Another Loan (Moan)

OK, i'll cover it, as briefly as possible; Wrexham FC... amongst everything else at the club off the pitch, I feel we have made too many loan signings recently (7 in 5 weeks with more to come). They just don't seem to have any heart in it, we're now in "the relegation battle" - ive tried not to write that before, or if i have it's been with a sense of fun, still in the hope and belief "Its just a phase, it's Wrexham!" - not anymore. A survival of football league status; 5 home league games remaining, just 4 goals and 3 points scored, no win, since Brian Careys appointment, 9 league games ago. Strong centre-back Steve Evans now serving a 5 match suspension for his red on Sunday. I believe Gareth Evans will be centre-back - a player so shit we couldn't even get rid of in the summer - and they tried.

Loanees replacing regular fit first team players places in the 'team', I don't get it!? Fair enough to patch up injury / suspension holes - but i think there are 4/5 loanees now, all starting - where is the sense of 'team' there?!

Got to get a Wrexham / Everton tie-in here; Wrexham currently have Evertons 3rd or 4th keeper "John Ruddy" on-loan, starting now ahead of international first-team keeper Ingham, who admittedly was a liability / shite in his last few games, though kept a clean sheet against Wales... From what i've been reading each game, John Ruddy is "Ruddy ...insert cheap shot here...".

In total fairness the Shrewsbury match report reads well for on-loan, Jeff Whitley (Cardiff) as perhaps the best player on the pitch - have i just contradicted my entire post? I dunno, but i do know that another loanee has been signed yesterday; a striker from Stoke City called Martin Paterson.

I'm behind Carey with my support. One of the best centre-backs the club has had is in danger of his reputation being tarnished by his work in a job he didn't even apply for. He may prove to be a great manager, but thrust into managing a depleted, low morale, injury riddled squad with loss of coaches, after the transfer deadline, at 22nd in League 2 with not many games remaining at the time of his appointment, is just cruel! I'm led to beleive this current run is the worst in Wrexhams "history" - of which, there is lots! Brian, be a hero!

Oh to start this season over again; Unbeaten for 7 league games, "hammering" Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough in the Carling Cup, and taking Birmingham to extra time in the next round! From the depths then, let's get it back for the final fight...

How good does: Season 2006/07, League 2, Wrexham - Pos. 23rd - Relegated from the football league Look on any players CV?! Pull it together!

I will leave posting about Wrexham FC for a few weeks now. Let it take it's course and see what happens. Follow the results on that vidi-printer people!

Todays Betfair prices for the drop:

Torquay United 1.15
Wrexham 1.67
Boston United 2.00
Accrington Stanley 3.55

* There is rumour of Boston Utd going into administration... how ironic! We're relegated to League 2 because of the 10 point ruling, the very rule which could keep us in the league this season! Dire. Ashamed to have included this paragraph in my post to be honest.

The Producers - Palace Theatre, Manchester -19.02.07

Ever since watching the fourth series of the mighty ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ I’ve been hoping to catch the stage production of ‘The Producers’. Last Monday I finally got round to it when I travelled up to Manchester to watch the opening night of the show at the Palace Theatre. Cory English and John Gordon Sinclair will be playing the roles of Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom for the stint up north but it seems no one is slightly interested in the choice of the lead actors. The appointment of Peter Kay as super camp choreographer Roger DeBris has monopolised any publicity surrounding the show. Driving into Manchester that morning I notice there are posters of Kay absolutely everywhere while flags of him hang from most of the lampposts in the city centre. Peter Kay is undoubtedly the face of this run. If you weren’t British you’d probably be wondering what all the fuss about as he’s only playing a supporting role, of course any one from this island would know the marketability of brand Kay. To be fair he didn’t disappoint, lucky really as most of the crowd are fans of him rather than the musical. This became obvious with the ovation Kay received when he walked on to the stage eclipsed anything the other actors got. One or two people in the audience were annoyingly over zealous. At one point right in the middle of a scene a drunken woman yelled “C’mon Peter!” Clearly this woman thought she’d come to see a pantomime. He coolly brushed her off replying “The name’s Roger darling”. Despite the attention he never broke character and was very impressive in the role. I’m not the biggest Peter Kay fan, I thought ‘Phoenix Nights’ was great but I went off him when he did the John Smith adverts. Digging up fucking Tony fucking Christie for that fucking song didn’t help matters. Seeing him on Monday has really got me into him again, I’d forgotten how funny he can be. I like to see him get away from “Garlic Bread!” bollocks and carry on taking these kind of roles for a while because I’m sure he’s up to it. The rest of the cast were great too. Cory English was amazing as Bialystock, a real force of nature.

