The events of Saturday evening in the Midlands offered a salutary reminder that while football hooligans may have been tamed, they have not completely gone away. But let’s not get things out of perspective; the worst of the dark age is just a nasty memory …
Are woodentops in charge at Selhurst? Among insane decisions in football, away from Luis Suarez’s insistence on fighting tooth and jaw for what Uruguayan officials assure us as are just South America’s ‘different’ cultural traditions, the forced exit of Tony Pulis from Crystal Palace must rank high. To adapt a witty thought in today’s Guardian, ‘mutual consent’ was possibly a typo for ‘mutual contempt’ between Pulis and co-chairman Steve Parish. So Palace start the season without one of the few men in football who could have dragged them out of the mire last season. And all after our own Sixer heaped praise on him ….
Pity Wendy Taylor. When she left a perfectly good job and, I’m sure, decent colleagues at Newcastle airport to become head of communications for Newcastle United, she had high hopes of putting her public relations skill to effective use.
“I am looking forward to working closely with all areas of the media; developing and strengthening our relationships off the pitch,” was how she put it. Noble aims.