Well now, when it comes to football, one man has for many years been the most noticeable, the most controversial, and occasionally the most successful blogger this country has ever produced. His pithy words and abrasive style make him as famous off the pitch as he is on it. This man is Escapini. "I love football. Football she's a cruel mistress. She's, she's more than a mistress. She's a wife, she's a mother, she's a daughter, she's an errant child. She's a… she's a… she can make you laugh, she make you cry. She can bring tears me eyes. She can bring blood to me shoulders. She can bring a kettle to the boil." "Cause football is about nothing, unless it's about something and what it is about, is football."

1 min readPublished 16 Aug 2010, 19:43

Arsenal Football Club

Will Arsene Get Given Or Will Mancini Do ‘A Bellamy’ ?

Shay Given’s future appeared not to be in doubt this morning as Roberto Mancini made noises about hanging on to the player he dropped in favour of Joe ‘Having the form of my damn life’ Hart.

But Warren Barton who played with Given for years was talking on American TV’s Fox Soccer today. He said that Shay to Arsenal is pretty much a done deal.

Mancini remember folks is under no pressure financially to do anything. As with Bellamy, Manchester City are under no obligation to sell to anyone.

So will an new phrase pass into football vernacular, ‘Always the Schwarzer, never the Given’? Possibly not, but given (sorry, that wasn’t deliberate) the Fulham keeper’s recent quotes, if Barton is onto something here, Mark may have wished he’d kept his mouth shut.