Monday 13 April
Gianluca Vialli is clear of pancreatic cancer. Our former manager has been suffering on and off with the disease and had been cleared in 2018 only to relapse. Vialli was a great striker and led us to the League Cup the Cup Winners Cup and the Super Cup in a delirious few months in 1998. He added the FA Cup in 2000 as well as the Charity Shield.
Spurs have been shamed into paying their staff after they announced the reversal of the furlough decision. Spurs fans’ groups had urged the club to reverse the decision one said: “This is the first step, but a big step, in restoring relations between fans and the club.” Spurs fans have clearly been very upset by the club’s behaviour.
Harry Kane has openly been talking about how ambitious he is and how that ambition will probably take him to a different club. Manchester United have been linked despite Spurs rushing out a statement saying they would not sell.
Sky Sports and BT have been banned from asking players and managers about when and if the season will resume or how the crisis is affecting players mental health. Access to players and managers will be revoked if journalists stray. A Sky Sports email reported in the Daily Mail said “We should avoid ‘news’ interviews as much as possible”.
Further proof that it is unpatriotic to report what is actually going on and look on the bright side.
News from the front today suggests that the lack of ventilators is academic when staff do not have the full-sleeve gowns that need to be worn in order to intubate patients.
Matt Hancock still maintains there is no problem with PPE.
Hancock covered himself in more glory last year announcing that migrant NHS workers bringing family members from abroad had to pay a surcharge of £625 – “It’s the National Health Service not the International Health Service”, the gormless Tory swine spewed.
Boris Johnson’s saviours are from Portugal and New Zealand.
Nurses have had the their pay cut by £2,650 since 2010 when Tory government’s started running down and privatising the NHS.

Tuesday 14 April
The Football League and the Professional Footballers’ Association have recommended a 25% wage deferral as talk is starting to move on to how football clubs can be saved.
The deal doesn’t apply to players earning less than £2,500 per month, and yes, that is a lot of them, and only applies to League One and Two.
Below the top flight’s top six, clubs are in limbo especially the lower league club’s reply on gate receipts they are not getting and transfer fees from a market that is closed.
The financial hit the game has taken means transfer activity when the window finally reopens is likely to be quiet and fees low.
The FA and the Premier League are sitting on billions in revenue they have squirrelled away since cutting the Football League loose in 1992. It is time for them understand what solidarity payments implies.

Wednesday 15 April
Dundee changed their mind and voted back the SPFL proposal to end the season below the Scottish Premier. Dundee United, Raith Rovers and Cove Rangers are champions of their leagues. Partick Thistle and Stranraer are relegated.
Discussions are going to take place about league reorganisation ahead of next season.
The SPFL have the power to end the top flight season if football cannot be restarted.
Dundee had intended to vote against the proposal until their original vote was delayed. They denied that any deals had been struck with the Glasgow clubs.
The move leaves Rangers holding their flaccid, little pink dicks in public. Rangers looked to pressurise Dundee and attacked the Scottish football authorities, accusing named officers of incompetence and dishonesty. Now it appears that the clubs have voted and it is Rangers who are left without any credibility. Again.
Jimmy Greaves is out of hospital. These days it is great to hear that someone got better enough to be discharged.
Amid warnings about impending chaos in the game as a whole Arsenal are negotiating wage reductions. Without any word from the FA, PFA or EFL or Premier League about rescue packages for clubs it appears we are approaching a cliff edge where clubs could go bust.
Sky has been conducting a survey of EFL owners and club officials and found that wages this month are a struggle for a third of clubs. Three months without a gate will cripple dozens of clubs and send some to the wall. Many are considering administration and the mandatory 12-point deduction.
50% wage reductions might help but only 25% is being discussed.
1,500 players are out of contract at the end of this term, what kind of deals they’ll be able to find when the game resumes is questionable.
It is time for the FA to step in a guarantee club’s income and players wages across the whole pyramid from semi-professional to the Championship. The banks have only handed over a trickle of Rishi Sunak ‘s £330bn loan guarantee money. The FA should borrow from this fund and spread repayments around the clubs on an ability to pay basis.
Who would have thought that if you give banks £330bn they would delay for months handing it out to the businesses it was intended to help? They have only handed out £1.1bn so far. The rest sits in their coffers earning them money. It seems the pinstripe arseholes are still intent on profiteering even from a pandemic.
The move would allow FA accountants a good look at the books of every club and a massive cleaning of the stables could benefit the game as a whole.
Meanwhile in Chelsea football, in the Stay and Play Cup on Fifa 20 Cesar Azpilicueta will play Jesper Lindstrom of Brøndby who beat Marseille 8-2. Cesar has been given a bye into the round of 16 and had better have been practicing some drag-backs as our pride now depends on him.
Thursday at 5pm for the match.
It all has a feel of the London Evening Standard’s 5-a-side tournaments of the 1970 and 80s. It is football but you’d only give a damn of you get anywhere near the final. Well done anyone who remembered our solitary win in 1973.

Thursday 16 April
Chelsea 0:2 Brøndby
Jesper Lindstrom proved that his 8-2 from the day before was no fluke as he thrashed Cesar Azpilicueta. The Chelsea team were undone by an early goal and a penalty. We didn’t really threaten but at least it felt like watching Chelsea football.

Friday 17 April
Norman bites yer legs no longer. Football lost one of its biggest characters from the 1970s as Leeds United’s Norman Hunter died from Covid-19. Hunter was 76.
He won two league titles with Leeds as well as an FA Cup and League Cup. The Elland Road side lost the 1975 European Cup final to Bayern München but won the Inter Cities Fairs Cup in 1968 and 71.
Norman Hunter made 726 appearance for our greatest rivals of the time and we respected him for his contribution to his club, the era, the game and our rivalry.
The SPFL have started handing out £1.8m in prize money to Scottish Championship League One and League Two clubs. It appears Ranger’s bleating about the outcome is pointless.

Saturday 18 April
The government have admitted that PPE isn’t going to reach hospitals on time and have hastily tried to alter the regulations about what clinicians can safely wear.
A month into this fiasco they haven’t been honest with us and they haven’t been competent. Matt Hancock has been telling anyone who will listen that there is enough PPE to go round but somehow he cannot arrange to get it to the clinics where it is needed.
This a man with the NHS logistic department, the Post Office and the Army at his disposal and this weekend we run out of gowns.
The incompetence of the government is costing lives. They are treating our NHS staff as if they were naughty for complaining that they don’t have the equipment they need to keep themselves safe. The trade union Unite have said staff are being placed in a position that endangers them and their patients. “The continued lack of PPE is a national scandal and the government’s litany of broken promises over the last month is shameful.”
58 healthcare workers have died so far.
Little or none of the PPE is getting to care homes where Care England estimate the death rate is five times greater than the government is admitting.
Add to those numbers the people dying in their homes and the immigrants too afraid of being charged or deported to ask for help and the picture of a country run in the interest of private capital not in the interests of the people.
Sorry that football has dropped out of the reports but the clinching news is the increase in UK voters who approve of the way the government are handling the outbreak and think that Boris Johnson is some kind of secular saint.
Ok, so some football but only the petty wrangling in Scotland. Aberdeen and Herts have joined Rangers in calling for an investigation into the vote they lost earlier in the week.