Torres: Waning? Waned? Or Not Waning?

FERNANDO TORRES hit the net last night, but his Liverpool side slumped to another defeat – this time against Blackpool.

But Torres has found goals hard to come by this season; last night’s was just his seventh in the Premier League.

Those goals have come at a rate of one every 232 minutes, whereas in his first three seasons in England his 56 goals arrived every 107 minutes.

When does a lack of form become an irreversible decline for a top-quality sportsman?

Brazil and North Korea paper over cracks

ON DAY five of the World Cup the tournament finally produced a game that managed to be both evenly matched and satisfactorily entertaining.

Three goals! Three actual goals! From different sides!

All three goals (assuming you believe Maicon, who has previous, meant it) were in fact just like watching Brazil.

A grown man cried at his national anthem, as though his life depended on it. Which it might have done.

Dunga wore a funny coat, which was possibly meant for a lady, but made him look like a camp tugboat driver.

What more could a football supporter want?

But the thirteen games prior to Brazil v North Korea were mainly drivel and emblematic of a worrying trend in world football.

England’s success hides cricket’s cloud

FOR the third time running the World Twenty20 was an unqualified success.

For the first time ever the England limited-overs cricket team was an unqualified success.

Better to have loved and lost than to have never watched the IPL

ON SUNDAY I had my first viewing of the future of cricket.

Maybe it is because it is on ITV4 this year or maybe it is because it is has received more media attention from the non-cricketing press this year, but either way I am following the IPL for the first time.

Except the IPL is not the future of cricket.

Mansfield Town introduce children to drug

MANSFIELD Town allowed fans to pay what they liked to watch the team play Gateshead yesterday.

The decision was deemed a success with an attendance more than double what they have averaged this season, even forcing a ten-minute kick-off delay.

But football matches are not consumer goods, they are not a Radiohead album.

Football matches are an addiction, they are a drug.

Babies the key to success in Premier League title race

BACK in September Sir Alex Ferguson, like an embarassing dad, urged Jonny Evans to settle down and get married.

He argued that starting a family was the key to the stability that footballers need to perform at their best.

And this week two top Premier League stars took his advice and reaped the benefits.

You can’t beat a lower league pie

THE football season finally kicks off this weekend with the start of the Championship, League One and League Two.

Only with ridiculous levels of spending have Manchester City raised any doubt about who will be in the Premier League’s top four, after two seasons in which the top six clubs were the same.

The football league suffers no such problems.

City and United play mean

THE war of words between local rivals Manchester United and Manchester City has intensified.

City kicked things off by parading new signing Carlos Tévez around Manchester in a petty yet amusing billboard campaign.

Phil Brown – literally

HULL CITY have been quiet so far in the summer transfer market.

This can only be attributed to one factor – Phil Brown is on holiday and I am all in favour of that.

The thing I am most looking forward about the start of the Premier League season is seeing exactly what colour Brown will be after his jollies.

I think I can guess the type of holiday the Hull manager goes on.