A small portion of despair and enlightenment delivered to your inbox every Friday
8 February 2008 ~

Garth Crooks Fascinates Me
Cameron Carter introduces an occasional feature of his own devising
On Final Score or Match of the Day 2, Garth appears to go into a serene meditative state while another pundit makes their tactical review. On being asked a direct question, he starts to life, as if from a swoon, and rolls each phrase round his mouth like thick, expensive wine. On finishing a pronouncement, he smiles sadly, his face finally settling into an expression suggestive of Socrates listening to children talking over an orchard wall. He is fascinating every time and never disappoints. He is Garth Crooks.

---
Badge of the Week
In a wilderness of bold graphics and Latin mottos here is one that, in lack of ambition, imagery and meaning, comes close to actual perfection. The club whose values and dreams the badge represents is a Peruvian Primera Division team called Coronel Bolognesi, founded in 1929 and named after military hero Francisco Bolognesi. Surely, with this in mind, they could have put a warship or cannon in there, but instead the final decision was for a big red B in a red circle. It doesn't look like the badge of a successful football team at all. It looks like an eye test for the bone idle. It's just a red B. Is this what Colonel Bolognesi resisted the Chilean invader for? The answer must be a resounding No. 

---
Spotted this week
Howl reader Paul Faron was recently in a cab driven by Trevor Aylott, a former striker with Chelsea, Millwall and Palace among others: “I wouldn’t have known who Trevor was had he not introduced himself: ‘Do you support a team? I used to be a player...’ then spent the rest of the time discussing his career. At the end of the ride, Trevor summed up his outlook on the cabbying life with a quick mime involving putting a gun to his head. A search around message boards suggests that Trevor should always enquire whether a fare is a Palace fan before they set off, as he features in several Worst Ever Palace XIs – that could lead to a rather tense journey.”

---
Stuck for a conversational gambit? Try this: Cesc Fabregas is frightened of mushrooms. A visitor to the Arsenal canteen was recently told: “He can’t be anywhere near them. He has to move tables if one of the lads is eating them. He thinks there is some sort of conspiracy, that the lads are putting mushrooms on everything to wind him up.”

---
Slow News Day
On January 26, several papers reported that Sven-Göran Eriksson was among the clients of Rome-based Clara Romano, a self-styled “soothsayer and exorcist”, who was recently arrested on suspicion of tax fraud. Investigators supposedly found a “cheque for an undisclosed amount” from Sven when searching her apartment, though some reports say it was only a photocopy of a cheque. Clara said: “I saw this arrest coming you know – remember I have supernatural contacts.” According to the Mirror: “Fans are wondering whether Maga was behind Sven’s bizarre selection of Theo Walcott in the 2006 World Cup.” The Sun and the Mail both went to the trouble of contacting Sven’s current employers with the same result: “A Manchester City spokesman said ‘We cannot comment on this’.”

---
A lot of managers use sports psychologists these days. But Sir Bobby Robson deserves to be acknowledged as a pioneer, having engaged them while Ipswich in the 1970s. As he recently told the Mail on Sunday: “They came to a game and when I asked for their comments, they said they had noticed the players getting agitated before kick-off. Several players would shout out, asking how long there was to go before they went out on the pitch. I asked: ‘That’s interesting, how do you suggest I deal with that?’ Their reply was to the point: ‘Have you thought about putting a clock on the dressing room wall?’ The amazing thing is, I hadn’t.”

---
This week in history ~ Division One, February 7, 1998 

Results

Goalkeeper Salvatore Bibbo made his debut in Reading’s 3-1 loss to Tranmere but he was from Basingstoke rather than Italy. That was one one of Reading’s 11 home defeats and they eventually finished bottom. Crewe lost the same number of home games but finished in their highest ever league position – 11th.

The Wolves side that lost to Sunderland included 17-year-old Robbie Keane who was to score 11 League goals in his first season.

Alan Ball’s Portsmouth, beaten by eventual champions Forest, managed to avoid relegation by a point with a final day win at Bradford.

