Premiership Time!

Blackpool's Stanley Matthews(l) takes on Bolton's Malcolm Barrass in the 1953 FA Cup Final

Yes, 'til the season again! And once more, we are here with fearless predictions! This year, I've decided to divide the Premiership teams up into groups, based on their rough projected finish. Furthermore, I have wittily named these groups after Clash songs. So here we go (teams are listed in alphabetical order in each group, and last year's finish is in brackets after the team name)!

"Brand New Cadillac": Arsenal (3), Chelsea (1), Manchester City (5), Manchester United (2). You can probably lay down money that your champion will come from this group, and there's a good chance that these teams will hog all the Champions' League spots. Large questions remain concerning Man City's ability to get their very expensive lineup to gel (and they're not done tinkering with it yet), but I think they're ready to make the jump. The other three teams here are long-standing members of the "Big Four," and it'll be no surprise at all to see them clustered at the top of the table again. These teams have no chance at all of being relegated, and failure to qualify for Europe will be viewed as a catastrophe.

"Safe European Home": Everton (8), Liverpool (7), Tottenham Hotspur (4). Here we have the teams that are likely to take the Europa Cup (formerly UEFA Cup) spots. These teams are dangerous, and do have a chance to creep into the Champions' League, as Spurs did last season, but they probably won't contend for the Premiership title. Fortunately, relegation is also virtually out of the question. And what is Liverpool, traditionally one of the "Big Four," doing in this lowlier group? Suffering from major financial problems, is what. Liverpool are actually very hard to figure out for this season; they could rise above it all and get in there with the big boys at the top of the table, or they could implode, sell all their good players, and finish 16th.

"Lost in the Supermarket": Aston Villa (6), Birmingham (9), Blackburn Rovers (10), Bolton Wanderers (14), Fulham (12), Newcastle United (promoted), Stoke City (11), Sunderland (13). Ah, here we have the great "meh" of the mid-table of the Premiership, with no disrespect intended. These teams generally don't have the financial clout to compete for Champions' League spots, and can really only hope (faintly) to fight their way into the lesser Europa Cup. Relegation is also unlikely for these teams; however, a bad run of injuries or loss of form could land any one of them in hot water quite quickly. The mystery team here is Newcastle. They're back, obviously, and they've certainly got the fan-base to compete with anyone, but the seers have foreseen a season consolidation before they once again assail the upper reaches of the Premiership. We also originally had Aston Villa in the "Safe European Home" group, but their manager walked out on them this week, three days before their first game, and that's not going to do their chances any good at all.

"Should I Stay or Should I Go?": West Bromwich Albion (promoted), West Ham United (17), Wigan Athletic (16), Wolverhampton Wanderers (15). No, I do not have anything against the letter "W". These teams must be a bit nervous looking forward to the season, since two of the relegation spots are likely to go to members of this group. Mid-table safety will be quite acceptable, and a spot in Europe next season would border on the miraculous. West Ham are probably the strongest of this group, and the most likely to survive.

"Train in Vain": Blackpool (promoted). Almost dead certs for relegation, unfortunately. Once one of England's great teams, Blackpool last saw the top division in 1971, and have stumbled around the lower flights ever since. Now, a couple of years back Hull City managed to survive their first ever Premiership season, so the situation isn't totally hopeless, but Blackpool's chances are slim and none, and slim's in the taxi on the way to the airport. Blackpool just don't have the resources to compete at this level. At least they'll always have "The Matthews Final."

So, in the end, your Premiership table is likely to look roughly so:

1	Manchester United
2	Arsenal
3	Manchester City
4	Chelsea
5	Liverpool
6	Tottenham Hotspur
7	Everton
8	Aston Villa
9	Newcastle United
10	Sunderland
11	Birmingham City
12	Fulham
13	Bolton Wanderers
14	Blackburn Rovers
15	Stoke City
16	West Ham United
17	Wigan Athletic
18	Wolverhampton Wanderers
19	West Bromwich Albion
20	Blackpool

And what of Millwall, back in the Championship, the second tier of English football? Well, to be honest, their goal this season is to finish above three other teams in the standings. I'll be happy wherever they end up, as long as they don't get relegated straight back to League 1. And they're off to a decent start; the Championship actually began play last weekend, and Millwall strolled off to Bristol City, a team with a genuine shot at promotion to the Premiership. Sometime later, they strolled back to London, having thrashed City 3-0. So that was good, but there's still a long road ahead of them.

