Almeria on TV this evening

[El Gordo]

I'm all in favour of more equality when it comes to distributing football coverage around the leagues, but that would irritate the average top-4-shirt-wearing punter in Belfast and Exeter far more. Instead we'll have to make do with what is, I guess, a roughly democratic system where the more successful you are, the more attention you get. This is why ManU, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool ALL get a hugely disproportionate amount of media coverage.

Trouble is, once we get it into our heads that the world, or the BBC, or even one particular commentator, is against us, it permanently affects our ability to judge the output objectively. So any negative reference to the Rowdies from Alan Green only confirms what we always supected. On the other hand, all the positive things we hear about them get filtered out, or caricatured -- as with the Hansen remark. To you, he was trying to swallow a mouthful of vomit. To me, he was just complimenting Manchester United on playing some cracking football.

It wasn't that long ago that Alan Green was believed by the masses to be a rabid ManU fan, and he would often get teased about it on the radio and on the football messageboards. And once one has that idea in one's head, how easy it is to prove that Green is a ManU fan. I promise this is true, because I used to believe it myself

Re Hansen's remark about European nights at Anfield. As an armchair fan, I think there's something in what he says. I just don't get any great sense of occasion when I watch Arsenal CL games. Or Chelsea. But when I watch big ManU or Liverpool games in Europe, the crowds do SEEM noisier and more up for it. So I read that sentence and thought "fair enough" while you read it and thought "Bah! More Liverpool bias!"

Comfort yourself with the thought that Liverpool are not playing great football at the moment, and Hansen was simply having to own up to that with his comments. You should have been grinning. He's basically admitting that they're boring as hell, but that they do seem to have a system that works in European games, as shown by their recent record. The prose is as dull as the football, but it seems a reasonably well thought out argument to me.

On the other hand, just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you.