Unintentional Googlebomb

For those of you that don't know, a googlebomb is an attempt to influence a link's position on google by the number of people that link to it in a specific way. One of the more famous examples is a large number of sites linking http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/victories.html to the search phrase "French military victories".

Sometimes, a site may not have many links from the outside world. One of these sites is one belonging to DJ and Fulham's PA man David Hamilton. Because this post on the rather excellent Todger Talk linked to the official website of Diddy Fucking David Hamilton like I've just done, it's changed the name of his link on google. Like so. Oops.

Does it work to say Betfair are cunts?

Shite here, Wright now

Blogger is still shit with Opera, so this post comes courtesy of Internet Explorer. If the brains at blogger haven't fixed this, I'm taking this off to wordpress.

Anyway, since we last spoke last week, Ipswich have made two signings. A striker and a goalkeeper. The suggestions were that Jim Magilton has been looking for a big strong hold up forward, and a smaller, pacier goalscorer. So it's a suprise that Kevin Lisbie has turned up, and that we've paid good money for him. I know he scored 17 league goals for a relegated Colchester side last season, but he didn't score that many for Charlton in the previous 12 years. He's only managed to score against that collective that we call a defence once in nine games, which is less than prolific types such as Danny Dichio, Devon White and Paul Furlong have managed in one. Like most Ipswich fans, I remember his laughable dive whilst on loan at Norwich, which only the referee bought, causing the popular Sito to be unfairly sent off. Not impressed.

Less suprising is the signing of Richard Wright as our new goalkeeper. He meets one of the criteria of new signings (ex-teammate of Magilton), and is brought in as experience, as Shane Supple isn't deemed to have played enough games to be quite trusted yet. Wright has made just over 100 appearances since he left us seven years ago, which is an average of just over a dozen a season. Not ideal for someone who had missed just 11 games in five seasons. Hopefully he won't be too rusty, especially as we don't have a left back anymore, as Matt Richards has joined Brighton on loan. Again. Why we don't just pay him off and let him join them permanently, I don't know. Still, we're talking to Ben Thatcher, and trialing a mystery Honduran international (the mystery being how it took six days for his pre-arranged flight to land in the UK).

Optimism is not at a high.

Oops....

Right. Where was I? Oh, yes there'll be another post soon, as soon as Opera stops being shite with the Blogger template. And I've written that three times now.

I've also found myself distracted by a couple of things since I last posted (insert your own Carry On imagery and Sid James laugh here). Apart from Big Brother (and why do people always vote out the interesting tossers out?), I've been going through some old video tapes to see if there's anything worth copying to DVD. And out of about 60 tapes, I've found about two hours worth. And I've found some awful shite that I'm wondering why on earth I taped it in the first place. Christ, I could almost make a list of things I've taped that I would never have any intention of watching:

* The Brit Awards from the year that Zoe Ball and Frank Skinner presented it (badly) and Travis were Best Band.
* An episode of RI:SE presented by Ian Lee and Edith Bowman.
* Bakersield P.D. - Probably the only program I didn't watch on Paramount c.1998
* An hours worth of Telewest's home screen from 1993 - 8 tiny screens showing various channels round the edge of a quarter size screen showing Beavis & Butthead on MTV. With Telewest's own muzak for sound.
* A Prince's Trust concert on 'The Power Station' - BSB's own music channel. (For those of you that aren't Stuart Maconie, BSB were those people with the Squarial)

Okay, so maybe 'could almost' is wrong. I've also found:

* A random episode of Have I News For You on two tapes.
* Three quarters of a Johnny Vegas game show on BBC Choice.
* Sky's Top 100 Goals of 1991. Well, okay, I've only got the last 30 or so. But they only showed about 10 games that year (For those of you that aren't Stuart Maconie, this was before Sky had the football market cornered, and all they had was the FA Cup and Serie A).
* The first ten minutes of what was shaping up to be a really good Episode from Futurama).

I also found a really random Public Information Film, which caused me to root through a few more on the web, and I also found one of the most notorious of all on my own hard drive.

So, as well as some final thoughts about Euro 2008, that Wedding Present review, and a look at Pablo and Charisteas (which still may or may not happen), I'll be talking about those scary PIFs as well, as soon as Opera stops being a pain in the arse.

Hi, honey, I'm home!

Or rather, to paraphrase the late, great Smash Hits (and when I was a teenager, Smash Hits really was great), I'm back, BACK!, BACK!!!

The knee's back to about 60%, and I can walk a bit, and sit down without it hurting too much now, thanks for asking. There will be a few things coming up over the weekend. I was doing an album review before my hiatus, and I was just thinking about maybe writing something about Ipswich cult hero, and crowd polariser Pablo Couñago. And I'll wrap up my thoughts about Euro 2008, maybe even come up with a team of the tournament, after Sunday's performance, it really should be full of Spaniards, shouldn't it?

