Countdown

Only 5 days 'til the wedding...I am sh*tting bricks about the speech etc etc etc. Really looking forward to the actual service, just worrying myself sick about all the other stuff.

Will be glued to this all week :

BBC - Weather Centre - 5 Day Forecast in Celsius for Liverpool, United Kingdom

Bad pennies

Look who's turned up. Remember this Blackistone on Everton fans. Well, wonder if he's changed his tune now.

http://www.evertonfc.com/news/archive/tim-howard-s-us-diary-day-five.html

"I spoke on the telephone today to a well known local columnist with the a big local paper.

I used to watch Kevin Blackistone when I watched a sports programme called Around The Horn and it was nice to chat with him.

He is a big hitter in the states...similar to the guys who are on Jimmy Hill's Sunday morning TV chat show."

Story from The Dallas Morning News by Kevin Blackistone from 2001 :

http://www.big12.net/stories/021101/men_02110114416.shtml

"And above all, no matter how much you mortgaged to get in to the big game, you don't have the right to pelt the opposition, its fans or the referees with bottles, lighters, coins, batteries, bags of excrement, your great granddad's false uppers, your ex's door keys or the marbles you've apparently lost.

Where do you think you are? At Stanley Park in Liverpool with the Everton soccer team in the house!"

Anyway I was walking down Bold Street on Saturday when I was asked to sign petition by some Socialist Workers, it was aimed at stopping the Israeli attacks in Lebanon. I said I'd be happy to do it if there was something in it about getting Hezbollah to release the two solider and condemning their rocket attacks..."Nope" I was told "Hezbollah was a resistance organisation" I looked puzzled and said they were as bad as each other so condemning one would be like validating the other. "Nope" I was told, "if someone was coming at you with a gun and you've got a knife then you've just got to stab them haven't you?". I said that was fair enough but Hezbollah have snuck upto the gun owner, stabbed him then hid behind their mums & cried foul..."Nope" I was told, "it's all to do with zionist aggression" (I kid you not they actually said "Zionist aggression"!)...I walked off.

I was 100% behind the anti-Israeli petition but at the end of the day there has to be balance & even handedness. Bombing a civilian target like happened in Qana is an appalling atrocity but it's as bad to fire rockets from a building housing civilians knowing that there'll be a counter strike.

Everton lose on pens to Club America

MOYES STILL PLEASED

By the sounds of it we did pretty well in the first half but faded badly towards the end and conceded an equaliser right at the death, it was really, really hot according to the official website. Arteta nipped in with a free-kick for our opener in the first half. More progress? Hope so.

People on The People's Forum say Lescott and Yobo looked strong together so that's a major plus...It'd be nice to see Beats and AJ start getting golas though.

SO FAR NOT SO GOOD, WAYNE - Brian Reade

SO FAR NOT SO GOOD, WAYNE

Can't argue with this can we.

Nice to see England regain a bit of form...they wrapped a highly impressive win over Pakistan today :

BBC Test Match report





People are arriving back from Lourdes...reports indicate a good time was had by all although the heat did take it's toll by the sounds of things. Nigel popped along to ours to round off a two country 48 hour working/drinking session so we chewed the fat and polished off our Becks supplies.

Schadenfreude Utd V Wishy-washy Hippy Town

Cubs Fans, Cubs Haters, Please Take a Look - Front Office Football Central

Me and Sara were having a chat about sporting schadenfreude and basically agreeing that it's very odd to meet a sports fan who does'nt reval in the misfortune of their rivals.



Sara is a Cardinals fans and Diana, my other American Evertonian type pal, is a Cubs fan...just go onto google and search on "Cubs Cardinals Suck".

You know those people who say stuff like "Oh well if Sunderland can't win it then I hope Newcastle do". Surely they are just playing at it. Us Bluenoses will always chuckle when the redshite lose, why not...they love to smirk at our misfortune. Long may it be the case. My point is that sports fans are the same the world over. We went to an AFL game and the guy in front of us was SO sarcastic towards the oposition, in New Zealand we watch rugby with a family of Aucklanders who'd donned Wellington Hurricanes gear in the hope that they'd beat Christchurch. It's just the way of things.

Fortress?

£80m takeover battle looming for Everton

How odd that it should be an institution called Fortress involved after the Christopher Samuelson debacle :

Erm...Was it Eric Templar?

Wonder if this will come to anything?

