Beef Bagel

Well, it’s only taken the FA about 10 weeks but yesterday they decided to fine both ‘Boro and ourselves over that accidental spat at WHL back at the beginning of December. Remember the one? You know, Little Aaron shoved Boateng and then walked away as a brawl kicked off? Having decided that they simply couldn’t let this stand (well, for God’s sake just think of the children!), the governing body, quite sensibly chose to tax both clubs and actually, even more sensibly, ourselves slightly more to the tune of an actual £4,000 with the same amount suspended for a year. ‘Boro were fined half as much but then in true playground style ‘it was us who started it, sir.’

It’s all merely bunching of arse though because I mean really; four thousand pounds? Come on, what’s that, like 80 seats at match day? 50 full replikits? A few of Jermain Defoe’s veruca clippings? I do hope both clubs feel suitably punished. I’m sure we’ll never see that kind of behaviour again in the Premiership.

Actually speaking of that kind of behaviour or actually worse, the kind we mentioned when The Bagel last talked, there’s a rather interesting movement going on over at the establishment, Topspurs. If you feel like you want to do something about the fly of ugliness in the ointment of the beautiful game that take a look here.

But don’t do that too soon because there may be a little refereeing bias that could well just swing in our favour come Sunday’s cup tie with Fulham. The Cottagers are none too impressed by the selection of the match official being one Mark Halsey. Last season the part time ref and most time white van man dished out more yellow cards than any other man in black over the course of the Premiership campaign and was particularly harsh to the South West Londoners on two occassions and in matches against both of our favourite London clubs as well. Shame on him.

Now, considering our last visit to the most friendly ground in the English leagues consisited of the Fulham midfield kicking ours about at the expensive of the ball for 90 minutes, we may well actually get something more resembling a game of football this time around and that can only work in our favour. On last count, old boy Michael Brown was out of action, through suspension if memory serves, which should reduce our opposition’s physical presence even further. Here’s to our soft centre taking the opportuntity this time around and MJ taking the same trouble to release a little of that mounting pressure. I’ve got my ticket. Have you?

One thing did bug me a little about the Big Guy’ words the other day:

“We will turn it around and make things better. We have been a bit vulnerable lately but, in the end, our quality will pull us through.”

Pull us through? Pull us through? We don’t want our quality to pull us through. We want it to lift us high, to make us shine, to create more than the sum of its parts. How about some of that? Oh, enough bitching. I’ll save that for someone else after the weekend. I feel a COTD coming on.

Should, however, we be thinking of adding to that quality, there’s an old rumour that’s re-reared its not so ugly head. Our need for a ball winner has once again overtaken that for a left footer and so someone’s transfer compass out there has pointed to Nigel Reo-Cokernut.

Young, English, some good years of Premiership experience at our feeder club; sounds about right. Fallen out with the West Ham faithful, looking for a change, likely to hand in a transfer request the day after the Hammer’s certain relegation. Sound familiar? The 22 year old could be just what we need and a little competition for the likes of the Man Mountain and Dider Zee certainly wouldn’t go amiss. He wont come cheap though at a proposed and actually cut price £6m but well…hmmm…that does seem like a fair whack after a very medoicre season so far. I guess we can wait till the summer and see what else is out there first before we have to add our seals of approvals to these bits of business.

But more immediately, I feel rather strange this evening. All is not quite right. I…I shouldn’t be here. I should be stoned or in the arms of a lady of the night/afternoon or be picking tulips for my belle or eating some mini baby belle. That’s right. I should be in Holland right now and so should you but no. We are here. The question is, where will we be going when we do finally get that next UEFA Cup tie? Italy or Portugal, Portugal or Italy and if indeed it is Parma, will we be allowed go? In that case come on Braga for tonight and next week. Do we want to go on this European tour or what?

We’re all going on a European bagel.

The Bagel.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 at 6:49 pm 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.