5 out of 10

In Ireland, every week, at least 5 (occasionally 6) out of the ten premiership games are shown live on TV. For example, this weekend:

Sat 12:45pm Liverpool v West Ham
Sat 3pm Watford v Man Utd
Sat 5:15pm Man City v Arsenal
Sun 4pm Blackburn v Chelsea
Mon 8pm Middlesboro v Portsmouth

That's 10 hours of football if you take in the half time breaks and 15 minute post match interviews. That's a lot of time in a working man's weekend. It's like I have two jobs. No wonder the washing is piling up.

Saturday, normally starts with the 10-11:30am five-a-side-cobweb-killing astro turf game, leaving one's blood circulating at a normal rate and an appetite for salty food and coffee. Lot's of coffee. However, due to holidays etc. the Saturday morning runaround was cancelled due to insufficient squad members.

Hence a more lethargic start to the Saturday. My significantly better looking other half had a hair appointment in town at 11am and a lunch date with a revisiting emigrant friend at 2pm. She estimated her return home would be sometime around 7ish. She had abandoned her plans to supplement her lunch with alcohol due to an inordinate amount of wine the previous night medicinally administered to dull out the constant replaying of the new Bob Dylan record which had been released that morning. What I'm trying to say here is was that I didn't need to leave the house to collect her from town. I was home alone with satellite TV and the fridge...

For those of you not familiar with the dual couch set up for marathon sports fests, here is a brief summary of the theory in it's rudimentary form.Two couches are positioned along parallel walls lying perpindicular to the angle of the TV screen. If the TV is north facing, then the two couches will be east and west facing respectively. The south facing arm rest on each couch is the 'head' position. When a human male is immobile for long stretches of 2 or more hours, the smaller vertebrae can become irritated at the lack of support as the molecular structure of the cushions and spring mechanism setlles in one position. This necissates a 'couch substitution'. The couch rotation system allows the primary couch to regain it's 'vigour' so to speak and one can 'switch-back' at the end of the fourth hour of the sports-fest.

Clear? Good. Dateline 12:30. Breakfast inhaled and coffee pot full. Various mini muffins within arms reach. 13:40pm. Liverpool unveil their new Dutch striker after about an hour. 2-1 up at half time against a West Ham team high on endeavour but low on quality. A spectacular Daniel Agger 30 yard strike equalised and a Crouch strike put them ahead right on the break. (Agger's goal can be seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVGbCXSAi9k). A good game that could have been turned upside down had Bowyer not missed a sitter in the dying minutes. Kuyt, however, looked nothing like he did in a Holland shirt. He looked like he could play. He was intelligent, enthusiastic and a big handful for defenders. It's too early to tell but the advance previews would certainly point to a box office hit, so to speak..

3pm. First couch switch. Muffins gone. Coffee dreggs only in pot. Switch also to Brazil nuts and Pilsner Urquell. Watford host Man Utd and the usual array of ex scouse players fan the flames of Mancunian hatred both in the RTE studio (Ray Houghton, Trevor Steven) and in the commenatry box (Jim Beglin). Who hires these clowns? Impartiality is a word they'll never understand. United were easy favourites and the leaped to an early one nil lead thanks to a well taken Silvestre goal. However in the usual comedy defending slot Mikael Silvestre starred in his usual role of the 'dummy' as he allowed a shimmy to wrong foot him and the cross ended up beyond Van der Saar for one all.

It took another piece of high jinks to put United one up when the worst back pass of all time allowed Giggs time and space to put Utd back in front. Without too much sweat being broke United sailed comfortably to their 3/3 record so far in the league. There's a highlights clip here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LsVSyZ6C2k.

5:15pm: Pilsner numero quatro as Arsenal travel to Manchester to give a lesson in football to Man City. And a lesson they gave. In football. But not in winning. Arsenal suffered once again from their desperate quest for the perfectly executed goal. A clumsy challenge from Hoyte led to a penalty which Joey Barton despatched with the help of a crossbar to make it one nil. Arsenal passed, passed, passed and passed a little more while never really offering any thrust or goal bound end product. This Arsenal team likes to play pretty football, and fair play to them. But sometimes you gotta dig in for a result, scrap, scrap, scrap, scrap and scrap some more. Thierry Henry, who has more admirers than a Swedish Supermodel, didn't want to be there. His body language betrayed a distinct lack of interest and this could be Arsenal's undoing.

7:15pm and the newly coiffured lady of the house returns with glossy magazines in tow. She assumes her cat-like curl in the corner armchair and miraculously a large cold glass of white wine appears at her fingertips. I'm beginning to think her name should be Samantha...

Saturday's highlights round up starts in 15 minutes time whilst I change couches for the final time. I enquire as to what will be served for dinner when I am reminded in a timely fashion that I do the cooking around here. All this armchair athleticism made me forget who I was...

...What!!?

Dateline: Wednesday 23rd August, 20:44 GMT. I was in the middle of an ordinary evenings football viewing. Chelsea were one up at Middlesboro as usual, It was only a matter of time before Manchester United went one up at Charlton. The woodwork had already denied them on a coupel of occasions and Darren Fletcher had just made his 187th incomplete pass of the game....

Business as usual.

Then the phone rang.