Landis gives positive drugs test

Landis gives positive drugs test

Sad stuff...it leave such a bad taste in the mouth, especially considering how much it means to the French.

Tim Howard's U.S. Diary

TIM HOWARD'S US DIARY - DAY ONE

TIM HOWARD'S US DIARY - DAY TWO

I know these things are fairly generic but it's all part of the build up to the new season.

We drew with Columbus Crew last night but we had a fair few players resting again. Anichebe seems to be doing very well at the moment. Watched United take Celtic apart last night, makes our 1-0 look a lot less positive. Still pre-season counts for very little, would like to see AJ & Beats up and running though.

Telegraph | Sport | Liverpool ground to a halt

I'm sure this is all pie-in-the-sky about Everton's potential new stadium but I was surprised at the level of the kopite's debt. £80,000,000 can buy a lot of journeymen French and Spaniards. Personally I think all these rumours of their stadium project grinding to a halt is just softening the fans up for when they sell the stadium naming rights.

Punishments cut for Italian clubs

Punishments cut for Italian clubs

Well that's pretty pathetic isn't it...just like Spurs in 95. If you are a big enough club and you cry enough they always look after you.

Plunkett ruled out of two Tests

This probably warrants a mention just because it seems English cricket is ravaged by injuries left, right & centre. Vaughn, Flintoff, Harmison, Jones, Giles plus several others have all suffered since the ashes. Seems odd really to get this many injuries.

Rooney reveals bust-up with Moyes

Rooney reveals bust-up with Moyes

icLiverpool - Rooney in Moyes rant

Usual bullshit....he's hardly going to say "I was a greedy kid who had his head turned by an even greedier agent and so turned my back on my boyhood club when they needed me most." He had to come up with something like this. Why on earth is a 21 year old putting out an autobiography? Nonsense.

"I suppose he expected to get most of the attention himself following a good season when Everton had ended seventh.

"But when he realised I was getting so much of the limelight I felt he resented it."

"I would have gone almost anywhere just to get away from David Moyes," Rooney said in his autobiography, which is being serialised in the Daily Mail.

"To me, he appeared overbearing; just wanting to control people."

Ah right, over-bearing manager eh Wayne? Well United would be the perfect choice then wouldn't it. Why throw the boot in when Everton and Moyes in particular have been nothing but polite and complimentary about him since he left?

As the entirety of Goodison once said : "Fat little knobhead...you're just a fat little knobhead"

hail, hail

Right-oh....hopefully the wedding stuff is in hand. We rounded off a few things but ultimately had a bit of a weekend off. Saying that I did have to get up at 3:30am on Saturday to help with the Lourdes departure (nice to see everyone, but still a bit gutted I'm not going though). Hopefully catch up with them on the webcam at some stage :

Rosary Square

Rosary Basilica

Grotto

Anyway did some shopping on Saturday :

The Lotus Room

thought this place, was worth a mention. We got a coffee table from them at the weekend. Absolutely gorgeous...great shop if you have a penchant for ethnic furniture.

And on Sunday got down to the business of watching Everton take on Celtic on telly. Not too bad for this stage of the pre-season. Looked bright enough with some key personel missing (Cahill and our entire first choice back four). We lost one nil but it was nice to get a look at them.

Sarcasm at it's best

Guardian Unlimited Football Columnists Rooney Vol I: a heartbreaking work of staggering genius

Superb review of Rooney's Story-so-far "auto-biography".

This is good too :

PNC Park Threatens To Leave Pittsburgh Unless Better Team Is Built

Everton take on two teams at once!

OBJECTIVE ACHIEVED

How long was the footy season over for? 6 days? On Saturday Everton kicked it all off again with two games at the same time...one at Port Vale and the other at Bury. The Bury game in particular was interesting 'cause it was AJ make his debut and aparently most of the Neville clan are involved with at Gigg Lane :

"The match against Bury will also give Phil Neville the opportunity to play at a ground that means a great deal to his family.

He told evertonTV: "My mum is the secretary, my dad used to work there as the commercial manager, my grandad is on the car park and my gran does the catering so we have monopolised the whole club!"

Johnson missed a hatful of chances but was still mobbed at the end (EVERTONFC.COM report, Guardian report)

Anichebe grabbed a brace in the game, without a huge amount of fanfare this could be his year. It'd be nice to see him and Vaughan play a part this season. It'd be just nice to see poor James Vaughan kick a ball after the nightmare he's had. It's be horrible for him to be cut off after such a fabulous start to his career.

