Evans is over an hour late. Afterwards, there's talk that Crawley's PR has gone home straight after the match, ruining what should have been the most important media moment of his/her career, but I don't know whether that's true or not. Then as I'm doing the second edition stuff, I'll do another 400-word quotes piece. The adrenaline surge is fantastic - that's one of the reasons why I love it - although I'm not the only one to get twitchy while Evans dallies. Everything gets done of course and of course it's on time. But, as I said, it's not a day to chat.
The match is weirdness itself. United's reserves look in control, but they're not swashbuckling and at some point Ferguson is surely going to have to admit he's erred with Bebe, Gabriel Obertan and possibly Javier Hernandez (stopping calling himself "Chicharito" on his shirt might be a start). At half-time two people from broadsheets disappear to watch the game in the hackroom warmth on television. I can see their point, but for all the extra detail they get, their bigger picture - and surely their reporting - is diminished.
Amazingly Crawley's mixture of rejects ne'er-do-wells and hopefuls take control in the second half. Pablo Mills and Kyle McFadzean are as good a centre back pairing as any I've seen this season and with a bit of luck they might have equalised Wes Brown's first half header instead of hitting the bar and departing in a coach with what looked like dreadfully uncomfortable leather seats with their dignity intact and byzantine finances boosted.
Ferguson's not turning up is against some regulation or other, but the press (yep, myself included) no longer mention we've pilfered his quotes from MUTV. And, as noted, Steve Evans takes an eternity. Red of face but suspiciously blond of hair, he blathers on about how great Ferguson is, but makes better points about how his team can reach the Football League next season. I'm sure they will - their FA Cup run has helped rather than hindered his team's league form - and surely it's better Crawley than AFC Wimbledon. Apparently Evans turned down a whopping Christmas bid from a Championship team for McFadzean: he may not be able to resist when whoever it was (no idea I'm afraid, but they were doubtless northern) come knocking again with more serious money. And surely they will.
Laptop off, it's late but the drive home is a delight. It must have been like this in the '50s: empty motorways (I know there weren't really motorways then, but dream with me), few lorries and the sense of space that only driving in the smaller hours - or driving in the US - brings.
That night I dream of being invited to the Brits by John Cleese. We're seated at Peter Ustinov's table.

Playlist
The Masterplan
Oasis
Possibly their finest moment, but sticking it on a B-side was proof that even at such an eary stage of their career, Noel Gallagher's judgement was fatally flawed. They'd never be so adventurous again.
On: Stop The Clocks, Big Brother, 2006

You know what they say? Joni Mitchell never wrote a better, deeper song than Both Sides Now no matter how much she aspired to be better and deeper. For the next 42 years.
Anyway, today it's Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United. Good. They both conceded four last week so it'll be goals a go-go this week; they're both in a sort of turmoil so there's back stories aplenty and the cavernous Rovers hackbox means I won't get crushed.
If nothing else, Blackburn are a proper club. Their ground still sits snugly amongst terraced houses, although not as many terraced houses as when I first came; they have some sense of a distinctly chequered history; and they understand that nobody cares about them beyond the Ribble Valley. Deep down, they seem grateful to even be near the Premier League, let alone in the thing.
It's somehow right that they've been taken over by Indians (nice ponytail, Balaji Rao) too, with the unspoken although patently bonkers suggestions that the youth of Ammakandakara will soon be wandering the streets wearing half-blue, half-white shirts and Vince Grella will suddenly turn out to be big in Bidar. And then there's Steve Kean who, according to the usually reliable Nick Harris in the DM, has been assured by the Indians that he's unsackable for two-and-a-half years. We'll see about that.
And there's Newcastle. Always worth a chuckle to the bewildered outsider. This week, they've replaced Andy Carroll with Shefki Kuqi, presumably on account of Carl Leaburn wasn't available and they're still playing Peter Lovenkrands and Mike Williamson. Still, Jose Enrique's looking the part, I've always had a soft spot for Leon Best and Steve Harper's much underrated. Alan Pardew might not be unsackable - I'd love to see what his five-year contract actually says though - but said five-year contract should mean he won't need another job, ever.
You'll be relieved to learn that the tea's northern and robust, but the food in the hackroom is too vile to even contemplate (nice soup at half time though), but I can have a gossip with Mark Ryan of the MOS - he does the same daft but sad thing as me on Sunday mornings and for exactly the same reasons - and Clavane of the SM. We're all looking forward to the feast of goals to come.
Of course it turns out to be 0-0 and it's the worst game in living memory, which in my case extends as far back as January. Newcastle, bar the predictably excellent Jose Enrique, are dreadful, but Blackburn are worse (I really want to like Christopher Samba; until I see him) and, essentially, nothing happens, bar both teams keeping morale-boosting team sheets. Perhaps this is what happens when managers are secure, but I'm not sure Blackburn are safe from relegation yet.
Afterwards, even after encountering him for the second time in a week, I'm still not sure about Steve Kean. He seems a decent enough cove, but maybe my judgement is coloured by how lucky he is. That's not wholly fair, I know, but let's see. I'll give him another go.
Unlike, erm, some people, I've always liked Pardew an ,especially, his earnestness. He talks football sense - quite clearly too - and he almost apologises for the game he's just helped oversee. I ask him about inculcating his football values and putting his stamp on Chris Hughton's team. "That's a tough question," he muses (in hackworld, such encomium is the equivalent of being praised by teacher) and gives it a considered response. As we all know, someone, someday will turn Newcastle United around . Whether it's Alan Pardew remains to be seen. I give Clavane a lift home. We have much to discuss...

Playlist
Bright Eyes
The People's Key
It's a warm, wry and fantastic record, but it takes a while to fall in love with and it makes more sense live so much better live. Win-win then.

You know what they say? Walk a mile in my shoes and we might have to share verucas too. Going to Wigan for the xxth (oh, look it up, it’s a lot) time has its special joys of course, but it’s a depressing journey up there.
I see the first coach of English Defensive League marchers heading south just after Luton. After 20 coaches, I stop counting. They may have been - apparently - founded by some Luton MIGs, they may claim Jewish sections (hmmmm); they may claim gay sections (self-hate alert) and they may claim Hindu and Sikh members (it‘s an India/Pakistan thing), but it’s a racist rather than a rainbow coalition. They’re to the British National Party (not entirely coincidentally, the former home of leader “Tommy Robinson”), what the British Movement were to the National Front. And just because their Fuhrer “Tommy Robinson” turns white bodies to brown at his tanning salon; just because he can’t pronounce the Sharia Law he’s obsessed with; just because a near-giggling Jeremy Paxman didn’t know where to start with him and just because he has a troubling fixation with what he seems to see as our nation being overrun by rampaging gangs of Muslim paedophiles, doesn’t mean his organisation is a joke, much as I‘ve always thought that laughing at these people is the best weapon. They’ve bit into a rotten nerve and while they won’t get the race war they’re trying to incite, they’re not going to let go any day soon. Oh dear, oh dear. Anyway, how’s your stuff going?
The way the planets are aligning, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone behind you in stationary traffic on the M6 were to get out of his car, knock on your window, call you a “cunt” and return to said vehicle. On the way home, it happens. He’s not joking and I’m not surprised.
In contrast with, say, Stevenage, Wigan may charge for wi-fi but it’s an oasis of loveliness. “The food,“ you say, “but tell us about the food, please.“ The food is OK but no more, thanks for asking: undercooked chips which stick together, a passable steak pie and combative tomato soup during half-time. Better still, I’m sat next to Myles Hodgson from The Independent who’s a joy to cackle along with. And the game, oh the game. It’s 4-3 local derby on a bog of a pitch and just as spine-tingling as the scoreline implies. Sadly it’s on a vintage Premier League day, so I haven’t the space to wax as lyrical as I‘d like.
Clavane from the SM is here too. He’s wearing a red coat and still has his fine, Melvyn Bragg-esque head of hair. I offer him a lift home, but he’s heading east. I thank him for mentioning me in his book Promised Land, say how good it is (it is) and how marvellous at self-promotion - he even suggests a mention in this blog - he is.
As Oscar Wilde never said, being thanked in books is better than not being mentioned I guess, even if it’s abuse. One author detailed an encounter we’d had and noted how ghastly I was (I deny the charges; not so much on the grounds that I’m not ghastly, more that said encounter didn’t happen) before using my name on the cover. His request for Facebook friendship has gone unacknowledged. Petty I know. But he started it.
I’m getting increasingly attached to Wigan. They’re worth the three points, but God they’re so fragile it’s like watching Isodora Duncan out there. And much as I’m not really a fan of Sam, Blackburn have gone sideways since he was ousted and they’re not immune to fragility themselves. Afterwards, new manager Steve Kean blames his midfield for losing possession too often, rather than his defence and his peculiar deployment of personnel. They really miss Phil Jones and Jermaine Jones isn’t the answer. Chris Coleman always rated Kean exceptionally highly, but I’m not sure he’s in it long term, less so I’d wager since Steve McClaren has been seen frequenting Job Centres.
Afterwards before I'm visited, I'm, speeding through the dark night, driving through the pounding rain, I’ve got a warm post-match glow. There’s average chips, there’s the extreme right and there’s weird men in stationary cars to contend with, but still the football shows us there can be life-affirming goodness. Just like it always did.

