At this very moment, persons willing to fork over far too much of their monthly income to the great god of sports programing, DirectTV, have the priviledge of choosing from 3 live Premiership matches taking place simultaneously ; Arsenal v Sheffield United (many shots of Neil Warnock screaming) on FSC, Fulham v Chelsea on Setanta US (at least one shot of Terry Venables looking like he fell asleep on a tanning bed) and most curiously, Man City v West Ham United on the newly launched Setanta Xtreme.

Tough to choose between the 3 ; I’d opted for the Stuart Pearce deathwatch, but the Xtremely incompetent folks at Ch. 670 didn’t manage to flip the switch until the match was some 15 minutes old. That said, all of the above remain blacked out on live television in the UK.


It would, however, be unfair for me to suggest that American footie junkies have the better deal. Not only are US viewers deprived frequent cut-ins to Chris Kamara bellowing over what can be described as moderate crowd noise, but we’re also screwed out of other enticing small screen morsels. For instance, later this afternoon, Ch. 5 UK are showing “Dennis The Menace Strikes Again”, starring Betty White, Carrot Top, Brian Doyle Murray, George Wendt and Don Rickles as Mr. Wilson.

Through the glory of econo internet audio, I’m currently listening to John Gregory’s first match in charge of QPR, a scoreless thriller with Hull, midway through the first half. The BBC London commentary team have suggested that “we might not see a goal from open play,” which a polite way of saying both sides are as poor as you’d think.

Over on the sadly neglected (by me, anyway) Gol TV, Bayern Munich are clinging to a 2-1 advantage over Alemania Aachen, Mark van Bommel’s 55th minute strike being the difference. They claim Oliver Kahn is 37 but he doesn’t look a day older than Grant Fuhr.

Earlier this morning, Liverpool scored 3 second half goals against visiting Spurs for their 2nd home win in 4 days.

The former MetroStars broke ground on their new stadium earlier this week in Harrison, NJ. In the future, if anyone asks Tony Meola to kiss them where it smells, the commute will be rather brief.