The entrepreneurial spirit was alive and well at Football 365's online shop last week - barely had that announcement been made when a brand new shirt to celebrate the occasion appeared on the market (see photograph below).
Stan fights off temptation
David Wardale has been at it again in the Coventry Evening Telegraph. In January he had an "exclusive" interview with Steve Staunton in which "Staunton" claimed it could easily have been him who married Britney Spears in Las Vegas ("I'm taking a 'there but for the grace of God go I' sort of line on the whole affair," he said); now "Staunton" has told Wardale he could easily be him going through David Beckham's current ordeal, if circumstances had been slightly different.
"If I was alone in, say, the capital of Spain and playing for, oh I don't know, Real Madrid, maybe then, yes, I might be tempted to 'play away' if the circumstances were right," said "Staunton". "But I wasn't, I didn't and I wasn't because they weren't so I never did."
"The former Liverpool and Republic of Ireland strawberry blonde has never met Rebecca Loos or cheated on his wife but admitted that he has sent text messages using a mobile phone similar to David Beckham's and would have signed for Real Madrid, if they'd ever asked him," said Wardale.
What is this lad on?
Quotes of the week
"The telephone hasn't stopped ringing all day with reporters looking for my opinion. The only ones who didn't ring were Reuters and that's only because they're busy in Iraq."
- Jason McAteer, after the world and its mother looked for a reaction to you-know-which announcement.
"****ing hell, you're joking!"
- Another, unnamed, Irish player's reaction to . . . you-know-which announcement.
"I believe the team will grow and, at some stage, we will win the Premiership."
- Gerard Houllier, still cracking jokes despite all the pressure. Fair play.
"I will definitely be at Anfield next season . . . I definitely think so."
- Houllier again - is that a "definitely maybe"?
Leeds entitled to hope
After Shamrock Rovers' start to the season Rowan McFeely had been a bit down in the dumps but then, he says, after looking at the English Premiership table on Aertel he realised that some clubs "are in a far worse state than Rovers".
Indeed, as Rowan put it, "the table looks decidedly uncomfortable for Manchester City" - they've won just seven of the 67 games that, according to Aertel, they've played.
Good news, then, for Leeds, who have 33 games in hand on City to make up a two-point deficit - City should still be safe, though.
Paper fans the flames
You couldn't make it up . . . could you? The Daily Record reported last week that "a 92-year-old woman lit a candle to pray for a Blackburn Rovers victory. Result? She burned her house to the ground - and Leeds won 2-1."
As the Record so kindly put it, "this disaster probably wouldn't have happened if she'd only lost as many matches as Graeme Souness has this season".
Gunners take the darts
Blame our pal Brendan for this: "The Winmau Dart Board company, in association with the Arsenal football team, launched a new dartboard at Highbury this morning.
This dartboard, to be known as the "unbeaten in the league'", is special and peculiar to the sports and social club in Highbury - it doesn't have any doubles or trebles on it."
More quotes of the week
"To win or not to win, that is the question, as an Englishman by the name of William Shakespeare once wrote. He even looked like an old manager - sort of - and in a way, he was right."
- Carlos Queiroz - to be or not to be Real Madrid coach next season? Probably not.
"I always say, it's not the loser who goes down it's the one who doesn't get up - and we'll get up immediately and try to work to go back again."
- Portsmouth chairman Milan Mandaric. Help?
"We have behaved like a hungry guy who wants to eat everything - we have tried but some got left on the plate."
- Arsene Wenger, noting that his lads only ate a third of their dinner, leaving the Champions League and FA Cup on the plate.
"For you, whores and money. For us, indignation and repression."
- The banner that greeted Real Madrid players when they turned up for training last week.
Coach and donkeys
We don't mean to kick him when he's down but we have a hunch that manager Steven Bradley might be looking for a new position next season. BBC Online reported the sorry tale of Bradley's Coach and Horses side, who have finished their season bottom of the league, on minus three points, having conceded 113 goals.
You have to wonder if the Tyneside team have been consuming a little too much of their league's sponsor's product - they play in the High Level Brown Ale North East Sunday League.
Dodgy sense of direction
"Our plans for the future do not have Division Three football anywhere near the radar screen," Wycombe Wanderers chairman Ivor Beeks confidently declared when he appointed Tony Adams as manager of the second-division club last November - a sentiment that was famously echoed by Barry Fry, who predicted a bright managerial future for Adams on the grounds that he "was a born winner from a very young age".
A born winner, perhaps, but evidently not a born mathematician. After losing to Tranmere on Easter Monday Adams insisted "it's not mathematically over, so we'll keep going" - except it was over, thanks to a string of head-wrecking equations that made it impossible for Wycombe to survive.
The chairman's radar screen was, then, obviously faulty but, undeterred, Beeks declared: "I don't see it as doom and gloom, it is a new start and I'm excited about the future."
Meanwhile Adams summed up his season so far by saying: "I've loved every minute of it, it's all been fantastic. we're going in the right direction."
Wycombe fans - who've watched their team win just five out of their 30 games under Adams - must be beginning to wonder if they've been watching the same team as their chairman and manager.
