Izdihar - Magic Kingdom Escapology

I started something of a fashion, but wasn't quite panning out right - blogger's block perhaps. Maybe another shot at it with a clearer head on a different day. Till then it's is consigned to the pile that never quite made it out of the closet.

There's very little to report to you today. Stoke won, though they barely deserved a point the way they played. The sharper eyed amongst you may notice something a little different about the blog this evening, see if you can spot it if you are of a mind. I got another day older, but then again, so did you.

Night all...

For my sins, I was born in a two-up, two-down in Stoke-on-Trent some 47+ years back. The house is still there and on occasion, I think I ought to go back and get myself photographed outside the joint wearing one of my Stoke City shirts - courtesy dictates that I would knock on the front door and ask the current owners if they minded me doing that, my luck would inevitably see me being told to poke off because said occupants would be Port Vale fans, but hey I can but try. The house belonged to my long since departed Great Grandma, my Dad's Gran. As I understand it, my parents lived there for a while after they were married till they got a place of their own in Campbell Road opposite the Victoria Ground. Don't think my Mum enjoyed being there much (Great Gran's, not Campbell Road), but my Dad was doing his National Service at the time and was in Belize for some emergency or other at the time I popped my head into the world.

Most of the first 8 years of my life was spent at the Campbell Road address and it is the place that is primarily responsible for me ending up a Stoke City supporter. I can still picture cold, dark, winter Saturday afternoons when the game was at home, sitting in the front bay window, looking out onto the road where thousands of fans would stream past on their way home, breathe caught white by the lights from the Vic. An image of a Christmas tree covered in fairy lights inside and the floodlights on the front of our house outside remains etched into my memory - how could I not be a fan? In later years, we would find a way of going into the last 10 minutes of the game, when they opened the gates, if we were were really lucky we might see a goal, if not, all we'd likely get the chance to do would be to commiserate with the 'old' men in there and wander off back home dejected. I can still smell the place, the Boothen End, a great Kop like terrace of swaying and chanting folk all of one voice and one aim, to see the mighty Potters win at home. Names like Banks, Ritchie (RIP), Greenhoff, Marsh, Pejic and Smith fought the good fight in our name. They were good days, but being young and largely bereft of money, seeing a whole game was something of a treat despite our proximity to the ground. It wasn't until a few years later that I began to see rather more of the games, once we'd moved out of Campbell Road and up to Oakhill where my parent still live today.

Schooling I largely recall as being something of a trial at every level, as I ended up being bullied in each of the three I attended. Not consistently, but for long enough stretches to make it a fairly miserable experience all round. I survived though, whether the influence has quite worn off all these years later though is debatable - let's just say I'm self reliant and leave it at that. I did though manage to get through enough 'O' Levels to get into the RAF, work on the aircraft and see some small part of the outside world.

I'll leave this here for now and shall on occasion return to pick up the story. Feel free to ask questions should you so desire. I'm no great raconteur, so any jog to the memory is likely to turn up some or other snippet.

OK, so I know I've not been very reliable at posting anything this week, I can't really claim I'm massively busy or something, but I was short of something to say that would be of any real (or suspected) interest to anyone. Did I mention I'm not very reliable at this sort of stuff? Thought so..

What to tell you then? One thing I could tell you is that the image in the header above is about to change, but unless you are paying very close attention, you'll probably not spot a thing. All I'll say is a brief thanks to Andrew Hreschak who created this skin. Nice work there.

One thing I do wish to get off my chest is the press treatment of Stoke City in the coverage of our games. Almost every time we play a side that doesn't beat us (as apparently some have mandated they should), you see endless sloppy commentary about how such and such side didn't play their best football and that somehow they are flat and listless. Does it never occur to them that the manner in which Tony Pulis sets out our game plan might be responsible for that. Always, the result is attributed to the opposition playing badly, never is it that we were might have been playing well and never is the team credited with that. After a while it really does stick in your throat what is said about us. I know we're not fashionable, I know we're unlikely to ever win any major honours, but at least show that you understand what is going on on the pitch and drop the cheap, lazy and 'big four' biased coverage.

