Stewart was an amazing
person - A wonderful husband, a fantastic brother, a loving son and an
adored uncle. He was also a brilliant friend and colleague and will be
missed by so many people. His family are determined that his death will never
be in vain and are doing their part to beat bowel cancer for good. We are fundraising for the Bobby Moore Fund
which is part of Cancer Research UK and specialises in research into bowel
cancer. If you wish to donate to the
fund, you can via https://www.justgiving.com/Geraldine-Smith3
.
If you haven’t already
done so, please read the article which recently appeared in the Daily Record
and learn from Stewart’s story that you must never be complacent. It makes grim reading for us, his family,
even though we were beside him throughout his ordeal, or battle; call it what
you will. http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/lifestyle/heartbroken-widow-geraldine-smith-raises-3452997
His wish was that The Grambler
should continue after his death and I have been happy to oblige. Welcome to The Grambler, the most
ill-informed blog you are ever likely to see. Read on and enjoy…
First off this week, I must mention the death of Stephen Sutton. He died of bowel cancer. He was 19.
Do you understand why I keep bleating on about being on your guard about
any bowel problems you might have?
19. It is no age at all. But this remarkable young man embraced social
media and in doing so raised over £3 million.
More importantly – although totally ignored by the media covering his
story – he raised awareness about bowel cancer and how it can attack both young
and old.
Talking of social media; we got booted off twitter last week. Really.
The Grambler twitter account was ‘suspended’. Why?
Because I had been putting out so many tweets I was tweeted (d’you
geddit?) as a spammer. I don’t even like
Spam. Chopped ham and pork was never a
favourite with me. Anyway, I sent a
message explaining that I was trying to boost readership of thegrambler.com
and, by doing so, raise awareness of bowel cancer in the young. Anyway, it worked and we are up and running
again. So all you folk out there in
Twitterland please tell your fellow Twits (is that what we are called?) to
follow @letsGramble and to read thegrambler.com. The more readers we get, the more chance we
can help someone detect bowel cancer early.
Right. On with this week’s
business. Congratulations are due to
Georgios Samaras, the Greek Celtic forward.
How many footballers can boast that they won the Scottish Premier league
title and the Eurovision Song Contest? And
he managed to sing his song without once hurling himself to the ground. Such self control.
And so the season comes to an end, save for a couple of cup finals and
play-offs to decide the final promotion/demotion places. The winners of the various leagues have
received their trophies. Those clubs in
leagues that are sponsored by the big TV companies will know how much dosh they
will be receiving.
Of course, those teams which took second spot should also be
applauded. Especially if on the very
last game of the season they managed to overtake a team that had been sitting
in second spot for most of the season.
Yes the mighty ‘Well scored in the 90th minute to wrest
second spot from Aiberdeen. Yahsss!
Did I mention I was a Motherwell fan?
I am now going to draw your attention to a newspaper article in the Noo Yawk Times
. Why?
Well, two journos at that august publication have highlighted something
that has been bugging me (and a great many others) for years. It points out that many clubs have very few
local lads in their ranks. By local,
they mean English. Basically, Manchester
City had only one Englishman in their regular lineup – model and part-time
goalie, Joe Hart.
It set me thinking [Fancy that – Ed.].
What percentage of home grown players does each team from the English
Premiershit employ? Do those teams at
the top always have fewer English players?
For the purposes of this little experiment I have treated both Welsh
teams as English (sorry Swansea and Cardiff) just to keep the comparison
valid. If it were based on players from
the country each team plays out of, then Cardiff would be down at the bottom as
it only employs 2 Welsh players (at the time of writing).
Below is a table of the teams as they were at the finish of the
season. The columns to the right are
percentage of English players with new table placing in parentheses and
percentage of UK players with new table placing in parentheses.
1. Manchester City 24% (17) 24% (18)
2. Liverpool 39% (8) 50%
(7=)
3. Chelsea 16% (20) 16% (20)
4. Arsenal 18% (19) 21% (19)
5. Everton 42% (4) 45% (10)
6. Tottenham Hotspur 27% (15) 31% (17)
7. Manchester United 36% (10) 50% (7=)
8. Southampton 52% (1) 57% (3=)
9. Stoke 33% (11=) 37% (14=)
10. Newcastle 30% (14) 37% (14=)
11. Crystal Palace 41% (5=) 56% (5)
12. Swansea 21% (18) 46% (9)
13. West Ham 48% (2) 60% (2)
14. Sunderland 33% (11=) 42% (11)
15. Aston Villa 41% (5=) 41% (12=)
16. Hull 26% (16) 41% (12=)
17. West Bromwich Albion 37% (9) 52% (6)
18. Norwich 46% (3) 57% (3=)
19. Fulham 33% (11=) 33%
(16)
20. Cardiff 41% (5=) 62% (1)
Not quite sure what point is being made here, other than it is a sad state
of affairs that only one club in the Premiership actually employs more than 50%
of players who are English. It doesn’t
follow that more than 50% of first team players are English; these figures are
based on total squad numbers.
The second column of figures looks a little more encouraging. But only a little. Eight clubs employ 50% or more of British
players. Hmm. It’s not encouraging in the least, is it.
Is it any wonder, then, that the National teams from the UK (and I am
including England) are so (How can I put this without upsetting too many
people?) rubbish? If top clubs aren’t willing to play British
players, how can UK national teams ever hope to achieve?
Okay, let’s move on shall we? By the
by, I am happy to eat my words if that mob from south of the border do well in
the World Cup.
Any birthdays of note this week. Who
can forget Trini Lopez? Trini Lopez…you
do remember him. Singer. If I had a hammer…him. Boom boom, boom boom, Gonna get along without
you now. No? Well, it’s his birthday, anyway. 77 on May 15th. So let’s gramblerise his most famous toon,
his version of Pete Seeger’s protest song ‘If I had a hammer’.