Playlist
Justin Hayward
Forever Autumn
A bit wimpy, I know, but that doesn’t make it wrong. And on Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version Of The War Of The Worlds, interspersed with Richard Burton’s sepulchral tones, it’s truly astonishing and genuinely moving. “You always loved this time of year...“ The new Keren Ann album’s good too.
On Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version Of The War Of The Worlds. Try the remastered 2006 version.

You know what they say? Just do the best you can, all the time, then the sheer effort of that stops you thinking about the other stuff. Sometimes I wish that like some of my colleagues not a million miles from home, I had a pseudonym. Money would roll in, but surely quality would dip if you're doing two Sunday stories and a Monday on the same match. Then again, the agency guys do it all the time and they do it honestly. Then again (again), why should the quality drop if you're as good as you think you are? Then again (yet again), I once sat next to a hack who was reporting both from the game we were at and another one being played elsewhere simultaneously. Oh, I don't know.
What I do know though is that it's Stevenage again - I did a morning's non-ironic ironing to celebrate - and it's the FA Cup and, shiver me timbers, they're playing Reading. It's the sort of game where they might get something, but only if Reading are as sloppy in the fourth round as Newcastle were in the third. This, in turns, means it's one of those afternoon where there's adrenaline-pumping fun to be had if there's a shock, but only scrabbling for space if nature takes its natural course. Things have changed since my last visit. There's now a hackroom with vile-looking sandwiches and pleasant tea. There are desks, there are chairs to go with them and the atmosphere is still irreverent and life-affirmingly lovely. It's OK here, it really is.
Graham Westley's programme notes are as messianic as an Anthony Robbins pep talk. "There is a calm and eerie sense of focus in the players' eyes. A hunger, a steel, an authority, a knowing," he announces, presumably with a straight face. "I am thinking attack. I am thinking dominate. I am thinking victory." I am thinking delightfully bonkers. Afterwards he dresses like Robbie Williams's father, the one time I met him. Is that the world's least impressive namedrop? Probably, so let's move on.
Since every radio station in the land seems to be here (do they need to come quite so mob-handed?), I'm in the overspill bit behind their tiny hackbox and my laptop's on my knee. This is what the FA Cup's all about, hem hem. The wi-fi works and it's all very cosy, unless you want to, say, move your arms. There's Alex Montgomery and Paddy Barclay (neither of whom operate under a pseudonym as far as I know), so there's quality talk to be had and the tie's not bad either. I can just about type with one finger.
Unlike Newcastle, Reading take the sensible line, allowing Stevenage to exhaust themselves. Then they pounce and take the lead through the ever-excellent Mikele Leigertwood and it all looks set fair for progression. Ever doughty, Stevenage rally in the second half and for 10 heady minutes Darius Charles scores a terrific equaliser, they almost seize the day. But while Reading wobble, they're supremely focused and they don't fall. Moreover, for all Stevenage's daunting fitness regime, the minnows tire and Reading finish by far the strongest. Shane Long scores a neatly taken winner and it's move-along-there's-nothing-to-see-here time. But there almost was.
Afterwards, Brian McDermott cuts an impressively modest figure and when I says "I love the FA Cup", he's clearly telling the truth. Westley talks 10 to the dozen - there are hints of Aidy Boothroyd's ceaseless optimism in there - but when I ask him if they'd been beaten by the better team and what he might have learned from the afternoon, he answers another, less interesting, question. But he answers it in great detail, and I would have been home in time for Wallander had the BBC not taken it off. Why didn't they tell me? Bah.

You know what they say? Don't accept lifts from strangers, but it's OK to accept ones from people you know. Everton then. Excellent: a proper club and the Z-Cars theme by Johnny Keating when the players come out. The B-side, Lost Patrol, covers the same ground, but it doesn't make the hairs on the back of your neck tingle. Oh no.
There's something unfulfilled about Everton, but they're less sentimental than their faux chums from across Stanley Park (why they won't share a ground beggars logic: co-habiting the San Siro has hardly diminished AC and Inter Milan, now has it?), even if not once but twice reappointing Howard Kendall suggests hard-headedness is a recent, Bill Kenwright-fuelled development. Still, they can watch King Kenny lose his crown and smile knowingly.
The food. You want to know about the hackfood don't you? Of course you do. How could you not? Sausage and, mash: not vintage. They did scouse a few years ago: now that was nice. It's all a bit cramped in the hackroom in a way in which it wouldn't be in a new stadium. They do hand out Mars bars though.
Speaking of loss, Everton have rather carelessly let Steven Pienaar slip through their hands. They admit it was because they wouldn't meet his wage demands, but I'd have paid him what they're paying Mikel Arteta in a heartbeat and not just because Arteta seems to be going backwards with each passing month. And letting Pienaar go to Tottenham, the sort of club Everton should be emulating not bettering, is near-insanity. Worse, what does it say about Everton? It's like they've turned into Bolton Wanderers overnight. It's hard to imagine their best players being overjoyed about this turn of events. And I know it's only one game, but how they missed Pienaar and how many opportunities is Leon Osman going to get to prove he's not quite good enough, despite a terrific piece of play which provided Everton's second?
And there's people to talk to. Mark Ryan from the MOS claims he's never heard of Richard Thompson; Gary Jacob from The Times always makes me laugh and although my customary (when I say "my", I don't mean "my", I mean "the newspaper whom I work for's") seat has now been allocated to someone else, I'm next to John Keith, the Merseyside institution: I like his manner.
With Pienaar Everton would surely have beaten West Ham. Or - sorry to fence-sit - perhaps not. Now Avram Grant's been given a scandalously begrudging vote of confidence, they can trudge on for a couple of weeks in peace. I simply don't know about Grant, not least because he could mumble for Israel, so I always lose his logic. I don't know whether he's a Being There-esque buffoon promoted above his station, but if he were to suggest there's a few Mourinho revanchists - not least in the press - trying to unseat him, I'd believe that. Then again, look at how the Chelsea players always greet him: they don't have to be so effusive.
The players play for Grant today. West Ham are full of problems, but for all Everton's technical superiority, a 2-2 thriller is about right. Heaven knows where Everton go from here. David Moyes was honest enough to admit (assuming he wasn't sneakily lowering expectations) that they're only going to get a loaned striker in this transfer window. Whatever Everton are reaching for, it's not the stars, but right now they're drifting and if Jermaine Beckford's a Premier League player I'm a leg of ham.
Grant turns up so late, I've already filed. No wonder some hacks hate him. Will West Ham survive? Do you know, I think they will. Afterwards, it's all a bit late, but I saunter off. I'm walking past the graveyard when a car stops
"John!"
It's that nice Graham Chase from all sorts of publications. He gives me a lift to my car at the very moment a gang of 20 (doubtless peace-loving) 15-year-olds pour out of Stanley Park. I'm grateful. Sometimes it's the smaller things that help the world turn in a kinder way.


