
I’m sure you all remember the days when you could shrug off the effects of a hangover by 11, leaving you clear-eyed and bushy-tailed when your elders and betters were still groaning into their coffee. Nights spent curled up in the architectural equivalent of Skinner’s box, with your head hanging over the […]

I wonder… do Liverpool fans view the upcoming pair of fixtures against Chelsea with the same sense of impending tedium as I do? Probably not. Victory, as any modern Chelsea fan will tell you, goes a long way to relieving the spirit-crushing boredom of a soulless game.
Before the high-pitching whining begins, I’d like to make […]

I’m 32. I have to remind myself of this quite often, because I carry around an image of myself in my head, and in it I have the pristine body that someone lent me for a few weeks around my 19th birthday, healthily coloured skin and eyes unfaded by years of cynical underachievement. It’s not […]

To manage “on the continent” is to be beset by uncertainty, one eye ever to windward, awaiting the moment when the mute with the bowstring calls time on your career. So much are we told by the columnists. We icy Albion islanders are not of this breed. We have learned the true lesson of our […]

They pull a knife, you pull a gun. They send off Lampard, you pull a Ballack. That’s the Premier League way.
If there is an award for most ham-fisted segue into the concept of “Untouchable”, I’d like to claim my prize. But the point is an extremely important one. Just who is irreplaceable at Chelsea right […]

You’d think that a good 24-hour period of reflection would be needed after losing to Spurs in a competitive final but, in truth, no Chelsea fan with even an iota of self-respect can do other than hold their hands up today and acknowledge that the better team won on the day.Second in nearly every department […]

High on the seas of the interactive bunfight that we call the Internet, you’ll find a project called A Swarm of Angels. In as small a nutshell as I can fit it, it’s an attempt to wrest control of the film-making process from the traditional fiefdoms of studio and marketing man.
You’ve heard of open-source software, […]

It’s official. Avram Grant is now as good as José Mourinho.This has come as something of a surprise to many of us, who expected Avram to be the very definition of the stopgap manager; the interim measure before a bright young star appeared on the horizon in a sharp suit. Deschamps, Klinsmann, even the expectorating […]