do u have any opinions about barney ronay

The reason for mentioning this is that I was reminded of Sting while watching Andy Carroll play for Liverpool against Manchester City. Or rather, not so much reminded of Sting as the sad-faced Amazonian tribesman Sting used to bring with him to awards ceremonies and TV talk shows. This is who Carroll reminds me of these days: a gnarled, dignified, quietly obsolete figure, carrying with him above all an air of terrible sadness. The world that might have nourished this towering, peat-smelling specimen from English football's withered folk past has now vanished, but still we parade him about under the main stage lights, his face a haunting mask of ancient confusion.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/jan/13/andy-carroll-liverpool-pain/print

Not generally a fan of the Guardian's humorous articles, though the podcast is a treat, but that Carroll piece had me laughing several times.

andy carroll is the last entish child, and as any orphan bereft of kin or peer or connection to a fading world would, he's railing against a society that neither cares about nor wants him.

im not sure i have definitive opinions abt barney ronay right now

is barney ronay the one they always talk about being terribly posh on the podcast?

still doing his "passing" - lol

"It was a lonely role for Andy Carroll," Gary Lineker mused on Wednesday night - this made me wonder have there been any parody lyrics to 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll' yet?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/feb/24/ashley-cole-chelsea-england

Not sure I have any opinions about Cole's current form, broadly agree with the overall point though. There's some great AVB mocking in here too.

Ah, we were onto Cole's greatness round these parts a good couple of years ago. And now the bandwagon, just as he turns to shit.

This is lovely though: "Even the moment Ronaldinho left Cole in a jumble of twitching limbs at the 2002 World Cup before Brazil's equaliser had a wonderful substance to it, a recognition, in Cole's befuddlement, of a wound inflicted by pure, high-ceilinged football talent"

Read his piece on AVB. The Redknapp bit is beautiful.

"We must build on Harry's great work," Villas-Boas said this week, bestowing an unexpected gravity on the legacy of a manager who has traditionally been a kind of footballing Cat in the Hat, a tousled and infectious improviser who could probably cook you the most brilliant meal you've ever tasted simply by hurling everything in the fridge into a massive bowl and then flambéing it over a raging fire built from every stick of furniture you own, before abruptly disappearing just as you come round, dazed and hungover, face down in the ashes of what was once your kitchen.

this cunt doesn't know shit about actual fitba btw

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/jun/17/euro-2012-strikers-false-no9s/print

Dear Barnay,

Hello there. Its Jo B here. I met you in Greenwich park not far back with Olly et al. I'm doing a journalism course at the moment at London School of Journalism in Maida Vale and pretty intensive it is to.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/14/weekly-sport-diary-us-pga

Even in their basic physical mechanics they complement one another beautifully. Ronaldo, despite his restless toes, seems a footballer of the upper body, all upright shimmy and feint, propelled like a shark by those flaring neck muscles. Whereas Messi is a footballer of the lower body, at times appearing physically incapable of actually falling over, driven by the scurrying woodlouse-genius that resides in his impossibly adhesive feet.

so he's moving into slash fic then