Planet Soccer

The weird and wonderful of the week's football.

Quotes of the week

"The answer you normally get after a tackle like that is 'he is not the type of guy who does that'. It's like a guy who kills one time in his life. It's enough. You have a dead person."

- Arsene Wenger, not in a forgiving mood after Martin Taylor's challenge left Eduardo Da Silva with a broken leg.

" We don't want to build him up too much in the hope he keeps his feet on the ground but, after Zidane, he will be one of the great French footballers."

- Patrice Evra tries (but fails) to keep the pressure off Lyon's Karim Benzema.

Reporter: " Can you win 2-0 in Barcelona?"

Gordon Strachan: "I wouldn't put my house on it. I've worked too hard for 35 years to risk that."

- The Celtic manager hints at a slight lack of faith in his Bhoys doing enough at Camp Nou to progress in the Champions League.

"I don't predict in football. All I predict is next week against Barnsley you will see a vastly different Norwich City team."

- Norwich manager Glenn Roeder, predictably.

"You can defend against anybody if you do it properly. You can get your body in the way, put them off, stand on their toes, grab them by the Vinnie Jones's."

- Reading assistant manager Kevin Dillon attempts to teach his back four the art of rowdy defending.

"It's not going to happen. All the lemmings who want to jump off the cliff and rip everything up won't get their wish. At times I feel like the only sensible lemming on the cliff, saying 'this is stupid why are we doing this, why are we going to dive off the cliff?'. Usually they all say 'well, this is what we normally do' and then push him off as well, but no one is pushing this lemming off the cliff - he's going to stand on the cliff and stop you."

- Shrewsbury manager Gary Peters - the person who asked him if he was going to resign was probably sorry they bothered.

Roy Keane's week

"John Delaney? Is it John Delaney? He's a great man, him, like."

- The Keane/Delaney love-in gathers pace . . .

"Eamon has had an outburst, has he? It's not like Eamon, that . . he's obviously a good friend of mine, I think I last spoke to him about four or five years ago."

. . . while the Keane/Dunphy romance cools a touch. See below.

"The whole Saipan thing was a result of bad management and stupidity and, if you want, indiscipline."

- Dunphy. Indiscipline? Who could he be talking about?

"We have to keep believing that (away) win will come. We hope to put that right. It will come. Hopefully it will be in my lifetime."

- And still he waits.

"They have a top goalkeeper, two experienced centre-halves, two very good full-backs, a good midfield and good strikers - that's not bad."

- On Portsmouth's strengths.

Empty talk

Football 365 were lucky enough to be tuned in to Sky Sport's Soccer Saturday when Phil Thompson was asked for his opinion on Rafa Benitez and how he's doing at Liverpool this weather. Are you ready?

"For me, you should . . . and you're a great manager if . . . and what you do . . . and Rafa Benitez will be loved for ever more, if he can be . . . and I think he can do, if he takes, even what Jamie Redknapp was saying, if he . . . why does Rafa change things as much, more than what Sir Alex or Arsene Wenger with their teams?"

- Well, Phil couldn't have made his position on the issue any clearer.

Spot the difference

If you visit internet-land at all you're likely to have happened upon this photo of Denise van Luyn (right) which was doing the cyberspace rounds last week.

Yes, it is Denise van Luyn of Utrecht, and not Celtic's Aiden McGeady with a wacky hair-do. Uncanny.

More quotes of the week

"I'm happy with my language progress. The only difficulty, when I tour Premier League matches, is different people in different accents talk to me and in some instances I can hardly understand a word."

- Fabio Capello after Anfield.

"When people see me walk through the doors of a club or a bar they just see pound signs and they think to themselves I want a bit of that. Girls just throw themselves at you. It's unbelievable what they get up to get your attention - the clothes they wear, the way they talk."

- Manchester City's Micah Richards struggling to cope with all the girly attention.

"It's just like a case of a Trabant and Ferrari."

- Manchester City's Valeri Bojinov comparing Sven-Goran Eriksson with former boss, Didier Deschamps. Eriksson is the Ferrari, by the way.

Puzzling

Bill O'Herlihy: " Celtic against Barcelona, John?"

John Giles: " At home, Celtic?"

Bill: " They are, yeah,"

Giles: "Right."

- Gilesie hinting he needs to do more homework on Celtic's Champions League campaign.

" With me on the field Henry and Eto'o would have to be on the bench."

- Arsenal's Emmanuel Adebayor on being asked if he was in Thierry and Samuel's class.

Eamon Dunphy: "You know one of those things that you get at Christmas, Bill, where they all have to be put together?"

Bill O'Herlihy: Blank expression

Eamon: "It's in a box. And it all falls out on the floor."

Graeme Souness and John Giles: Baffled expressions.

Bill: " Are you talking about a jigsaw or what?"

Eamon: "Yeah, like a jigsaw, or one of those building yourself things. A table."

Bill: "Oh. I see."

Eamon: "A good manager understands it, he looks at it, goes boom, boom, boom, you've got a table. A bad manager could be there for two years."

Bill: " That's what we'll get for you at Christmas."

Graeme and John: (Still baffled).

Identity crisis

John Giles pointed last week to the likeness between American actor Giovanni Trapattoni and new Irish manager Lloyd Bridges. Well spotted -they could, indeed, be twins.

Almunia and the monk

Our sympathies go to Arsenal goalkeeper Manuel Almunia who has revealed his Hertfordshire home, which was built on the site of a former psychiatric hospital, is haunted. Indeed, so sympathetic is his club they're even allowing him go home to have lunch with his wife so she won't be alone with their unwelcome visitor. "One night we were sleeping and my wife suddenly woke me up with a shout. She said there was this monk-like figure with a candle in his hand," he explained. "She was in bed, next to me. I didn't see him but I was shit scared. We've spoken to neighbours, and they said this was normal. Perhaps it's black magic, I don't know. But some weird things were definitely going on."

We're curious about the monk. Is he a big German lad who wears goalkeeping gloves and doesn't like Oliver Kahn very much? Or are we being unkind suspecting Jens Lehmann would go this far to get his place back in the Arsenal team?