You’ve probably noticed that the frequency of updates here has dropped off significantly in recent weeks. This, I feel I must explain.

The majority of the piffle was unsubbed versions of columns published by The New Paper in Singapore. In the early days, this was perfectly acceptable as the articles only ever attracted a handful of readers. In January however, a few of them proved so popular that they popped up on news aggregators, denying TNP’s own website traffic and raising the issue of an impact on paper sales. As TNP are my first responsiblity, I must reluctantly pull the plug. The content, after all, belongs to them.

Without a regular stream of content, there’s little point in keeping the blog open, attracting readers with the occasional feature and then losing them with weeks of silence. I’d much rather direct people towards some of the internet’s best football blogs where passionate, intelligent and wonderful people are creating communities for up-and-coming or occasional writers around the world. Therefore, when I write free blogs in the future, I’ll be writing them for people like In Bed With Maradona, The 72 Football and anyone else whose gib I like the cut of.

I want to thank everyone who ever sent a link to this website on to a friend, or left it on a messageboard or tweeted it to their followers. Because of your support, I’ve had the opportunity to write for The Blizzard, Official Playstation Magazine and Sports Illustrated. And that makes me feel all warm and glowy inside.

I’ll still be on Twitter (@iainmacintosh) and I’ll leave everything that’s here already up online until told otherwise.

Regards

Iain

“Two hours!” he roared. “That’s all it took for some fucker to start impersonating me! He’ll get what’s coming to him. He’ll be sat at his desk one day – stroking his lank hair with his bony, lying fingers – and Big Sam will swoop upon him like a magnificent maelstrom of anger and cunning. He’s a disgrace. He’s playing with a Tiger and he’s armed with a plasticine gun. He shall be vanquished.”

Choking back tears of rage, @thebig_sam recounted the moment he discovered that Twitter had frozen him out.

“I’d just returned from wine-tasting. Well, I say ‘wine-tasting.’ It’s basically a big shed where myself and a few friends meet up of an evening to taste wine and watch chickens fight to the death. Anyway, I came home and I knew something was wrong. The missus was crying, the answer-machine was blinking like Harry Redknapp and my dog Fergie had defecated everywhere. I logged on to my internet computer and my world came crashing down. It soon became eye-gougingly clear what had happened – they’d done a Mandela on me. I’d been dethroned and send packing to a virtual Robben Island. A travesty.”

A friend of @thebig_sam, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Twitter had moved to suspend the account three days ago, but revealed that no official reason had been given for the ban.

“Forms have been filled out and we’ve requested a review, but we’ve had no response at all. We sent another email earlier today, but still nothing. What really grates is that there are so many spoof accounts still out there. Some are even on book deals.”

“There are plans in motion for a comeback, but there are obvious concerns about dumping an account with nearly 40,000 followers. The worry about starting a new one is that people might worry it’s just another chancer stealing the idea . Hopefully, they’ll be familiar enough with the style to know that it’s the real thing.”

Invigorated by the support his followers have shown him over the past three days, @thebig_sam is insistent that, unlike his tenure at Blackburn Rovers, his Twitter career isn’t over yet.

“I’m weighing up my options,” he said thoughtfully. “But I can tell you this. I’ll be back. With a bang. Like – BOOM! The resurrection will soon be upon us.”

Supplier of Piffle attempted to contact Twitter for comment repeatedly over the weekend, but by the time we pressed ‘Publish’, they still hadn’t got back to us.

We turn our faces to heaven, but our brightest star no longer twinkles.

Your decision to shut the Twitter account of @thebig_sam has caused great upset in the Twittosphere and I write to you today, on behalf of many, to demand an explanation.

@thebig_sam was a creeping finger of sunlight, rising up through all of our timelines, illuminating and warming everything he touched. Without him, Twitter is a cold, cold place. Why did you end his existence?

I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to tell me that he contravened your parody policy. But he didn’t. And here’s why.

Username – The username should not be the exact name of the subject of the parody.

@thebig_sam is very different from Sam Allardyce. There aren’t as many letters, for starters.

Bio – The bio should include a statement to distinguish it from the real identity

“Breathing Northern fire over the wheatfields of the beautiful game.”