Playlist
The Violent Femmes
Gone Daddy Gone
Always a tad wearing over the long haul; that Christianity stuff was odd whether true or false and they peaked with their debut, but they were at their most trim here. Impossible catchy.
ON PERMANENT RECORD, THE VERY BEST OF, SLASH/RHINO, 2005

You know what they say: if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger, but not if you've been seriously wounded and have perhaps lost a limb. Leeds again, then. Ho hum.
This is bad news in many guises. Since they've decided to punish the good people of Leeds and those hardy souls who have travelled from Middlesbrough (Middlesbrough being one of the few place on earth which makes Leeds seems forwards-looking and cosmopolitan) by making it a 1pm kick off on New Year's Day this means:

a) I must spend New Year's Eve alone. This isn't bad in itself - New Year's Eve was always too loud for my delicate sensibility - and indicates only practicality rather than other issues. I watch myself talking utter, utter rubbish on a John Lennon documentary and some repeats of Benidorm if you must know...

b) I have to leave my corral at 7.30am. Again, this could be worse. I love early morning drives and the roads are clear, but Christ, I'm tired.

and c) it's Leeds. With all that implies.

Since it's New Year and breakfast time, they do the decent thing and provide a hackbanquet featuring myriad fruit juices, sizzling bacon sandwiches, tomatoes fresh off the vine, black pudding and freshly filtered coffee. Only joking; they begrudgingly do unspeakable sandwiches and undrinkable coffee from an urn. The good news? I don't know a soul, so nobody blanks me.
And a big hello to my old friend deja vu: It's still freezing, the hackbox is still horrible and the stewards - with one notable, humanity-enhancing exception - are still insufferably pompous (and what's the difference between pompousness and pomposity?). Happy New Year everyone.
Still, Ken Bates's programme notes are, as ever, a joy. He talks of an anonymous player who a Championship team won't play again because one more appearance will trigger a £1 million contract renewal (£1 million for Michael Brown? God help us all) and he rounds up his legal vendettas with the promise of more to come. And his girlfriend's name changes its spelling along the way. Bless him.
The game is most peculiar. Leeds were impressive against QPR. They're not impressive here, chiefly because their three best players: Max Gradel, Jonathon Howson and Richard Snodgrass all have stinkers. Elsewhere, Luciano Becchio takes his goal well, but he gives David Wheater and Matthew Bates the afternoon off and they have trouble in central defence where Neill Collins and Andy O'Brien don't have whatever "it" is. Collins is this century's Roy Ellam, while if O'Brien were Premier League standard, I'd wager someone at Bradford, Newcastle, Portsmouth or Bolton would have noticed. Leroy Lita gives them the runaround. Leroy bloody Lita! Of course, if Leeds do go up - and it'll surely be the play-offs at least - it'll all be very different.
And Middlesbrough? They're terrific, I'm surprised to report. They play like a unit and if they could take their chances, they'd be thinking up instead of down. Steve Gibson might have a shockingly bad track record at picking managers, but after the dead hand of Gareth Southgate, the genuine strangeness of Gordon Strachan - although in fairness he did sign Scott McDonald who's the best player on the pitch - Tony Mowbray is a revelation. They can't go down. Can they?
Afterwards, apart from some nonsense vis-a-vis Andy O'Brien where he seems to think he's acquired Duncan Edwards, Leeds manager Simon Grayson is better in near-defeat than victory. I grasp his appeal a bit more now and he might just be one of the good guys. He's honest enough to admit how lucky Leeds were and I can see his notion that drawing twice over Christmas might be superior to winning and losing in the long term, even if it means one point less in any term. Shamefully, I miss the obvious question that signing O'Brien and persevering with Collins means it's all over for Leigh Bromby, who's surely a better bet than both of them. There'll probably be a next time.
Stone-faced Tony Mowbray's body language is awful and he mumbles like a granddad, but he's smart enough to say this performance was the culmination of several weeks' effort and he doesn't fall into the trap of saying how unlucky his team was. I pen my words, shoot off into the night and I'm home for Wallander. Things could be worse.

Playlist
R. Dean Taylor
Indiana Wants Me
Man kills man who upsets his ladylove. Goes on the run. The gun-toting police are coming and he knows it's the end and so he writes her a letter, regretting only that he'll not be seeing her again. All human life is here and you can scream along to the chorus.
On the fabulous The Essential Collection, which still forgets to include Window Shopping. Pah.

You know what they say: be careful what you wish for, not because you'll get it but because you might nearly get it and that's so much harder. It's a longish way from Southampton (where I am on Boxing Day morning) to Bolton (where I must be on Boxing Day afternoon) but hey it's just getting from A to B in the allocated time.
I am now Tweeting. My Tweet name is Aizlewood1, apparently, but I don't know how you get to follow me and I don't know how to follow you either. I try to send a Tweet by mobile on the way up, but it doesn't seem to have made it. Can we move on? I'm boring myself here.
Driving on Boxing Day is a joy. The roads are empty, except for when I pass the Trafford Centre, the snow-covered scenery is beautiful and I now know my in-car temperature reading can go down to -9. That's proper cold and to celebrate, I seem to have mislaid my fetching woolly hat.
It feels like -9 at Bolton, but they've done the decent thing, by investing in some under-soil heating and clearing the glaciers of snow in the car parks outside. I have some pointless, long-forgotten grudge against gloves, so my hands immediately turn the colour of bruises and I'm glad someone bought me a hoodie for Christmas. The hat though, where's the bloody hat? Has anyone else in the whole ground popped up from Southampton? I doubt it. I'm just trying to be professional. Nobody's noticed.
Bolton's OK. The natives are quite friendly and the hackfood isn't bad. I plump for a meat'n'potato pie which doesn't quite hit what is quite a hungry spot, the gravy is ropey and the chips are more wedge-like. Have I ever been to a Harvester before? Yes. This summer. Ugh. The tea tastes of the cups you pour for yourself. Those cups are furry and seem to be coated in asbestos. Yum.
There's a holiday feel, but nobody here I know too well, just Graham from The Times, Trevor from the MEN and someone whose name I can't place but I chat to anyway. It's cold up in the hackbox, really cold. The seat next to me is free, my mobile's on the blink and perhaps my eyes too, since I have trouble making out the player numbers.
Anyway, you didn't have to be the unlikely offspring of Russell Grant and Mystic Meg to predict that battle of the good guys would be a treat. West Bromwich Albion create a shedload of chances, but Peter Odemwingie misses most of them. He doesn't look fully fit to me, but what do I know? Nothing, as we know.
I've seen Somen Tchoyi a few times, but never really got him before. Silly me. He's fantastic. Just for extra sadism, he switches between humiliating Gretar Steinsson (is there a less effective Premier League defender? There is not) and Paul Robinson. He's big, he's strong, he's full of tricks, he runs like the clappers and - in contrast to Odemwingie - he has a certain composure. What's not to like? We'll meet again, my friend.
For all that, Bolton win. Matthew Taylor scores a fine team goal for the first and Johan Elmander - awful and uncharacteristically lazy otherwise - finishes things off just when Albion seemed set to equalise. It's hard to feel anything but sorry for them and surely they can't go on like this, which is exactly the point I put to Roberto Di Matteo afterwards. He sort of agrees, but he's more worried about Chris Brunt being suspended than Odemwingie getting all prodigal on his first game back after injury. I can see his point, but the only way they'll get into Europe is of they arrange a pre-season tour of Albania (Durres is lovely, Roberto: long beaches, firm sand and temperate climate). They may yet end the season looking down rather than up.
Meanwhile, Owen Coyle - who I swear was wearing shorts during the match, but I might have hallucinated this - has the untroubled air of a man who's got off very lightly indeed. Which he has. For all their understandable swagger, they've only taken four points off teams above them and if Albion had been sharper, we all know what would have happened. I think it's a cause for concern.
"Concern?" he asks, politely but firmly. I expand briefly, regrettably without using the term "flat track bullies", but he's having none of it. He's not one for negative thoughts I suspect, at least in public. I wonder what he'll do - or what he can do - in the transfer window...

