Date published: Monday 19th December 2022 9:35 - John Nicholson

They think it’s all over because it absolutely is. And our John Nicholson will be glad to return to proper football after all that World Cup nonsense. Thermal Cash Register Paper

TUESDAY DECEMBER 13 The day dawns bollock freezing cold. You know it’s proper cold when postal workers ditch the shorts. He turns up with 24 records. Hurrah! Especially pleased with the Queensrÿche 7” shaped picture disc of ‘Jet City Woman’ and the American mix of Whitesnake’s 7” ‘Love Ain’t No Stranger’.

We’re about to head off in pursuit of comestibles in the car when we notice the BMW is telling us that its battery is very low and needs charging. This is because we’ve not done a long drive for a couple of months. So, being gay and carefree, Dawn drives us deep into frosty, bleak and wild Argyll, heading up to Inveraray. This is Campbell country. They bossed it for centuries and still own some huge properties such as Inveraray Castle, because if you acquire land and properties through violence long enough ago, it’s just laughed off as a bit of a joke by the current owners, who nonetheless still benefit from their ancestors’ bloody and criminal history. Doesn’t seem right.

And history is everywhere as we pass through old villages and hamlets wedged into great glens carved out of the rock by glaciers in the last ice age. I love it out here. It makes you feel small and insignificant. We come and go in a blink of the cosmic eye and here it is never more obvious. It puts the World Cup in perspective.

Inveraray is a lovely wee place, even if it has gone a bit shortbread, highland coos and tea towels. We turn around and head back as the sun dips over Kintyre peninsula, the stretch of land that for years was infamous as being representative of the maximum tumescence a penis could be if shown on TV.

We agree it’s too cold to be tumescent today, at least without taking drugs, so we drive home, eventually doing an 80-mile round trip, the battery now fully charged.

Argentina v Croatia It’s not often a broadcaster realises they’ve made a mistake and, if not exactly admitting it, making a change which all but reveals the fact. Because for this game ITV has got Sam doing comms and Lee is joined on co-comms by Coisty. Has ITV ever had two co-comms before at the tournament? I don’t think so.

Was it planned? I suspect not. Did it happen because of the persistent volume of criticism on social media of their chosen pairing? Well, you decide. All I’d say is that these pairings are sorted out well in advance and contracts are presumably drawn up to reflect the choices. You can’t remove someone without breaking the contract, but perhaps you can add someone in.

But there’s no point in having a mind if you never change it and ITV should be praised for trying to make what was widely thought to be a flagging product, better. And it works. It really works. Coisty is the yeast in the dough. His fireside chunterings, good-natured grunting and laughing, leaven the bread. Maybe I’m making this up but I swear that Dixon sounds more animated, his voice a little higher and more engaged now that he’s got someone to bounce comments off. His dissection of how Messi beats the defender to set up the Argentine goal by remarkable changes of speed was especially good.

While the effect of this co-comm magic is rather to leave Sam as the one on the edge of the bed in a threesome, left to his own devices while the other two enjoy themselves, but it’s OK and his performance improves; even his vocabulary seems to expand. Perhaps the addition of Ally takes the pressure off and everyone relaxes a bit more. Like I say, maybe this is all an illusion in my own ears, but I’m certain it was a great move to get the Scotsman on board and whoever made that choice should be congratulated.

On the radio it’s Denno, Alan Shearer and Rob Green. Alan is also effusive about the same goal – “here, you have a tap in…have it on a plate” he says with more relish than most of us who have not racked up hundreds of goals thanks to others’ skill and graft.

The penalty seems ridiculous – where could the keeper go? – but of course it is not overturned as VAR isn’t there for that. It’s there to catch someone’s foreskin being 0.0000001mm offside.

At half-time Kelly assures us that Ian Dennis’ half time snack will be 75% Twix. Seems like a good choice to me.

On ITV they’ve got Peter Walton to talk about the penalty which GNev, Roy and Wrighty all think it was a mistake. Walton says it was correct and attempts but fails to explain why. He’s absolutely hopeless, largely because he’s swallowed the VAR kool-aid and thus has to explain its innate inconsistencies and stupidities as though they are neither.

In the second half I notice that the Argentinians seem to have a lot of ginger beards. Denno calls a Croatian ‘a big lump’. “He speaks well of you,” adds Rob Green, amusingly. I want Croatia to win, but of course, they don’t.

