McCarthy's men abroad

Do you often look at Dutch football websites and wonder what they're talking about because your Dutch isn't as fluent as it should…

Do you often look at Dutch football websites and wonder what they're talking about because your Dutch isn't as fluent as it should be? Us too. On Saturday, for example, one headline screamed "David Connolly vanaf maandag terug in de Kuip!". The exclamation mark led us to believe the news we were reading (but couldn't understand) was startling.

So, we emailed an Excelsior fan, like you do, to ask him to translate the above for us. We can't repeat most of what he said because it was mainly rude about Feyenoord. The story? Feyenoord have decided to recall Connolly from his 18-month loan spell at their feeder club Excelsior where he is their leading scorer. Why? Well, officially it's because they want to give him a second chance at Feyenoord - but, according to our friend, it's because they want to sabotage Excelsior's promotion hopes and this proves what he always suspected: Feyenoord are the sons of the devil.

In short, then, it might be very good news for Connolly. Might. No doubting Keith O'Halloran's fine weekend after the Cherry Orchard old boy scored twice for Swindon in the FA Cup on Saturday. True, the opposition came in the non-league form of Gateshead, but, judging by the quality of the goals on Match of the Day, Fabien Barthez might have had difficulty keeping them out. Long distance exocet missiles, the pair of them.