Playlist
Wayne Smith
Under Mi Sleng Teng
Christ, I'd forgotten how fantastic this is. One of those songs which moved music on a step - sort of inventing ragga - it merged Smith's growl with cranium-busting bass and the tightest, hardest, harshest keyboards you'll ever hear. It's part crackhouse, part rollercoaster, wholly wondrous. What a "sleng teng" is and why Mr Smith should be under it, I know not.
On Kiss Presents Rodigan's 25th Anniversary, Universal album, where you'll also find Tenor Saw's Ring The Alarm and Eek-A-Mouse's Wha-Do-Dem, plus Maxi Priest's Wild World.

You know what they say: if it looks like snow, if it's white and freezing, it's probably snow. There's a lot of snow. Leeds, being Leeds, seems to be immune to the stuff’s effects , if not the stuff itself. That means that as matches fall by the wayside during the morning, their table topping clash with Queens Park Rangers doesn't. I really don't know why, but hurrah anyway. What might have been bad has turned out good, although it's important to remember that this is by accident rather than design.
All is far from plain sailing on many levels. Let's just say I get there in good time, but Christ my feet are cold. There's a long queue at the fish'n'chip shop outside the ground and the QPR team coach is almost as pokey as West Brom's.
I haven't been to Leeds since I saw them hammer Crewe in 2008. Nothing's changed and soon I rather wish I'd joined the fish'n'chip queue, since the hackfood is manky sandwiches and turps-tasting tea and coffee which is clearly poisonous. Worse, the blessed Neil Jeffries is on the hackbox seating plan, but he doesn't make it. A real shame.
Weirdly, the one person who I do know, blanks me. What that’s all about I cannot say, for I do not know. It’s another shame, not least since I really wanted to talk to him as we have so much in common. I know it's hardly band of brothers these days, but hackboxes - and the Leeds hackbox is built for the neighbourhood homunculus - are too small for anything but friendliness. Hit at Wigan, blanked in Leeds: hey, it might just be me. Anyway, it’s not all bad, I sit next to Simon Hart from The Independent and he’s obviously one of the good guys.
Cold or not, shame upon shame or not, the match is terrific. Much as childhood trauma means I’ll never be able to take to Leeds, objectively their defence is weak, while there seems to be some mistaken impression that Luciano Becchio is quite good. Even so, in Jonathan Howson, Max Gradel and Robert Snodgrass they have a trio capable of taking them further, assuming history doesn’t repeat itself and a big club doesn’t quietly sign them to a pre-contract agreement in January, hem hem. Simon Grayson isn’t helped by his accent and his mildly bewildered manner, but he steadied Blackpool and he’s worked wonders at Leeds with Ken Bates peering over his shoulder. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for now and they’re worthy winners, not least since QPR aren’t much cop at all.
Adel Taarabt has his moments, but they don’t create a chance of note against that far from happy defence and they’re overrun in midfield. Maybe it’s an off-day, but they looked dreadful in losing to Watford on television the previous week. Perhaps it’s a wobble, perhaps the game’s up. Afterwards, Neil Warnock takes over an hour to turn up. Since it’s an out-of-character move - he loves a press conference as much a me - it seems reasonably to assume dressing room words have been spoken. He professes to be pleased with what he saw, but I’m not sure he is.
Both these teams might sneak up without the play-offs, but they need to watch themselves in the transfer window: Leeds must buy wisely and hang onto their jewels; QPR just need to buy wisely. And they both ought to take Norwich seriously and remember how good Cardiff can be.
Warnock is so late I almost miss my deadline. Almost. Then it’s back home in the snow. Still, it’s better than an enforced afternoon on the sofa. If you knew my sofa, you’d know why.

Playlist
Althea And Donna
Uptown Top Ranking
How on earth could anyone not fall for this? And not just because it knocked Mull of Kintyre off the Number 1 spot. Poetry, of sorts. Albeit tricky to sing along to poetry. And, no ,it’s not a novelty record.
On Uptown Top Ranking. Virgin Frontline album, 1977.

You know what they say? Keep up with your blessed blog or it'll keep up with you. There's been rotten stuff to deal with, such as my friend Hugo Dixon dying. We went around the world together: me writing twaddle, him photographing brilliantly. We went to the US a few times, we went to Australia, we went to Middlesbrough where one of the most unhelpful PRs I've even encountered (the competition remains fierce) tried to make us (ie me and Hugo) sleep together until I had a tantrum; we went to Siberia where we actually had to sleep together (he snored like a wind tunnel); we went to South Africa and we went to places I've forgotten. We had a ball, we had precisely no cross words and I'd always ask for him to accompany me. Now he's dead, via some wretched cancer, leaving a wife - God, he loved her - and children. Whether he's gone to a better place is immaterial, he'd rather be here. And he hated football with a passion.
There's been trivial stuff - it's all trivial compared to death but you know what I mean - like being hit at Wigan by a scary man shouting "stick that in your fucking programme" and there's been some good stuff too. Hey, it's all stuff. Anyway, it's Villa time, for the first time in, um, ages.
Departure time is civilised, the roads are clear, the weather's picked up and at the end of it all, there's wi-fi and people I know (and like). There's also some poor quality hackfood, albeit leavened by bags of sweets and nice-looking desserts which I forget to try. A few years ago, ie in Doug Ellis's time, the hackbox was the best seats in the house. It's not now: it's shoehorned into a corner and the seats are so constricting I spend most of the afternoon rubbing thighs with Ian Ridley and I wishing I'd left the coffee - not bad; not great - behind.
But the match, oh what of the match? Well, Villa isn't a happy ship and not just because their manager will never walk alone; James Collins was caught - not drinking says the report - in a restaurant a few minutes before Villa played Liverpool and there's an air of ennui about the place.
It's a frantic local derby, but the atmosphere's hardly sizzling. They were feeble in the first half against a West Bromwich Albion who're beginning to look the part, but once Villa fluke themselves ahead, they imitate Albion's pressing game and it transpires that while the hosts had no Plan A, the visitors had no Plan B. Villa win. Roberto Di Matteo is nonplussed and Gerard Houllier - a baffling appointment if ever there were - is even more owlishly odd than he was as Liverpool manager.
He won't talk about why he dropped Stephen Ireland and when I ask him what was different about the performance, I simply can't follow him. I can't have been alone. Randy Lerner may have many attributes, but I'd wager limited patience isn't one of them.

