Early Doors - Your morning briefing blog

As Zeljko Kalac creaked down to his right, attempting to save Cesc Fabregas's good-but-not-great long-range strike last night, it was all too easy to remember that this was the man Martin O'Neill once considered worse than Kevin Poole. Aussie Kalac spent the 1995/96 season at Leicester, where he committed numerous...More

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Aim far and wide and there will be no limits to what you can achieve. Well, at least according to Early Doors's motivational guru at a recent seminar on attaining success through self promotion.We prefer the 'seduce and destroy' method championed by Tom Cruise's Frank T.J. Mackey in the film...More

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For all those at Upton Park on Saturday, it may come as something of a surprise to find out that Frank Lampard's sending-off was only the second worst decision of the weekend.Lamps was dismissed against his old club for ersatz tag-team wrestling with Luis Boa Morte, bringing back an old...More

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Three weeks today David Beckham will find out whether he has been named in Fabio Capello's England squad for the friendly against France. This week Becks has been saying that he may miss out on the squad named by Signor 'individual strand of hair' due to a lack of match fitness -...More

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BBC bosses are not noted for their sense of humour - as shown by the continued existence of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps.But Mark Thompson and his fellow mandarins might have broken off from sacking thousands of people to allow themselves a brief smile yesterday evening.Even...More

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Sea Bass Sashimi; Slow-roasted Blythburgh Pork Belly with Parmesan-fried Courgettes; Scandinavian Iced Berries with Hot White Chocolate Sauce; English Cheese Board; all washed down with a spicy Barolo.This cornucopia of culinary delights is yours for £200 and a three-month stint on the waiting list at Soho eaterie The Ivy, located...More

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Chelsea might be in the throes of a mini-crisis, but at least we finally know what Henk ten Cate is for. The burly Dutchman has obviously been employed as Avram Grant's bouncer, and was reportedly involved in a bundle with John Terry in the lead-up to Sunday's Carling Cup final -...More

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Matthew 20:16: 'So the last shall be first, and the first last'Time was, the only sense in which the Carling Cup final could be described as 'first' was chronologically. It trailed in last for importance, interest and usually quality, as anyone who sat through Middlesbrough versus Bolton in 2004 will...More

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Yak 1 n. large ox with shaggy hair, humped shoulder and large horns. Yak 2 n. Nigerian striker who scores when fed.Strong as an ox, but without the hair, hump and horns, last night Yakubu was the subject of one of the more prophetic terrace chants of recent weeks.'Feed the...More

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Getting on the property ladder can be hard. The credit crunch and the resultant tightening of mortgage lenders' belts has left the most unlikely people homeless, with no hope of affording a place of their own.You might think Jonathan Woodgate's estimated £60,000-a-week pay packet could get him a nice mock...More

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