ITV has Laura and Karen on the pitch, still below the men. The boys are being very, very serious. Football doesn’t deserve this degree of seriousness, even if playing it in Qatar does.

WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 14 I volunteer at a local arts centre on Wednesday mornings which basically involves directing people to where they want to go while smiling. Again it strikes me how little anyone I meet knows or cares about the World Cup. They mostly know it’s happening, but aren’t interested. The intersection between arts centre people and football is, it seems, quite a small one. Funny how different parts of society are kept apart from each other culturally.

Postie is on strike so no deliveries today or tomorrow. When I get home I play ‘In For The KIll’ one of my favourite Budgie albums and spin some 7”ers by April Wine and Gillan, as well as a lovely 10” picture disc of ‘Heartbreak Station’ by Cinderella. There’s just time to make a mushroom and barley risotto, made with beef stock, and have a bath before tonight’s game.

France v Morocco Jonny Infant is at the match and he’s wearing a suit with big white trainers. It makes him look like someone who’s recently escaped from an institution after a big lad throws a sink through a window.

Gary, Didier, Wor Al and Rio are there. No women allowed. However, the Frenchman is wearing a shirt and pants that look made from finely rolled steel. They’re all very pro-Gareth staying on, but I still don’t think he will.

Kelly Somers appears smiling while wearing some voluminous white trousers. Steve Wilson and Danny Murphy are doing the TV work to almost instant howls of protest on Twitter. Not against Steve, because, by and large, none of us can remember what Mr W’s voice sounds like even when he’s talking, but the thought of an hour and a half of Murph is too depressing for some. However, I don’t know why they’re complaining, just turn over to World Cup Extra to see the same pictures but with John Murray and Chris Sutton’s 5Live comms.

The broadband begins to buffer just as the game kicks off but then settles down after France scores. Maybe everyone turned off at that point and freed up the network. John Murray refers a little cynically to official Fifa stats which says France have had “50% ‘possession control’ otherwise known as ‘59.1% possession’” he says dryly. He describes the slightly pinkish desert moon and Chris asserts that a Moroccan defender “was like a doorman throwing someone out of a nightclub there” as Thuram is fouled.

Danny Murphy is trending on Twitter as ‘Captain Buzzkill’. Wasn’t there a band called Captain Buzzkill?

Although they win the game 2-0, France still don’t look like a great team. Take out Griezmann and Mbappe and what have you got? England should’ve beaten them.

THURSDAY DECEMBER 15 It was perhaps just an amazing coincidence that an MEP was arrested this week by Belgian police after being found with a million euros in cash in her house and hotel room, just three weeks after declaring that Qatar is “a frontrunner in labour rights” and “the World Cup in Qatar is proof of how sports diplomacy can achieve a historic transformation of a country”.

Rangers v Hibernian Ach well, feck the World Cup corruption, some Scottish Premiership football from Ibrox feels reassuringly normal. Rangers v Hibernian is on Sky this evening and here are Eildh Barbour, James McFadden, Kris Boyd and Jack Ross to bring it to us.

Faddy appears to be wearing a suit and jumper made out of Brillo pads. Boydy looks like a big bear that’s been forced to wear human clothes and perches in a chair uncomfortably. Jack looks on, a wry expression across his lips like a maverick cop with a dark secret. He’s got a degree in economics and has written children’s books which must surely qualify him as a laptop guru in Boydy’s hard, scathing eyes.

Ross’s last job was at Dundee United in August for an X-rated seven games which ended with a 9-0 humping by Celtic. Even so, he always talks a good game and is a recent former Hibs manager. He says, “Sometimes you can have too many questions in your head as a manager.” Boydy looks cynical at this as he’s never had more than one idea in his head at one time, and that is usually about dinner.

Ivan Sproule, who once scored a hat-trick v Rangers for Hibs in 23 minutes, is interviewed. He looks like an ageing member of a long forgotten boy band. Lee Johnson, the current Hibernian manager, does a pre-game chat as Dawn puts her head around the door and looks at the screen.

“Who’s he and why does it look like he’s pissing through his eyes?” she says, before going to the studio shouting “I’m going to look for my hot glue gun. Will you bring me a vodka and cherry?”.

As I fix the drinks, Hibs midfielder Ryan Porteous is interviewed as he’s offski after five years at Hibs. He fancies moving to a new league in England or abroad. As he’ll probably only cost pennies, he’ll be a good purchase for a Scottish manager – they’re the only ones who know there are good players in Scotland going cheap – in the Championship or League One, probably Alex Neil at Stoke City or Scott Brown, an ex-Hibs man himself, at Fleetwood.

