Fergie raps with Diddy You might have read during the week that rap-type popster P Diddy dropped in to Manchester United's hotel in Copenhagen, ahead of their Champions League game, to say hello to Alex Ferguson and the team.
Fergie, Diddy, and his two biggest fans in the United squad, Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand, posed for a very nice photo, which was accompanied by this caption on the Sky Sports' website: Ferguson: "Who was that blinged-up, talentless, big-mouth prat?" Rooney: "Rio Ferdinand, gaffer." Lovely.
Quotes of the week
"Places like this are the soul of English football. The crowd is magnificent, saying '**** off Mourinho', and so on.
- Jose Mourinho, moved by the greeting he received from Sheffield United supporters at Bramall Lane a week ago.
"The worst thing about playing Chelsea is having to listen to the stupidity of Mourinho. He is a little man who has suddenly been created into the owner of the world in his own head. And when you lose against him it is even worse because you have to hear it all over again. He talks absolute b******s. He should shut the **** up."
- Barcelona's Edmilson, sounding like a Sheffield United supporter.
"I think he is 99 per cent correct every time he opens his mouth. I think we both say how we feel. He is almost a Yorkshireman with a Portuguese accent."
- Sheffield United manager Neil Warnock, sounding like a Jose Mourinho supporter.
"We've had quite a number (of incidents) since I've been at the club, people headbutting each other and all sorts. When you're living with someone for 10 months a year, which we do, that kind of thing's going to happen. It's like a marriage."
- Warnock again. That's one rowdy marriage he has.
"The 2,000 away fans will be unhappy, in fact half of them have gone, there's only 500 left."
- Would somebody give Chris Waddle a calculator?
"Beanie has been gelded."
- After just one win in five games Stuart Pearce reveals the fate of Beanie the Horse, the "good luck" mascot given to him by his seven-year-old daughter.
"I was scared to death of him the first time I met him. I still am actually."
- Paul Scholes on his relationship with the gaffer. Still tremblin' after all these years.
Aer Oar-ann
Young Irish midfielder Michael Timlin, who captained the under-21s last season, is probably ruing the moment he agreed to take part in a quiz for the Fulham programme. Worse, the Daily Mirror picked up on the highlight of his efforts and shared it with the world.
Question: "Name something which flies but does not have an engine." Timlin: "A kayak."
Walker wanders
We were gutted to read yesterday that celebrity couple Ian Walker, the former Spurs goalkeeper, and his wife Suzi, upon whom Chardonnay in Footballers' Wives was based, have split, with Ian straying in the direction of "a busty "DD" dancer while on holiday in Las Vegas", according to the Sunday Mirror.
What we always enjoy about these stories though, which, need it be said, we only read for research purposes, is how the wronged partner rarely takes it lying down.
"She's a dog. I can't believe my husband has run off with someone like that," said Suzi, a former Page Three model, adding she had been reliably informed that Ian's new love is the spit of Pete Burns, the former singer and Celebrity Big Brother whose face is still being rebuilt after dodgy plastic surgery. You gotta love it.
More quotes of the week
"When I left Fenerbahce, I would have liked to join a big club. That's not been possible."
- Nicolas Anelka, succeeding in hiding his excitement at being a Bolton Wanderers' player.
"It was a great goal from a great person, not just as a footballer but as a person too . . . he's a great character, a great person and a legend as well. He's got a great strike on him. He's a great player, I just wish he was 10 years younger."
- Robbie Savage pays tribute to his Blackburn team-mate, the, eh, great Tugay.
"Today, if your granny was born in Dundee, you can play for Scotland. You shouldn't have these foreign lads all over the place, ****ing Nigel Squashie and all that lot. Christ, come on!"
- Tommy Docherty? His name's Quashie, Nigel Quashie.
"Some people say Fidel Castro is great, but millions are segregated in Cuba, the world's biggest open prison, where dissidents still vanish. And nobody says a word. Then they break my balls! Come on! Yes, I'm a fascist. So what? I'm not racist."
- Paolo Di Canio. Of course.
"We are in the drying room about an hour before the game - although we arrange it around Harry Redknapp's team talk. It's a squeeze as we are surrounded by tumble dryers."
- Portsmouth chaplain Jonathan Jeffrey explaining why himself Kanu, Lomana LuaLua and Sol Campbell could do with a permanent chapel at Fratton Park.
"You know what the great secret at Barcelona is? In our dressingroom there are no sons-of-bitches."
- Barcelona's Samuel Eto'o on Chelsea. We're beginning to assume talk of him moving to Stamford Bridge at some stage might not be well-founded.
Lineswoman not easily cowed
Since first reading that French lineswoman Corinne Lagrange officiated at the 1995 women's World Cup finals when six months pregnant, with little Matthieu arriving in or around three months later, we always assumed she was a woman not to be messed with.
Paris St Germain's Portuguese striker Pauleta should have known better, then, than to address Lagrange thus in the league game against Rennes: "Cow". A two-match ban for him.
