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Next up we face Brighton & Hove Albion. Kick off on Tuesday, whenever that is, will be 7.30pm so you can get home before sunrise. Always a bonus.

The match will be broadcast on something called Sky Sports Golf, for some reason. Presumably there's some sort of economy drive caused by their ever-increasing bill for their failure to provide me with their internet service. At my current rate, I reckon they owe me something like £2,700 and counting. A couple of season tickets for next season then. Or maybe a treat.




So Brighton, then. Since we last played them only a few weeks ago in weather so awful arks were being built on the south coast, they've lost two and drawn one.

They went down 2-0 at Anfield, drew 0-0 at home to Sunderland and then narrowly lost to bottle jobs Arsenal, who relied on a good - but not as great as everyone was making out - save from David Raya, going down 2-1 in the process. All of this has left them in 13th spot on 24 points from the 18 that they've played so far.

As usual, thanks to Sky, we don't have access to our usual internet service. I'm charging interest, by the way, Sky. But in any case, it's only a few weeks back since we went through their new signings, so if you're that bothered, look it up. We do, however, have some injury updates.

Definitely out will be Stimas and Webster, both of whom have serious knee ligament injuries, which will keep them sidelined for the rest of the season. It's a couple of weeks too early for the return of March, who also has a dodgy knee. They should be able to welcome back Mitoma, who missed the trip to the Haemorrhoid due to an unspecified illness.

The other absentee will be Carlos Baleba, who's currently plying his trade in the slightly warmer climes of Morocco, where he's part of the Cameroon squad currently topping the table in their group in the African Cuppa Soup.




An interesting point about Brighton was raised recently on the subject of the rules on betting that ruined Paqueta's career. To recap, it's illegal for anyone connected to a club to bet on football. You will recall that the FA were quite happy to spend two years in an attempt to end Packatar's playing days, despite what most observers described as a total lack of evidence.

They seem to be slightly more reluctant to investigate Brighton owner, the professional gambler Tony Bloom, against whom there are a number of allegations. These include the use of front men by Group Bloom's syndicate to place bets that they might not otherwise have been allowed to place.

There's also been suggestions that Bloom is the anonymous 'John Doe' responsible for £52million-worth of winnings, mentioned in an ongoing US law case. Now I've got no idea how much water those allegations hold, but given that the FA was so quick to persecute Paquta, wouldn't it be nice to see them at least apply their own rules elsewhere? Yeah, I know, naive old me.

Never mind, let's move on to the wild and wacky world of Association Football. And changes are afoot at the Olympic, where it would appear that City AM's story stating that our commercial director, Tara Warren, was on her way, turned out to be not so much "vicious and unfounded" as suggested by one of the club's tamer outlets, as simply premature.

Papers filed at Companies House this week show Ms Warren as being terminated in her role as company director. All of which means I guess I'll never get an answer to the question I asked of her in person back in 2016.




Let's go back to the World Cup, shall we, as Gianni Infantino seems intent on trying to outdo Joao Havelange and Sepp Blatter in the stakes for the 'worst FIFA boss of all time' competition. You might have thought that charging someone something like £50 a minute for World Cup tickets was pretty indefensible. Not our Gianni.

You see, the extraordinary price of tickets was justified by the demand. "We could have sold 300 World Cup's worth of tickets", Infantino boasted, without once referring to the touts who were the most likely customers.

Meanwhile, FIFA claimed that the proceeds of the World Cup will be reinvested in the global game. Though interestingly, they did not quote any specific amounts - or indeed, identify who in the world of the global game would be deemed to be worthy recipients of said largesse. Look out for the Infantino Charitable Foundation being set up very soon.

Let's move on to us then. Remember my comment the other day about losing games we should have drawn and drawing games we should have won? Yep, that again. As the minutes ticked away on Saturday, or whenever it was, I was feeling disappointed that we were only going to get a draw out of this game. So to letting a goal so late was a right kick in the proverbials.

Now a quick word about Ollie Scarles. Some idiots have laid into the poor lad who cared enough to be totally distraught at his error. More heartwarming was the reaction of the more sensible elements of the support who rallied round the lad. Indeed, one would be pleased if one or two others on the pitch might show such signs of interest in our current plight. Hopefully the lad will get a decent reception on Tuesday night, whenever that is.




We need to be more ruthless up front. Of course, that would require a proper striker being on the pitch from the start. I appreciate that Wilson may not have a full 90 in him, but those games you might laughingly think of as "winnable", surely it would be better to have us try and build up a lead so that when Wilson is taken off, we have something to build on or defend?

Yes, I can also see the idea of sending him on to try and win a game when the scores are level with 20 left. And it has worked this season to be fair, Forest away leaps to mind. However with our defence, the likelihood of us not having to chase the game with 20 minutes left before Wilsaon came on is, let's say, less likely than us being one down at that stage.

Overall, the day as a whole was totally unsatisfactory. My journey to the ground was hampered by multiple cancellations which, for some reason, TFL didn't think worthy of bothering to inform the public of.

We also had the usual substandard performance by Chris Kavanagh, of whom the law of advantage was something that simply happened to other people. His booking of Jean -Clair Todibo for delaying the restart was a particular joke, coming as it did seconds after a Fulham player had actually thrown the ball away without punishment.

He did punish a similar transgression in the second-half, though it took a complaint from Bowen to remind Kavanagh of his duty in that regard. In the meantime, the amount of time actually wasted by Todibo can be gauged by the amount of time Kavanaugh added on - which was nothing.




On the injury front, it's pretty much as you were with Niclas Fullkrug officially injured in advance of his probable departure to Milan, and Lukasz Fabianski still sidelined with a back problem. Malick Diouf and Aaron Wan-Bissaka are still in Africa, of course. So the manager has pretty much the same squad of players as were available last weekend.

So to the prediction, then. We have, of course, effectively beaten Brighton already this season, the 1-1 draw at their place coming as the result of two professional referees cheating the game from which they steal a living and a corrupt organisation willing to lie to protect those employees, the legal term for which is "fraud".

So if it hasn't occurred to the manager, we should do exactly the same as we did in that match, on the admittedly tiny off-chance that the match is decided on the relative merits of the teams involved rather than on the competence of the officials and the honesty of their bent employers.

So with that in mind, I'll plump for us to prevail for once, and the £2.50, which was going to buy some Happy New Year flowers for Daisy, she can wait until Sky pays up, will instead be going on a 2-1 win for us.

The odds being doubled if Scarles scores the winner, and the result being based purely on the true score and not that which PGMOL decide ought to be the true score - if that's OK with you, Mr. Winston. Enjoy the game.




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