Beef Bagel

Boycott London Lite! Any Spurs fan, who read their article on Robbo yesterday will have already decided this for themselves. The Bagel cannot even remember the details of the print itself, as red mist descends, blocking my mental pathways every time I attempt to recall it. For those of you fortunate enough to miss it, I can inform you that all it talked about was what a pitiful performance he gave, how it was all his fault and who else can England put between the sticks. Kill them. Kill them all.

Nothing annoys The Bagel more than football journalists, who don’t know what they’re talking about or perhaps worse still, one’s that do but write inaccurate stories to reflect/dictate the national mood. So Mr. London Lite reporter, lucky you are that The Bagel does not have your name to kick around the mud, already sullied as it must be. Perhaps a fitting and equitable punishment would be to stake him down to the centre circle at WHL, spread eagle on his back and naked as the day he was born. It’s night time. All is dark. He is alone and cold. He screams his pleas of mercy, his ownership of a wife and small children and his claims he was only trying to sell a paper. The floodlights burst on. Our man lies squirming trying to cover his blinded eyes and his naked shame. His cries become empty threats of legal action but they soon fade as the echoes of his voice are replaced by a steady rhythm getting louder and louder; a gently mencaing, ineffable sound of the clip-clop of studs on tunnel concrete. Robbo is coming.

England’s No.1 is out on a special late night training session. Today it’s distribution. Time to practice a few of those up ‘n unders Paul. Inside the Park Lane end penalty box with the ghosts of the fans behind him singing him on, Robbo punts ball after ball up high in the air, so high that you can see them shine in the moonlight from miles away as they clear the roof of the stadium and each one landing with pin point accuracy on the shivering flesh of the oh so sorry journalist, save perhaps the first two or three as warning shots to make sure his nerves are at their most sensitive.

By the time Robbo’s exhausted his supply, the wretch from the London Lite is as curled up as the tethering allows him to be. Only semi-conscious, he is bloody and whimpering. The keeper looks him up and down almost sorry for the worthless life quaking at his feet. He unstakes the man, who drags himself up tripping on his own heels as he runs toward the exit, ropes still trailing from his limbs. He disappears snivelling down the tunnel, to the exit of WHL and passed a door, where a familiar man, no, giant cockerel stands, polyester eyes fixed in maniacal happiness, Hotspur magazine, Robbo on the cover, rhythmically tapping into his free wing, like a hood with a baseball bat. The man runs through. Chirpy waits, maybe 5, maybe 10 seconds, just for the sport until he turns and follows. Reports are heard and indeed written of the following day of a naked man chased down the Tottenham High Road, all the way to Seven Sisters by an angry chicken batting his behind every step of the way. Wow. That feels so much better.

Aside the odd national slagging, the other problem with internationals, as Arsene Wenger put it so well I have to admit, is that our players do tend to get the joy ride treatment and right now 1960’s Ferrari Ledley King and Porsche Boxter Jermain Defoe are in need of an oil change and a little body work. The mechanics down at the Lane are working round the clock on Ledley and it’s uncertain, yet not so important, as to how scratched up the Little Yiddo is. Let’s hope we can add them to the fleet for Saturday’s drive up to Birmingham. Fingers crossed for a demolition derby.
For some reason I had it in my head that Keano was injured as well. Now, as inaccurate as this is, it did force me to work with the premise of playing Mido and Berbatov together up front. The Bagel had never considered this before and actually, I reckon it could work, particularly away from home. The two bigger lads could soften up a defence by trying to batter their way through for 70 minutes, before bringing on a pace man to run rings around the spinning heads. Or better still, we may uncover some sort of telepathic understanding between this untested pair. Two target men would certainly be a novelty.

To finish where I started though, think twice before you pick up London Lite today, unless of course your plan is to throw it away to take it out of circulation. Only one of Metro, the London Paper and London Lite will survive. What kind of sports writing would you rather read over you morning bagel?

The Bagel.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 13th, 2006 at 10:07 am and is filed under Bagel News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.