About Bloody Time!

I know that this was announced a week or so ago, but I for one am very happy that England now has an English manager. It is Steve McClaren of course, the now ex-manager of Middlesborough. (In the pic above!) I remember when they appointed Sven as our manager, I was appalled. I thought the same thing back then as all the papers are saying nowdays- our coaches aren't good enough in England? Well, now that it has been put to rest, I for one am glad about it.

There is one thing that is totally pissing me off though. The whole way that they told Sven he could coach the team to the World Cup and then he would be done. I mean, if there was that much guff about him and the scandal thing, why didn't they sack him on the spot? McClaren was already there, so it wouldn't have been that big of a deal for them to run the team without the 'dickhead' Swede.

By the way, that describes him to a 'T.' He has about as much enthusiasm as my students studying for another exam! He hasn't done a great job while he has been in there, he has just had some damn lucky results with a bunch of worldclass players. I would rate his whole tenure as mediocre at best.

That game against Argentina in the last World Cup, drove me insane. We won 1 to 0, but we defended for the last 15 minutes while the Argentinians bombed us again and again and again. Also that game in Euro 2004 against France, has got to be classed as one of the worst cave-ins in the history of a world class team!

The whole deal about finding a manager before the World Cup had even ended ,has drove me insane. If the FA were worried about 'rocking the boat' prior to the preparations for the tournament, why didn't they just find a manager after the damn tournament?

I know that it had something to do with some of the managers that they were interested in were at clubs, but so what? Keep it under wraps and let the England players work with the coach that they have now!! Again, political bullshit by the stupid Football Association.

Anyway, enough about the coaching thing. Let's just breath a sigh of relief that we now have one of own, coaching our national team. On another note, this weekend is the FA Cup final between Liverpool and West Ham United. It should be a good game as West Ham like to attack and so do Liverpool. West Ham are a bit suspect at the back, so Liverpool should be able to exploit them. But at the kick-off both teams are 0-0, so who knows what could happen?

I just hope that Stevie Gerrard is lifting the Cup at the end of the day and makes the fans go wild in Cardiff. It is being held at The Millennium Stadium in Cardiff and it will be the last Cup final played there as Wembley should be ready to go by mid-September or sometime at the end of this year. I will be glued to my television here in Korea watching the game!!!!

It starts at 11pm our time here, so not too bad. It is on a Saturday night, so even better. Dave will hopefully be watching it with me, but we are not sure where we are going to watch it yet. I don't want to go somewhere far, but would like some kind of an atmosphere.

Chants are always a fun part of watching a game live and Liverpool are known for being the most vocal of any of the English football clubs.

Here are two of the chants that I heard while I was in Tokyo for The World Club Championships last December to see Liverpool play that I hadn't heard before:

Steve Gerrard, Gerrard
He'll pass the ball 40 yards
He's big and he's fucken hard
Steve Gerrard Gerrard.

He's great he's sound
He'll twat you with a pound
Carragher Carragher



The second chant refers to when Carragher picked up a pound coin at the Arsenal game that was thrown at him and threw it back into the crowd at someone. I think he got fined for that incident, if I'm not mistaken!

There were some hilarious chants and a lot of them I can't remember. There was one point in the match, which by the way was about -3 degrees at kick-off time.... bleedin' freezin'....... when the crowd went silent. The refs had not been calling anything for us, only for Sao Paolo.(3 goals disallowed, one penalty not given.) We had 17 corners and 21 shots on net in the second half alone. Everyone was getting on their case. The refs were wearing yellow outfits by the way.

At the moment of silence, someone yelled out across from us,

"You yellow vested twaaaaats!"

It was so funny and as we turned to see who said it, we all just fell about the place. It was a fella about 60 odd years old, drunk as hell, sitting in a chair. A Liverpudlian of course !!!!!!! One of the moments I will remember forever.... haha........