Everton team V face Bury: Iain Turner, Phil Neville, Mark Hughes, Joseph Yobo, Patrick Boyle, Leon Osman, Mikel Arteta, Scott Phelan, Bjarni Vidarsson, Victor Anichebe, Andy Johnson. Subs: Stephen Connor, Darren Dennehy, Scott Spencer, John Ruddy, Alan Kearney.

Everton team V Port Vale: Richard Wright, John Irving, Gary Naysmith, Alan Stubbs, David Weir, Andy van der Meyde, Lee Carsley, Simon Davies, Kevin Kilbane, James Beattie, James McFadden. Subs: Jamie Jones, Lee Molyneux, Ryan Harpur, John Paul Kissock, Steven Morrison.





Nice to have Everton back...here's a couple of vida to get us all in the mood (the second one is the final seconds of the nail-biting 10 V 14 game against Blackburn).

In other news the test is progressing towards either a plodding draw with the batsmen on top or a nail-biting final day finish. Nice to see some England batsmen in three figures though.

The main focus of my weekend was on Saturday...we all went to Chester races for my stag do...Fabulous afternoon for it, not a cloud in the sky. I'd never been racing before but I enjoyed every minute of it. I didn't do too bad either, most of my horses cam first or second and I ended up ever so slightly up on the afternoon. Didn't last very long once we got back to town though...called it a day at 11pm, having started at noon that'd not too bad though.

Waterloo have signed Mike Petri a scrum-half from Penn State in the US :

AmericanRugbyNews.com: Petri signs with UK Division I club

Gainline.us report (note the link to the wikipedia page I started)

England v Pakistan

England v Pakistan



England have another chance to get some stability in this test series before they jet off into the lions den to defend The Ashes in Australia. Decentish start although you feel it never really counts if the opposition are dropping catches left, right and centre.

Nice to see Collingwood get his name up on the board at Lords. A good landmark for any cricketer.

World cup footnotes

Watch to the end to see Tim Cahill run over to get an Everton shirt off a bloke in the crowd.

The Matterazzi/Zidane thing is rumbling on with the media indulging in the ZZ apologist role. It was obvious at the time Marco said some very nasty to Zidane but if you look at the replays very carefully the Frenchman headbutts Matterazzi...amazing how the media have missed it really.

Odd Matterazzi report from the beeb

Mad Materazzi

"Materazzi's most famous moment at Everton was when he was sent off against Coventry after he was the victim of a Darren Huckerby dive.

In that single season Materazzi managed to clock up three red cards and 12 yellows.
Poor Marco slumped against an advertising hoarding on the touchline in tears, and to say sympathy was in short supply from his manager Smith, his own fans and team-mates is understatement of the year.

There were highs - such as a brilliant free-kick against Middlesbrough that sparked scenes of such joy from Marco that he may still have been celebrating now had the referee not demanded a re-start.

But it ended as it had started, in tears. Materazzi left Goodison Park with little fanfare and no regrets on either side.

Gone and presumably forgotten."

Nice of the bbc & Phil McNulty (who should know better) to tell us what we remember.

Italy World Champions

Ex-Everton player lifts the world cup

Interesting night for Marco Matterazzi...Gave away a penalty, equalised, said something to Zidane that made him descend into madness, get butted in the sternum by said player, score a goal in a penalty shootout, got his hands on the world cup!



We'll never know for sure what Marco said to Zidane but I lip-read it as : "Ha ha ha! You are a failure! I've played for Everton and you never will now. I can die a happy man 'cause I've achieved the ultimate zenith of being part of the People's Club whereas you will now just be left dissappointed and unfulfilled....plus you've gone bald in a really odd way"



Italy are champions of the world for the 4th time. I thought they shaded the first half but France were much the better side in the second. Then they lost Henry to injury and Zidane to a red card (The debate is whether the 4th offical had told the linesman about the headbutt because initially nether the ref or the linesmen seemed to know what had happened). Italy still held back against 10 men but as it turned out there was never any doubt with the penalties...they were all unsaveable.

yawn

Home sweet home....admittedly blogging whilst a bit pissed probably isn't the best policy but it's a world cup blog now so reports need to be entered.
Had a dullish day...Anne is up at the lake distract for her hen do so I am abandoned. My principle mission for thw weekend was to secure our wedding rings from the jewellers. Managed to sort it out with the minimum of hassle, although an unexpected delay did mean I had to hang round in Dr Duncans at 12:15pm drining a pint (far too early in my book) but eventually it got sorted...then I had to get home. It has to be said there is no nervousness quite like that of walking through town with two grand's worth of platinuum on you.

