Third Post

Unlike many of you big-money club loyalists, I have been closely monitoring the “bottom-three” with bated breath this campaign.  You see, my dear Toffees, who seemed to take the first 2/3^rd of the season off, have danced in-and-out of the relegation zone for much of the year.  But after securing 9 points from their last four league games and with three consecutive home matches upcoming – we now seem to be mostly out of harm’s way (fingers-crossed, rubbing my lucky rabbit’s foot, avoiding black cats and ladders and knocking-on-wood), but a quick look at the table shows how quickly things can change.

You see, an argument can be made that the “bottom,” or should I say the “middle-to-bottom,” of the table is the closest race in modern Premier League era:

Second Post

I think it would be a great step toward world peace and international understanding if all the world's nations could compete in one sport together. FIFA, the international soccer association charged with organizing the World Cup, seems to have already gotten a lot of nations onside with this soccer thing. Here are some friendly suggestions to help sign up the rest:

• Stop calling it football. It's not football for Pete's sake. Football is the Bears vs. the Giants, Notre Dame vs. Ohio State, the Edmonton Eskimos vs. the Saskatchewan Roughriders. The game that's on the TV 24/7 right now is soccer. S-O-C-C-E-R. Got it?

• Please put more lines on the field so we know where the players are. How about some horizontal parallel lines every five yards or so to let us know where the action is?

• Give the players some helmets and padding. I tell you, it's hard to watch a guy hit the ball with his uncovered head or collapse in pain when someone bumps him and not think this is a cruel and dangerous sport. I think it goes without saying that protective equipment will make everybody safer.

• Let one team have the ball for more than 10 seconds. Why not give each team three or four tries to make 10 yards, say? If they do, they get three or four more tries. Then you've got some continuity instead of the current random chaos.

• Stop the clock once in a while. The referees have whistles; why not let them use them? I'm sure the players could use a break and I'd sure like a chance to get a snack or use the bathroom. And you know what? I bet the TV networks would get a lot more advertisers. They might even want to consider splitting each half up into two quarters to provide more ad time.

Opening Touch

As you probably know, we're in the middle of the World Cup, that quadrennial soccer tournament that seems to get everybody excited. Everybody that is except for us — Americans and Canadians.

As you can probably gather, I'm not a big soccer fan. For whatever reason, I've never really taken to the game. Maybe it's because, like most folks living north of the Rio Grande, I don't know a goal kick from a corner kick.

But I do know one thing: Most Americans and Canadians don't care for soccer. It's not that we don't want to like it. It's just that it's so darn boring and confusing.

Test 2

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