He's not the player of the year, he's a very naughty boy

My mother once thought Ryan Giggs was called Bryan. LOL.

More humorous however, was the decision to give Bryan the PFA player of the year award. Not one to jump on any bandwagon that suggests that footballers are stupid and shouldn't be allowed to vote on the X Factor, never mind 'serious' football polls, I will restraEEEEH....AAShhh"..."A"ARGGH222fFURooaaOHSODIT

Footballers are stupid, and shouldn't be allowed to vote on the X Factor, never mind 'serious' football polls.

How Xabi Alonso, whose passing and awareness is second to none, has not got near this award is baffling. He is the brain and the class behind Stevie Me's wild dog, rabidly foaming at the mouth, and the mind wonders how many more points Liverpool would've dropped had Mr Benitez had his wicked way and seen Xabi shipped off to Turin in the summer.

If anyone should win a ridiculously-awarded award, though it's Giggs, a refreshingly unridiculous player with an ego the size (or lack thereof) of a prematurely-born doormouse. He just should've won it in '94.

Oh Everton

Everton are lovely. My heart felt oh so very warm yesterday when Phil "i look like a nice dinosaur' Jagielka scored the winning FA Cup semi-final penalty, and not just because the late-afternoon sun shone at a slant through the window and onto the uppear reaches of my chest.

As a follower of a aesthetically brilliant team who live-somewhat-in-the-shadow-of-a-more-'successful'-jerkoff-team (I believe that's the official phrase), I've got a nice little affinity for Moyes' boys in blue (see also City, Man; Madrid, Atletico), believing Toffees to be in the same sort of boat as me. Well, less of a boat, more of a wheezy dinghy.

But did that dinghy sail last night.

Well not really, it was a horrific game of football, even worse than the non-event that was the game the previous day. But what made it worse was the inevitability of the final result, United were the pressure-loving behemoth with the technique to swat away their flies, like they did with Spurs......

But no, Everton were steely-gazed, with composure to burn, and made me a very happy boy indeed.

Taking the Sheen off

Well, it was ok wasn't it.

Football films are weird. I failed to apprehend this before watching the film, but I've always found that when a novel or film tries to depict football, it just feels a little... flat. The reality seems skewed, the game sequences rendered almost camp. Escape to Victory, of course is the exception that proves the rule, if only 'cos of Ossie.

Now, The Damned United was alright. Not great, like the book, but alright. Martin Sheen was great as Clough, as was Timothy Spall as his friend/male football lover Peter Taylor, but it lacked what made the book so great.

David Peace's Damned United was less of a football book, more of an introspective perusal into the mind of a genius, less warts 'n' all, more just warts. For Peace, football was the handy backdrop with which to hang the inspection of Clough's flawed psyche upon, whereas the film - perhaps trying to eschew the controversy of the book - is much more football-centric, telling the tale of post-1966 British football through the persona of Brian Clough, and not the other way round.

This is certainly a more populist approach, and would have made The Damned United more palatable to the neutral, and a great deal more enjoyable for Clough's poor family. However, it left me feeling like it had come up a little short, lacking the intensity the book had, and more importantly, that Clough had too.