New Man United purchase.

Sir Alex Ferguson today announced a key new purchase ahead of next week's derby game against Man City.

He's off to Toys R Us to buy some balloons.

Well he is Scottish.....

Football 365 have this report on their Mediawatch page (Sir being a reference to Sir Alex Ferguson):

"To manage a national team you need to be a certain age with plenty of experience and with a presence and a CV that is indisputable" - Sir on Don Fabio.

Could you not have said that 18 months ago, Sir?

Well he is Scottish. He's probably spent the last 18 months having a very good laugh. Mind you, he's in good company.

Prime Minister fails in his duty....

According to the Sun via Football365.com:

'Gordon Brown WILL stay away from England's crucial Euro 2008 qualifier - amid fears he is jinxed. The PM has been on hand to see our football and rugby teams crash to defeat in recent months. He also saw Scotland get knocked out 2-1 by Italy at Hampden Park on Saturday'

Surely that's failing in his duty as a Scot?

That idiot Celtic fan....

Rumour has it they've found him, identified him and banned him for life.

They should just send him into the home end at Ibrox wearing a celtic shirt at the next Old Firm game.

Korea, dogs and football songs

It was the one, incredibly predictable fact about last weeks cup final was that the Man United fans would sing a song on the subject of Jose Mourinhio and his dog. What was nearly as predictable was that references to Man United's Korean striker, Ji Sung Park, would be made in the song.

Like most Man United players, Park has his own song which can be regularly heard from the Stretford End at Old Trafford. The lyrics are (to the tune of Lord of the Dance):

Park, Park, where you may be,
you eat dogs in your home country,
but it could be worse, you could be Scouse,
eating rats in your council house.

The lyrics are aimed at United's old rivals from down the M62 - but the fact remains that part of the lyrics touch on a subject which is rather sensitive for the Koreans. I don't know if Park's English is up to understanding the song (it's not always possible to make out the lyrics to songs like this at football grounds) or if anyone has explained it, but he's probably also managed to work he's rather popular with the United fans.

For the cup final, predicatably there were a couple of songs - the one I heard quite regularly while queuing for the programs was another ditty to the tune of the Lord of the Dance:

Jose, where ever you may be,
Ji Sung ate your dog for tea,
Special One, your dog is dead,
maybe you should get a cat instead.

Jim White in his report on the FA Cup final also reported this variation on Winter Wonderland:

Mourinho are you listening
You know your dog went missing
Well we heard it bark
So we fed it to Park
Eaten in a stir-fry wonderland

The thing about all these chants is they, are by the standards of football chants, vaguely funny and pleasantly free from the sort of language and aggression that is often typical of the average football song. But, in all cases, they rely for their humour on a blatant stereotyping of Koreans - so it begs the question "why aren't these chants covered by the anti racist chanting rules that are now in place in football?"

New Wembley

We had the good fortune to get tickets for the FA Cup Final - so it was a most impressive sight. Rather disappointing however that the loos were over flowing by the end - a couple of comments were over heard along the lines of "somethings at Wembley never change".

Getting away afterwards wasn't too bad - as Man United fans, we decided to leg it on the full time whistle as we didn't want to hang around feeling miserable and then get stuck in the middle of the Chelsea queuing for the tube. Quite impressed we were back at Shenfield by 7:30 considering we only left Wembley at 5:45.

One comment on the match - I was rather disgusted at the cynical behaviour of the Chelsea players for what was left of the game after Drogba's goal - three bookings inside six minutes means they also accrued enough bookings for an automatic disrepute charge.

West Ham, Southend, Tevez and injustice.

Here's an interesting point that was made by someone on the Southend United mailing list.

It has been suggested that the compromise made by the Premiership over the Tevez affair would be to allow Sheffield United and West Ham to stay in the Premiership, making a 21 team league affair next week.

If this happened, the knock on effect could be that Southend are "saved" from their relegation, in order to keep the Championship at 24.

It's probably wishful thinking, but given that Leeds deliberately went into administration before the end of this season so their ten point penalty didn't affect their League 1 campaign, it would be tempting for the League authorities to say to the Blues to stay up. With my Man United hat on - great news. With my Southend hat, better news.

Living in a Siberian cave.

Do you live in a Siberian cave with no access to the print or television media, or are you incapable of understanding it? Then there's a job at Basildon Council's Planning Department for you.

A few weeks ago, a group of travellers were given five years temporary permission to stay at plots
they developed in Cranfield Park Avenue, Wickford. Basildon Council is appealing the decision because (according to the Southend Echo) of the travellers is Freddy Eastwood who "is a well-paid professional footballer earning £100,000-a-year and this may have affected the outcome."

Now that would usually sound fair enough - I don't expect local officials to have an in depth knowledge of the football team in the next town - even their goal scoring hero whose goals got Southend United promoted last season for the second season running and scored a vital freekick in the game that put Southend in the Carling Quarter Finals for the first time.

Except I do expect them to notice when a) the goal was against Manchester United and b) the result of said goal was a bunch of national newspaper articles talking about how he was about to get evicted from his house by Basildon Council.