Twitter was awash with photos of Jose Mourinho in Chelsea shirt today, after a digital billboard in west London showed the soon-to-be-departed Real Madrid boss in a familiar blue top, along with the hashtag #The2ndComing.
However, fans' excitement at the apparent imminent arrival of the Special One was soon dampened when it was revealed that the advert was nothing more than cheeky little PR stunt by digital media sales folkDaylite LED.
Thank the little baby Jesus! Taiwanese animated news agency NMA have cut through the fug and finally made sense of the whirling cyclone of tabloidhyperbullshit that was kicked up by Wednesday night's Eden Hazard/Swansea ballboy fracas at the Liberty Stadium.
The complete silence after the fan drops the U-Bomb just makes it!
For those unaware, Collymore hit his then-girlfriend Ulrika Jonsson in a Paris bar during the 1998 World Cup, allegedly kicking her in the face when she refused to leave a pub full of Scotland fans having spent the afternoon drinking with Ally McCoist.
Nice touch from Bobby Mancini in this morning's Manchester Evening News, in which the former Man City boss took out a full-page advert in the sport section of the paper to thank the City fans for their three-and-a-smidge years of support...
Apparently, according to Telegraph scribe Henry Winter, many City fans are now contemplating pitching in to take out a similar advert in theGazzetta Dello Sport to reciprocate the love and wish their newly-departed manager all the best in the future.
Chunky journeyman striker and current Sky Sports pundit, Dean Windass, is rather peeved at the fact that Nigel Adkin's job a Southampton has been taken by a foreigner, former Espanyol bossMauricio Pochettino.
In light of the appointment of the Argentinian tactician, ex-Bradford City hitman Windass Tweeted:
One of the criticisms aimed at foreign coaches is that their lack of English can be a big impediment to their job.
This isn't the first time we've featured this video on Pies, but we reckon that it just might be the showreel that landed Michael Owen the gig as lead co-commentator for BT Sports next season?
Watch and listen as Little Micky takes us on a helicopter tour of Dubai, complete with breathtakingly enthralling commentary.
It's official people. Everton have confirmed that David Moyes is to leave the club at the end of the season to take over at Manchester United.
Everton have issued a statement on their official site announcing that Moyes had been an "outstanding manager" who had made a "massive contribution" to the club.
BT Sport are throwing their launch party as we speak and, Christ Almighty, the tidbits being leaked by journos on Twitter vis-a-vis their football coverage is already making it sound like some sort of hellish nightmare. If you had to pick your worst possible panel, you probably couldn't do much worse than BT themselves.
At 74-years-old he's earned the right, but former Manchester United midfielder Paddy Crerand is prone to getting a bit tetchy especially when it comes to people chatting bull-honky about his beloved team.
In need of a go-to guy for a good old-fashioned rant about the rumours that circulated last night vis-a-vis Sir Alex Ferguson's imminent retirement, Irishradio station Newtalk phoned Paddy up at sparrow fart on Wednesday morning to canvass his opinions on the matter.
Last night, a Tweet was sent to Joey Barton (who has just been suspended for two games for calling Thiago Silva a "fat ladyboy") from the official Twitter account of QPR midfielder Stephane Mbia, asking if the two could swap places.
Barton responded, giving it the old "no way, Jose".
The following photo has been circulating over the past few hours, appearing to show Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho and this is the point where you may want to find something leathery to bite down on or ingest some particularly strong anti-depressant medication IN IKEA, POSSIBLY BUYING BOXES, TAPE AND/OR OTHER MISCELLANEOUS PACKING MATERIALS.
Tottenham left-back Benoit Assou-Ekotto is a pretty awesome chap who cares little and always seems to give a good interview, and his recent chat with Guardian journo David Hynter is no exception, in which while sitting in a barber's chair and having his dreads threaded by a man named "Steve the Visionist" Benny admitted that he doesn't really follow football and was surprised to hear that Luis Suarez had bitten someone recently.
