Planet Football

We already had a notion that this Jose Antonio Reyes character Arsenal have just bought is a bit useful - well, he'd want to be for £17.5 million - but based on the tribute paid to him in a Seville newspaper last week, as quoted by the London Times, it sounds like he could be positively supernatural: "Not every singer is an artist.

Reyes of pure artistic genius

Nor every painter or poet. It's possible to sing or paint or rhyme and nothing more. It's the same with footballers; they all play football, but very few have enchantment, magic, art. Reyes is one of the chosen few, a pure expression of the Sevilla school."

All we can say is that when Ray Parlour leaves Highbury we hope the Islington Bugle bids him as warm an adieu.

Making the most of hard times

Remember the scene in The Office when David Brent called a staff meeting to announce job cuts? "There's good news and bad news," he said. "The bad news is that . . . some of you will lose your jobs . . . I know: gutting. On a more positive note, the good news is: I've been promoted! So, every cloud . . . " Well, we thought of David last week when we were reminded by sundry Michael Gray reports of the day last season when Sunderland told 30 of their staff they were being let go because of financial troubles, the first of almost 80 redundancies the club had to make. "On a more positive note, the good news is: I've got myself a new Ferrari," Gray, who joined Blackburn last week, seemed to be thinking to himself as he arrived at training on that very day in a sparkling new Ferrari. So, every cloud . . .

Sensitive boy.

Quotes of the week

"Put any red-blooded, heterosexual male in a room filled with scantily dressed women, fill the bloke with booze, tell the women you're a footballer earning £10,000 a week . . . it's a recipe for disaster."

- Neil Ruddock, reflecting on the ordeal that was his football career.

"They are opportunistic scum, quite frankly . . . thieves, fraudsters, scum."

- Alan Sugar, former Spurs chairman, acknowledges football agents' contribution to the game.

"Makelele's is massive - it's big! Is he proud? Well, kind of. When we joke about it he just laughs, he doesn't flash it around like I would. I'd be everywhere."

- Frank Lampard, as quoted by Football 365. We can only assume he was talking about Claude Makelele's watch.

"Aston Villa have some of the worst players I have seen in my life, that is the truth."

- Colombian Freddy Grisales after Villa declined to offer him a contract following a trial. You should have seen Leicester's players on Saturday, Freddy - they lost 5-0 to Villa.

"All I can say is that there is a train in the distance - and it is not going to stop. It is going to hit you right in the face."

- David O'Leary? Get off the railway tracks. Quick.

A Liddle bit over the top

As the former editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme London Times' columnist Rod Liddle was in a bad enough mood last week after his ex-colleagues came off worst in the Hutton Report, but watching the African Nations Cup game between Tunisia and Rwanda on television seemed to push him over the edge.

"Does anybody here care a toss who wins the African Cup of Nations, given that most African nations are crap at football," he wrote. "In previous years, we've witnessed Rwandans engaged in a sport with which they're palpably more familiar - genocide . . . the Hutus and Tutsis seemed quite adept at genocide, whereas they're absolutely shite at football."

Good God Rod - it's only a game.

Hacking away at Toshack

Having already had three spells as Real Sociedad manager and two as Real Madrid head honcho we assumed that John Toshack's appointment as Real Murcia boss was an indication that the man is highly regarded in Spain. Not with the media he isn't, according to the Guardian's report on "John Benjamin", as the Spanish have taken to calling him.

"Murcia's new manager is John Benjamin Toshack," announced a man by the name of JJ Santos on channel Antena3's sports news. "Yes, you heard right," he said, "Toshack, El antipatico (that unpleasant man)." And, as was pointed out, this was a news programme, not an opinion show.

Add to that AS editor Alfredo Relano's observation that "only football's turbulence explains people still employing John Benjamin". Cripes.

The root of this media aversion, apparently, lies in Toshack's fondness for using phrases and similes that have absolutely no meaning in Spanish - example: "In the first half we were like chickens with our heads cut off and the ball was a hot potato, but in the second we were like chickens with our heads held high and the ball had cooled down."

At which point the assembled Spanish hacks were left "wearing Andy Cole expressions and hacking at their wrists with razors."

A player with real drive

You were, we're sure, relieved to hear that Paul Gascoigne walked away from a car crash last week relatively unscathed. Indeed, according to the man himself his only injury was a "dead arse", which wasn't actually in our medical dictionary but is, apparently, a "numb bum".

"If it wasn't for the airbag I'd have been a goner - you can replace a car but you can't replace Paul Gascoigne," said, well, Paul Gascoigne.

Gascoigne wasn't the only footballer who had trouble with cars last week - and we're not even talking about George Best. In East Hartford, Connecticut, police pulled over a footballer returning from training after spotting him weaving down a road during rush-hour in his Lexus.

Drunk? Nope. It was just that he was seven-years-old and was barely able to see above the steering wheel. (His father, who was in the passenger seat, has been charged with risk of injury to a minor and reckless driving - the youngster had done so well at "soccer" training that Daddy rewarded him with a drive home. All human life . . .).

Simpemba gets unlucky break

Our "Heartfelt Sympathies of the Week" award goes to Cabra's very own Ian Simpemba, the Irish under-20 international. Before last Friday night the Wycombe Wanderers' man had played 32 senior games in England (20 of them on loan at Woking) without scoring a goal.

We can't claim to know for sure but we'd guess that the young fella was dreaming of the moment he'd break his scoring duck and, perhaps, even had a special little celebration lined up.

We're afraid it didn't quite work out that way for Ian. Two minutes into the game away to Sheffield Wednesday he scored with a brave diving header. So brave that he got a kick in the head for his troubles, was knocked out cold, stretchered off and taken to hospital for a scan.

So, at that point he didn't know whether he had scored his first goal in English football or if he was, in fact, Donald Duck. A speedy recovery, thankfully, ensued but Simpemba probably only found out he scored when he read the next day's papers. Hate that.