Let’s start with football; both of my teams had disappointing days on Saturday. Plymouth Argyle slumped to their first loss at Home Park this season going down 2 – 1 to Sheffield Wednesday. Plymouth took the lead just after half time when Peter Halmosi was brought down in the penalty area and Sylvan Ebanks-Blake calmly converted the resulting penalty. Akpo Sodje drilled home five minutes later to put the visitors level, then Sodje turned provider for Burton O’Brien to put the Wednesday into the lead five minutes later with a curling shot that deceived Plymouth stopper Luke McCormick. But it’s not all bad, even with two defeats in the last week, Argyle are still in 8th still only one win away from a play off spot, this league is so hard to predict; anything could happen, even runaway leaders Watford were beaten at home 3 – 0 by West Brom. Six points covers 11th right up to 2nd in the championship and its a long season ahead; we are only quarter way through the season!
Liverpool lost ground in the premiership as well only managing a disappointing scoreless draw at Ewood Park, the home team came closest to scoring hitting the woodwork twice in the first half in which Blackburn dominated. Blackburn keeper Brad Friedel twice denied Steven Gerrard and Dirk Kyut and Peter Crouch missed easy chances. On balance of play it’s a fair result; but some goals would have been nice. So this result means that Liverpool have dropped to 7th and Portsmouth leapfrogged both Liverpool and Blackburn. Liverpool’s premiership title aspirations seem to be fading; yesterday would have been the perfect opportunity to make up ground with Man Utd drawing 2 – 2 with Arsenal at the Emirates.
Fernando Alonso has parted company with McLaren as expected. It’s the most unsurprising news in F1 ever, it’s been on the cards since Alonso showed his true colours in Hungary, first ‘pitlanegate’ then threatening team boss Ron Dennis with handing over incriminating emails in ‘spygate’. Flavio Briatore has offered Alonso a contract to return to Renault, but wants Alonso to sign a long term contract and refused to be a stopgap team for Alonso. Alonso’s options seem to be limited, Ferrari have both drivers contracted until the end of 2009. So it’s looking like Renault will be the likely destination unless Alonso wants to take an option in the US for a couple of seasons. Anyway, bottom line is that I am happy that Alonso has gone from McLaren, I have no respect for Alonso left after this years child like antics, so who is it going to be for next year; Williams has already warned McLaren off Nico Rosberg, maybe a driver swap with Renault; Heikki Kovalainen who has shown great promise and Ron Dennis seems to have a preference for Finnish drivers in recent years with Mika Hakkinen and Kimi Raikkonen driving for the English team in the past 10 years!
