Blue hell

RE-READING Birmingham City’s programme for last Saturday’s match against Preston, I can feel myself wince. There are so many statements of cautious optimism inside, it hurts.

Last on MOTD: My camera never lies

I HAVE, to my knowledge, only been picked out in the crowd by TV cameras at a football match three times. Fortunately, none of them were particularly embarrassing.

The Anglo-Swedish Guillem Balague

TUESDAY evening. My mobile rings. It’s a friendly-sounding chap from the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. Well, you know how popular I am in Sweden.

Shearer’s shadow

SIR Bobby Robson’s Mail on Sunday column last weekend was ostensibly about Manchester City. But it ended up giving an insight into the remarkable level of authority Alan Shearer wielded as a player at Newcastle.

Last on MOTD: There’s no one quite like David Elleray

BACK in the 1990s, there was a referee called David Elleray. He became, entirely inadvertently, a kind of refereeing pantomime villain.

Golden year

I’M not saying Wolves were on edge ahead of this afternoon’s game against QPR. It’s just that, when the gates opened 90 minutes before kick-off, the first song played over the public address system was ‘Let’s Face The Music And Dance’.

Match of the season

ABOUT an hour-and-a-half before kick off, the news broke that Steven Gerrard was not even in Liverpool’s squad. My phone beeped – a text message from a friend. “Liverpool have given up, then,” it read. Well, not quite, as it turned out.

Y Pasg Hapus

WHEN John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, described the decision to play football on Easter Sunday as “glory hunting”, I’m guessing he was referring to the day’s two Premier League games (one live on Setanta, the other on Sky) rather than the Welsh Cup semi-final between Aberystwyth Town and Camarthen (exclusively live on S4C).

Last on MOTD: Love is a stranger

NICK Hornby’s novel High Fidelity contains a section where the narrator, depressed at being dumped by his latest girlfriend, tries to track down his five most significant exes to try to make some sense of his relationship history.

Great double entendres of golf

NUMBER one in a series of one: courtesy of Ross Fisher, the Berkshire-born golfer who came within a couple of dropped shots of being a clubhouse leader on the first day of his first trip to the Masters.