Playlist
The Yachts
Suffice To Say
Does he really say "what's a young yacht supposed to do?" halfway through? I do hope so. They deserved better than being forgotten. Then again don't we all? That Clare Maguire album's interesting by the way. Think Florence Welch singing Shirley Bassey.
ON THE YACHTS, RADAR ALBUM, 1979 (if you get the right edition)

You know what they say: don't take anything for granted, even when it feels like the right thing to do. Stevenage then, for their FA Cup tie with Milton Keynes. It's the 32nd most important match of the day, give or take how you see Luton Town's visit to Corby Town. Whining's for whiners, so there's only one way to deal with it: treat it as, in fact, the most important match of the day. It is to me and to most people in the ground and frankly, it's the only way ahead. This means I have no excuse not to be brilliant, although whether actually I was brilliant or not isn't for me to judge; if not, though, it's nobody's fault but mine. Even so, I really could have done without leaving my steaming vanilla latte in the car. I now know that long-term Starbucks cups have seepage issues.
Obviously it's my first time to report from the Lamex stadium, but it's not my first visit. since I'd been when it was Broadhall Way for a pre-season friendly sometime in the last century. Everyone gets to park in a field on the opposite side of the dual carriageway which passes next to the ground and as I'm early I get to walk around all four sides. I love doing that. It's trim and clean and since my last trip, the Lamex has been marginally modernised and it's certainly league standard. The away fans get excellent seats behind one goal, the home fans get to stand and everyone seems happy enough.
Unlike, say, Arsenal, there's no hackroom or hackfood let alone hackscreens,, but the hackbox is perfectly comfortable, there's wi-fi (take that, Manchester United) and elbow room. That's really all I need. And not only is Stevenage as efficient as anywhere I've been, everyone couldn't be more welcoming, even though the ever-so-likeable PR thinks I'm someone else. There's a lot of laughter here, probably a result of said endearingly sweary PR and his wife's double act. People are glad to be here, glad that Stevenage are a league club at last and it shows. I'd come back any time.
There's bad news on the doorstep. Both my cups of tea are unspeakable (but served with a smile so I don't mind), the one person I know relates some ominous news from elsewhere (that's a counterbalance to discovering the Sunday Mirror sent someone to Donetsk last week) and what had started out as one of those gloriously sunny autumn days rapidly turns into my first freezing of the season.
Frankly, the game isn't much cop at all. There's a row of noisy children in front of me - they seem to be sponsoring the game, but it's far from clear - and much to my disappointment since I quite liked their enthusiasm, as the 90 minutes progress, they get noticeably less noisy: it's that sort of game. MK Dons - backed by a proper and properly noisy travelling support; only those blinded by sentimentality could argue the experiment isn't working - are much the better team, but they don't create any proper chances. There's a virus running through the club so they only name four substitutes and those who do play look heavy legged, bar the excellent Angelo Balanta. Stevenage try hard, work as a unit and although they too struggle to create direct chances, they're quite comfortable at the end. I'd really fancy MK Dons in the replay, but these things are never so clearcut and the prospect of meeting AFC Wimbledon clouds everything (and especial hats off to Jim Rosenthal for not noticing the potential of that one when he helmed the second round draw on Sunday). No goals for them, 600 words for me. We're all kind of happy.
Afterwards, MK Dons's young boss Karl Robinson is urbane beyond his years; while Stevenage's Graham Westley pleased to fight another payday. I'm a bit too cold to get a question out. It's been a learning curve for us all.

Playlist
LCD Soundsystem
This Is Happening
Parlophone album
Oh dear. I gave this a proper kicking when it came out. Perhaps because they made it so difficult to review and because they have such a stupid name for an act who sound like a better-produced Gang Of Four, but, even so, I really thought I was right. Having gone back to it, it's time to admit I was wrong. Ho hum.

You know what they say: too much comfort and things start to go flaccid. Not for me, though. It's Arsenal for the first time in some time. This means many things, not least a morning trip to what must always be called Appapple Park with a tiny one. And a midday leaving of the house.
Second only to Manchester City, but ahead of Wembley, Arsenal is probably how the wider world imagines hacks are treated. Before-hand there is a full-on three-course meal. I - and I'm merely reporting for the record as I do when it's poison hackfood - plump for a delicious tomato salad, taken to new heights by shavings of parmesan; some braised beef and herb dumplings for which the word “orgasm” would not be inappropriate; a small tub of Ben & Jerry’s cookie dough and some fruit, including three types of melon.
I eschew the selection of beers, wines and spirits and plump for tea. Others do not. At half-time I take the fish’n’chips option and guzzle more tea. I am, you may or may not be delighted to know, stuffed. Lucky then that the hackbox seats are padded.
The wi-fi works a treat, the hackscreens simply work and there’s people I know at every turn. The Star’s Harry Pratt makes me laugh and I’m in a two-man pod of luxury with The Guardian/Observer’s David Hytner, who speaks of the terrible trouble he had filing from the San Siro last week. One day, I won’t be able to file. That day will be dark indeed. Do copytakers still exist? Anyway, best not to dwell and call me easily pleased, but in this strictly narrow context, things couldn’t be better.
The game’s an epic of sorts too. Arsenal create chance after chance; West Ham United hang on, hang on and hang on a bit more, until the 88th minute when their defence falls asleep and Alex Song heads home. Arsenal deserve it, of course, but even a flintheart such as me couldn’t help but feel sympathy for West Ham. They might even survive.
Afterwards, Arsene Wenger is at his most urbane - always has good shoes our Arsene; hand-made I reckon - but I still have trouble following Avram Grant. And if I do, so must Herita Ilugna. Given his performance, it looked like it.
Sainthood beckoning, I again give the alcohol a miss - even more others than before do not - in favour of yet more tea and get on with trying to explain just how fantastic Robert Green was and, and, after all this time, after all these years, that I finally get Scott Parker, all within the context of Arsenal being vastly superior. Flaccid? Hardly.
It’s just after 6 when I leave. I’m home before 7. Heavens. As it were.

Playlist
Lonnie Liston Smith
Expansions
Can music get any more sophisticated? Apart from Sade, probably not. Heavenly.