Football manager Sam Allardyce has many skills, but he is not a dragon. He cannot combust his own breath. Therefore, the implication that @thebig_sam can snort clouds of flame at will is a clear statement to distinguish it from the real identity. I will, of course, concede this point if the real Sam Allardyce sneezes and accidentally burns a small village to the ground.

Communication with other users – The account should not, through private or public communication with other users, try to deceive or mislead others about your identity

@thebig_sam didn’t follow or direct message anybody. His public communications were limited to small scale spats or well-executed wooing manoeuvres, the likes of which you and I could only dream of being able to demonstrate.

Twitter Overlords, only a certified moron could ever confuse @thebig_sam with Sam Allardyce. The real Sam Allardyce watches and comments upon Premier League football. @thebig_sam watches and comments upon the classic 80s movie ’Labyrinth.’

The real Sam Allardyce has never yet professed an interest in contemporary music. @thebig_sam regularly tweeted the lyrics of such diverse acts as Another Level and Kenny Loggins.

The real Sam Allardyce wears a suit to work and has never been caught in a compromising position. @thebig_sam was recently caught masturbating while dressed as a Care Bear. Clearly, they are not the same person.

Please, if you can’t restore @thebig_sam in his original form, at least give him the chance to amend his details accordingly. Nearly 40,000 of us woke up on Saturday morning to discover something horrible. We hadn’t lost a follower. We’d lost a friend.

Yours, in hope

Iain Macintosh

In the wake of Andy Gray’s demise, is it time to redefine the concept of the pundit? Mike Summerbee certainly seems to think so. From a Sky sofa at Old Trafford, the former Manchester City man blazed a glorious trail for all the infuriated, myopic ranters out there who thought their time had gone.

Fed up with the increasingly lurid eulogies of Wayne Rooney’s goal, Rooney’s performance and Rooney’s impact on humanity’s perpetual pursuit of spiritual transcendence, Summerbee flipped out.

“I’m just wondering, there were two teams out there, weren’t there?” he growled. “We dominated this game, we dominated possession, we had 60% of the game.”

There was laughter, but it was scared laughter. It was the laughter you hear when live TV gets so ‘live’ that everyone’s bottoms shuffle forward to the edge of the seat. You didn’t get that with Andy Gray towards the end. Most people’s bottoms were with the rest of their body, in the kitchen making a cup of tea.

“I tell you something now,” Summerbee continued, “they’ll be looking over their shoulders now, because Manchester City are there. They’re a force. And I would love it, love it if we beat them.”

Alright, he didn’t say the last bit, but who would have minded if he had? It was entertaining. It was considerably more entertaining than watching a cross swung into the box and hearing an awkward ex-player with an enormous knot in his tie say, “Look at the way he swings that cross in. First class.”

Andy Gray was wonderful in the early years of Sky. He explained formations and movement. He brought tactics into the living room. But then he seemed to stop trying. The game changed around him and he didn’t keep up. He refused to believe that there might be something in zonal marking, that 4-5-1 didn’t necessarily mean a more defensive formation than 4-4-2. His nadir came just before the end, when he cast doubt on Lionel Messi’s abilities to perform at Stoke on a wet Wednesday night. As if The Britannia Stadium is the universal testing ground for global genius.

In the absence of a replacement Gray V2.0, a knowledgeable, learned and forward-thinking pundit, why not let Summerbee and others like him come on and rant? Because if we’re going to let ourselves go stagnant, we may as well do it with a smile on our face.

We didn’t hear the roar of the crowd at first, we felt it. It was a heavy vibration on the ribcage, the shockwave of a distant explosion. We saw Cheick Tiote’s boot flash, like the muzzle of a rifle. We saw the ball whipping through the air, always curling away from poor Wojciech Szczesny, divine retribution for having a name that no-one can spell. Then nothing. An eternity of silence, the contradiction of what our eyes were reporting and what our brains were insisting couldn’t have happened. It was Schrodinger’s Goal. It existed and yet it didn’t exist. It couldn’t. And then the roof of St James Park exploded into the sky like the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’

In the press box, chins fell to the floor. A few souls, more professional than I could ever hope to be, diligently continued to type as the celebrations erupted around them. Newcastle’s head of PR sat agape, hands pressed to the side of her face, wondering what on earth this week could throw at her next. In the rafters, the Arsenal fans were like a Lowry, distant stick figures frozen in time. In front of us, Joey Barton charged at coach John Carver and leapt into his arms, the pair of them tumbling to the floor at the feet of a distinctly unamused Arsene Wenger.