Ian Crocker is the commentator and co-comm is Andy Walker, a man who managed to get banned from both Ibrox Stadium and Celtic Park at the same time last year, is riding shotgun. When Porteous scores the opening goal with an unopposed header six yards out, Walker explodes, “who’s near him? No-one!” he yells with the indignation of a man shouting at the last bus as it pulls away, just as he arrives at the stop. Crocker bursts when Hibs score a second 53 seconds after a Rangers equaliser. “Welcome back the Scottish Premiership!!”, he yells, his voice breaking a little. Welcome indeed. It’s a long way from Qatar

It’s a barnstorming game in which Rangers come back from 2-1 down to win 3-2. Alfredo Morelos scores. He wears the expression of someone eating a lemon covered in wasps and sports a haircut that looks applied with high gloss black paint. I’ve never seen a footballer more generally narked off about everything. He is also that rare thing in 2022: a fat footballer. Not fat like me and you, of course. But definitely in possession of both the pork and the timber.

FRIDAY DECEMBER 16 We awake to heavy snow, but by the end of the day it’s all gone as it absolute pishes doon with rain. We’ve got terrible condensation in the porch which is also my music room. The outside wall is soaking wet. We’ve got a dehumidifier going to dry it out but I need to reorganise the album shelves to keep them away from the damp. 9,000 albums and 3,000 singles are not the easiest things to accommodate, but we shift Kallax units around and eventually come up with a configuration that works in the space and looks good without being near the wet wall. Dawn has plans to fix the problem. Apparently it involves special paint and silver wallpaper. It takes all afternoon to shift the albums off shelves and relocate them. Trouble is, messing with the records just makes me want to play them and I keep getting distracted by albums by Dog Soldier and Gentle Giant, as you do.

Birmingham v Reading Gary Taphouse (great name…who doesn’t like a house with a tap?) and pleasingly Brummie and one-time Alfred Newman look-a-like, Lee Hendrie. Jude Bellingham is there as is his brother who is on the bench and looks identical. Hendrie has played against Jude’s dad which blows my passing-of-time gasket.

There’s a goal in 61 seconds from Troy Deeney on his 600th career appearance and how fantastic not to have to wait for VAR to have its say.

Ongoing repairs to the ground means it feels semi-derelict and quiet. I’ve always thought Birmingham, because they are named after England’s second city, should be a really big club even though they never have been.

Later, Deeney wins a pen. Again. Such a relief not to wait for VAR to squint at it for five minutes. Dawn says Troy looks like Richie Havens and starts singing ‘Freedom. Freedom’ like the great man at Woodstock. They’ve got a Chong up front, but no Cheech. Shame.

Paul Ince casts some hard-to-read expressions. At times he looks like a man who has taken a lot of magic mushrooms and is unable to believe that 10-foot high orange mice are doing ballet in front of the dugout. At other times he looks like someone trying to swallow a gerbil.

Reading are 3-0 down at half time and their awful red-sock-in-the-white-wash shirts aren’t helping. Dawn is browsing rug grippers – as you do – and looks up when I mention Reading’s shirt. “They look like those bri-nylon knickers I had in the early 80s,” is her verdict. I laugh. They do. She used to have them with the days of the week embroidered on the front and never wore them on the right day. “I was probably too pissed to know what day it was,” she says as I remind her of this.

I get a double double vodka and ice and feed Rabbie who has just come in soaking wet, the poor lad. I make a fuss of him and he smiles and purrs and rubs himself on my legs. Cats. You get ‘em or you don’t..

It’s the great Caroline Barker hosting this show. She is such a relaxed, informal and warm performer, like it all comes easily to her. I miss her work on 5live but you can understand her snaffling of the Sky dollar. Weirdly, the camera seems to be lying flat on the floor looking up at CB, Jamie Mackie and Garry Monk, who used to be the The Next Big Thing but now, after five jobs in the last eight years, has been on the football dole for 25 months and wears the look of a cad in an Agatha Christie drama.

Jobe Bellingham comes on. The Big Horse, Andy Carroll follows him onto the pitch. How is he still making money playing football? It’s like he’s a really old pro, but he’s still only 33. Ince appears to be deploying him as though he’s a concrete block dropped from a crane.