Fair play, the show was highly entertaining. I knew it was going to be good but not like that. I strongly recommend anyone to catch ‘The Producers’ while it’s at Manchester. I’m even contemplating going to New York to watch it. Hang on, I think I’m building it up a bit too much. I think perhaps if I hadn’t become so familiar with the show through my love of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ I may have not enjoyed it as much. Maybe watch the original film to test the water before buying any tickets. I suppose the humour is quite specialist, anything with dancing Nazis could be considered specialist.

Such a Beautiful Horizon

Barcelona, awesome. Gaudi buildings and monuments at each turn, business district buildings in the sunshine only yards from the Mediterranean, narrow lanes with boutiques, cafe surrounded squares every couple of hundred yards, decent bars and mostly every restaurant was newly kitted out in an art deco style all playing cool ambient music, and everything just "so". Loved it! Oh, and if you were wondering the "Sagrada Familia" is truly breathtaking, "look at the size of the thing"! Trip to Camp Nou... what a stadium, another "look at the size of that thing" moment, took the tour and got Emma to take some classic must have done pictures, including the "here's me walking down the Nou Camp tunnel", "here's me stood next to Ronaldinho's locker", oh ye! Immense place - the urge to chant "Wrexham!" repeatedly from the Presidents box was too much to supress! Other highlight was Gaudi's "Park Guell", something else!

I hadn't been abroad this century... had to get accustomed to flying again; I was a bit of a veteran back in the day, but lost my cool in a little turbulence over the Pyranees mountains last week. Kept thinking maybe Dennis Bergkamp is right, don't fly. Billy Connollys words of "We just don't fuckin' belong up there" and the line "In the event of an emergency put on your life jackets, as we'll be going into the ground like a fuckin' dart, and in years to come people will think there was once water here!" ringing in my ears, which I think is what made me laugh and regain 'some' cool. Fuckin' colliding air streams!

If I don't post before Monday - Charlie Brookers Screenwipe this coming Monday (BBC Four 10pm) features Stewart Lee, as they discuss 70's & 80's TV, a must watch!

Unibond Screen Wipe to Barca

Can I just skip writing anything about Wrexham on this post? I'll just say, i'll be checking the Chester result Sunday afternoon... in Spain. Hoping for any sort of a result... an arse cheeked deflection in the 96th minute to get a draw will do!

Went to watch a Unibond Division 1 game last Saturday: Colwyn Bay 2 v 0 Shepshed Dynamo, well deserved win. Still think they should be competing in the League of Wales, bigger attendance, better prospects... or they could continue to strive for promotion to the Unibond Premier Division (even then they'd be 3 steps from the Football League)...

Moving on though; Charlie Brookers BBC Four show is back, fantastic! First caught my attention on seeing his piece about "aspirational adverts on TV" - an amazing rant (included below too)! If you've not seen his shows, heres a 'genius' clip of Celebrity Big Brother 2007 "go on cry, cry yourself tolerant":




Think i'll have to put in another clip here too, Eastenders - "The real East End has Hawksmore churches, fashionable nightclubs, a thriving Bangladeshi community. Eastenders however, has just got Keith Miller swabbing windows with a rag on a stick":



You see how it brightens up my week "from the get-go"!

Anyhow, i'm off to Barcelona with Emma in the early hours, a city centre boutique hotel with rooftop pool and across the street from the Picasso Museum awaits... and of course a trip to Camp Nou.

Anfield one week, Racecourse the next, The Bays Llanelian Road after that, obvious next choice; Nou Camp!

Adios.

Ricky Gervais - Cardiff International Arena - 09.02.07

For most of Friday I didn’t think the performance would be going ahead. Like the majority of the country Cardiff had seen a surprise second covering of heavy snow bringing the city to a stand still. After the amount of effort I’d put in to getting hold of the tickets I was pleased to eventually find out the show was still on.

Support was superbly provided by Will Smith. No not the star of ‘Men In Black’ but the very funny British stand up comedian of the same name. Naturally his name led to enough material to fill the opening few minutes of his set. He quickly won over what generally seemed to be a new crowd and got his fair share of belly laughs early on. When discussing the state of the youth of today and then later Tony Blair he had a real star quality about him and despite the fact he’s an incredibly posh Englishmen he had a tiny hint of Bill Hicks in him. It didn’t surprise me when I read this week that he was one of the main writers of Armando Iannucci’s Time Trumpet. Being part of a record breaking tour will no doubt further his career in some way.

