Crazy times in Manchester

THE morning belonged to City, the evening to United. Sir Alex Ferguson is going to Moscow. Sven-Goran Eriksson is just going.

Last on MOTD: What made the difference, Kevin?

MY first encounter with Kevin Keegan was at a post-match press conference a few months after he had taken over at Manchester City in 2001.

Simply the 37th best

ANYONE artistic or creative will tell you this: As soon as you make your work public, you lose ownership of it – as people will always attach their own meanings to it.

For instance, when Mike Chapman and Holly Knight wrote ‘Simply The Best’ - Tina Turner’s ode to overstatement - in the late 1980s, they probably never imagined that it would one day be blared out over a public address system during Barnsley’s player of the year awards.

Unless I’m very much mistaken…

“UNLESS I’m very much mistaken,” Murray Walker once said during a Formula One commentary, only to interrupt himself mid-observation. “I am very much mistaken!”

The first half of that quote became so closely associated with Walker, that it ended up as the title of his 2003 autobiography.

There may be another chapter to write. Unless I’m very much mistaken, Bruce Willis is being lined up to play Walker in a film biopic of Michael Schumacher.

Of flesh and blood I’m made

CRISTIANO Ronaldo is not a badger. He is not a skyscraper. He is not a trifle, nor a giraffe, nor a door hinge. He is not even a panda. No. Cristiano Ronaldo is human.

Out of the wreckage

TEN years ago this week, Wrexham were just about hanging on to a Second Division play-off place – and were the top football club in Wales. The decade since has not been kind. Last night, their 87-year run as a Football League club was ended by defeat at Hereford.

Last on MOTD: Derby are the champions

CONGRATULATIONS to Derby County, last night mathematically confirmed as winners of the Gubbometer after they were shown last on Match of the Day for the 12th time this season.

Here come the games again

WHEN I was at junior school, we were always allowed to bring in games at the end of term. The leaders and decision makers in the sporting world seem to allow themselves to do the same. And the game they like to play is “Silly Beggars”.

Jean Baudrillard reports from Moss Lane

FAKERY, fakery, fakery. One moment, Blue Peter are fixing a couple of competitions to get themselves out of a bit of a scrape; the next, you’re wondering if anything you see or read is real any more. It’s all Thomas Kohnstamm’s fault.

Somebody, do something!

INTRODUCING Aston Villa’s embarrassingly-easy victory at Derby on Match of the Day last night, Ray Stubbs remarked that they were in a three-team mini-league chasing an Intertoto Cup place. No criticism of Stubbs, but that mini-league does sound about as appealing as a Christmas present brought from a petrol station.