You've no doubt already seen the Jose Mourinho quotes floating round this morning in which he openly flirts with the notion of "returning to a club in England where people love him", but ITV almost extracted themselves an exclusive batch of revelations direct from the Special Horse's mouth live on air last night only for a producer to scream down pitchside reporter Gabe Clarke's earhole that they needed to cut to adverts instead.
Having made his decision to retire at the end of the current season, Liverpool stalwart Jamie Carragher has sorted himself out with a nice little earner for life after football landing a job on Sky Sports' punditry panel (alongside Red Nev, no less what could possibly go wrong?
An unfortunate set of initials has seen an IT consultant from India bombarded with Tweets intended for Manchester United striker Robin van Persie, known to his friends as "RVP".
52-year-old Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad signed up for Twitter under the account handle "@rvp" and is now complaining that the case of mistaken identity is becoming a real "nuisance" after hundreds of over-eager United fans Tweeted him to congratulate him on his Premier League title success.
Sepp:Bitch got fraped (or whatever the Twitter equivalent is...twaped?)
Last night a series of Tweets were posted on Sepp Blatter's official account which "announced" that the FIFA president accepted money from the Qatari royal family in return for World Cup hosting privileges.
You couldn't make it up: Infamously 'bitey' boxer Mike Tyson (just ask Evander Holyfield actually he probably won't be able to hear you all that clearly) immediately started following Luis Suarez on Twitter in the aftermath of the Uruguayan's impromptu afternoon snack on Branislav Ivanovic's bicep.
Safe to say that Borussia Dortmund's injury time salvo pleased this particular German commentator, who was reporting the Champions League action for a regional station last night (the fun really begins when Marco Reus' 90th-minute equaliser pings in at the 0:36ish mark).
Congrats are due to the Irish Daily Star, who somehow managed to print this guff about Andy Reid's shocking reaction to Paolo Di Canio's appointment at Sunderland yesterday with a straight face...
Yep. That's it. That's all she/they wrote!
"Irish star Andy Reid has no opinion on the Paolo Di Canio controversy.
As you're probably aware, the big story coming out of Danish football at the moment is that Nicklas Bendtner has been banned from driving for three years, fined€113,000 (£97,000-ish, i.e, slightly more than his boxer shorts cost him last summer)and banned from representing the national team for six months after he was arrested while drink-driving the wrong way up one of Copenhagen's busiest streets in the middle of the night last weekend.
It seems a certain moribund Russian oligarch has well and truly failed to see the (fairly tenuously) funny side of a billboard whacked up outside Stamford Bridge that mocked "Fernando's" recent inability to bother the onion bag.
The offending message reads: "Fernando, we've got an onion bag you can actually find.
In which Top Top Triffic Jnr struggles, quitepredictably to get to grips with Stephane El Shaarawy's name while providing his elite expert punditry on last night's Champions League tie for Sky Sports...
El Jarawee? El Shahawee? El Showaddywaddy? Summink like that innit?
As you're probably aware, Paolo Di Canio resigned as manager of Swindon Town on Monday after a botched buy-out and several unsolicited player sales made his position at the League One table-toppers untenable.
His assistant,Fabrizio Piccareta, took charge for Tuesday night's game against play-off contenders Tranmere and racked up a pretty impressive 3-1 victory then, almost immediately after the game, told Sky Sports News in a live interview that he and his entire technical staff were resigning from their positions too.
In today's 'Just how far can we slide our collective tongues up Lionel Messi's back passage' news, the Barcelona demigod's name has now been included in the Spanish Dictionary, with'inmessionante' (adj.) defined as...
1.)The perfect way to play football, an unlimited ability to self-improve.
For those not au fait with fine dining, haute cuisine and the like, the Michelin Guide is a kind of gastronomic bible for those who are only truly happy when their steak is still twitching, their chips come served with a drizzle of helium-flavoured foam and it's all been ordered from a menu written in a language that requires a codex to decipher.
