Russell V Lawro - The Return

With the return of the blog I will reincarnate my favourite part of doing the blog last time. This will be the first of many Friday afternoon posts where once again I will be going one on one against the BBC legend Mark Lawrenson. As most of you know Lawro does predictions for every Barclay's Premier League each weekend, for his thoughts click here.  So I thought why not put my ideas into the fishing pot and see if I am can best the pro.

Fact or Fiction or Opinion?

I read the websites of most the major news papers in the UK to have a read of some of the different opinion columns, to see if some of them have seen things in a different light to me.  Some are good, some are bad and some are just stupid.  The this writer about one which I will write was brought to my attention only last week but has already driven me to write about him. James Lawton is a writer at The Independent, his piece on Tuesday in which he declared Messi to be a symbol of all that is wonderful about football as opposed to Suarez, who is all that is bad because of his handball goal against Mansfield, I was reminded of this incident.

Then he notes in his artcile today that: 'When Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, who once plundered so brilliantly the best of his native France, recently signed a clutch of English-born players, including Jack Wilshere and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain...'

I will skip the obviously retard line about Jack Wilshere, who has been on the Arsenal books since he was nine and if James Lawton's definition of recently is 12 years otherwise I will spend to long on who is stupider footballers or football writers.  But I am going talk about his idea that Wenger brought French then and buys English now.

It there any point to comparisons when they're done like this?

Yesterday Barcelona and Argentina forward Lionel Messi has been awarded the Ballon d'Or for a fourth year running as well as releasing the FIFA/FIFpro World XI.  Most of you will know that for the first time since its inception all of the players in World XI were from the same league, Liga BBVA. I often read other sports blogs and a few twitter feeds but I don't think I have ever seen such consternation to something like this before, people will obvious disagree with 1 or 2 of the list but like most I don't agree with 4 or 5 of them.

The Team is;

Iker Casillas (Real Madrid)
Dani Alves (Barcelona)
Gerard Pique (Barcelona)
Sergio Ramos (Real Madrid)
Marcelo (Real Madrid)
Andres Iniesta (Barcelona)
Xabi Alonso (Real Madrid)
Xavi (Barcelona)
Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid)
Radamel Falcao (Atletico Madrid)
Lionel Messi (Barcelona)


That is the FIFA/FIFpro World XI and I think I know the reason why it is not very good,

Do you care where they come from?

Today we learnt that British women to be ranked in the top 50 in the world at the same time for more than 25 years. World Number 47 Heather Watson born in Guernsey to a Papua New Guinean mother and has trained at a Tennis Academy in Florida, USA since she was 12. World Number 50 Laura Robson born in Melbourne, Australia then moved to Singapore when she was 18 months old and then to the United Kingdom when she was six but after that she was trained by the Lawn Tennis Association at the National Tennis Centre.

What I am getting at here is that although we should be proud of the performances so far as they are both possible future stars of the sport of tennis, there are both different examples of the most common thing is modern sport.  One is British who went abroad to learn her sport then other is a foreign nation who came to to this country to learn this sport and adopted the nationality, "Multi-National Sport Stars"

Before the Olympics a few newspapers where going on about "Plastic Brits", foreign nationals representing the UK, but after the glorious two week love affair this country had with the Olympic and they have forgotten all about that and is still living off the euphoric high.  But since Immigration had a part to play in at least 24 of the 65 medals claimed by Team GB, should you care?

Controversy, Sports Unwanted Friend

Controversy and Sport have gone hand in hand ever since the the first caveman accused the other caveman of spoiling his hunt.  Today the current controversy Luis Suarez struck again, as a clear handball preceded his scoring of Liverpool's crucial second goal but this time to my eyes he didn't do it deliberately.  He hasn't anticipated the ball coming to him, it hits his hand and he puts the ball away full expecting to here the whistle but he doesn't so he goes and celebrates to his teams fans by kissing his hand.

This is where Luis shows that he takes his love of Toby young and Simon Pegg to heart and shows the world how to 'Lose Friends & Alienate People'.  It is not what he does that that sparks most of the controversy, it is the way he behaves afterwards that causes most peoples dislike of him.  Suarez still is one off the best strikers in the world and if he keeps this up he will not be remembered for his skill, but compared to some people in sport Suarez is basically a saint.

Here a my top 5 sporting scandals/controversies.