It should have ruined my day. For a journalist, 4-0 leads are, to all intents and purposes, an afternoon off. I’d finished my match report after 49 minutes. Thanks to Abou Diaby, lines like, “Andy Carroll has left town. And hope has left with him,” will never see the light of day. Hope, of course, hadn’t left at all. She’d just nipped out to the shops. I didn’t get any lines like that in the new version, frantically slapped out in the space of two minutes and filed on the full time whistle. In fact, thinking back, I’m fairly sure that some of the words I used weren’t even real. And yet I’m still not annoyed.

Because for all the greed, treachery and corruption, for all the nastiness of the modern game, it’s clear that something of football’s soul remains intact. It still has the power to incapacitate us with shock. It may take a little recovery time, but even Arsenal fans will have to acknowledge that something special happened at St James Park this weekend.

QUOTE – “We went out there and played like lions.” Alan Pardew on the definitive game of two halves.

There’s a passage in Lee Sharpe’s unintentionally hilarious autobiography that encapsulates Gary Neville. Sharpe, a regular in the Manchester United first team, is relaxing in the canteen after training when he hears a repetitive thumping against the wall outside. Intrigued, he and his team-mates go to investigate. To their amusement, they discover that source of the noise is Neville practising throw-ins on his own. Sharpe thinks this is hilarious, but then Sharpe’s career at Old Trafford ended in 1996, took in Bradford in 1999, Exeter in 2002 and Garforth Town in 2004. Neville stayed for almost two decades and he wasn’t born with half the talent that Sharpe squandered.

It’s easy to poke fun at the patchy moustache and the air of officious middle-management that Neville carried throughout his career, but if you have ever moaned about footballers wasting their time or their ability, then you have to love Gary Neville. Rarely has a footballer so emphatically fulfilled every last drop of his potential. It’s not that he was a bad player. Far from it. In the late 1990s, there were few more efficient, reliable fullbacks in Europe. It’s that he remained as driven and determined in his 30s as he was in his teens. He kept working and kept learning and, as a result, he kept playing. There will be few United players who will ever overtake his total of 602 senior appearances.

Footballers are routinely accused of caring more about themselves than they do their own club, but you could never say that about Neville. He was as passionate, as myopic and as ill-mannered as any supporter in the stands. His ridiculous groin-thrusting celebration at the Liverpool fans in 2006 was unbecoming of a senior player, but is there a United fan reading this now who wouldn’t have done the same? Is there a Liverpool fan out there who wouldn’t take the opportunity to get one over the United supporters? He was doing what any one of us would do. Neville cared.

His finest hour came in the build-up to the 2006 World Cup. Team-mate Rio Ferdinand, working on a hidden camera TV show, arranged for a fake policeman, from Liverpool naturally, to stop Neville and book him for a speeding offence he hadn’t committed. After a lengthy lecture, the policeman offers up a deal. Neville can go down to the station and have six points put on his licence, or can he pose for a picture with the Liverpool-supporting copper. “I’ll take the points,” says Neville immediately. “I ain’t being blackmailed by anybody.”

That was Neville. Uncompromising and resolute. Rival fans might love to hate him, but there’s no doubt that we’d all love our own, homegrown version. In an era of molly-coddled, overpaid and overhyped superstars, he is one of the last of the old school. What he’ll do now is anybody’s guess. The timing of the decision suggests that he has something lined up somewhere. It could be that he’ll replace Andy Gray as a pundit on the Premier League. It could be that, as he has all of his coaching badges, he’ll move directly into management. Wherever it will be, you can guarantee that he’ll remain as hated and despised by opposing fans as he always was. You can guarantee too that the abuse won’t bother him in the slightest. And, while you can’t guarantee success in whatever industry he chooses, you can be certain that he’ll give it everything he has.