And talking about European Championship finals, we're allegedly in talks with the scorer of the winner at Euro 2004 - Angelos Charisteas from Nurnbürg, and I'll say why that would be a "good thing", so you can marvel at it when I'm proved right. Or we can hush it up if he ends up being shit, and smuggled in a van off to Le Havre or Vitesse Arnhem in the January.

And get me, I'm using tildes and umlauts now.

Intermission

Apologies for the lack of updates over the last few days, but my knee has ballooned, so I'm not spending as much time as normal in front of the PC. Normal service should hopefully be resumed by the end of the weekend.

Euro 2008 Review: Just five games left

And elsewhere, the Euro 2008 blog gets as random and as haphazard as I expected it would, but all in all the football has been superb. Turkey reached the semi-final last night having led their games for a total of two minutes, but it's better to lead for just the last two minutes that just the first 88. And they'll face Germany in the semi final, with their embarrassment of riches up front, and their, well, guaranteed at least one embarrassment a game at the back. Turkey look to be aiming for the Greece approach, but aren't as organised at the back, and look to score through Ardan or Nihat's creativity, rather than through set pieces. I told you to look out for that pair. Okay, Nihat's a given and should be well known from when Bayer Leverkusen played Manchester United in the Champions League, but Ardan was an unknown quantity in these shores. Just forget everything else I said about Turkey. Especially the bit about them finishing bottom of Group A. Mertesacker and Metzelder are good for at least a mistake each per game, and Joachim Löw's use of Marcell Jansen as a late sub against Portugal, despite his performance against Croatia suggests he has a chance of playing. His performance was blamed on a shoulder injury.

In the meantime, we've got two more quarter-finals, and Italy eliminated France to strike fear into the hearts of Spain. Raymond Domenech's horoscope suggested that the end of their tournament would be the best time to propose to his girlfriend on live TV. The French Russell Grant clearly doubles up as the French Jeremy Beadle. The only people unhappier than the French, were the Spanish, as their record against the Italians is poor, and appears to have reached the point of being a psychological barrier, rather than a sporting one. The Spanish view of Italian football is one of anti-football rife with cheating, fouling and play-acting, something which has mainly been absent this tournament. No goals, penalties, important free kicks or sendings off have been caused by play-acting - although Jan Koller's face-holding antics after Volkan Demirel pushed him in the chest may have helped increase the ban to two games, especially considering Bastian Schweinsteiger was only banned for one game for a similar push to the chest.

The other quarter final sees the Netherlands face Russia. Russia seemed like a team reborn after Andre Arshavin was available for the Swedish game. Inspiration as well as being at the heart of the two best team goals in the tournamen revitalised Guus Hiddink's men, after the misfortune of the Spain match, and the misfiring against the Greeks. The Dutch on the other hand look excellent going forward and frail at the back. Just like Germany. In some respects a Dutch-German final would be a fantastic spectacle and one likely to feature a lot of goals, but I would be suprised if both made it. After fancying a Croatia-Portugal final in the top half (I know I didn't say it on here, but I'm hardly going to pretend I got it wrong just for the sake of it, am I?), I'll give the kiss of death to the Italians and the Russians. The latter after penalties. And as Tom Dunmore of Pitch Invasion points out, any Total Football we see tonight, is more likely to come from the Russians.

One In, Aul In

And the headings get worse. Both a statement of fact and a promise for the future. The Gareth McAuley saga is finally over, and hopefully this means that now he and David Norris are on board, and given the 'no comment' about Shola Ameobi, maybe our attempts at conducting transfer business via the press are over.

Well. Almost.

“We have made an enquiry about Shola [Ameobi] but not a bid." - Jim Magilton, 14th June
“If I could get [José Emilio] Guerra I would. We have made an enquiry to Barcelona about him and we will see what happens." - Magilton, 14th June

Magilton has almost stated that he's still after "back four players" - likely to be another centre half and a left back, with maybe more cover at full back, "strengthening the midfield" - rumoured to be after a left midfielder, although a right midfielder seems more urgent, given we don't have a natural one, and a striker. No mention of a keeper, so either Nick Colgan's staying as backup to Shane Supple, or he's staying open-minded about the level of keeper he's looking for. All of which leaves next season's team looking like this.

GK: Shane Supple or New signing
RB: David Wright or Alex Bruce
CB: Gareth McAuley
CB: New signing or Richard Naylor or Alex Bruce
LB: New signing or David Wright
RM: Square peg. Probably David Norris or Jon Walters or Danny Haynes
CM: Owen Garvan
CM: Velice Sumulikoski or Tommy Miller
LM: New signing or Alan Quinn
CF: New signing
CF: Jon Walters or Danny Haynes or Alan Lee or Pablo Couñago

Clear as crystal then.