You know what they say: there's no fool like an old fool. This isn't strictly true of course, but they have a point. It must have been difficult for those folk living in the tiny terraced streets near Anfield and Goodison Park to have their space invaded every time there was a football match. And if nothing else, if they happened to take their car out circa 1pm on matchday, where on earth could they park until the mob fled circa 6pm? Towards the end they were almost putting sofas on the street to stop people such as myself. Those tales of stolen hubcaps and broken into cars may or may not be apocryphal, but on occasions I did pay protection money (see also Maine Road and Villa Park) and, horror of horrors, I once got a parking ticket. And, no, I hadn’t blocked someone’s exit.
Now the world has changed and the parking scheme around Anfield/Goodison is manna for residents - it’s simply impossible to streetpark on any matchday if you don’t live there, although what happens when a friend pops round while Liverpool or Everton are playing I cannot say - but it’s horrible for everyone else. I end up parking somewhere near Southport and walking. Incidentally, were I ever to write about my sole evening there, the headline wouldn’t be factually wrong if it said My Night In Southport With A Freddie Mercury Impersonator And A Hereditary Peeress, but we really must move on.
This is Anfield. The hackfood is awful, the hackbox cramped, but it feels like a football ground in a way, say, the DW Stadium doesn’t. The people are pleasant, although when I try to enter the hackroom at half-time I’m barred by a steward. I’d left my pass upstairs. “You’re not going to let me through are you?” I asked. I’d been chatting to him before-hand, but newly mute, he now just shook his head. You have to know when you’re beaten.
The mood is less bitter since Tom Hicks and George Gillett were ousted. Whether Liverpool have swapped one bunch of Americans for a very similar bunch remains to be seen, but John W. Henry doesn’t strike me as a sentimentalist. We’ll see, we’ll see. And the kick off against Blackburn Rovers is delayed because some tennis-ball-shaped crooner is bellowing out You’ll Never Walk Alone and everyone - bar the few hundred from Blackburn - is singing along. Let them have their moment...
Now the ire can be turned at Roy Hodgson, whose main fault seems to be that he’s not Kenny Dalglish, rather more than his long-standing inability to bank points away from home. His version of Liverpool look fragile at the back (two words: “Martin” and “Skrtel”) and no matter how much Ye Kop wills him to greatness, Fernando Torres simply isn’t what he was, even against a team without their imposing centre-halves, Christopher Samba and Ryan Nelsen. As to whether it’s temporary or, after all those injuries, permanent remains to be seen.
In the end, Liverpool give away a comedy goal, but Torres scores from a chance even Bruno Cheyrou wouldn’t have spurned. Lucas Leiva rules midfield with a firm-tackling rod-of-iron (he’s been unfairly vilified: Rafael Benitez bought far worse and there’s something of the Peter Cormack about him) and his team deservedly wins a league match for the first time since August.
Afterwards, Sam Allardyce takes the easy route and, not wholly unreasonably, blames Rovers’ defeat on his absent defenders. Hodgson, a man with a surely fascinating hinterland - is more interesting entirely. He has grace and intelligence. That may not be sufficient for those who want a fan in charge (in which case why not appoint Jimmy Tarbuck and have done with it?), but it’s more than enough. He’s no sentimentalist either. He praises Torres, but not unreservedly and when I ask if he was surprised at the extent of rebuilding required, as hinted at in his programme notes, he even says “good question”, before explaining in fantastic, fascinating detail how things are not quite as he thought they were, but that’s always par for the course at a new job and, anyway, opinion is always subjective. And he writes his own programme notes. I do wish I knew him better.
If I did, he might have given me a lift back to my car.

Playlist
My Ride’s Here
Bruce Springsteen
Ah, the difference between a man and his art. Warren Zevon was a ghastly human being - and he knew it - but he was an astonishing spongwriter. Bruce Springsteen does him proud here. Rumer album’s good by the way...
On Enjoy Every Sandwich, The Songs Of Warren Zevon (Artemis, 2004)

You know what they say: things do happen, but not always at the right moment. Anyway, Hull. Oddly I didn't get to go there when they were in the Premier League and now here I am, making my way across the Humber Bridge for the first time this century (I did interview Peter Taylor at the KC Stadium, but I was pushed for time). It's surely one of the great wonders of the age - my stomach does little somersaults with the sheer joy of it all - and it looks scarily easy to jump or drive off. I wonder where John Prescott's house is, muse that even Hull has nice suburbs and manage to park next to the ground. All is well.
I was due to do another game, but overnight it emerged that Portsmouth might be going bust. It's a story, although it also seems like it's some bluff-calling by the administrator who made the statement that provoked the latest crisis. It's also bloody cold.
I find a feisty Portsmouth fan to chat to. He's called Colin and he's obviously one of the good guys. When he tells me the tale of the young him wandering around Portsmouth in the '70s (when the club were last in financial pain) collecting paper, selling it of recycling and giving the money to the club, I'm in awe. I don't think he'd do the same now though and that reflects more on the club than him.
Inside, the press room is a whole and there's no hackfood, no hackmilk for the tea and no real space. I manage to spill some tea over someone and he's a bit off about it. I'd be off too, but - although it wasn't wholly my fault - I did apologise which should have been the anecdote to said offness. Luckily Anna from The Guardian/Observer's here, so I chat with her. She's woefully under-dressed for tundra too.
I lose my way trying to get to the hackbox. Chiefly because it's in the sky somewhere. I buy a pie. It's vile. The wind hurts.
The match is fine, they have wi-fi and Portsmouth are worthy winners, but I'm trying to piece the whole tale together, which is a joy. The more I think about it, the more I write, the more sure I am it's not for real and the more I wonder what Derek Showers is doing these days.
Afterwards, there's a muscle in the back of my thigh I've never noticed before. It really hurts. Maybe it' because I've been tensed up for two hours. I'd like a massage.
And speaking of tense, here's Hull manager Nigel Pearson. I actually think he's joking when he bellows "come on!" as an opening salvo. He's not. He gives the rudest, most surreal press conference I've ever attended, at the very point when his team's dismal showing really ought to have meant a little humility. Apropos of nothing (ie nobody knew this) he mentions he had to alter his team selection in the morning. The only response to that is "who, why and what?". Having introduced the topic in the first place, he refuses to go on. He berates someone for asking about the sorely missed Jimmy Bullard ("have you got a fixation with him?") and so forth. He marches off followed by embarrassed PRs and the hackroom collapses in giggles. But there are mutterings - not by me; I had a ball - about this kind of treatment being remembered at a later date.
In contrast, Steve Cotterill - not necessarily the most loved man in football - is sweetness itself. He even apologises for not being able to answer my question about his club's situation right here, right now. You wonder if perhaps it's time for his career to get going again.
Either way, come tomorrow his club will be out of administration.

Playlist
Love And Pride
King
Haven't heard it in, ooh, decades. Today I hear it twice. It's still dreadful.

You know what they say: if you pull elastic it has to snap back. I'm not so sure any more. I do know it's one of those days where before I've even set off to Ipswich. I speak to the world's rudest woman on the phone - well employed Partners For Islington! It's not like there's a job-shredding recession going on - which gets to me rather more than it should. She wouldn’t do her job because she brazenly claimed to be out shopping (although if true, I’d have been too embarrassed to admit it). This is why people get ulcers.
And then after I’ve driven gently around a roundabout, I reach for my coffee. There's nothing there. Instead, Costa’s finest is dampening (is "dampening" a word?) the floor and since it was a latte the milk content will be a nostril-singeing friend for some time.
I'm been dispatched to Ipswich for the first time since a game with Millwall several (ie I genuinely can't remember) seasons ago. Christ. Still, this is where the half-full, better-times-ahead mindset needs to kick in. Look at it this way: the coffee might have soaked my jacket, but the laptop was in the boot and the phone was carefully stored. It could have been much much worse. So, in a way, could everything. The pretty woman at the ticket office gives me a huge smile of welcome and the clouds begin to lift.
There's some proper and properly delicious hackfood too: a baked potato and chilli with a reasonable kick and a pie every bit the equal of Wigan‘s. The stewards are friendly and so helpful that one actually calls someone to ascertain the wi-fi key. The woman dispensing tea is sweetness itself and there's plenty elbow room in the hackbox. as there was all those years ago, there's Tony from the News Of The World and Peter from more papers than I can think of. It's lovely to see them. I've actually missed coming here. I know this kind of courtly courtesy is how life should be conducted, but it’s not.
The game doesn't quite live up to the welcome. Cardiff City are eyebrow-raisingly dreadful after the first 40 seconds, but Ipswich get better as the game progresses and in Connor Wickham, they have an obvious star. He's going to cause a lot of people a lot of problems a lot of the time.
Another teenager, Cardiff substitute Adam Matthews, scores a comedy own goal for Ipswich’s first and is caught napping for their second. Afterwards Dave Jones has no complaints and he’s pretty scathing about Matthews. I hope that’s reverse psychology rather than him being a horrible person.
And then there’s Roy Keane. Oh joy. It’s been a while and for me it’s never been with Ipswich. That electricity that crackled from him at Manchester United and Sunderland isn’t appropriate for Ipswich, but he’s still a force of nature to behold. And he tells Tony “everyone has potential: you’ve got the potential to be a good reporter”. Fortysomething Tony nods his thanks. Comedy pause “.... but I didn’t say you’d follow it through mind”. You don’t get that with David Moyes. I ask him whether he might need a few old dogs to shepherd his young pups. He sort of agrees: “a blind man could see we need more players”. I love him.
After that, someone from Ipswich comes around our laptops and asks if we’d like more drink. And then delivers it to us, waitress style. A small thing but I’m seduced. I’ll always be seduced by Ipswich.