"This is NO JOKE,", came the voice on the end of the phone, quavering slightly. "Roy Keane is the new manager of Sunderland!". .

Something funny was happening. Was Superman doing his big lap of the globe and dirupting some temperal flux of cosmic jiggidy joobies? Roy Keane? Reporting directly to Niall Quinn!!!! The Sunderland chairman who famously backed McCarthy in the Saipan incident. The spineless coward who sat back and watch ireland's greatest player sent home from what would have been the crowning glory of his football career. The beanpole 'Mother Teresa' who was the subject of much of Keane's post-Saipan vitriol!!! Something is screwed up. Bobby Ewing was about to walk out of the shower.

Then Darren Fletcher scored. I passed out.

I came to with just over ten minutes to play. United were cruising to an easy win. Louis Saha had made it two nil, then the scoreflash came on the bottom of the screen. Middlesboro had equalised against Chelski! Just when I thought things were as far off the sanity plane as they possibly could get, up steps a big fat Australian named Mark Viduka, and sealed a Middlesboro win in the 90th minute.

Chelsea beaten, Fletcher scores, United three points clear of Chelsea at the top of the table, and Roy Keane's PRSI number on the same paypath sheet as Niall Quinn's! I need to lie down.....

The first week of normal service

Normal service resumed. In more ways than one. Chelsea take a handy 3-0 victory over Man City looking like they are just continuing on from where they left off in May. Liverpool stuttered to a very unconvincing draw against newcomers Sheffield United, Arsenal christened their new stadium with an equally unconvincing 1-1 draw at home to lowly Aston Villa. Spurs nosedived against Bolton, going 2-0 down to a wonderstrike from Ivan Campo (40 Yards??) and Manchester United brushed Fulham aside 5-1 in what must have been the easiest win seen at Old Trafford in many a year.

Too early to decipher anything from these events. Only it is worth noting that Liverpool have an uneasy Champions League qualifier tomorrow against the re-housed Israeli team Macabi Haifa (The game is being played in Kiev for security reasons) so one can assume the below strength eleven was fielded with this game in mind.

The most notable event of the weekend was Reading's arrival in the top flight. Two nil dowen to Middlesborough and yet they won the game 3-2. Their dedication, commitment and application of a 'back to basics' style of football was by far and away the biggest achievemnet of the opening weekend.

Scouse Escape / Prospects for New season

After going one nil down to the Israelis, the two scouse new boys, Craig 'GBH' Bellamy and Mark Gonzalez conspired with the Red version of The Great Escape. Indeed, it was the young Chilean who came off the bench to rescue the ten million in Chamions League fees in the last minute. High drama at Anfield.

But what about their prospects for the coming year? They show great potential. Barring Peter Crouch, Bolo Zenden and Luis Garcia they have quality all over the pitch and though it pains me to say it, they do look like contenders, but they do seem to lack direction and strategy.

Where Chelsea, and to a lesser extent, Man Utd, play to a preordained system, Liverpool seem to lack the understanding of the system they try to play. Playing a centre forward alone means that he needs to be mobile. So much so, when the game necissatates him (Bellamy) to drift left or right, the hole in the centre needs to be plugged very quickly by either a Gerrard moving up quickly from midfield, or a Gonzalez or a lesser spotted Pennant coming in from the flanks. Out of all thre players mentioned above it was only the Chilean who seemed to grasp this concept.

This is where Liverpool floundered lkast season. The inept Crouch being used as a spearhead only contributed to a blunt attacking force and a whole litany of wasted opportunites. It looks like that unless Dirk Kuyt arrives from Holland in a big hurry that Liverpool's plan B will again involve the worst centre forward in England. Liverpool are one nil down. Twenty minutes to go and Crouch comes off the bench. Not exactly striking fear into opponents hearts now is it....

Aborted World Cup Experiment / Premiership & Champions League Gusto

Well who'd have thought that a little thing like The World Cup could take up so much of one's life, and Summer. So much was the excitement and the juggling of work and the beautiful game as well as competing in an albeit much tournament that the oul Blog got neglected to a dusty state of disrepair.

But it's back...

And so is the Premiership, and The Champions League. Liverpool and Arsenal have to prequalify for the Champions League and a potentially fatal banana skin awaits the Liverpudlians. They have drawn those giants of world football. Israeli team Macabi Haifa. Normally this would be a pushover but with the political situation the way it is and the spotlight of the world on Israel these things have a habit of going "NOT ACCORDING TO PLAN".

The qualifiers, are as most of you will be aware, two legged affairs. The home tie is at home in Liverpool for the reds and the away tie?..Well, nobody really knows yet. One thing's certain Israel and Lebannon are OUT!

Arsenal travel to eatern europe for their AWAY leg tonight against Dynamo Zagreb. The Arsenal are clear favourites, but without their talismanic Thierry Henry, the now Retired Dutch master Denis Bergkamp, and the 'soon-to-be-a-Chelsea-player' Ashley Cole, the trip doesn't look as straightforward now as it did before they boarded their Air Crotia Flight 999 yesterday morning.

One waits with bated breath before the kick offs tonight and tomorrow. For those of you watching on Treadmill-O-Vision the kick off times are 8:05pm GMT.