Beef Bagel

It’s a strangely big clash tomorrow at the Lane. What must have looked like an innocuous fixture back in August has turned into not only an important 6 pointer for a European spot but a grudge match too. Our players maybe driven by the hurt of that defeat but the Reading squad were just as hurt by the victory. Royals defender Greg Halford said:

“If we need that extra something on Sunday, we’ve got the perfect thing. All we have to do is think about what’s written on our dressing room wall.

We’ve got a notice up there with comments on it that Martin Jol made back in November when we beat Spurs 3-1.

It was put above the door so everyone sees it before walking down the tunnel. It says ‘When you lose to teams like Reading, you know there’s a problem’.”

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With a striker rate for Northern Ireland of better than a goal every two games, the man of the moment is most definitely Leeds United’s David Healy. He scored a couple of crackers last night at Windsor Park and his home country’s press is convinced that come next season the well traveled 27-year-old will be heading for the Premiership once more.

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Well, The Mirror have made themselves perfectly clear this morning. They rated Gerrard a 7, Robbo a 6 and everyone else got 4s with a few 5s thrown in for good measure. That must be an all time low for a 3-0 win. The fans in Barcelona didn’t look much more impressed and on the first half’s performance you can’t really blame them. On its own it’d be unfortunate to sack the manager after a comfortable win but when McClaren came on and said ‘We showed a lot of character out there,’ The Bagel lost all sympathy for him. How much character does it take to beat Andorra? About as much as Phil Neville, that’s how much it should take.

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It’s all gone eerily quiet as Steve McClaren waits for his last meal. The press, myself included, stand ready to did our sharpened quills in the poor saps blood. Old Beetroot Head is going to have to pull something very special out of the bag in just over 2 hours now to save his job; around 7 goals should do it, preferably all for England

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Little Aaron Lennon knew he was in for a tough test when he was sent out to take on the entire Israeli national team on his own. But the 11 against one odds were just too stacked in the favour our winger. So being the good sport that he is, the greased lightening pace gnome thought it only fair to play himself out of position.

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Been wondering why you haven’t been able to buy tickets for Sevilla away? No, there hasn’t been a clandestine ticket allocation of 2,000 corporate hospitality seats, although there may yet be, it’s all been about Sevilla’s request to UEFA to have the game switched to another date. Thursday 5th April is holy day out there in southern Spain and it is the day that Seville holds its Easter procession. They claimed they wanted the date changed because of the logistics of having so many tourists in town but I’ve a feeling it was closer to the image of a beautiful, cultural, atmosphere being slightly marred by the background noise of thousands of English hooligans singing ‘The Road to Amarillo’ (Spurs version) and pointing at the local archbishop with a chorus of ‘Yiddo! Yiddo! Yiddo!’

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Freezing my buns off down at WHL to watch us get knocked out of the FA Cup in front of far too many Chelsea fans was not my idea of a good night at the Lane. It still hasn’t really settled in. How can Wembley ever be finished until we’ve played there?

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Last night I dreamed of football. It was Tottenham vs arsenal at WHL and by half time we were leading by a goal to nil. As the second 45 began, I could feel the tension in the air just as I had felt at Stamford Bridge; a palpable, unspoken knowledge that we weren’t going to win this game. The prize was just too big.

Minute by minute, the clock ticked on and with each new figure on the Jumbotron display a deeper sinking, a more horrible certainty. So when the whistle finally blew and I was feeling more wretched than at any twist of the knife of previous dramas , it didn’t quite feel true to look up and see that we’d actually won the game.

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It was a very relaxed Bagel who arrived at White Hart Lane for the rarity that is a 3 o’clock Saturday fixture. Despite turning up to find our big guns playing cards on the sidelines we were all still looking to administer a healthy spanking to the club resting firmly at the base of the table or as we later put it ‘Going down with the West Ham. It became clear very quickly that this wasn’t to be.

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The trouble with us is that we’re just too good. Last night’s 3-2 scoreline makes for a strange looking 6-4 aggregate that doesn’t quite tell the story. In both legs our men have come out firing and been the better team by too wide a margin. We take possession, we push them back, we threaten from all over the midfield and then our strikers cut through what remains of the Portuguese defence like a warm knife through even warmer butter.

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