And finally, you didn't think I'd do the whole "Clash song title" thing and then not post a vid, did you? Here's "Safe European Home":

Post Title Goes Here!

So with the Premiership season due to commence on Saturday, the wizened Kobold seers are even now adding the eye of newt and such to the scrying cauldrons to see what may be seen. Last year the seers did pretty well, actually correctly selecting the three relegated teams (missed on the title winners, though, and went three-for-four on Champions League participants).

That's for tomorrow, however. In the meantime, behold! as one of the greatest scientific questions of our age is at last answered:

Premiership!

Yes, it is that time again! Or rather, it was that time again last weekend, when the 2009-2010 Premiership season actually began. However, it's not too late to take a look at what's likely to happen over the coming months!

The top of the Premiership table is likely to look a lot like it did last year. In fact, I think it's probably Manchester United's title to lose again, despite the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo et al. They're too well-managed, and none of Liverpool, Chelsea, or Arsenal significantly strengthened their teams over the summer.

As always, one big question revolves around whether anybody is going to be able to catch one of the big four, and this year's prime candidate is Manchester City, who are now the richest soccer team on the planet (yes, seriously) and have been throwing the money around in a meaningful sort of way. I have heard some speculation that Arsenal are vulnerable, but I just don't think that Manchester City are quite ready to make the jump just yet. It's pretty much a given that they will qualify for the Champions' League one of these seasons, but it's probably not going to be this one. Other teams with European aspirations will, as always, include Aston Villa, Everton, and Tottenham.

At the other end of the table, the general consensus is that Hull City and Portsmouth are dooooomed, and I tend to concur. Hull City were dismal towards the end of last year, and Portsmouth are in deep financial trouble. The third relegation spot is far less certain. It's always tempting here to include one of the newly promoted sides, and I'm afraid that this time the finger of Fate points at Burnley. It's their first season in the top flight since 1976, and it's likely that they'll need a couple of tries to establish themselves among the big teams. The other two teams who came up, Birmingham City and Wolves, have recently experienced Premiership soccer, and should be better prepared.

And what of Millwall this year? Well, it's going to be very tough. There are about five clubs in League 1 this season who really should not be there on the basis of their resources and fanbase, and it's tough to see Millwall getting by enough of them to earn promotion. That said, nobody thought we'd come within 20 minutes of going up last season, either...

Anyway, here's your predicted Premiership table:

1	Manchester United
2	Chelsea
3	Liverpool
4	Arsenal
5	Manchester City
6	Aston Villa
7	Everton
8	Tottenham Hotspur
9	Sunderland
10	West Ham United
11	Fulham
12	Birmingham City
13	Bolton Wanderers
14	Wigan Athletic
15	Blackburn Rovers
16	Stoke City
17	Wolverhampton Wanderers
18	Hull City
19	Portsmouth
20	Burnley

Soccer Notes

A couple of wee tidbits:

• England lost a one of the good ones today. A genuinly classy individual, as well as a very fine manager. He also was known to employ an interesting turn of phrase, every once in awhile...
  
  
• The Canadian men's national team just returned from the CONCACAF Gold Cup, and I actually think it went pretty well. Canada faced as tough a group as they did during the WC qualifiers, but the boys defeated Jamaica and El Salvador, and managed to tie Costa Rica, thus in fact winning the group. The Canadians then bowed out at the quarter-final stage, losing to Honduras on a very debatable penalty call (aren't they all!). Most impressive of all, in the games that I saw, there was actually evidence of forward-thinking tactics, something that was too often lacking during the Dale Mitchell era. Oh, and Ali Gerba's goal against Jamaica was truly a thing of beauty:
  
  
  
  
• The new manager of the Canadian men's team, Stephen Hart, has enjoyed a fairly bright beginning (well, it's not really a beginning, since he was interim manager before Mitchell got the permanent job). Under Hart this time around, the team's record is: Played 6, Won 4, Drawn 1, Lost 1, 8 Goals Scored, 3 Conceded. Pretty good, I'd say.