The opening moments of the main event were hilariously self indulgent. The lights went out and the theme tune to ‘Stars In Their Eyes’ began to play. A pre-recorded audio message from Matthew Kelly ran through the many awards and achievements Ricky Gervais has claimed his own before Kelly asked the famous question.

Matthew Kelly: “So then Ricky, who you going to be?”

Ricky Gervais: “Tonight Matthew I’m going to be Ricky Gervais!”

The spotlight flicked on centre stage and the dry ice switched on. As Gervais stepped through the curtains, complete with crown and royal gown, ‘One Vision’ by Queen blasted out of the arena sound system. He started to strut around the stage, high kicks and air guitar aplenty. And when you thought the audience couldn’t get any louder the huge theatre curtains were pulled back to reveal ‘RICKY’ in ten foot neon letters.

Anyone who’s seen the other live shows would recognise the routine. Once he’d thanked us all for being there he made his way to his notes on the podium and opened his can of Carling. He immediately launched into a set about the teenage cancer trust doing that thing he does so well, making you feel extremely guilty for laughing about some cruel subjects. This he does all night, almost systematically ticking the boxes going through the illnesses. There are no taboos as he discusses a vast array of topics never to be heard on national T.V. These include ‘queer holes in men’s toilets’ and then later in the set, ‘fucking monkeys up the arse’. He had a big rant about obesity being considered a disease, an idea he found ridiculous. He pictured Jesus telling a gang of lepers “Sorry lads you’ll have to wait, I’m off to heal that fat bird over there”. It was a fantastic show.

I’m just glad I got to see him perform live as I’m unsure whether he’ll do another tour. He seems to be getting increasingly famous by the day and with the movie roles coming in I imagine he’ll have bigger fish to fry come next year. His reputation took a bit of a knock with the weak reviews of the second series of ‘Extras’ but it’s fair to say Ricky Gervais has the Midas touch. From sitcom to podcast he's been the best in the field so it’s probably only a matter of time before he begins to play the lead roles in film. The momentum of his career doesn't look like it's going to stop. No wonder the title of his show is 'Fame'.

Don't believe the hype

I’ve never known Channel Four to promote a show as much as they have with their new venture ‘Skins’. I for one don’t think the show merits the hype, in fact I think it’s bloody awful. I really had expected more from the makers of the sublime ‘Shameless’, a show that also heavily relies on the talent of the younger members of the cast. None of the young actors in ‘Skins’ came close to performing as well as the kids of ‘Shameless’. To be fair the lad that plays little Liam has more charisma and screen presence then anyone in ‘Skins’. As a whole there was nothing substantial to it. If you took away the drugs, the nudity, the swearing and the trendy soundtrack it would leave you with very little.

Caitlin Moran, television columnist for the Times, wrote last weekend that lead character Tony (Nicholas Hoult) is “the best working class hero we’ve had in years”. I very nearly threw up the moment I read those words. From what I’ve seen so far there is nothing remotely working class about him. I find his smirking face so amazingly annoying I feel like ripping my eyeballs out of my head and flushing them down the toilet just so I wouldn’t have to see him ever again. It seems I’m very much alone on this one as every female featured in ‘Skins’ wants Tony to nail them. One scene in the first episode had what seemed to be an entire girl school lusting over him, not one of them bothered by his bowl head haircut and Dr Spock eyebrows. What the hell? For me it didn’t reflect the life of the average teenager in Britain, well not my teenage years anyway. If you made a T.V. show about my social life aged seventeen it wouldn’t last ten episodes. In fact about five minutes would cover everything. The opening scene would be me walking into an off license asking for four cans of lager. The shopkeeper would ask me for some I.D. I’d tell him I didn’t have any then he would say he can’t serve me. Role end credits…I’m probably just jealous.

Away from the television I’ve been spending my time watching the mighty Youtube. It is an amazing gift from the heavens! With it I’ve been able to find so many clips of long forgotten programmes of my youth; programmes like the influential early nineties Channel 4 sketch show ‘Absolutely’. The show starred Morwenna Banks and John Sparkes (Better known in Wales as Barry Welsh) it played a big part in reinventing the sketch show as a medium. Nostalgia has a habit in making you remember things being a lot better than they actually were so I approached the clips with caution. I’m glad to say that it had me in stitches; a lot of ‘Absolutely’ has aged well. Without Youtube I doubt I would have had the opportunity to review the show. In a time where Channel 4 will screen hours of people sleeping and talking crap on ‘Big Brother’ it’s a mystery that they choose not to repeat ‘Absolutely’. If you visit the fan site you’ll see there’s definitely an audience for it. There’s also an online campaign to get a DVD release for he show.