The timing was immaculate. Just as people were beginning to feel sorry for him and his partner in slime, Andy Gray, just at the tipping point between the righteous indignation of the British people and their natural inclination to back the underdog, Keys stepped in to send the scales crashing to the floor. If only he’d turned up, sat down, said sorry and then stopped talking, he might have gotten away with it. Gargh! If it hadn’t been for that meddling ego!

Everything was someone else’s fault. The fault of the press. The fault of ‘dark forces,’ the fault of those who knew that ‘success breeds envy.’ He lashed at out Rio Ferdinand, claiming that his sources had told him of far worse comments in the Manchester United dressing room. He poured scorn on the idea that he genuinely believed women had no place in football, putting his comments down to that awful word, ‘banter.’ He compared the leaked tapes to phone-tapping, he reminded us of the many women whose careers he had aided. He said that he was worried about Sian Massey and that’s why he praised her so much at half-time. He repeatedly apologised and repeatedly followed it up with more desperate self-justification.

This wasn’t ‘I’m sorry,‘ this was, ‘I’m sorry, but…’ It was frustrating to listen to. And yet we agreed on one thing.

When I saw a determined-looking Massey striding out of the tunnel at Molineux, I was worried as well. Don’t get me wrong. I read The Guardian, I’m partial to a good bowl of muesli, but I’m not so politically correct that the sight of a woman in a Premier League game doesn’t still catch my eye. Unless, of course, it’s Nani. I’m used to her now.

I wasn’t worried because I had pig-headedly assumed she’d just turned up from John Lewis, dropped her shopping bags and picked up the prettiest flag. She’s a qualified official, for Christ’s sake, she knows more about the offside rule than you and I combined. No, I was worried because I feared that any mistake she might make, and all referee’s assistants make at least one mistake a game, would be seized upon by the fans, the viewers and the media. I was worried because the bit of me that still opens doors for ladies and would never dream of saying Jeremy’s new surname in their company, feared for the way she‘d be treated. This, in itself, is probably sexist, but that‘s let’s not go down that road today. Anyway, I scribbled her name down (because I was writing a feature on the game for my employers, not because I’m creepy) and hoped that by the end of the match I’d be one of the few who could remember it. Didn’t quite work out like that, did it?

So let‘s get this out of the way. The comments about Massey were indefensible. If you’re the face of football and you’re caught expressing your belief that no woman can understand the offside law, you deserve to take a pasting. It wasn’t banter, it wasn’t ironic and I fail to see how, as Richard Keys so memorably claimed, that it was designed to calm debutant pundit Matt Murray. If vicious sexism is a sedative, what about any other kind of prejudice? How about nailing the gypsies next week? Will that slow the heart-rate?

The comments were dark, they were mean and they were desperately wide of the mark. What was even more shocking was that two men so influential in their industry could genuinely hold the view that women don’t understand it. There are more than enough first class female journalists and broadcasters out there to disprove that theory and, though the sight of a female official here is still rare, surely they know that it is commonplace elsewhere.

Andy Gray and Richard Keys should have been hauled over the coals, given a public bollocking, been forced to make a full and contrite apology and then been allowed to salvage what remained of their reputation. As Gareth Southgate said this week, the incident will actually boost the standing of women in football, so why not have them there as long-standing reminders that the game must be inclusive?

But Gray was taken down by other tapes, the release of which looks like an obvious hatchet job. Some of them weren’t even controversial. If it’s a sackable offence to stand with your mates and weigh up whether someone is sexually attractive or not then I’m first against the wall, I’m afraid. SmashGate, the brief, but impressively toe-curling footage of Keys discussing Jamie Redknapp’s ex-girlfriend, was nothing. If you leave four men in a room for long enough, they’ll say a lot worse than this. God knows I have.

The other tape, the Charlotte Jackson incident, was harder to judge. It could have been good-natured banter within the boundaries of a friendship. It could also have been sexual harassment. Before the TalkSport interview, there was no way to know. I was even beginning to feel sorry for Keys and Gray. Who was trying to destroy them? What did any of this have to do with their ability to do their job?

