Early Doors - Your morning briefing blog

Cluj-ing at straws

Thu Oct 02 08:53AM

Early Doors found itself in a bit of a pickle last night.

On the one hand, it wanted to see Chelsea subjected to a humiliating defeat. On the other, it harboured a profound desire never to see or hear the Cheeky Girls again. So nil-nil wasn't a bad compromise.

It seemed like the sinister Romanian twins had left the public eye after a glittering pop career that saw them rack up a staggering UK four top 10 singles - one more than Pink Floyd - to spend more time boffing Liberal Democrat MPs (well, one of them is. Which one? It really doesn't matter).

But as they were born in Cluj, the publicity-hungry Transylvanians have made hay out of their home town club's qualification for the Champions League.

They spent all day yesterday on the TV, wearing plastic fangs and imploring the players to take their shirts off after scoring.

Nauseating stuff. And don't they know that's an automatic yellow card?

Given the dubious nature of the town's most famous musical export, Cluj were presumably relieved that the British media had a whole host of vampire references to distract them.

You cannot open a newspaper this morning without reading about Chelsea failing to draw blood, losing their bite or just plain sucking.

From there, it was a short step to tortured analogies about Chelsea having shirts the colour of sunrise, injuries driving a stake through their chances or Luiz Felipe Scolari Bram Stok-ing the fires with his half-time changes.

Why not just send out Florent Malouda with a string of garlic around his neck?

Cluj didn't seem to mind very much, with their fans even unveiling a tribute banner to their midfielder Juan Culio that called him 'Draculio'.

One man unswayed by all this vampiric silliness was Five Live's Steve Claridge, who voiced more earthly concerns when he complained about the BBC's failure to put him up in a five star hotel.

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Just hours after having his goal drought mocked by Early Doors, Robbie Keane finally got off the mark for Liverpool against PSV.

Keane took 11 games to find the net, a positively cheetah-like start compared with Peter Crouch, who needed exactly twice as many matches to locate the onion bag.

On a night of landmarks, Steven Gerrard completed his century of goals for the club.

It was said to be fitting that he would reach three figures with a 30-yard piledriver, but Early Doors would probably describe it as inevitable, given that screamers have made up something like 92 of his 100 strikes.

Last night also marked the 1000th unnecessary personnel change of Rafa Benitez's reign (Aurelio for Dossena) and Alvaro Arbeloa's 50th appearance without making a noticeable contribution.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "As a lifelong fan and former chairman of Watford, I feel I must now express my deep dismay about what is happening at the club ... Voices other than my own have already asked the question of what has happened to the money from the sale of some of our best players and the parachute payments." Elton John voices his displeasure about goings-on at Watford. You know you're in trouble when the pop stars get involved. Who would have thought that relegation from the Premier League would cause a drop in revenues? Stick to the singing, Elton. And the massive pink wigs.

FOREIGN VIEW: In the absence of any juicy gossip in the foreign pages, ED found its head turned by the headline 'Man punches shark to save dog':

A US man saved his pet dog from a shark attack by jumping into the water and punching the predator in the neck.

Greg LeNoir took his two-year-old terrier Jake for his daily swim at a Florida marina when a five-foot shark surfaced and bit the dog.

Mr LeNoir yelled and jumped into the water to save his dog, the Miami Herald reports.

''I clenched my fists and dove straight in with all my strength, like a battering ram,'' Mr LeNoir, 53, said. "I hit the back of the shark's neck. It was like hitting concrete."

COMING UP: It could just be the rummest piece of match scheduling since Barcelona kicked off against Sevilla at five past midnight a couple of years ago. Tottenham's UEFA Cup tie at Wisla Krakow gets under way at the inexplicable hour of 14.40 UK time (twenty to four local time). On a Thursday. Why? Surely they have floodlights? And even if they don't, why twenty to? Swansea and Cardiff will go one better next month when they make like hungover pub players and kick off on Sunday morning.

Anyway, the upside is that you can follow our excellent minute-by-minute text commentary without having to leave your desk.

Also playing nondescript UEFA Cup opposition: Aston Villa, Everton, Manchester City, Portsmouth and Motherwell.

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