Saturday, November 24, 2007

A Frenchman, A Finn and A Senegalese

It is fortunate that this is a written blog, because my voice is still sandpapery after yelling my team Bolton Wanderers to victory over the mighty Manchester United today. I was trying to think of an analogy for how unlikely the victory was, and the best I have is "As unlikely as Bolton beating Manchester United". Sorry.

United were toothless. Rooney wasn't available and Ronaldo was rested. If I were Sir Alex, I would rush out and give these two massive new contracts, because today confirmed that these two have been carrying the rest for some time. United today reminded me of the pushovers Arsenal could be in recent years when Thierry Henry wasn't available.

Full credit to Bolton - they don't have the massive resources of United and they're trying to recover from the nosedive caused by losing two managers. But what they do have is a world class striker in Nicolas Anelka, a world class goalie in Jussi Jaaskelainen and the strongest player in the Premiership in El-Hadj Diouf. Sometimes in football, that can be enough, and it was today.

Sir Alex complained about the referee : I don't understand it, the referee seemed to me to be bent on keeping United in the game by awarding fouls whenever a red shirt fell to the ground, which was often.

So, the first victory over Bolton's Superpower neighbour since December 1978 - and I was there.

Apologies to non-football-fan readers - but at least I didn't join in the uninformed mass outburst of flatulence regarding the England soccer team.

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