The View From Churchmans

I bet Brian didn't get too many correct entries in the prediction competition today. An extraordinary scoreline largely due to an extraordinary half-hour when we couldn't seemingly do anything wrong. It'd be going a bit far to say I felt sorry for Sunderland, but it really wasn't their day. Couple their luck (or lack of it) with an atrocious defence, and you have the proverbial drubbing. And how good does it feel? No radical ... More...

Two wins in two, and the scores might suggest we've sprung back to life, but it's probably a little more gradual than that: the Newcastle - Villa - Tottenham - Leicester matches represent a steady progression, with all of them being in the zone where a few (un)lucky breaks the other way could still have turned the result on its head. But progression it is, and there definitely looks to be a little ... More...

I'm started to get irritated as well as a tiny bit scared now. Every time I think "well that's the low point, the recovery starts here" we come out the next week and offer nothing new. I can't see where the next goal's coming from, the defence looks more porous than it has done for years, and the midfield seems outnumbered 2:1 regardless of how many people we put there. Today I think ... More...

We came to Milan, we saw a big stadium, and we failed totally to conquer our own nervousness. The team stood around like they didn't deserve to be there for eighty minutes, and in the end, it wasn't the occasion or the devotion to the cause which finally got some of them going, it was getting a little bit angry after the constant Italian diving, niggling and generally irritating play had gone just ... More...