Chelsea’s Didier Drogba is one of the game’s great enigmas. He can be utterly abject or almost unplayable, depending on the way the wind is blowing.
This season he has largely been the former, struggling to even hold down a first-team place under Luis Fillipe Scolari.
However, since Guus Hiddink took charge at Stamford Bridge, the burly Ivorian has shown glimpses of his dynamic best.
Could go either way this one.
You might think Sporting will be feeling fragile after their rogering in the Champions League, but they’re bemusingly inconsistent and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them win here. However, Porto are consistently strong, have the best attack in the league by a mile and could easily put another hat full past Bento’s boys.
I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.
Some celebrities really want you to know that they like football. Perhaps supporting a team counteracts a perceived lack of masculinity. Or maybe it just enhances the manly traits that they already have. Either way, when certain ‘talents’ hit the big time they go out of their way to let their affiliations be known.
Not just a chubby little gay, John is a long-time, long-suffering Watford fan – a commitment more honest and longer-lasting than his sham-marriage in 1984. The dumpy songster certainly looked to assert his masculinity when he bought the club and installed himself as chairman.
I’ll start by blowing my own trumpet.
After their victory over Benfica I wrote: “Sporting…put on a performance that makes you think you should reassess their chances against Bayern Munich on Wednesday. However, two seconds of reasoned thinking tells you that they’re going to get panned.”
And they duly got their panning. A 5-0 one.
I try to not be a hypocrite, so even though I wouldn't want to question the wisdom of Martin O'Neill, I can't help but feel a tad disappointed by his decision to leave 8 first team regulars behind for our second leg match in Russia against CSKA Moscow. At the airport, the youthful squad containing the likes of Clark, Bannan, Lowry & Lichaj looked more like they were queuing up for their school dinner rather than depositing their luggage and the decision to rest so many key players is tantamount to conceding the tie & the UEFA cup.
In the past I have criticised the likes of Bolton & Portsmouth for not giving two hoots about continental competition. Both of those clubs strived so hard to qualify for Europe and may well never get there again, so for them to play weakened teams in September and October when the season was young and they'd been comfortably mid table just seemed like an awful waste.