Wednesday Evening Thoughts

Posted

OK I should have posted this much earlier but I seem to have been struck down with something which my immune system has not been able to cope with, hence I didn’t wake up until 4pm and have only just started to have any kind of physical energy.

Firstly I have some thoughts on the football from yesterday.  Montenegro are a good team.  They were a good team before they won their first three games and are still a good team.  They could well do just as Greece did in 2004  – an unspectacular team but with the spirit and togetherness to see them through.  I cannot understand the tsunami of criticism for the England players or managers.  England drawing against Montenegro is like Chelsea drawing against Aston Villa.  It happens.  It is football, get over it, you cannot win every game.  We know Chelsea are better than Aston Villa and we know England are better than Montenegro.  Not every result goes to the favourite.  It was tricky, we got a draw, it is an ok result.  We have no divine right to beat decent teams.

I still suspect Fabio Capello is a man on a huge contract, smoking his Italian cigar with a diminishing sense of pride, and that he does not have what it takes to be England manager.  But name me someone who does?  The job of England manager is almost impossible.  You have to control a group of young men, many of whom who have lost all sense of morals, though some of whom will be very moralistic, players from very different areas of the country that tend to generally loath each other.  Then you have to cope with the demands of premiership club managers, who all have huge amounts of pressure upon them with regards to their star players who are going to foreign countries not under their control.  And then the fans, who expect to win every single game, and win comfortably.  Give the guy a chance, let him fail or, perhaps, just perhaps, succeed.  There is no point in getting anyone else to do it, because as soon as they fail to slightly meet an expectation, they are no good again.

Secondly, I am somewhat perturbed by the seemingly continuous footage of 33 miners trapped underground in Chile coming to the surface, when there are other news stories to report.  I don’t want to diminish the exceptionalness of the story of the miners, but I do not need to know which miners have a wife and a mistress who met each other for the first time whilst said miner was trapped.  Especially given that the miners are from a country that very few of the people in the UK have anything to do with.  Although I am special in this case, as the revered Ricardo Villalobos is from said country.  Anyway, surely Sky News could report a little more on our own good news story, that of the privatisation of the Royal Mail?  Excellent news which will affect us all, and most of us in a good way by finally having a modernised postal service that we can again be proud of.

And finally, a happy 85th birthday to Margaret Thatcher.  I doubt our country’s standing or prosperity would be as it is now, were it not for her.  I would expect us to be more like Italy.

Goodnight, I hope to be posting in a better state of body tomorrow, loving the world!