A quite unbelievable story in today's Lancashire Evening Post concerning Paul Simpson, the current manager of Preston North End. http://www.lep.co.uk/template/viewarticle.aspx?sectionid=75&articleid=3150397

OK this seems like a joke but I've heard the audio and it's true. He wants to ban the club from playing our traditional song "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" because it's too depressing and doesn't motivate the team.

In the ten years or so that we've been singing that song we have won two Championships, appeared in two premiership play off finals and a semi final. Other PNE teams and managers (and fans) have been inspired by the song.

Time for Simpson to change his record and get us out of the six month depression that we're in. When we go 1-0 down to fellow strugglers Sheffield Wednesday in just over two weeks time this tune belted out from the Town End may just prove to be Simpson's Swansong.

My next blog entry may be called 'Simpson Has Left The Building'

Sound drinking advice

Subject: Alcohol V Water

It has been scientifically proven that if we drink 1 litre of water each day, at the end of a year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli (E.Coli) - the bacteria found in faeces.

In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poo.

However, we do not run that risk when drinking wine (or rum, whisky, beer, lager or liquours) because alcohol has to go through a distillation process of boiling, filtering and fermenting.

So, WATER = Poo ALCOHOL = Health

Therefore, it is better to drink wine and talk s**t than to drink water and be full of s**t.

There's no need to thank me for this valuable information - I'm doing it as a public service

(Thank you to Mr Nixon for these words of wisdom)

One David Nugent!

What a night for David Nugent, making his England debut coming on as a substitute with only ten minutes of the match remaining. He then topped all this excitement with a goal. Okay, so it was only a tap in but it counts and he joins the elite club of players who scored whilst making their England debut. I am convinced that if he had joined the game earlier he would have scored more goals, he was a constant threat from the moment he set foot on the playing area and looked more dangerous in those few minutes than Rooney and Johnson had done during the whole game.

He is obviously destined for greater things, if PNE don't make it up and out of the Championship this again this season he will leave and join the Premier League via a transfer, probably to Everton.

Why was he so effective in comparison to the other premiership stars on display? My theory is that the other players in the squad play in the Premiership every week and are not used to facing the quality of opposition that England faced last night. Outside of the premiership there are teams that are low on skill but are dogged in their determination and play in the opposition's faces. Nugent faces these sorts of teams most weeks and can cope with it. He adopts the strategy of running at defenders and making space for himself and unlike Rooney can cope with the rough treament when the going gets tough. His extra yard of pace makes this possible and his undoubted skill on the ball and eye for a goal.

There was another example of this last night, David Healy knocking in two more goals for Northern Ireland against Sweden taking his total to nine so far in the competition. Healy again has not played in the Premiership, after being shown the door by Manchester United he built his reputation in the Championship at Preston North End before trawling the Championship depths with Leeds. Jason Koumas and Gareth Bales, two other Championship stars were also on target for the Welsh last night.

So what is the lesson here for international team managers? A policy for beating lesser European teams could be to field more players from the Championship; players used to a more passionate and dogged style of play and would provide the edge that Messers Rooney, Lampard and co. clearly cannot. Only Stevie Gerard really showed his mettle last night in Barcelona. Perhaps we should save our Premiership stars for the matches when superior skills are required, that seems to be the only way of motivating the prima donnas in the England set up.

Get Over It Arsene!

Last night Arsenal were knocked out of the FA Cup by Blackburn Rovers, a good result for Blackburn and one that livens up the cup by removing one of the 'Big 4'. However the BBC Radio sports bulletins this morning are running with the main story of Arsene's comments regarding Sunday's Carling Cup final defeat to Chelsea.

This is a reflection on the sad state of English football where certain 'personalities' are becoming bigger than the game itself. Well done Rovers (as a PNE fan I find that hard to say but I mean it) you might be ignored by our so called leading sports editors but I salute your acheivement in removing the Show Boys from North Lond(ish) from the best club cup competition in Europe. That was Arsenal's third cup defeat in a week and doesn't it show in the reaction of Arsene?

Perry Groves this morning said that it was unthinkable that Arsenal could be out of all the cup competitions by March, well just live with it, supporters from almost every other club do every year. It's time to enjoy the game as a sport, as entertainment and a life style and not just worry about how many pieces of silverware you can cram in to your already over stuffed cabinet. It's time for you to point your finger at yourself instead of anyone who happens to get in your way.

