Early Doors - Your morning briefing blog

Pain in the neck

Tue Apr 22 08:57AM

Good news for binary fans. The rivalry that deals only in zeroes and ones is back to bore the pants off us for the fourth time in as many seasons.

The results of Liverpool and Chelsea's six Champions League encounters since 2005 read thus: 0-0, 1-0, 0-0, 0-0, 1-0, 0-1. Which is fine if you are an Intel central processing unit; less so if you enjoy the odd goal.

If you're Jose Mourinho, the sequence is even more nought-heavy, as one of the three precious strikes was not even a goal.

All we have from 570 minutes of football is efforts from Daniel Agger, Joe Cole, and that infamous Luis Garcia 'goal' that might or might not have crossed the line (although using goalline technology to actually get the right answer would destroy the game and everything it stands for). Oh, and a penalty shootout.

Despite the quality of players on show, nobody is salivating at seeing Torres, Gerrard, Drogba and Cole strut their stuff, or anticipating bags of flair or open football. Not even Early Doors is that stupid.

No. All the talk is of desire, fear, toughness, war cries and mental blocks. This tie will be played inside the two teams' heads, which is rarely preferable to playing on a large, rectangular piece of turf.

Gerrard returns after his neck injury, sustained heading a ball in training. A more cynical observer than Early Doors might point out that the injury was a mightily convenient way of dodging criticism for leaving Gerrard out of Saturday's Fulham game.

But after watching Stevie G crane his neck in training (above), ED is convinced that the injury was not only painful, but possibly career-threatening.

Meanwhile, John Terry has laughed off suggestions the Chelsea dressing room isn't behind Avram Grant as, well, "laughable".

A week after Tal Ben-Haim said he wouldn't have signed for Chelsea if he'd known Grant was going to be in charge, talk of unrest at Stamford Bridge has been dismissed as pure speculation.

Terry himself provoked questions over Grant's authority by delivering the on-pitch team-talk before extra-time in the Carling Cup final while his boss skulked miserably around the in the background.

"We are totally behind the manager," said the Chelsea skipper. Although Grant might prefer to have Terry in front of him where he can see him.

"It is bizarre because since Avram took over, one thing we've done is that if any players are unhappy or has a problem, we've all got together, as you need to do, and speak our minds," said Terry. With or without Grant in the room?

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It's official: England are bottlers.

There are few things scientists like doing more than confirming what everybody knows.

Eating burgers and boozing is bad for you. People in the North are friendlier. The world is getting warmer (American readers can delete that one as appropriate).

You may remember Early Doors reporting "proof" that teams in red do better. Because of some warlike instinct, of course, not because they are Manchester United, Arsenal or Liverpool.

Now boffins have proved that German footballers have ice coursing through their Teutonic veins, while their English counterparts are a bunch of weak-kneed losers.

Scottish academics, presumably looking for a way both to maintain their state funding and have a pop at the Sassenachs, teamed up with some chaps in Exeter to investigate why England are so rotten at penalties.

It turns out to be the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy: We know we are going to lose, so we lose.

"If you look at the performance of individuals in the England team it would appear that they are not particularly worse than the Germans," said Prof Alex Haslam.

"But when they play for England they are aware that others expect them to fail, just as the Germans know that others expect them to win, and that has an impact on their performance and will compromise it."

All of which is a very highbrow way of saying: "You're s*** and you know you are."

- - -

Does my bum look big in this? Unequivocally, yes.

Or at least it does if you are Wolves striker Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, who has come under fire for his voluptuous physique.

Ebanks-Blake ripped his shirt off after scoring on Saturday to persuade fans he is not overweight. Early Doors remembers David Ginola doing the same when accused by then-Villa manager John Gregory of "carrying a bit of timber".

But it seems the Wolves faithful were not convinced, and now the 13-stone-4 striker is considering doing a Full Monty against Cardiff tonight to prove he is just big-boned.

"If we win I might take all my clothes off. I've got an arch in my back and my bum sticks out," he said. Early Doors can't wait.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "It is a very open semi-final, in which there will be a lot of goals," Fernando Torres discusses the Champions League showdown they've all been waiting for, before adding: "It's totally the opposite of ours."

LEFT-LEANING BROADSHEET'S GEORGE ORWELL-REFERENCING HEADLINE OF THE DAY: "Glum Henry attracts few homages in Catalonia as form and fitness decline." (The Guardian, obviously)

FOREIGN VIEW: It is hard to think of a way in which Ronald "He's going to flip one!" Koeman could have done a worse job at Valencia. In a few short months he took a team that was fourth in the table and still in the Champions League, and turned them into relegation battlers while drumming out several senior players. And now he is out of a job. It's enough to make the Valencia daily Superdeporte scream "Liquidated!".

TALKING POINT: Suggestions for a football-comedy connection:

"How about Roy Hodgson as Frankie Howerd? "Titter ye not, Fulham are good enough for the Premiership." dantomprez

"Avram Grant as Tony Hancock. The monotone delivery, the constant struggle to cope with a world gone mad, the feeling that whatever he does he is still doomed to fail. Even on an HD TV he appears to be in black and white. All he's missing is the homburg and the alcoholism." chrisnewman950

"David Beckham as Joe Pasquale. Yes, they both have a squeaky voice, but they also have another thing in common. They're both useless at football." samuelbanks

COMING UP: There's a Champions League semi-final coming up - follow it live with us from 7.45pm. Earlier, if you like. Plus we've got Paul Parker on Manchester United's 4-0 mauling by Barcelona in 1994, a Fernando Torres exclusive and, you know, just some news.

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