Mary Hannigan's Planet Football: If you happen to be ambling through Asia at any point in the near future and you think you've spotted Wayne Rooney flying overhead fear not, you won't have mislaid your marbles.
Air Asia, Manchester United's official low-fare airline (which presumably means they don't use it themselves), has unveiled its Red Devil Airbus which features pictures of Rooney, Alex Ferguson, Rio Ferdinand, Park Ji-Sung and Cristiano Ronaldo. The plane, though, will only be seen in the Far East because Air Asia doesn't, eh, compete in Europe. Insert your own joke here.
Not so bright Sun
The Sun got a right old ear-bashing from Football 365 last week for an unfortunate blunder in its list of all the under-21 players signed by Arsene Wenger for Arsenal. Each player was rated either as a "hit" or "miss", with one of those deemed to have been a flop by the Sun Italian defender Niccolo Galli. As 365 politely pointed out it was a little difficult for Galli to make it at Arsenal, largely because he was killed in a car crash when he was just 17 years old.
Quotes of the week
"We've got to get from them their biggest ambition, their biggest motivation, they've got to want to play for the green shirt and drop until they're dead."
- Bobby Robson, asking quite a lot of his Irish players.
"He's not determined to give in, that's for sure."
- Sky Sports' Chris Kamara tries to describe how intent Graeme Souness is on keeping his Newcastle job, but just ends up confusing us.
"They had a couple of - what's a nice word for lumps? - big players up front. Lumps is too rude."
- Spurs manager Martin Jol on Liverpool's big lads, Peter Crouch and Fernando Morientes.
"With Glazer and the departure of Roy Keane I am worried. I have the feeling that the club could lose its philosophy. That would be a pity now we've entered the age of making players like sheep."
- Eric Cantona, concerned about United's team-full of Dollys.
"At the moment he prefers for us to hit long balls upfield, rather than using guys like me who can play a bit of football."
- Bolton's Khalilou Fadiga on his admiration for Sam Allardyce's up-and-at-'em tactics.
"The matter's over for me. I had a good chat with Sven and what he told me I accept. I've good friends at the FA as well. If I get tickets - and I want to go to the World Cup final - I hope England are one of the teams in it."
- David O'Leary swaps forgiving Sven-Goran Eriksson for a World Cup ticket. Fair deal.
Clemente pulls wrong string
You'll probably have read about the heap of trouble Athletic Bilbao coach Javier Clemente landed himself in for comments he made following his side's game against Barcelona. First he succeeded in offending the entire nation of Brazil with his criticism of Barcelona's Deco ("A player of his class shouldn't pull someone's hair, he ought to be more of a gentleman, but then Brazilians like pulling hair"), then, to top it all, this was his response to Samuel Eto'o spitting at a Bilbao player: "I thought that spitting was something only done by those who have just come down from the trees".
Clemente, predictably enough, didn't understand what all the fuss was about, but at this stage he's well used to offending folk. He didn't quite endear himself to the Euro 96 hosts when he said, before Spain's quarter-final against England, "it will be very difficult for us, we have no support - it will be 2,000 of us against 70,000 drunkards". And of Scotland he once said: "This is an unusual Scotland side because they have good players".
Henry is gone to the dogs
Hearty thanks to Niall for sending us a rather alarming email last week with "Thierry Henry's Career Is Over" in the subject line. A click on the enclosed link took us to the story, which told us that so severe was Thierry's leg break there was even talk of him being "euthanised". Mercifully he was saved, and is now pottering about on his three remaining healthy legs - yep, this Thierry Henry is an Australian greyhound (whose father, incidentally, is fast bowler Brett Lee). Niall noted that Thierry Henry is owned by a Ferguson, to which we could only reply: in Alex's dreams.
More quotes of the week
"Every time I looked down, I saw a mouse. There were loads of them, I've never seen that before."
- Burton Albion defender Ryan Austin after spotting vermin at Old Trafford. Behave.
"Burton just couldn't lose tonight. Except that they did."
- Ian Wright, the BBC's ace pundit.
"I don't want to waste my time any more in the Turkish Championship."
- Nicolas Anelka, speaking a fortnight ago.
"I'm very happy at Fenerbahce and in Turkey and I plan to stay until the end of my contract."
- Nicolas Anelka, speaking a week ago.
"Every defeat hurts. You might think it doesn't, but you ask my family, you ask the dog."
- Middlesbrough manager Steve McClaren on how Rover McClaren understands the pain he's going through.
"Our team has some qualities that money cannot buy, and when people sometimes don't give us credit for our work, it's because they don't understand the world where we are."
- Never mind the world, we don't always understand what planet Jose Mourinho is on.
Sun hit Jackpot with Coleen
You know the way Sky News flashes "BREAKING NEWS" on the screen every so often and you get quite excited because you're half assuming it'll be a gigantic story? And then it turns out to be something as revelationary and surprising as, say, an announcement that London is the capital of England. Still, even Sky was outdone by the Sun last week. On their website, under the banner of "BREAKING NEWS", came an astounding announcement that rocked the world: "Coleen: I hope Brit wins. Wayne Rooney's fiancee hopes Brit will win £85 million Lotto rollover." Eat your hearts out, Woodward and Bernstein.