Playlist
The Autumn Defense
Once Around
(Yep Roc, album)
Lovely harmonies, soaring tunes and adult lyrics. I'm hooked.

You know what they say: if you’re bored of Wigan, you’re bored of life. That’s not strictly true and this has been a week with much to ponder, but all’s well that doesn’t end in complete pain, so Wigan it is, then. The journey up is OK, the journey back ruined by someone deciding to close the M6. Solely, I’d wager, to stop me from getting home to my hot dogs. When I do get home the Last Night Of The Proms hasn’t finished. Renee Fleming gives a spirited, jolly rendition of Rule Britannia, but now we have BBC 4, it’s still a peculiar decision to clog BBC 1’s Saturday evening schedule withit .
It’s deja vu all over again. I’m still reading the Rupert Thomson book - what a cop out the ending will prove to be though, tsk, tsk - I’m still scowling about having to pay wi-fi; the pies are still over-rated and I still need to have two to make sure. I think I drink some neat orange cordial. And still I’m a bit friends-free. This is happening so often now, perhaps it’s me.
The hackbox steward is having a bad day - someone else’s feathers are distinctly ruffled - but the match is a thriller even if having to do a runner means I can‘t take 10 minutes to watch rather than write. Sunderland’s ex-Wigan midfielder Lee Cattermole is clearly having a bad day too. He’s running around like a demented dervish and the only surprise is that he lasts 23 minutes before being sent off. Wigan, as ever, look great but have no cutting edge. Mauro Boselli gives every impression of being hopeless, but it might just be him struggling to adapt to a new league and new culture. However, the manner in which he plants a simple second-half header wide bodes ill indeed.
Sunderland go ahead with their only attack of the game and Wigan equalise late on with a goal which even the hosts themselves themselves don’t know who to credit to, but it’s all a fine showcase for the outer reaches of the Premier League.
Afterwards, I ask Steve Bruce a convoluted question about whether he should feel aggrieved to have failed to hang on or relieved that they deserved to lose but didn’t. He hedges it and I don’t blame him. Roberto Martinez looks much less haunted than he did a fortnight ago. He’s right about his team beginning to gel, but they still struggle to create chances and Boselli seems far from deadly, so they’re stil going to find it difficult. I bet he still can’t grasp why Jason Scotland didn’t work out...
I slope off. It’s still light when I’m leaving. Soon it’ll be dark.

Playlist
Heaven 17
Don’t Fear The Reaper
They do it like you might expect vintage period Heaven 17 (ie before they thought they were soulboys) to do it: at a roaring pace and with great big pounding keyvoards. What’s not to like?

You know what they say: smile and the whole world smiles with you. A brilliant thing - not the brilliant thing of course - happens on the way to Wigan. I'm in the middle lane of the M25 (not hogging mark you, just waiting for cars to pass on the outside so I can join them). I'm looking dolefully at them wondering if the fact that people often know you're doing that proves there's a God or just the existence of peripheral vision and I catch the eye of a woman in the front passenger seat. She's fiftysomething and the people with her are presumably her family. She gives me a great big smile and a whole-hearted wave as she drifts by. I'm sure I had my uglyface on at the time, but I switch personas and respond. She looks delighted. It's only a small thing I know, but of such small things are big joys made and, anyway, it made my day.
The journey's a doddle - long, easy journeys make my little heart sing - although it's an evening kick off and I even have time to sit in the DW car park and read some of my book, Rupert Thomson's Five Gates Of Hell. It's fantastic and makes me feel rather foolish for putting off reading something for so long though simply because it's by someone called Rupert. Oh happy day.
Inside, Wigan are still charging for wi-fi access and their pies are still over-rated, but I have two just to make sure. Another week and I don't really know anyone beyond the nodding stage. Where have all my friends gone?
Before kick-off something else happens. A soldier and Wigan fan was killed in Afghanistan the other week. Wigan agreed when his young widow asked for a minute's applause and his two boys to lead the team out. I get to my feet sighing. I loathe minute's applauses (a silence for me, please) and the unthinking, candy-coloured deification of serving soldiers makes me feel especially uncomfortable. Yet, when I hear the applause and see his pretty, dignified wife clapping slowly and his little boys pumping their hands like crazy, I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself for missing the point. I think of the future, the kids not knowing their dad and not understanding why he's never coming home and I just can't help myself: I begin to cry for them. I get it now.
The game's a funny one, but utterly absorbing. Chelsea win 6-0, but Wigan have the best of the first half. You have to fear for them but if they can sort their defence out and find a goalscorer they'll be fine. Chelsea were very Chelsea and although he didn't score, Didier Drogba was impeccable. What a player he is.
Afterwards, Carlo Ancelotti won't be getting carried away now or indeed ever. It's an act of course but I like him and I'd wager he's a calming influence at the centre of the Chelsea madness.
In contrast Robert Martinez looks a little shellshocked, as well he might. I like his shoes though. How does he get them so shiny? ("Polish" isn;t the full answer). Some people ask him about his job security in a roundabout way ("Some people might say, Roberto...") and while he gets the point, he knows Dave Whelan better then some people. I don't go down that route, simply because I don't believe it yet. Wigan problem seems glaringly obvious to me, so I ask him if he feels he has any on-field leaders.
"Good question!" he replies in surprisingly cheery fashion. I report his response on only ego grounds. Sorry. And he agrees with me and explains he'll sort it out. Between us I think we've cracked Wigan's season. Cough.

Playlist
Knowledge Of Beauty
Dexys Midnight Runners
Still one of the greatest songs I've ever heard. Gets me every time: "I look back where I came from". Has nobody been smart enough to cover it? How can music be this good, this moving, this life-affirming?
From Don't Stand Me Down, Mercury album, 1985

You know what they say: if you don't have any friends, that's probably because you're pretty dislikeable. And so it proves. I drive up to Blackburn, pausing only to wonder whether.... But then I decide not to think about it. It's for the best.
I don't mind Blackburn. Really. Their press arrangements may be weird (I'd wager they may become less weird if/when the takeover happens, but what do I know?), but the people are properly friendly (there's a faux friendly nothernness which that line from GBH - and I'm paraphrasing since I can't remember it exactly - "you know what we mean when we say 'friend'," encapsulated rather well) and their hackfood of Lancashire Hot Pot was surprisingly edible for an naturally inedible dish.
But to go back to friends for the third time in three paragraphs, I don't know a soul, bar one and when I strike up a conversation he's pretty hostile, so fuck him. Blackburn Rovers against Everton isn't a bad or off-kilter game, but the none of the usual mob are here and the hackbox feels more like a creche. Maybe it's a sign of the times; maybe not. Maybe it's me; maybe not. I don't know, I really don't. I do know I'm going to do an age survey when I can remember.
The game's quite entertaining. Rovers are fine, if typically overly-cautious after the giddiness of a Tim Howard-assisted opener. Everton, though, are lacking in all areas, as if they hadn't bothered doing tactics in pre-season training, while Louis Saha doesn't seem to have done any pre-season training whatsoever. Fair result, fair game although as the scores filtered through, it was clear the real interest lay elsewhere. Still, it could have been worse.
Afterwards, David Moyes is better value than usual. Being honest about what everyone in the room has seen usually takes the pressure off and he even gracefully takes my point about his team dominating possession but not creating a chance of note.
Sam Allardyce is his usual un-self-doubting self. When he's praising the excellent Phil Jones, he announces "you don't need a trained eye like mine to see what a quality player he is" but I'm the only one to raise an eyebrow. As Dionne Warwick And, um, Friends Said: that's what friends are for.
It's still light when I leave. The phone call doesn't come. A shame in a way.