Ooh ooh ooh ooh
Ooh ooh ooh ooh
Ooh ooh ooh
If I had a gramble,
I’d gramble in the morning,
I’d gramble in the evening,
All over this land.
I’d gramble out danger,
I’d gramble out warning,
I’d gramble out love between
My brothers and sisters ah aaah,
All over this land.
Ooh ooh ooh ooh
etc. etc.
Teeny loafers?
What? Little shoes? You’ve lost it now. You have n’all. Beat seagulls? That’s aminal cruelty that is. You can’t go around attarcking seagulls. I know they can be blibbing annoying when
they nick your chips when you’re having an fish supper at the seaside, but that
doesn’t mean you’ve got to go beating them up.
And shitting on you. They do that
and all. And ripping binbags
open…leaving your rubbish lying all over the place. And the racket they make. Especially first thing in the morning when
you’re still trying to sleep…Blibbing noisy, scavenging vermin…Hang on, I’ll
get me cricket bat.
Shall we get on with some grambling?
How did we fair last week? Not
well. Not well at all. 33 pees is all we won. So we actually lost 1 quid 87 pees. Rubbish or what. How did that happen? Read on…
Rickie Lambert shot Saints in front, with United
claiming Nemanja Vidic had been fouled in the build-up.
Juan Mata equalised with a curling 25-yard free-kick
in the second half.
There you go.
One match report.
Incidentally, did you know that Man U. Europe for the first time in 25 years? Yeah.
Thought you might have heard.
Media have talked about little else for weeks.
Tottenham Hotspur vs Aston Villa – Prediction Draw – Nah
Tottenham Hotspur 3 Aston
Villa 0
Paulinho cut through the
heart of the Villa defence to shoot past Brad Guzan to put Spurs in early
control.
Nathan Baker headed Danny
Rose's cross past his own goalkeeper before Emmanuel Adebayor scored from the
spot.
Spurs finished the season in sixth place, three points shy of their
total last term, in what proved to be boss Tim Sherwood's last game in charge.
Just what do club owners expect from their managers? Tim Sherwood gave them a sixth placed finish
and European football next season and what happens? Sorry Tim.
Not good enough. Here are your
jotters.
Call me cruel, but I hope the manager who takes over makes a complete
a**e of it. See http://www.thegrambler.com/2014/05/week-36-raindrops-keep-grambling-on-my.html
for my thoughts on much the same thing at Cardiff.
Liverpool vs Newcastle – Prediction Home win - Yay
Newcastle had threatened a surprise when Martin
Skrtel diverted a Yoan Gouffran cross into his own net after 20 minutes.
But two goals in as many second-half minutes –
Daniel Agger and then Daniel Sturridge converting Steven Gerrard set-piece
deliveries.
I don’t suppose Newcastle were helped by having 2
players sent off. Shola Ameoba for
mouthing off and Paul Dummett for a foul on… I might have known… Suarez. I haven’t seen the incident but no doubt the
little Uruguyan performed a pike on his way down.
Sunderland vs Swansea – Prediction Home win - Nah
Nathan Dyer and Marvin Emnes struck for the Swans inside the first 15
minutes.
Fabio Borini pulled one back soon after the restart, but Wilfried Bony
restored the visitors' two-goal lead with his 25th goal of the season
Cardiff vs Chelsea – Prediction Away win - Yay
The Bluebirds took the lead on
15 minutes when Craig Bellamy's left-foot shot was deflected off Chelsea
Below-par Chelsea finally struck back in the 72nd minute when Andre Schurrle
fired a rebound high into the net after David Marshall's save from Azpilicueta.
Three minutes later, Fernando Torres's 11th goal of the season from six
yards completed the comeback. That’s 11
goals in total, not 11 from 6 yards.
So that’s it my little gramblerinis.
Those 2 wins only netted us that 33 pees thanks to the crappy odds for
the Liverpool and Cardiff games.
Now what do we do? Hardly any
games to bet on. I did suggest that we
could have a gramble on the gee gees from now until the World Cup. The problem is The Grambler knows nothing
about horse-racing [Doesn’t know much about football either. – Ed.]. But I have come up with a scheme. If The Grambler were to take all horses in
all races on a given day, there would be thousands of permutations (That’s a
good word. Must look it up.). However, he/she/it has thrown up some
interesting statistics. Some days, up to
half the winners are the favourite. So,
here’s the plan. The Grambler will take
all the favourites on a particular day and randomly pick 5 from that. We can then still do the 10 doubles and a 5
race accumulator. Sound good? It does to me anyway. Here goes…
Meeting
– Time – Horse – Odds
Newbury 3.50 Olympic Glory 11/10
Newmarket 4.05 Pinzolo 6/5
Newmarket 4.40 Yuften 8/11
Doncaster 5.55 Haxby 4/5
Uttoxeter 8.50 Forever
Field 4/6
That’s it. Our first foray into
the sport of kings. Five horses for
courses, Four courses. If all bets go
our way, how much will be heading for the Bobby Moore Fund?
£11.96
Not much, I grant you, but as we were selecting from favourites only, we
can’t expect to get much more.
Okay, what about last week’s teaser?
What was the link between all the champions of all four English
leagues? They all came from Lancashire – Div 1 – Liverpool, Div 2 – Burnley, Div 3 – Bolton
and Div 4 – Southport. Wasn’t that
interesting?
How about a teaser to finish with?
Okay. What first was attributed
to Everton at Goodison Park in 1957?
What about a little song from Father Ted, to end with? We have mentioned the Eurovision Freakshow
and we have horses; if we put the two together we get My Lovely Horse
Happy grambling.
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