Norwegian television show Golden Goal the same intrepid chaps who bought us "Bubble Football" and "Electric Shock Football" have been busying themselves once again, asking one of the most hard-hitting questions to dog the mind of the football fan since time immemorial: could a team of 22 amateur footballers beat a team of 11 professionals (from Valerenga no less)?
Here's Manchester United midfielder Shinji Kagawa's new advert for Japanese internet providers SoftBank. We really can't tell you an awful lot more as it hurts to even think about it.
WARNING: Make sure you've got your Japanese TV-strength mind bleach ready.
Michael Laudrup was a little bit tasty in his day, and glimpses of the old silk were definitely visible when he took to the pitch as part of a Swansea City staff XI for the club's annual game against the "This Is South Wales" press selecao during the week.
It's common knowledge that Harry Redknapp is Fleet Street's favourite manager just look at the press-wide clamour to get him the England job for proof what with him always being a phone call away and available 24/7 for a quote here and an opinion there.
Presumably for all his hard work appearing on tap to talk about other club's players on their rolling Deadline Day coverage over the years, Sky Sports journalists presented old 'Arry with a special birthday cake at his weekly presser yesterday afternoon.
Brought to us by the maths websitenumperphile.com, this is a rather interesting look at how the stats geeks at Opta look, in minute detail, at the sport we are all obsessed with.
The video focuses on Andrés Iniesta, he of the ghostly pallor and quick feet, and his match-winning goal for Spain against the Netherlands in the 2010 World Cup final.
Arsenal legend Bobby Pires looked like the older kid hogging the ball in park kickabout as teams made up of the French and German media folk went head to head in midweek in Paris.
Alongside Bobby Pies, the French side also had the great Bixente Lizarazu in their ranks although I'm not sure who was representing the Germans.
Carl Jenkinson really came of age for Arsenal last night. He put in a massive shift on the right flank in place of the injured Bacary Sagna, and pushed Laurent Koscielny hard for the Man of the Match in my opinion. He is a Gooner, and you could see how proud he was of the team at the end of the match, even though the 2-0 win was not quite enough to stay in the Champions League.
Poor old Lukas Podolski didn't have the best of games in the Gunners' 2-0 defeat at the hands of Man City on Sunday, but the loss doesn't seem to have affected the German international too much.
On Monday evening, the day after the defeat, the attacker both updated his Facebook page and Tweeted to his followers that, hey "Shit Happens".
Liverpool's Luis Suarez has been chatting to Fox Sports Argentina about his persecution complex, his ongoing experiments with gravity and the vast media vendetta against him, in which he, among other things, admitted diving against Stoke in an attempt to con a penalty earlier in the season.
When it comes to footballers on Twitter, there's usually not an awful lot to see; the odd resolutely neutral post-match comment, a stray lament about how foggy it is at training, selected bant though, in a break from the norm, Rio Ferdinand used his Twitter account to do a small UK charity the power of good while on a train from Manchester to London on Wednesday.
You no doubt heard that Reginald D Hunter a professional comedian whose last five Edinburgh festival shows have all had the word 'nigger' in the title caused "outrage" at the PFA awards gala on Sunday night when a room full of middle-class white peopleharrumphedin unison when he used the 'N' word in his set a few times.
NBA center Jason Collins came out in this week's issue of Sports Illustrated. People are celebrating him as the first man in a "major sport" to come out as gay. That is true only if we limit our examples to the US.
Justin Fashanu was the first athlete to come out as gay while still playing as a pro.
Football's answer to Socrates (if you don't count Socrates)put on his finest rhinestone duelling chaps, put up his dukes andtook on Didi Hamann in a gentlemanly bout of bareknuckle Twitter-to-Twitter combat last night. It was all rather entertaining, with Didi's knockout blow worth the admission fee alone.
ESPN have moved to issue an official apology (as posted directly in the comments of this Pies' article) after commentator Jon Champion referred to Luis Suarez's hand-assisted winning goal against Mansfield in the FA Cup this weekend as being "the work of a cheat.