Deeney is awarded the non-sexist ‘player of the match’. He’s male, so it’s okay to be Man Of The Match. If it’s women’s football, it’s Woman Of The Match’. It’s only an abstract award that needs to be non-gendered. Do we still need to be making this clear? It’s not hard.

SATURDAY DECEMBER 17 There’s a black ice coating across everything making walking anywhere almost impossible, so I glue my backside to the sofa and tune into the football.

Aberdeen v Celtic I grind some beans and froth some milk (this is not a euphemism) to make some cappuccino which I consume while reading Rory Smith’s superb piece on Fifa and Qatar and the nature of a World Cup which manages to be unreal and real at the same time. He’s such a great, inspirational word painter.

Postie arrives with a blue vinyl Tesla 12” and another Kingdom Come 12” picture disc. Sweet.

This game is on Sky and 5Live where Pat Nevin is back from The Evil World Cup and is doing this game with Conor McNamara. Roddy Forsyth is hanging around as well. He plays an unusual, rather undefined role. He’s on hand to make the occasional comment on the game or about a player, but he isn’t a co-comm and he isn’t a presenter. He’s a fine presence and always a pleasure to hear his surely whiskey-drenched Glaswegdian tones. If anything, it’d be nice to hear more from him.

Pat and Conor chat about oystercatchers during a lull in play and I’m always here for any blether about birds. Celtic win with a late goal. A perfectly good commentary during which we drive to Morrisons in a massive hailstorm and buy sea bass, milk and gin.

Steve Crossman is back in the studio. You have to feel a bit for Steve who was left out of the World Cup adventure after performing well at previous tournaments but then again, The Evil World Cup is an entirely plastic creation, so maybe it was best avoided.

He’s on EFL ‘around the grounds’ duty. I bloody love an around the grounds show, largely because it’s lots of small football snacks from the smorgasbord of all the football being played. It makes me feel part of the football community to hear so many people involved in the game all at the same time on the same day. This is the real People’s Game.

I put the TV on to watch some of the Croatia v Morocco game. It looks decent but to be honest having dipped back into domestic football in the last three days and found it warming to the soul, I just can’t muster much more interest. As pleased as I feel for Morocco and their insane fans, Qatar are still getting away with murder and the World Cup is still a crime scene.

Alex, Klinsy and Micah are in the BBC 1 studio with Chappers who has a touch of louche end-of-term about him as he lies back in his chair looking either exhausted, vaguely hysterical or three drinks in. I turn it off and go back to the radio. Boro are a goal up for a bit but then ship three. That matters more than football played in Qatar at great human and financial expense.

Denno reports into 5Live on the play-off game – they’re not broadcasting a commentary, though ahead of the tournament I’m sure they promised to broadcast all 64 games on 5Live and 5Live Extra – and it appears VAR have dropped another mighty bollock by somehow ignoring a clear penalty. It now doesn’t seem to matter how shit VAR is, we still have to suck it up because no-one in power can admit the truth about it and I will never, ever, tire of saying this is exactly the same as Brexit.

Meanwhile, Swansea come back from 3-0 down to Coventry to draw 3-3. The mad Champo at work as per. It’s been an excellent round the grounds show. A welcome return to the meat and potatoes of life rather than gorging on World Cup candyfloss. Croatia win the third place game. Fair play to them. Always liked those shirts.

I keep an eye on the Norwich v Blackburn game as I’m starting the monumental task of organising my 7” singles into alphabetical order. This isn’t some sort of OCD thing, it’s just practical, so I can find records. At the moment they are just stacked in boxes totally out of order. I make 26 different piles spread out across the carpet and try to make a decision on which pile to put records by A Band Called O.

SUNDAY DECEMBER 18 Final day. There is an argument that a World Cup final is no longer the biggest game in football. It has all seemed like some sort of fever dream or LSD trip. Plenty of people have diminished interest in international football, at least in the west and it does feel a bit old-fashioned in an era that is financially dominated by a few clubs to have a competition that you can’t spend money in order to win. That is, after all, the modern way. But to me, it still feels big.

The room is covered in piles of records. I finished sorting T – Z, boxed them up and stacked them in the corner until we’ve got the damp sorted out.

Does everyone really want Messi to win? I find it hard to understand why anyone not Argentinian is so invested in that outcome. Is Saudi Arabia’s ‘tourism envoy’ not privileged enough already? Perhaps I’m missing something. Jonathan Wilson, a man whose opinion I trust implicitly, says that after being relentlessly brilliant for so many years, football sort of owes Messi the only trophy he hasn’t won. I genuinely don’t understand that. It’s probably something missing in my psyche.