The main thrust of Mr Wenger's comments was that the linesman had lied at the Carling Cup final. He says "I feel Adebayor didn't punch anybody so when the linesman says he punched somebody, he lies," claimed Wenger. Strong words and a little disturbing coming from a leading figure in World football. What we have go to do here is let the officials run the game and don't keep banging on about it for days afterwards. Would he have made the comments if they had beaten Blackburn last night? I think not. If his comments prove to be false then he should be banned from English football for a long time such is the seriousness of the issue here.

Whilst he thinks that it is OK to rant and make accusations in public what about his responsibility to the game? What about the effect his behaviour has on the game in general, every Sunday, pub and schoolboy league has 'Mini Arsenes' running up and down and on to the pitch confronting the referee and questioning their authority and decision making. And I'm not just having a go at Arsene, Paul Jewell of Wigan made similar comments and has confronted referees publicly about their judgements and performance, notably Phil Dowd. In the climate of falling numbers amongst junior referees this should be of real concern to the authorities. Who wants to officiate at a game where dissent is the norm?

High profile sporting representatives should realise that they have a wider responsibility than simply to their chairman and owners. The sport is in disrepute and it's getting worse. Rugby Union is always held up as a fine example of true sportsmanship but recent events have now dispelled that myth. It is so refreshing when I watch my daughter play in the local ladies netball league. There is foul play and dubious decisions and missed incidents but never any dissent shown. And before you say 'It's only Netball' you must be aware that it is very competitive but most of all it is a sport, played in a sporting atmosphere.

It's time for football to reflect upon it's sporting roots and learn from it's sporting heritage before it goes completely show biz.

Keep Free Bike Parking!

Please follow this link to sign a petition to protest at the proposal to end free motorbike parking

It seems crazy to propose this when we are looking at ways to reduce the amount of cars coming into our town and city centres. And also, what is there to stop our little windscreen stickers being stolen?

I don't offer an alternative here, it's just uneccassry and will result in more cars on our city centre roads. Why not charge pedestrians for using the pavements or better still introduce a coin slot for using pelican crossings?

Can't do any harm to sign up surely, although you may get an e-mail from Tony himself

Road Congestion

There's a petition doing the e-mail rounds relating to a draft proposal to introduce a 'charge per mile' system to encourage drivers to reduce their car usage and therefore reduce congestion. The petition's originator, Peter Roberts said this week on national radio that this system was not necessary as congestion was a 'London' only problem. You must be joking Mr Roberts, it may not be a problem in rural Shropshire where you tootle around but let me assure you it's a countrywide problem. A four mile cross town journey in Bury, Lancashire can take anything up to one hour, we have congestion 7 days a week.

I am against this proposal but will not sign the petition. This petition, and many other petitions, are merely a negative comment on the proposal without adding any positive contribution to the debate. Ask many people if they object to spending more money on ANYTHING and the reply would be 'Yes'. Whether six thousand or six million sign the petition means little, what we need is an alternative proposal and until one is suggested objecting to this proposal is futile. You can sign the petition and bury your head in the sand but the fact of the matter is the SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE ABOUT CONGESTION.

I will add my suggestion. The governement wants people to identify the relationship between car use and cost to the individual so that when they see the cost of the journey they may think twice before taking the car out. However, installing a GPS tracker in each vehicle to calculate this seems a bit over the top, too complicated and smacks of unecessary state control of our daily lives. Journeys already have a cost per mile so why not simply make drivers more aware of the cost of their journey by installing a meter display in the vehicle, rather like the display that you see in a taxi. Many cars are already fitted with computers that can tell you most of this information. This is not to be used to charge the person but rather so that they can see the real cost of the journey mounting up as the engine ticks over. This charge is based upon the fuel used with a 'wear and tear' factor built in. I'm sure that with one of these cheaper devices the amount of car miles will fall and we don't need to worry about 'Big Brother' or a mechanism for collecting the tolls.

What do you think?

Einstein's Birthday

March 14th is Einstein's birthday, he would have been 108 this time around.

Few people remember that the Nobel Prize winner married his cousin, Elsa Lowenthal, after his first marriage dissolved in 1919.

He stated that he was attracted to Elsa because she was well endowed, and postulated that if you are attracted to women with large breasts, the attraction is stronger if there is a DNA Connection.

This came to be known as Einstein's Theory of Relative Titty

(Thank you to Mr Nixon for this information)