Indifference

That poor dog is safe for another few weeks, then.

Roy Keane is back in football at another club with lots of money to waste on crap players until something, somewhere, sticks: Tobias Hysen, Roy O'Donovan, Rade Prica, Michael Chopra (who Keane bought from Cardiff for ten times his previous transfer fee) and God knows how many more that I can't remember. Alex Ferguson might call Rafa Benitez a chequebook manager (I'll come back to the hypocrisy of this statement by King Bluster) but his former captain is the new breed of money and how it talks in football. A pity, then, that all Keane can talk is absolute shit. He bottled it at the first sign of someone (the majority shareholder at S*nderland) questioning his bizarro-zarro transfer policy and the players in the mackem wastelands seem far happier without him, so why, oh why are Ipswich Town fooled by this guy? It'll all end in tears, albeit in the Premier League. Maybe.

So, the great sideshow of who will finish top of the Premier League is (more or less) over and we can talk about who is and isn't a cock-end (more entertaining when Mourinho was kicking about, this). Alex Ferguson wins! His sustained attacks on Rafa Benitez, no matter how easy it is to dislike the spaniard, are tiresome and ill-informed. Ferguson crows on that Liverpool produce no young players. Excuse me if I am smelling the wrong pot of pease pudding for a minute but, well, did Manchester United produce Federico Macheda, Anderson, Nani or Cristiano so bronze I am a statue now Ronaldo? No. One generation of (yes, exceptional, we know) British players doesn't redeem you for the lack of any since. Myopia is a wonderful thing but it is quite alarming how many managers seem to suffer from the condition these days. What would Brian Clough have made of it all?

With the mention of Brian Clough, my copy of The Damned United arrived on monday, so I think I will alternate it with reading Phil Scraton's Hillsborough: The Truth, which I mentioned last week. Yet to finish the first chapter and its already evident (as if people didn't know this already) that the events of April 15 1989 should never have happened; it makes it all the more galling that noone has been made accountable. I hope that anyone who looked at this blog last week took some time to at least peruse some of the stuff I hyperlinked and see what a massive injustice it is (if you didn't know, I know some readers are more than aware). At least a step in the right direction was taken last week. Then again, Jacqui Smith has little or no choice if she wants to stay in the job...

Newcastle United newsflash: Obafemi Martins is not the messiah, he's just very fast and a crap finisher. If Alan Shearer saves the day now, he is a genius. Let's explain, he needs to win the last three home games of the season and even then we might not survive. We've won four home matches out of sixteen this season. Easy, then.

Come back today or tomorrow and I'll look at something a little less asinine than the pricks and pantomime villains that inhabit football: ATP stage times!

The Memory Remains

Twenty years ago today, ninety-six Liverpool fans died at Hillsborough; I was two years old. I have read many articles covering the anniversary and the outpouring of emotions in the media for the last few weeks shows the fury, indignation and bitterness that people feel; it is always simmering. Reading about the event and the aftermath makes me furious and upset. These feelings come around for the majority of football fans at this time every year, but it is just inconcievable to try and imagine the feelings of those who survived the crush and those who saw it at the ground, like Alan Green, or on television, let alone the feelings of the families of the victims. This is with them every day and justice has still not been done for the ninety-six.

Someone must be held to account. Hillsborough was an accident waiting to happen, the South Yorkshire Police covered up their incompetence by altering the witness reports of junior officers and the men in command on the day have been close to exonerated thanks to malicious and unsubstantiated coverage at the time of the incident in addition to the enquiries in 1989 and 1998, which condemned police action but only two officers have been tried and no one has ever apologised. The families need closure and Gordon Brown and Jack Straw have denied it to them not once but twice.

David Conn's piece in this monday's Guardian shows just how much went wrong and how much is still to do.

For more on Hillsborough, Dr Phil Scraton's Hillsborough: The Truth is seen as the definitive account and is available here.

Words alone are not enough but awareness and remembrance will see justice done. Days like today make football itself insignificant, it has changed forever, for good and ill. There's nothing else to say.