final thoughts from issue 35

Congratulations to B. Aston of Warmley who wrote to the Mail pointing out a few home truths about the Sleeping Giant and inspired weeks of replies from Outraged of Small Heath. They're sooo easy to wind up.

It'll be interesting to see how BFR gets on at Coventry. And it was even more interesting to see how he spent his first night in the job commentating on the Liverpool v Crystal Palace league cup semi-final. Start as you mean to go on ....

A Manchester United fanzine I happened to be reading recently gave a report of their match at Villa Park in November and featured the immortal words "give us one reason why we should get so few tickets". I've thought of ninety seven so far. Any advances? Answers to One Rule For Them competition, P. O. Box 1703 ...

There was a newspaper report recently about how Dalian's got an alleged 'lovechild'. The report said that he couldn't be contacted for comment. It was a Saturday edition so they'd obviously been looking around Villa Park.

Heroes Mansions recently received a letter from the Temple of Doom, headed Dear Blues Fan and containing raffle tickets to sell in order to raise money for them. In particular, they hope to get enough to keep the poison dwarf. Naturally, said tickets were sold to unsuspecting bluenoses and the money spent on a far worthier cause.

There's been a lot of press reports about the crisis in English football lately - bribes, violence etc. Not so much though, about Australian cricketer lan Healey getting his nose broken by a supporter, a linesman at a rugby league match being hit by a missile, cricket internationals being accused of throwing matches, murders at games in France and Italy. I wonder why?

It looks like Reebok will be manufacturing next season's shirt. At least their current designs are usually good, but a bit of pressure could work wonders. A few letters to the Villa and the manufacturers pointing out what we expect to see from them and we might have a design that'll be a big improvement on the current thing.

Talking of shirts, I couldn't help but notice some of the 'legendary' names on the new Mane third commercial opportunity. Cunningham? Moses? Hogg? Legends?

According to the press we've got some new local rivals in the shape of Wolves. It's been well reported that twenty thousand of their supporters vanished between 1985 and last year. Perhaps they were the ones who spent so much time slagging David Kelly when they first bought him. Extensive research in Wolverhampton has failed to discover anyone who's ever had a bad word to say about him.

Plenty's been said about Cantona, and a lot of it concerned how Matthew Simmons was able to get into a family enclosure. Surprisingly, nothing was said about why, in a supposed home part of the ground, there were so many Sharp advertisements on display.

And finally, a few more words about our loveable neighbours. They reckon they're on the way back to the top. Excuse my obvious ignorance, but since when was a highest-ever league place of sixth in division one, a couple of losing Cup final appearances so long ago that even we've won it since and winning the league cup when hardly anyone bothered to enter it considered to be the top of anything? How can you go back to somewhere you've never been?

Taken From Issue 35