Stowe sent me this "100 Greatest Quotes from The Wire" video on Twitter the other day, and I watched it, and I was like, "Oh my God, The Wire," because I haven't seen it in a few years and this sort of brought it all back. Then, for no obvious reason, this video started tugging at my brain after the Thierry Henry handball rocked the core of everything that had a core to rock yesterday.

I'm working around the clock on something that will change everything, alienate half of you, and blow the minds of the other half, so don't think I'm neglecting this place, even if actual blocks of text with my name attached have been in short supply lately. I'm here behind the scenes, listening to Annette Hanshaw records in a posture of revolutionary toil.

[Visit the post to hear the audio track.]

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Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm off from an anointed Scot;
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The manager elected by the Lord:
For every FA official Griffiths hath urg'd
To impose cruel fines against our parka'd self,
God for His Fergie hath in heavenly pay
A glorious angel: then, if angels fight,
Commissioners must fall, for heaven still guards the right.

Both [Robin van Persie's parents] are artists. José Ras, his mother, is a painter and jewellery designer who also teaches children with special needs. Bob, his father, is a sculptor who specialises in using discarded newspapers and other waste materials to construct football crowd scenes and has just completed a special commission — a giant frieze for his son's new house in Enfield.

His name is David. He always brushes his teeth before he goes anywhere. Yesterday, he didn't have time. He called the radio to share his side of the story.

Via the Guardian:

He explained to the host DJ Spoony: "I was wanting to get to the game and I put it [the toothbrush] in my pocket and forgot to brush my teeth.

Alex Ferguson, like all strong leaders, is 5% a fascist, which means he's 95% not a fascist, don't think I'm criticizing him, 95% is nineteen parts out of twenty and there are plenty of everyday people, history teachers and flight attendants and mechanics and biographers, who are more of a fascist than he is, but there's still that fascist sliver, all strong leaders have it, and it has to be that fascist part of him that wants Jonny Evans around.

Andriy Shevchenko against Inter.

Not to turn this site into a repository of foreign-language goal videos, but sheesh.

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Fabregas.

A new version of Football Manager is released today, which makes this, in my house at least, a time of hushed reflection. The old era is passing away, the new era is rising up before us. Everything we knew and loved is sliding into the sea, while before us, like a mountainous country, is thrust a terrifying and exhilarating possibility.

Say you're on the fence. You're sanding away the rough part of the day in the games store, and you're thinking, "Gosh, I'd really like to buy Football Manager 2010, but I need some additional motivation beyond the fact that it is part of the greatest video game series ever created."

Here. Here is your motivation.

Happy second birthday, Run of Play.

Click to see full-size image

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Click to see full-size image.

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Of course, our biggest mistake was inviting Steven Gerrard.

Click to see full-size image.

Related posts:

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