Keys’ simple comment, ’Charlotte can take care of herself,’ ended the argument at a stroke. That doesn’t sound like a friendship to me. That doesn’t sound like messing around with your mate at work. If someone alleges sexual harassment or bullying, you don’t pass it off by saying that they can handle it. With that one glib comment, it was all over. It has been reported that Keys and Gray are arrogant. After this, it was hard to argue.

Keys will lose his job. That much is inevitable now. He won’t lose it because he said mean things about Massey. He’ll lose it because he still doesn’t understand why what he did was wrong. He apologised for everything, even the things he didn’t need to apologise for, thereby cheapening the original sentiment. He tried to fight allegations of arrogance by being more arrogant. In attempting to destroy the story, he has succeeded only in making a much bigger story. Why did Sky let him do it? Perhaps, as journalist Dan Brennan suggested, they knew precisely how badly he’d screw it up. Perhaps they just wanted him to finish himself off.

There will be much celebration in the offices of TalkSport this evening. This was their finest hour and you’ll be able to hear corks popping from a ten mile radius. It won’t be the same at the Keys residence. The only thing that anyone should hear from there is the scratching of a pen on a letter of resignation.

Big money transfers can be a source of great anxiety for football fans, but Manchester City supporters can rest easy. Edin Dzeko will be a fine addition to Roberto Mancini‘s team. The towering Bosnian striker has everything it takes to be a huge success in English football.

A prodigious goalscorer in the Bundesliga with Wolfsburg, Dzeko has the height to be a threat at set-pieces, the close control to find space even in the packed defences of the Premier League and, most importantly, the ruthless streak to rattle in goal after goal. At €32m, he could hardly be described as a bargain, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t prove to be value for money.

And yet Dzeko was never expected to be a success. A teenage midfielder with tiny FK Zeljeznicar, he was deemed too erratic and unrefined to go far in the game. Jiri Plisek, his Czech coach for a short period in 2004, saw a glimmer of potential in him and recommended him to FC Teplice. When they paid €25,000 for him in 2005, a Zeljeznicar director was moved to remark that it felt like a lottery win. How must he feel now?

After an impressive loan spell with Usti nad Labem, Dzeko returned to Teplice and finally clicked into gear. 13 goals in 30 games won him the top goalscorer award and attracted the attention of Wolfsburg who signed him in 2007 for €4m. He started slowly in Germany, with a modest 8 goals in his first season, but caught light in his second campaign, hitting 26 as Wolfsburg made a late charge for the Bundesliga title. Having shed the awkwardness of his teenage years and adjusted to his enormous frame, Dzeko became an almost unstoppable goal machine. He will do the same in England.

Whether or not he can strike up a partnership with Carlos Tevez is a different question entirely. The rumour mill at the Eastlands suggests that the Argentine talisman is still intent on leaving in the summer. Nevertheless, Dzeko is more than capable of leading the line on his own. With his height and strength, he can be the focal point of City’s strategy, holding up the ball to bring team-mates like David Silva and Adam Johnson into the game. He’s an obvious target for set-pieces, a more determined workhorse than Emmanuel Adebayor and a grounded individual, noted in his home country for his generosity and loyalty to old friends.

City have been accused of having a scattergun approach to transfer policy, but this is a signing that will worry that entire continent. A player like Dzeko has the potential to define a team in the way that Thierry Henry came to define Arsenal. If he settles into Manchester, and his excellent command of the English language suggests that he will, City have a real chance to push on and dominate what appears to be a weakened top flight.

German defenders have long become accustomed to the ominous gloom of Dzeko’s shadow drifting into their airspace. He rises above them like a gunship over a hilltop. For every other club‘s sake, you hope that their English counterparts have been watching. Tall, powerful, skilful and merciless, Dzeko is their worst nightmare. On Saturday, Wolves were lucky to face him as he found his feet, but he won’t take long to settle. Be afraid. Be very afraid. 　