I suppose when it comes to hype, the underated 'Absolutely' sits on the opportunity end of the scale to 'Skins'. Here's a clip from the show. Hope you like it.

Wandering where my results went

OK they lost to Wycombe Wanderers, with the worst Wrexham performance i've ever seen. Wrexham are currently 23rd in League Division 2. I've looked up Forest Green on Wikipedia, their in Gloucestershire...

Best Wrexham player on the pitch was Steve Evans (biased i know - Welsh, plays in my favourite position and is a no nonsense get stuck in block everything defender, respect). He completed close to 100% of his long and short passes, his cross-pitch long passing distribution was Premiership class, strong head challenges, and cleared the lines far too many times for comfort. Be good to see Steve get another Welsh cap against N.Ireland tomorrow. Likely with Gabbidon and Collins injured... and Tosh at the Racecourse to witness the abomination too on Saturday.

Cherno Samba, "quick capsule review: piece of shit". Completely disinterested, no pace not even a burst of pace with or without the ball, waiting for the ball to come to him (true of most the players in fact). What has amused me is, he's been picked to play for England U-21s against Spain tomorrow night!? Stuart Pearce wasnt at the Racecourse.

Best bit of the game was the fight! 2 yellow cards and a straight red. Strong challenge, and a reaction... McEvilly then waded in to chants of "Evil, Evil, Evil" which definitely spurred him on to get 'stuck in' to one of their players faces. Their keeper was red carded for kicking the ball HARD and low (towards our wheelchair area - no laughing matter) at a fan in our stand - this caused the burberry caps to pile down the steps and hang over the hoardings entering argument with Wycombe players and staff (cocky Wycombe physio pointing and counting the crowd as if he could 'ave us all' just made things a whole lot worse!), quite scary really, 6 rows back from it, officials had lost all control. Ive got the pics and video on my phone... couldnt resist.

Dave, can we expect post-match analysis after Tuesday night game sir? We should do a Wales / Welsh football blog, with Sid and Mat - would be legendary!

Yes Wales lost the 6 nations match too, so the worst possible outcome for sporting results i wanted.

Where is Forest Green? Under an ironic hat?

Another couple of weeks hard time following Wrexham, slumping to a midweek 1-0 loss at home to Stockport County, the goal against coming in the 94th minute. I'm off to the Racecourse this Saturday and probably get very vocal as they take on Wycombe. Last time i saw Wycombe was when Tony Adams was in charge, remember him - awesome player, shite manager. Wrexham rife with injuries, have within the last week taken to strengthening the side in some short contract loans, one in the form of Cherno Samba - ring any bells? Did for me, was kicking myself for a good day thinking of the name, then it clicked "Brian Carey plays Championship Manager!!!" Cherno Samba would be almost guaranteed to score at least 2 goals a game in the PC game Championship Manager! Fantastic... in reality i think he's scored "one" football league goal in his entire career.

Hopes not raised too high then, I could still be digging out a map to try and find out exactly where "Forest Green" is, anybody? Any ideas?

Again i was seen making the trip to Conwy Utd and paying my £2.50 at the turnstile last weekend, as they took on league leaders Denbigh Town, I was pleasantly surprised to see a bustle of people around the pitch-side fencing, in the clubhouse and in the stands! Conwy lost 1-0 in a 'fast and open game' (I say fast, fast for League 1 in the Welsh football pyramid!), so fast the ref got caught out and knocked out. Ref stood at the edge of the area for a Conwy corner, swung in a little wide out over the 18 yard line, Conwy head and a Denbigh head go up for it, ref between them - out cold! The severly overweight liner took the reigns as ref, and i think a Denbigh coach took the line: Lower league / grass roots football gentlemen, get involved!

Not posted for a week or two, mainly due to illnesses and the like, on the mend and all seems much better now - the mid-winter colds, ear aches and the like. I'll get back to more regular posting from next week.

Come on Wrexham, oh and Wales in the rugby 6 nations, let's see just how much of a disappointing or rewarding sporting weekend I can have!

Football and sport aside, this really cheered me up last week, the "ironic hat" mwynhewch:



Just a shame his other Room 101 entry, Ben Elton, isnt on YouTube. Ben Elton had already been cast into Room 101 a few years ago, but they resurrected him, just to put him back down again...