Anyway, I make a decision over a sardines on toast breakfast to watch some of the game on both TV channels and listen on both radio stations in order to compare and contrast. To ground myself I watch the EFL highlights on ITV with Hugh Woozencroft, Matt Jarvis and Sam Parkin. It does the job nicely.

Around midday it is announced Gareth is staying on. Which is exactly what I wanted to happen but was sure wouldn’t. Always bet against everything I predict. It’s absolutely foolproof.

I listen to some of the build up on 5Live with Kelly and Mark et al, and it’s all very good-natured, intelligent, insightful and even occasionally a bit saucy. Someone makes the very interesting point that to be truly loved as a kind of folk hero, you have to be flawed, like Maradona. Messi, all the tax dodging and greedy autocratic state money hoovering aside, is not flawed, at least not in an interesting way, and thus, for some, too good to embrace fully. Something in that, I reckon.

On the BBC Rio, Gary and Pablo looked dressed in dark suits as though for a funeral, appropriately enough for this tournament. Shearer has gone for a wedding suit in father of the bride grey. Kelly Somers and Alex are on the pitch, following ITV’s idea of placing women below men.

On ITV Roy is wowing the internet with some newly sculpted facial hair which makes him look like Doc Holliday. Dawn tells me that Messi looks like a bearded Jeremy Hunt. I think she must’ve eaten some funny mushrooms.

For some reason Iker Casillas (what is it to do with him?) and a woman wearing a sort of heavily pleated leather tabard bring the World Cup out of a Louis Vuitton bag. Maybe I’m on mushrooms too.

I start the game by listening on talkSPORT. Jim Proudfoot reads out a long scripted introduction which sounds like someone introducing a complex game show. It must’ve been a full side of A4. Sonically, it sounds like they’re somewhere else. The crowd sounds like that fake soundtrack you could opt into during Covid.

He’s a very even-paced commentator and never stops talking, but talks without punctuation so the whole thing comes across like reading Jack Kerouac’s giant roll of paper on which he typed the ‘On the Road’ manuscript. He doesn’t even seem to take a breath but without rise and fall it all becomes a bit of a drone. He’s with Stuart Pearce who sounds like a voice from the distant past, like a Dickens ghost. There’s nothing warm about it. Even when Argentina wins a penalty, it all feels a bit frosty and functional.

So after 23 minutes I put on ITV where Coisty, Dixon and Sam Matterface are plying their trade. The two ex-players break down the play well and are warmer and chatty. They get Peter Walton in to speak about the penalty. He comes out with some proper guff saying VAR didn’t rule on it because it was a subjective decision and not a clear and obvious error. But we all know VAR rules on both of those things all the time. Walton has been hopeless. Everyone purrs over the second Argentina goal and the match seems done.

At half time I put on 5Live and Chappers says that Kelly is getting ready to chin a French commentator in front of them who keeps standing up. There’s much laughing and joking. They don’t work together very often, but they should as there is tremendous, very noticeable chemistry between them.

I take BBC1 for the first half of the second half and Guy Mowbray and Jermaine Jenas. It is very low key, possibly because the game is petering out. JJ says France’s body language is just to accept defeat. Is everyone a body language expert?

I think I’m finishing off a dull game on 5Live. But on 80 minutes it all goes apeshit, we end up in extra-time and then penalties. John Murray can hardly even speak; he’s so shocked when Mbappe scores France’s second. Ian Dennis is roaring like a tiger in the first half of extra time. It’s clear that Argentina can’t defend against direct football as this is a carbon copy of the Wouting Netherlands gave them. So much time and effort is spent on football science, trying to control and tame the game, but this match proved football is still chaos.

In the very last second Mbappe dances through the defence into the penalty area but is robbed before he can shoot. “If he’s scored that I’d have walked out,” said John Murray, who sounds genuinely stunned and exhausted. Chris Sutton and Rob Green all play their part in a fantastic broadcast of what turned out to be a great last 10 minutes and extra-time.

A bloke who looks like ‘hey now’ Hank Kingsley from Larry Sanders Show, puts what my pal Dave says looks like a cross between a negligee and Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility around Messi’s shoulders for some reason. The awards are given out, Mbappe is tortured by having to be there for the Golden Boot which swivels on its base. It looks shoddily made. Martinez pretends the Golden Glove is his big heavy cock.