Anyway jobs done for the evening I headed of across town to watch the third place play-off with my friend Mike. Glad Germany went out on a high as they've put on such a good world cup, after that we watched two fat boys cuddle each other into submission for the Commonwealth heavyweight boxing championship of the world or something then I begen my last train oddysey.

It's not so much the journey just the people you have to share your journey with...tonight we had :

• Scallies getting a severe talking to by the police only to get ushered onto my train and bid good-night.
• More scallies.
• Slightly conceited tanorexics who'd be gorgeous but for the for fact that their fake/sunbed tans are giving off gamma radiation.
• 'outrageous' Austrlian girls who are convinced they are the most interesting thing in the entire hemsiphere.
• an absolute snake of a women who slagged her partner off for the entirity of the journey (I assume she did because after twenty minutes I had to move seats so I could get out of ear-shot).
  

and that's about it...slightly bitchy post but I'm tired.

Here's Curveball just so I don't forget.

Curveball

Portugal 0-1 France

Portugal 0-1 France

So it's and Italy/France final...Portugal, who've become the pantomime villains of the tournament, were undone by a Zidane penalty resulting from a definate (but exagurated) foul on Henry. A dull game really...Portugal carved out a few chances and tried a few dives (one outrageous one from Ronaldo where he just flung himself into the air) but ultimately it was fairly straight-forward although Bartez looked ropey as anything at times. Just the 3rd place playoff and final to look forward to now.

Italy knock Germany out

Last-gasp Italy knock Germany out

Brilliant game last night...I only saw the 2nd half as I was playing footy...it was far too hot but it was still fun...up until the moment when my mate Mike Wildman belted the ball into my plumbs from about two yards. Never fun! Once I'd recovered and the game was finished it was into the pub subito for the match. Two teams playing quick, skillfull, strong, aggressive football...no thought of holding on for pens. It was a shame there had to be a loser. In the end Italy came out for extra-time on a mission, their record on penalty shootouts is as bad as England's so they surged forward hitting the woodwork twice in 5 minutes. With 90 seconds left Pirlo took the ball at the edge of the D and rolled a fabulous through-ball to Grosso who curled it into the far corner. The pure joy scoring celebration evoked memories of Tardelli.




with Germany going forward del Piero nicked another with the last kick of the game. Heart-break for the German people who've been building in belief with every game...They've put on a great world cup so you've got to feel sorry for them although you have to wonder about the wisdom in those inflamatory pre-match articles.

So that's that one sorted tonight France take on Portugal...can't really predict that one but a France Italy final will give the Azuuri a chance for revenge for the 2000 European Championship final when France & Silvian Wiltord of all people somehow stole a win from under Italy's nose.

Penalties AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!

plus ca change...

another heroic defeat. It appears to be our lot in life. Ultimately you can't moan about England going out of the world cup, they haven't clicked at any stage but why does it always have to be like this?



Beckham going off possibly helped the team as Lennon has always looked superb for England. Hargreaves was doing when Sven always hoped he would. Terry & Ferdinand, Neville & Cole looked comfortable even Lampard was contributing (Gerrard for some reason was completely anonymous, I suspect he had an injury)...The Rooney sending off was harsh...he was getting fouled by two players for a start. Was he sent off for the initial foul? Well it wasn't a stamp but even so the ref was standing there with his arm raised for the Portugal free-kick, it was only after the pimply knave Ronaldo got involved and Wayne 'pushed' him away that the ref went for his pocket.



Check out the pre-match headbutt too at the end too!

Anyway England + Penalties = Plane home.



Sven's gone and Beckham has resigned as England captain. I await the "Priceless" photoshop jokes from our Celtic cousins.

Anyway the world cup is wide open now and, as the cliche goes, it's all about peaking at the right time. Germany squeezed past Argentina on pens and sparked an on-field mass brawl.



If you think about the early games for the respective teams it's amazing to think that Argentina aren't in the competition anymore. They played some of the best attacking football the world cup has ever seen...and yet it's the Germans in the semis. Also peaking at the right time are the French...they beat The Harlem Globetrotters 1-0, the people next to us in the pub stood to win a lot of money if France had scored a second. Italy saw off Ukraine and that's the semis........anyone but Cristiano Ronaldo and I'm happy.