Playlist

Burn It Down
Dexys Midnight Runners
Burn It Down
What a tasteful youth I was. In this respect if no other. All together now: "Oscar Wilde and Brendan Behan. Sean O'Casey, George Bernard Shaw. Samuel Beckett, Eugene O'Neill, Edna O'Brien and Lawrence Stern". Is this the moment to admit I didn't (and still don't) know who Lawrence Stern is. Unless they spelt "Laurence" and "Sterne" wrong. They did, didn't they?

You know what they say: new season, new opening line. These are the strangest of times. And yet, and yet, and yet, I haven't felt this upbeat about a new season in years. Nothing's happened, I'm sure it'll all turn to tears by about October and doubtless there's pain, misery and heartache to come, but right now the sun is shining
Doing something for the last time is always unsettling (if I die tomorrow this is still just the normal guff; if I knew I was going to die tomorrow everything would have poignancy) and before 8am, I've done something for the last time in my life.
Even so, I sail up to Burnley (not literally, that would be tricky), through the vicious M1 roadworks and up the M66. Just after Accrington, I'm passed by a footballer. He's driving like a tabloid would expect a footballer to drive, ie somewhere between pre-comeback Michael Schumacher and a comedy drunk. Lights are flashed. Now, although this isn't to my credit, I'm reasonably macho about twatty drivers, so I simply drift (I can't give him the gratification of instant movement) into the inside lane in my own time, making the internationally recognised signal for masturbation as he speeds by. I'd love to tell you who he is, but his windows are tinted and I don't know (I have a peak at the players' car park afterwards: his is there) and without suggesting I have esp, I don't know how I knew it was a footballer either. But I do know he's going to kill himself if he carries on like that. Seriously.
I even get a parking pass with my name on it (I know, I know I'm acting like a 14-year-old again, but things aren't always so straight-forwards). Burnley's perfect-bound programme seems to be made out of toilet paper and their so-called meat'n'potato pie is the same astronaut-food-grey as their so-called mushy peas. Curiously, it tastes better than it looks.
Richard Jolly's here, which always personally and sometimes professionally is a good sign. He's already as cynical as October and he always makes me laugh like a drain. Chirs Moore's here too, so, ahem, nothing can go wrong.
Things start to go wrong just before kick-off. I've lost my phone. Really. We've been around the world together, we've been in terrible states together, we've been in an absent-minded rush together and it's never happened before. It can't be far since I'd used it in the car park to commune with the office. I get Richard to call it. No reply. Eek. Perhaps an urchin has found it. Eventually I ask Pete the helpful PR. There's one been found. Hurrah.
I realise that as anecdotes go, it's hardly one to take to the talk shows, but there's a general malaise here. One hack loses - and then finds - his car keys and at 6pm another discovers he's somehow lost his match report. It's all very rusty.
Anyway, the match has its moments. Forest are unfortunate when Robert Earnshaw hits the bar and Nathan Tyson misses a sitter, but Burnley's Brian Jensen doesn't have a save to make. I write a shedful of words and everyone's happy.
Afterwards, Brian Laws is relieved - he and Burnley are in their natural home, but their base is stronger than it was two years ago, so you never know - and Billy Davies is as cheeky as ever, his spectacles are admirably rose-tinted and he gives my question a thoughtfully detailed response. I'm not sure being managed by him would be easy, but I'd like to know him better. He might be fun.

Playlist
Donna Summer
I Feel Love
The sound of an actual new music being invented and it still sounds ahead of its time today. Astonishing and beneath all the boundary-pushing, a chorus The Beatles would have envied.

Moment of Zen: it wasn't the phone call. It was a phone call.

Off, then, to the British Speedway Grand Prix. Hurrah. A sport that's noisy, unashamedly proletarian and full of Poles. It's hot. Really, really hot, which has all sorts of implications for you know who, who's you know what, but, hey, life is full of implications.
The M25 is at a standstill at the A1 as they've imposed yet more savage 50mph limits. It's a speed slow enough to conform that there are no workers on these roadworks. Great. I take a diversion via Borehamwood and Watford, but that's blocked too.
My back's sticky, even though I'd hit upon the clever rouse of driving to Cardiff wearing shorts and changing into something marginally more dignified just before I arrive. Alas I forget to pack some shoes. For the dignified look, I plump for long trousers and sandals. It's what Jesus would have done. If he'd been covering the speedway.
Everything's a little bit haphazard. The man at the press gate tells me I'm late (I'm an hour early after some catching up after the M25 and that dual carriageway into Wales not being too disastrous, but thanks anyway) and when I stumble into the media area, I'm not on the hacklist.
"How did you get here?" asks another Welshman.
"M4," I trill.
This causes much hilarity, for he had wanted to know how I'd evaded the man at the gate, presumably with a view to shooting someone. I despair. A woman gives me a pass. They're all very nice about it, but not only are there places to spare in the press box, there's an awful lot of people not actually working. This may sound bitchy, but I really don't want someone putting pints of beer next to my laptop and standing up and cheering when the going gets thrilling, as it invariably does. Who are these people? Where are they from? What do they want?
I suspect 21st Century British speedway might have peaked when Chris "Bomber" Harris won in 2007. He hasn't won a Grand Prix since, but he's still the best local hope, since Tai Woffinden is just a kid and so-called wild card Scott Nicholls isn't remotely the contender he once was. Last year they had an endless supply of energy drinks. This year they don't. They don't have milk for the tea/coffee either and the attendance is down since someone moronically arranged British - indeed European - speedway's biggest day on the same weekend as the British Formula 1 Grand Prix.
Call me not understanding things properly, but I'd have switched Cardiff with, say, the Swedish Grand Prix on August 14 in Malilla (no idea I'm afraid) where the capacity is just 15,000 or the 4000-capacity Terenzano circuit, somewhere in Italy, some time in September.
The noise - air horns, vuvuzelas, unsilenced bikes, the Millennium Stadium's ghastly PA and shouty Poles - is overpowering. I wear earplugs. The racing is fantastic. Jason Crump and the Poles Jaroslaw Hampel and Tomasz Gollob seem streets ahead, but when Gollob's bike lets him down in the semi, the Australian Chris Holder surprises even himself by winning his first Grand Prix in his first season after a dramatic Grande Final.
Afterwards, it's a sort of chaos. The riders are jolly enough, but they're asked questions by a speedway official rather than the hacks. Worse, since so many so-called writers use the moment to get stuff signed and take photographs, it's more like a meet'n'greet. Still, you can't imagine, say, Glen Johnson posing with a berk in a baseball cap with the grace displayed by Holder and the more experienced Jason Crump.
I change back into shorts for the night ride home. There's only one traffic jam to negotiate.

Playlist
Sparks - Hello Young Lovers
I've long under-estimated this one. Perhaps it was the awful cover or Perfume, the least interesting Sparks single in decades. I wasn't ;listening properly. It's Lil Beethoven but better.