Mark and Kelly thank everyone involved in putting the whole thing on the air.

And that’s it. It’s all over. The Evil World Cup that never should have been hosted in this gilded palace of sin, has ended. Has the great football won out? Yes. But that means sportswashing wins. That is the insoluble problem.

Dawn comes in to tell me the armoire is complete and takes me in to look at it in its finished state. It looks mint. It took her the duration of the World Cup to deconstruct, take apart, repurpose and transform a massive, modern fitted wardrobe into what looks like an old bit of French furniture. “Are you pleased with it?” I ask. “Hmm. Could be better,” she says, never satisfied. “But it will always remind me of this World Cup.”

25 Hits of the 2022 World Cup broadcasting:

Gary Lineker’s political introduction on day one. Pity there wasn’t more politics throughout.

Alan Shearer, narrowing his eyes like Lee Van Cleef and quoting Amnesty International’s demands of Qatar.

Nigel De Jong looking like a Vegas illusionist called Mr Mysterio.

Coisty. Dear me. He made everything better.

Clive! Still the big voice for the big game, whether the ITV bosses realise it or not.

Souey telling Roy that “you’ll learn a lot more if you don’t keep talking all the time”.

Roy looking like John The Baptist or a vengeful God in a mediaeval painting, sneering at Brazilian dancing.

Laura Woods. Presented everything with an unusually smooth, relaxed vibe.

Vicki Sparks. A regular on 5Live now, she was superb all tournament long, especially with Pat Nevin. Her calling of penalty shoot outs, especially great in their throat rasping emotion.

Wee Patrick Nevin, Easterhouse’s finest, is surely a contender for best pundit in these lands. He’s so into it.

Graeme Souness’ dress sense. From electric blue tartan to raspberry, his jackets have been worth the entry fee alone. There’s still a fire that burns in the heart of the old lion.

Kelly Cates. The absolute queen of the tight but loose broadcasting artform.

Didier Drogba’s shirts: always from the future.

Micah. Like the Michelin man came from Leeds and had an aversion to using adverbs.

Tim Vickery. With a voice like Kahlúa, he conducts everything like we’re drinking cocktails, wearing velour elasticated trousers and velvet slippers while listening to lounge jazz.

Jonno Pearce saying “I was there, shakin’ an’ a movin’. The police took an interest and I ran”. The mad auld bugger.

Seema Jaswal. ITV’s forever young presenter whose liquid sunshine smile made the pain of life more bearable. And all done while up the duff as if to annoy people who would call themselves ‘traditionalists’ but who we would call something else.

Alex Scott. Anyone who can pronounce ‘wanted’ as ‘one-id’ is alright with me. Accents are assets.

Pien Mulensteen. Did great at the Euros in the summer and was fantastic at this World Cup, especially good when the football was bad.

The Seema, Eni Aluko and Karen Carney panel for the Poland v Saudi game. The only all-female panel of the tournament (I think) . Take the men away and everything is different and not worse. There’s a lesson there.

Laura Georges whose presence gave everything some authority and edge.

Rob Green and Matt Upson: football broadcasting’s Sense and Sensibility.

Mark Chapman another tight but loose expert on both TV and radio.

Ian Dennis on 5Live. He throws himself into every gig with gusto, aided by a wide range of snacks and refreshments.

5Live’s John Murray. When he announced the death of Doddie Weir. during the France v Denmark game with Alan Shearer on board. “Just a game this, Alan, isn’t it? It feels like everything, but it’s just a game.” It brought tears. Typical class from the big boss of the lip mic.

Sofiane Boufal’s mam coming onto the pitch to dance with her son, complete with handbag over her shoulder.

All these people gave us as great a time as it was possible to have in this context.

Now…can’t wait for the midweek League Cup games. That’s real football.

Low Points: Every time Johnny Infant opened his mouth.

Fifa: both morally and financially corrupt. Everyone should reject it as a governing body.

All the shit about an armband with a vague message

The ITV human rights abuses package featuring a clip of Eddie Howe giving it some serious deer in headlights when asked about how he feels taking wages from a regime that had just put 81 people to death. He says he’s still upset about the weekend’s defeat so he’ll just stick to talking about that.

Footballer Declan Rice singing Rice Rice Baby and the ad that delivers it.

Thermal Paper 3 1/8 X 230 Read more: Johnny Nic’s World Cup media diary – Part one |  Part two | Part three |  Part four |  Part five | Part six