If this clicks, Tom’s getting fired.

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This week Tom’s all FA Cup focused. He gives us his best fooball tips for the weekend:

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“Hey, hey, cheer up John. Missing a penalty doesn’t make you a bad person, mate. Now if you were, let’s say, to sleep with a good friend’s girlfriend, get her pregnant and pay for an abortion, that’d make you a bad person, but you wouldn’t do that of course. Ho, ho…the very thought.”
 
“Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!”
 
John Terry’s world – just like his left leg in the 2008 Champions League Final – is collapsing. And, like that night in Moscow, only people at Chelsea and maybe David Beckham will support him.
 
As most sit on their moral butter box Blogs and cry foul, it seems you can tackle the England captain after all. Good news for Roy Keane and the rest of us. People who believe in the myth of monogamy have been waving their arms and stamping their feet at John Terry’s “transgressions”. They’re right to, if they abide by those ideals, but if Bradley can forgive Max and Stacey in EastEnders, perhaps this will blow over eventually. For England’s World Cup hopes, it will have to.
 
Everyone has a right to lambaste Terry for his indefensible actions and being a sly, arrogant plonker who tried to conceal his deeds with his wealth in a court of law, but is he any less an England captain than he was last Monday? The Chelsea leopard still has the same spots he had before. He admitted to affairs prior to this most recent problem and Capello knew he was no saint when he reappointed him as their leader on the field. Heck, national treasure and the only man to lead England to World Cup glory Bobby Moore lacked moral fibre. He liked his booze and, according to his wife Tina, had a wandering eye which he acted upon at least once. What’s different and wrong with Terry now?
 
He’s slept with a team-mate’s, and worse still, a good friend’s ex missus. He’s broken a golden and unwritten rule among friends. A “normal” affair with a page 3 model is fair game, presumably. A highly unlikely reconciliation between the two players would probably repair some of the damage done to squad morale, but the England captaincy issue would persist.
 
Based purely on his ability as a centre-half and as a leader, John Terry should retain the captaincy. However, his inability to keep his trousers on means some of his international team-mates will have lost all respect for him. Respect cannot be learned, purchased or acquired - it can only be earned. Terry will have to do that all over again. He will, and has to, lose that precious and coveted armband.
 
So who’ll replace the England captain? Which morally sound players can England rely on to lead their side in South Africa? Rooney - the man who slept with a geriatric prostitute. Nightclub brawler Gerrard. Rio - the man who organises spit roasts and misses drug tests or Rebecca Loos’s David Beckham.
 
Would you adhere to the “public’s” criteria of a good England captain? Who would, in some of our moralising commentators eyes, be the right man for the job? Let us know what you think below!

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Things Are Looking Cup?

The FA Cup: “Pick a card, any card.”
*Picks card*
The FA Cup: “Now – look at it, don’t tell me what it is, but show it to me. Let me see it.”
*Shows card*
The FA Cup: “Right, your card was the four of clubs. Ta-da!!”
*Looks unimpressed*
The FA Cup: “Ok, tough crowd. Em … try this one on for size. Now, as you can see I have a rabbit in my hat. Abracadabra, hey presto, open sesame – ta-da - I’ve transformed into a slightly dizzy and nauseous rabbit.”
 
The magic of the FA Cup hasn’t been up to a high standard for much of the last decade. The fact that Man Utd gave it a miss in pursuit of FIFA brownie points may be cited as the straw that broke the camel’s attention span, but in the era of the Champions League and mushrooming TV revenues, the competition had started on it’s increasingly irrelevant trajectory long before.
 
But the fact that most neutrals were cheering on Dirty Leeds on Saturday night sums up what a remarkable edition of competition we’re having this season. Not too many tears were shed outside Yorkshire when the club reached for the stars and ended up with Dominic Matteo and tank full of tropical fish, but after their superb display at Old Trafford, the rehabilitation of the club’s image continued with another gutsy performance against Premier League opposition. Elland Road on a cold winter’s night will look about as appealing as a party devoid of glamour models for the Tottenham players.
 
Stoke put in a good display to comprehensively beat Arsenal and reduce the representation of the Big 4 to one. Comments about the Gunners fielding a weakened team only slightly tarnished the achievement. There’s no doubt that Arsene Wenger included a handful of players still far from being genuine first team players, but the reality – whether he chooses to see it or not – is the bulk of the team he fielded were Premier League regulars and should have put in a better performance.
 
So where does all this romance leave us? Well, precisely the mixed feelings we had about it at the start of the season. There’s a chance that the winners of the FA Cup will be the best team in the country, but there’s also a chance that they’ll be Notts County. Whatever team eventually lifts the trophy will have merited it, but that merit is largely down to the random numbers drawn by the various ex-pros who happen to have a couple of anecdotes about the FA Cup. It’s not perfect, it may not be as important as it used to be, but as long as the FA Cup keeps throwing up giant killings and the possibility of gaudy white suits, it’s still worth watching.

FA Cup Betting

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This week we climbed a mountain just for yoU!

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