I should also mention that I'm off for another stress technetium on Wednesday - or at least I will if KFNGH can decide whether the appointment is at 12:00, 08:15 or 09:30 - at least I've managed to establish that it's 'no caffeine' from 17:00 the evening before.

No pics from yesterday's Fight Cub this time - competent they may have been but, they didn't exactly set the world alight this time, though the voting isn't over for a while yet. If you're desperate, head over to the Chris of Arabia's Trash Can and look for yourself.

Link: http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=17567

Well that was fun. Had a problem with my widgets there for a moment ( those things over there --> ) full details to be had by following the link above.

So that's my first week of 2009 over in the office and we hit weekend at last. There are any things to be done this weekend; shopping, find AM a birthday present, perhaps get some plants for the back garden, get a corner shelf to put the SoundDock on - life really is a whirl round here at times you know.

Seems Stoke have bought themselves another player. This time Matthew Etherington from West Ham, a winger by trade, if only I could work out which side. Hopefully he's left-sided, as Richard Cresswell has been filling in for some time and it's really not his natural position and at times it has shown. I wish Matthew all the very best at the club and would like to think he could start like that on Saturday against Liverpool - we need the points desperately. Come on you Potters...

Today I've decided to write about someone who is probably the best striker Stoke City have had for years, but one that comes at a price, though not a financial one. The price is having someone on the squad who can variously be brilliant and imaginatively creative or as has been for the last two games, destructive and carelessly sloppy.

During the Boxing Day game against Manchester United, on a number of occasions he came close to breaking the deadlock that held over the first 70 minutes, but also lost his left boot on no fewer than 3 times. Can anyone explain to me how a Premiership footballer can't keep his footwear on? I could understand if he had been trod on from behind repeatedly, but that wasn't really the case - the first time it happened, he was one on one with Edwin Van De Sar and lost said boot in full flight. You don't half look stupid when that happens and more to the point a rare opportunity to get in front was missed. To then lose your boot twice more is past the point of comedy and suggests that your approach to the professional game is seriously lacking.

Today's incident at West Ham would be funny if it were not so serious. Having once more conspired to throw away a precious lead to a not particularly threatening West Ham team, our leading scorer decides that he's going to start having fisticuffs with the team captain, Andy Griffin. For his trouble, he then gets a red card and an early bath. There is something decidedly unsettling about Ricardo's temperament, as this is not the first time it has resulted in him being sent off. You understand that your defenders are sometimes going to pick up that extra booking in a last ditch attempt to halt the oppositions' progress, but when your strikers go for a walk because they can't keep their opinionated traps shut, it really is too much to keep quiet about.

I should at this point say, that I wasn't at the game and haven't yet seen it on Match of the Day. I can only go on my reaction to the Radio 5 Live reports I heard as I was travelling north from Peterborough.

I'll reserve final judgement until I've seen the incident myself, but at the moment, I'm thinking that Tony Pulis should be seriously thinking about letting Ricardo go during the January transfer window. Sorry son, but you are beginning to look like a bit of an extravagant liability.

So, the last time I posted in here, it was September, since when I've been home for Christmas and Stoke's results have gone down the proverbial. It's now February and we can consider the point gained from a 0-0 draw at Wolves to be on the positive side. OK so we're still not having much luck in front of the goal, the managerial team still doesn't seem to have resolved its differences and apparently the club is still up for sale - we have also kissed goodbye to any chance of making the play-offs short of a mathematical miracle whereby all of the clubs around us conspire to have the worst finish to the season in football history. I'm still not sure we could do it even if all the teams above us were Sunderland...

Anyway it's bedtime here and this cold won't just piss off and leave me alone, so I'll leave you with this thought "If you want to run your life like a Punch & Judy show, beware of the crocodiles" - be careful out there.

>;o))