Summer is over!

That's right people. It's set to be the hottest weekend of the year this weekend but summer is actually over. Why? Because the football season has started and as you probably know football is a winter sport. Last week we saw the beginning of the new season marked with the traditional curtain raiser the Charity Community Shield (when the hell did it become the 'Community Shield'? And what was so charitable about it in the past?) As with all football matches of a certain level these days, it was full of drama, you had a dud super signing scoring for once, a seemingly obligatory, red card and a late goal which spiced things up and produced the usual game of Snach between the goalkeeper and the attackers. Racist John Terry managed to keep his nose clean for the majority of the game and Tearaway Carlos Tevez produced the goods. Football is definitely back!

It was all going off at Villa Park

Before I start on the new season I feel I should mention  this summer's footballing events. We had a great tournament in the form of Euro 2012, where we discovered, Spain are as annoyingly good as they were 2/4 years ago, Germany still aren't quite ready, Roy Keane is very close to killing someone, England and Ireland are useless despite what FIFA or the tabloids over here think and I have no ability when it comes to predicting football results (as if France were ever going to win it). Or do I? See on top of Euro 2012 we had an Olympic football tournament that, for once, contained the home nations; and as a result got far more coverage over here than recent tournaments. I correctly (that's right, CORRECTLY) predicted in April, with some outside assistance, that Mexico were going to win the tournament but as with all of the few wagers that I make that come true, I lost my nerve when it came to placing my bet and only placed £1. That's right! One measly English (or British) Pound, at 10-1. For anyone who doesn't understand gambling, that means I won ten times my original stake (£10), plus my stake back (£1). For all of about 5 minutes, before I'd  checked my Bet365 account, I managed to convince myself that back in April I'd grown some gambling testicles and places a £10 bet, but no! I saved that for my Nostradamus like Euro 2012 soothsayings. Yes that's right, I'll have £10 on France, a team that until this year hadn't won a game at a major tournament without Michel Platini or Zinedine Zidane playing, since the 1958 World Cup (geek) but I'll only put a £1 on the team that came 3rd in the last Under 20 World Cup and won the last Under 17 version, IN AN UNDERAGE TOURNAMENT! You can probably sense, at present I'm As sick as a Parrot (do Parrots tend to suffer from sickness more than other animals/birds? Maybe they're just hypochondriacs...? I spelt that right the first time! Booooom!). Finally I must mention, England are up to 3rd in the FIFA world rankings, what the...? If anything I'd say we've got weaker since the World Cup what with the likes of Lampard and Gerrard staring to age. And we've hardly had better results in tournaments. Now I've not looked at who are above us in the rankings but I'm assuming that Spain are (obviously, everybody's still bumming them), then you have a host of teams that could rightly stake a claim to being above us. There's Uruguay, current Copa America champions and 3rd place finishers at the last World Cup. Unfortunately it doesn't matter how much everyone hates Luis Suarez the stats put them above us. Holland, who may have had a distasterous European World Cup (still saying it) but finished 2nd in the last World Cup. Germany, who have pretty much been awesome for the last four years (to be fair they're always awesome, it's just that now everyone likes them). They were 4th in the last World Cup (and knocked us out along the way), and got to the Semis of the European World Cup (AND were runners up in 2008). And Italy, who were runners up in the most recent European World Cup and dumped us out (while thoroughly outclassing us for 120 minutes). In my mind, either Trevor Brooking has got some serious dirt on Sepp Blatter, who I discovered this week has a Twitter account? Who wants to follow him "Just picked up some money from an Arabic friend... #Qatar2022 #BackTheBid". I'm sure it's better than that I'm just not following him; or Blatter feels so bad about awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar (the games better be on a decent times in the day) that he feels the need to compensate unlucky bidders like England.

I knew they'd do it!

Back to the new season, West Ham kick off with a home game against Aston Villa tomorrow, the battle of claret and blue. I always resent the fact that people who don't follow football much mistake West Ham for Villa. They don't have white socks! What kind of crazy man would design and claret and blue kit with claret or blue socks?!? It's madness I tell ya! As with our next two fixtures and going back to a post I did a few weeks ago, tomorrow's game is massively impinging on a social event that I need to attend tomorrow. I'll be missing our home clashes next  month with Sunderland and Fulham due to social events. Can people please start checking the football league calendar!!

There's no escaping him!

With a new season come things like fantasy football leagues too. Now I enjoy a good fantasy football league but a couple of things annoy me. The first is that you never get enough money, I'm always left scouring all the Wigan defenders or midfielders for a player that will get enough games to get points but not too many games, cos you know those Wigan players will end up with a negative score. Is Alcaraz any good this year? Who the hell is Alcaraz anyway? Isn't that an old prison in America? The second thing that grinds my gears is that they take so much maintenance. Why do I have to name a captain? And a reserve goalkeeper? Just let me choose 11 players and give me the option to change say three of them in January. This isn't actually the Premier League! Next they'll be asking us to hold virtual training sessions during the week...

The last thing I wanted to say with regards to the new season is, what the hell is the Capital Once Cup?!? And why did it start last Saturday? The League Cup is for weekday evenings only (except the final and maybe one of the semis). And Capital One?!? I was just getting used to Carling and quite frankly would rather we called it the Littlewoods or Rumbleows Cup, those were the days. When Forest were the only team that ever won it! Now Liverpool are the new Forest!

Ok so everybody enjoy the new season, can we please stop talking about Van Persie going to Manchester United, it's done now. The way some Arsenal fans have been carrying on, you think he killed a member of their family. And the way some Sp*rs fans have been carrying on... well they're acting the same way they always do, first to goad and setting themselves up for egg on their faces. And finally yes the Premiership is back but it IS NOT better than the World Cup or European World Cup! Fact!

See you later...