Man City manager Frank Clark was sacked and replaced by Joe Royle after their next match, a 1-0 home defeat by Bury. City’s relegation couldn’t be avoided even with a 5-2 win at another doomed team, Stoke, on the final day.

Steve Bruce’s Sheffield Utd used a remarkable 41 players, including Ian Rush, briefly reunited with Dean Saunders to no effect.

Promoted Middlesbrough sold Brazilian midfielder Emerson to Tenerife in mid-season, which meant the departure of his cousin, Fabio, who had been brought along to keep him company – and played in one League game, against Huddersfield.

---
Tales from the Landesliga
WSC contributor Matt Nation with the first of a series about watching lower league football in Hamburg
SC Vorwärts-Wacker 04 Hamburg-Billstedt offer more than just a vaguely amusing name. There’s the kit, a stroke-inducing combination of purple shirts and scarlet shorts; there’s the raffle, where you buy a ticket in the hope that you won't win the first prize (a platter of green cabbage and lard, topped off with a sausage with a colour scheme that's clearly been based on the home team’s kit); and there’s the catering, where you can still get Kalter Hund, a calorie-laden biscuit-cum-cake that can trigger obesity at 300 yards. And if they’re playing Turn-und Sportverein Hamburg, then they also provide a showcase for the opposition’s centre forward.

In his mid-30s, he’s clearly penetrated the Kalter Hund exclusion zone once too often, affording him the appearance of George The Bear off the Hofmeister adverts. But the face is familiar: the Steve Bull haircut, the ruff eyebrows, even the sunken cheekbones that you’d need a frogman’s outfit to reach the base of. And the movements, in particular the sort of well thought out runs usually made only by a man who’s just climbed up a knotted bedsheet and jumped off a prison wall, ring a bell, too.

And then somebody calls his name and everything clicks: it’s Artur Maxhuni, the erstwhile international powerhouse who, just a few years before at St Pauli, was constantly wreaking havoc among his own forward line, converting gilt-edged chances into goal-kicks and causing onlookers to invent new swear words every weekend.

And it's heart-warming to see that he's fulfilled his potential: back then, people said he wouldn’t keep his place in a Landesliga team, and they were right. He gets substituted on the hour, in which his star turn was a booking for trying to move back the opposition’s wall the full ten yards. At the end of a 3-1 defeat, Artur can be seen hanging around outside the dressing room – with crumbs round his mouth.

---
WSC Trivia ~ No 2
The new Culture Secretary Andy Burnham MP is in the news for this. But he is also the only WSC contributor – three Everton-related articles between 1995 and 1997 – to have become a member of the cabinet. As far as we know.

---
Stickipedia  
A mine of information constructed from sticker cards
Rinus Israel Wonderful World of Soccer Stars 1970-71
A Feyenoord defender and Dutch international who scored the winning goal in the 1970 European Cup final, Israel was often shown wearing specs in training ground pictures, though they weren’t used on matchdays. Amazingly, he wasn’t the only bespectacled Feyenoord player of the time – team-mate Joop Van Daele, a reserve defender, wore his specs to play in and had them deliberately broken during the 1970 World Club Championship tie with Estudiantes of Argentina.

from Gordon Wilde
A follow-up on last week’s Stickipedia star, the tracksuited teen Colin Beesley (who appears to be wearing a cravat under his tracksuit top). Colin was released by Sunderland at the end of 1971-72 and joined his home town club Stockton who, despite being on Teesside, had just joined the Midland League. But Stockton folded in 1975 so Colin may have wandered further in search of a game.

---
Contribute to the Weekly Howl
Spotted a footballer this week? Heard a non-libellous story about a player? Read a ludicrous football story in your local paper? Anything else you'd like to get off your chest? We'd like to hear from you ~ drop us a line at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

---
League table courtesy of www.statto.com: the place to go for football stats & odds comparison – English & Scottish stats from 1871 plus European & International

Tag it: