Monday Round-Up: Keown Ideals, Stopping Houllier and Bye Bye Billy

Hey folks,

I think at times we forget just how mind-numbingly awful football pundits can be. What’s the harm in letting a few journalists in there; even a shouty regular-joe supporter would be better than Ian Wright. Strangely though it’s not Wright who’s given me my quote of the year so far, but his former team-mate Martin Keown (pictured above) who yesterday on Five Live, when asked how the kidnapping of Wilson Palacios’ brother in Honduras would effect the Birmingham midfielder, said, quite brilliantly…

"Well, it's not ideal for a player."

Not ideal? Not? Ideal? Not terribly convenient? Not the finest way to start a Sunday? Not fuckin ideal? This man, this utterly ugly man (we’ve gone over his ugly personality and appearance in the past: http://www.okeydokefootball.com/showHate.asp?HateID=3) surely plunged to new depths with this drivel.

It makes you think that, with all the outlets that cover football at the moment, some poor radio stations and TV programmes must get stuck with a bunch of absolute fools for pundits. If Lawro, Hansen and Shearer are considered the top tier then you must know the overall standard is terrible. You have to feel sorry for those forced to listen to the likes of Charlie Nicholas screaming on Sky Sports Saturday; Tim Sherwood and Pat Dolan making little sense on Setanta; Big Ron being out of touch on Newstalk 106; or Dean Saunders sounding like a funeral director on Setanta as well.

Then there’s the Jamie Redknapp Sunshine Band on SSI; Richard Keyes impersonating an estate agent while hosting and Peter Beardsley having the odd tangle with the English language before moving on to speak fluent ‘Beardsley’ as Keyes nods sagely and says “the big question Peter is… eh (insert panic here)… Europe?” How much more can we take?

But in defence of Beardsley, Redknapp, Sherwood, Dolan and the rest (and yes it does disgust me to defend these prats) not one of them would answer the question, ‘how will the kidnapping of his brother affect Wilson Palacios’ with the words “well, it's not ideal for a player”. That in itself should mean that Keown should be barred from football grounds worldwide, not allowed within fifty yards of a microphone and told to go away and think about what he’s just done. Gimp.

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Phew, now that’s out of my system, Mark has started a sterling poll to keep Gerard Houllier out of contention for the Ireland job. I’m sure everyone will agree with the sentiment that he is a bluffer, a fool and unworthy of any job in football. Even if you’ve nothing against him personally, you surely can’t endorse his style of football, so sign on now!

http://www.petitiononline.com/jxz81c/petition.html

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And finally, why don’t we actually talk about some games. My eerily correct prediction that Blackburn would go two down and the game would be over after that came true. I take no pleasure in this though as (a) it meant United won and (b) I didn’t actually put down any money on it. Lord I hate Man United.

Pool stuttered to a much needed win; Chelsea stuttered to a disappointing draw; Sunderland stuttered to an even more disappointing draw; and Boro and Bolton played out a draw that we all hope takes place in the Championship next season. Elsewhere, from the looks of it both Portsmouth and Man City should be pleased with a point. There was that Villa/Birmingham game of course but for some reason I decided to pass on watching that tasty encounter – good win for Villa though. Juande Ramos continues to start his Spurs career well with a win against Wigan though none of the results achieved so far would have been unlikely under Martin Jol and larger challenges await.

Meanwhile West Ham had their biggest win since they arrived back in the Premiership, winning five-nil at Derby. It might be a good bet that, after this result, Billy Davies could soon find himself out of a job. International breaks do funny things to chairman as they have a fortnight to study the table intently, realise their team are struggling and decide that ‘hey presto’ they can fix it by bringing in a new team boss.

Could anybody do better in Davies’ position? Doubtful. Could anybody do any worse than him? At this stage, you’d have to say no.

Later, JJ