Four days to go

I'm trying to digest the news that Martin O'Neill has gone off in a huff. Not that I care at all about those upstarts in our claret and blue, but how might that affect that team on Saturday?

Part of me also thinks that having to watch your best players go and not seeing the money spent on new players sounds familiar. Fat Frank? Joe Cole?

Even worse is seeing your best players go and receiving nothing for them 'cos you can't afford their wages. Michael Carrick?

And then seeing them sold on for enormous sums of money very shortly afterwards and not having had the sense to have a sell-on clause. Michael Carrick again?


But perhaps it's worse to sell them for enormous sums (Rio Ferdinand) and watch your manager completely waste it on the likes of Big Titi Camara. But we need to be clear there was no bung involved, it was just incompetence.


So I don't have much sympathy. If you buy Curtis Davies, Steve Sidwell, Nicky Shorey, Habib Beye, Luke Young, Emile Heskey, Nigel Reo-Coker and they warm your bench for big money, it could be worse - it could be Benni McCarthy, Jiminez, Mido (but those two were only on loan) or any of the long line of past-its we've stuffed pension plans for from the Arse. But it does tend to undermine the idea that the manager walks on water.

Still if loads of those play on Saturday and stuff us, it'll probably prove something.