David Gold, David Sullivan and Karren Brady have been tactless, classless and heartless in their treatment of Avram Grant. They have undermined and betrayed their manager, leaking snippets of information to the press, forcing the former Portsmouth boss into the indignity of appearing at Upton Park on Saturday having essentially already been sacked. And yet I still don’t feel sorry for him. And neither should you. Grant knows better than anyone that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

The funereal Israeli has long been the Kate Adie of English football. When he rides into town, the locals flee. For death rides with him. Grant is a bad football manager, but he’s an even worse Director of Football. The traditional role of the DoF, on the continent at least, is to oversee long-term policy. Grant does that for a few weeks and then somehow ends up with the manager’s job. A genuine silent assassin, you can be sure that neither Jose Mourinho or Paul Hart will feel sorry for him this morning.

His continued survival in the industry has long been a mystery. Grant had a decent career in Israeli football but, after a brief spell of not taking Harry Redknapp’s job at Portsmouth, it was a personal friendship with Roman Abramovich that brought him to Chelsea. Unqualified and unready, there has never been a greater disparity between the statistics and the reality. On paper, Grant was a penalty kick away from winning the Champions League. On the pitch, it was inertia in action, Mourinho’s team gliding home in spite of their new manager. Grant’s panic at White Hart Lane, when a 3-1 lead became a 4-4 draw, told the real story. An FA Cup run flattered him at Portsmouth, earning him the West Ham gig despite the fact that his win percentage was less than Hart’s

Now, having been finally found out at Upton Park, he will leave with three and a half years of his contract paid off. Oh, for a job where a failure to meet basic performance expectations would result in a seven figure pay-off. Yes, the West Ham hierarchy have acted appallingly in dragging this out, but don’t be fooled into feeling sorry for Grant. He has been as ruthless as the rest of them and I assure you, he’ll be absolutely fine.

Alex Chamberlain. Remember the name. The assembly line at Southampton has given the Premier League players like Gareth Bale, Theo Walcott, Leon Best and Kenwyne Jones and its latest product is pinging the radar of some of England’s biggest clubs, with reports suggesting that Liverpool are preparing a big money bid. Chamberlain opened the scoring in a 6-0 rout of Oldham on Tuesday night, further impressing the visiting scouts. With less than three weeks before the transfer window shuts, you can expect someone to take a gamble on the 17 year old winger before long.

Manchester United’s assistant manager Mike Phelan was there to assess the Saints in advance of their FA Cup clash but you can bet that he’ll be telling Sir Alex Ferguson all about this young man. Scouts from Arsenal was also in attendance, but the favourites to secure his signature are the Merseysiders, who were represented by Director of Football Damien Comolli.

Reports suggest that Fenway Group are planning to make a statement of intent with a £10m bid for the youngster. It’s an enormous fee for a player who has made just 14 professional starts, but it’s a measure of just how highly he is rated. Lightning fast and capable of playing on the wing or behind the striker, he’s seen as an important part of Liverpool’s future. Southampton fans are in no doubt of the young Chamberlain’s talents. Some rate him higher than Walcott at the same age, others believe that he has the potential to go further than Bale. They are all agreed on one point. He will not be playing for Southampton for very much longer.

Chamberlain certainly has the genes for success. His father, Mark, was a star of the English game in the 1980s, shining on Stoke City’s wing and making over 500 appearances throughout his career. He even attracted the attention of Bobby Robson as England licked their wounds after the 1982 World Cup, winning 8 caps for his country. His uncle, the unfortunately named Neville Chamberlain, played for Port Vale.

Chamberlain could have been forgiven for actually worrying about his future earlier this season. It was former manager Alan Pardew who gave him his first professional deal, but just 10 days after putting pen to paper, Pardew was sacked. Fortunately, new boss Nigel Adkins saw his potential immediately and Chamberlain continued to represent the first team. With rave reports from the coaching staff ringing in his ears, the youngster began to attract the attention of visiting scouts.

Of course, potential is nothing without hard work, composure and professionalism. If Liverpool are to spend £10m on a 17 year old, it will still represent an enormous gamble. The success of Bale and Walcott will encourage Fenway to loosen the purse strings, but nothing in football is guaranteed. The only person who can make Chamberlain a success at the highest level is Chamberlain himself. He has, by all accounts, the potential. But does he have the drive? Liverpool fans, starved of glory in recent years, will be praying that the answer is yes.