Thursday, May 31, 2012
Stanley Cup finals breakdown
Goal celebrations go to Hollywood
This week's round-up also features special FX football celebrations, extreme exercising and a lucky Monaco driver
1) Happy Diamond Jubilee, your Majesty. Here is the Queen visiting Molineux in 1962 (albeit not to see Wolves); welcoming the Arsenal squad to Buckingham Palace in 2007; getting a first-hand haka, along with the corgis, from rugby league tourists in the same year; taking a trip to Wimbledon in 2010; and sprinting through the Royal Box in time to catch the end of a race.
2) Wonder whether Andy Murray has ever dared try this against his coach, Ivan Lendl, in practice? Meanwhile Lendl dishes out as good as he gets with an underarm serve to a fuming John McEnroe.
3) Rugby union beast mode, starring Tendai Mtawarira.
4) Random football clips dept: Arsenal Entertainers (feat. Phil Mitchell) v Wet Wet Wet (feat. Toby Anstis); Bernard Manning on a clean sweep for 'Manchester' football teams in 1997; the horrendous national anthem that possibly put Scotland off before their 5-1 defeat to USA; and Arsenal keeper Wojciech Szczesny showing his talents in front of goal.
5) The most shamelessly undeserved penalty and red card in football history? Some more contenders from Dundalk v Derry City and another from Argentina v Nigeria. And while we're on awful decisions: how is this only a yellow card?
6) Giro d'Italia comedy as team accidentally leave bike with man in underpants.
Our favourites from last week's blog
1) Football celebrations go to Hollywood. And speaking of the slightly surreal, two clips from last weekend's Soccer Aid match: here's Serge from Kasabian giving David Seaman more lob nightmares (he has form) and Teddy Sheringham v Gordon Ramsay.
2) More needlessly high and dangerous extreme exercising.
3) This is a brilliant 1974 film on British Columbia's soccer culture.
4) Back-to-back home runs are rare. Even more so when they're both caught by the same fan.
5) To celebrate Montpellier's famous Ligue 1 title, Rémi Gaillard is back, back, back.
6) Conor Daly was one lucky chap in Monaco last weekend.
Spotters' badges: xavierpeinture, TheCorporal, perezperez17, richardsmall, colddebtmountain.
Football transfer rumours: Liverpool to nip in for Gylfi Sigurdsson?
Today's rumours have heat
Now that Liverpool have finally plumped for a new boss in Brendan Rodgers, you'd think up-and-coming PR executive Dave Whelan, the premier source of incorrect news in the north-west during the past fortnight, would finally shut his jabbering yap. But no. He's currently telling anyone who'll listen that, not only is Roberto Martínez staying at Wigan Athletic, as he always thought he would, except he didn't, he's also buying him four new players and investing in a £1.5m training pitch. PLEASE SHUT UP, WILL YOU, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WE CAN'T TAKE ANY MORE.
Rodgers meanwhile plans to make himself immediately unpopular with his old club by scuppering Swansea's £6.8m deal with Hoffenheim for Gylfi Sigurdsson. Let's hope Liverpool yesterday man Steven Gerrard doesn't think about this one too closely during the next couple of weeks, he's got a job to be getting on with in Poland and Ukraine.
Attention now shifts to Aston Villa, whose managerial concerns are still unresolved. Paul Lambert, who has just dispatched every single one of his toys from the pram at Norwich City, is favourite to take the job, although Brighton's Gus Poyet is also in the frame. As is Rafael Benítez, who has probably finally put a tearful end to his Merseyside vigil for the Liverpool job, although you wouldn't exactly put a lot of money on it.
Norwich will replace Lambert with either Cardiff City's Malky Mackay or Birmingham's Chris Hughton.
Feeling somewhat left out of all this managerial chit-chat, Harry Redknapp has decided to demand a new contract from Tottenham Hotspur. His hand is undoubtedly strong, having shown his loyalty to the club by turning down the Eng … ah. Anyway, that'll probably take a few weeks to resolve, so in the meantime he'll entertain himself by selling Rafael van der Vaart to Schalke and purchasing Adam Johnson from Manchester City. He's also looking to pick up Demba Ba now that it's summer and Newcastle United are over.
Arsenal are about to spend £26m on CSKA Moscow striker Seydou Doumbia and £15m on Montpellier's Olivier Giroud. Or so it says here. Does that really sound like Arsenal to you?
Robin van Persie is definitely going to Manchester City, while Johan Djourou is off to Juventus. That's more like it.
Bayern Munich want to bring Edin Dzeko back to the Bundesliga. Manchester City will replace the big man not only with the aforementioned van Persie, but also Edinson Cavani of Napoli.
Meantime Manchester United's deal for Nick Powell looks to be in jeopardy, as Chelsea use their new status as European champions to do what they want. They've got £6m at the ready for the Crewe forward. And another £40m for Porto's Hulk. And £10m for Fulham's Moussa Dembélé.
So that's what City and Chelsea are up to, then. Suddenly that exciting end to the season doesn't seem quite so entertaining, does it.
Speaking of Fulham, as we sort of were, Martin Jol's stress levels - and accompanying fag consumption - are likely to skyrocket with the news that Clint Dempsey is a target for Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool, while Andy Johnson is off to some gig or other in the United Arab Emirates.
Wayne Rooney is the reported subject of a £100m-plus bid from Paris Saint Germain. You'd not normally take that seriously, but is there anything you wouldn't put past the Glazers?
Dirk Kuyt insists big clubs from England, Spain, Italy and Germany are after his signature, but seems reluctant to reveal anything other than the fact he's not going back to Feyenoord. Now why is that?
And finally Queens Park Rangers have their eye on former Blackburn Rovers defender Christopher Samba, now at Anzhi Makhachkala, Birmingham City keeper Ben Foster, and Manchester United full-back Fabio. Dave Whelan is knocking up a press release containing more details as we speak. Read More