So, How Did We Do?: Part 1

Quite some time ago, prior to the somewhat recently completed soccer season, the wizened Kobold seers speculated as to how the Premiership was going to turn out. And, given that the 2009-2010 campaign is just around the corner, it's probably time to see how they did. Here then are their picks, along

	Wizened Kobold Seers		Reality
1	Chelsea	1	ManchesterUnited
2	Manchester United	2	Liverpool
3	Liverpool	3	Chelsea
4	Arsenal	4	Arsenal
5	Tottenham Hotspur	5	Everton
6	Aston Villa	6	Aston Villa
7	Everton	7	Fulham
8	Manchester City	8	Tottenham Hotspur
9	Portsmouth	9	West Ham United
10	Newcastle United	10	Manchester City
11	West Ham United	11	Wigan Athletic
12	Bolton Wanderers	12	Stoke City
13	Blackburn Rovers	13	Bolton Wanderers
14	Middlesbrough	14	Portsmouth
15	Sunderland	15	Blackburn Rovers
16	Fulham	16	Sunderland
17	West Bromwich Albion	17	Hull City
18	Wigan Athletic	18	Newcastle United
19	Hull City	19	Middlesbrough
20	Stoke City	20	West Bromwich Albion

Some observations. First of all, the seers didn't actually do too badly, especially in the top half of the table (on the other hand, picking the top four teams in the Premiership is hardly a chore these days). They even managed to pick exactly the correct spot for Arsenal and Aston Villa! Well done seers! However, they also learned a valuable lesson: Tottenham Hotspur will always disappoint you.

Newcastle contemplate life outside the Premiership

There was less success with the bottom half; none of the teams picked to be relegated actually were. Fulham, Stoke, and Wigan all greatly exceeded everybody's expectations, and nobody really foresaw Newcastle's annus horribilis. Of the three teams selected by the seers to go down, Hull City actually came closest. They had a wild season; Hull were in the top five early on, and then completely collapsed, only securing safety at Newcastle's expense on the last day of the season.

And what about Millwall? Well, Millwall had a brilliant year, up until the last 20 minutes of it. The Lions finished fifth and qualified for the promotion playoffs, wherein they defeated mighty Leeds United in the first round. With 20 minutes to go in the playoff final against Scunthorpe, Millwall were leading 2-1, but they couldn't hold on and ended up losing 3-2. And so face another season of League 1 football, but this time there will be some big names (Norwich, Southampton, Charlton, and - heh,heh - Leeds) to keep us company.

Harris puts Millwall in front against Leeds

Next time: How did we do with Serie A?

De Stultitiis

Well now...

The Government of Alberta recently embarked upon the project of finding a new slogan for the province. It duly settled upon "Alberta: Freedom to create. Spirit to achieve," which is probably decent enough as provincial slogans go, since it creates warm cuddly feelings without conveying any information whatsoever beyond the name of the place. This slogan has duly been plastered all over pictures of charming-looking scenery, such as this one (click it to see larger version):



Lovely, no? The problem, of course, is that the scenery in that picture isn't in Alberta. Nor is it in Canada. In fact, it's not even on this particular continent. In fact, that's the coast of the North Sea, in Northumberland, England. It's not far from Bamburgh Castle, as shown on the map below.



Now, what makes this particularly funny is that the government PR types, when queried about this little problem, chose not to simply say "Oops, our bad." Instead, they trotted out the "I meant to do that" defense. From Paula Simon's column about it in the Edmonton Journal:

"'This slide represents Albertans' concern for the future of the world,' Olga Guthrie, manager of the brand initiative for Alberta's public affairs bureau, wrote..."

and later:

"'There's no attempt to make people think that this is Alberta,' says Tom Olsen, the premier's director of media relations. 'There's no attempt to mislead. That picture just fit the mood and tone of what we were trying to do.'"

Yeesh. Yeah, slapping the province's shiny new slogan onto a picture of some countryside has no chance at all of making the casual viewer believe that it's a picture of Alberta. I say again, "Yeesh."

However, it occurs to me that we could have some fun with this. So, kiddies, get out your crayons, and let's make some Alberta tourism posters! Like this one, which subtly reminds the viewer of the vastness of the Alberta prairie:



Or how about this one, which takes us a bit further afield?:



Or this?:



So go to it, and have fun!

UPDATE: The Alberta government has now in fact issued a straightforward apology for the mix-up.

Now then, turning our attention to a much more malignant and serious bit of stupidity. Warning!: This next section deals with a Michael Coren column! Once you've read it, you won't be able to un-read it. For those of you unfamiliar with Michael Coren, he's a columnist for the Sun Media chain, and also hosts some sort of talk show. In terms of his political beliefs, he resides within easy hailing distance of the folks who get together every April 20th to sing the "Horst-Wessel-Lied." Prior to what we're about to examine, my "favourite" Michael Coren piece was the one in which he pitched a whiny, passive-aggressive, fit because the Muslims portrayed in Little Mosque on the Prairie weren't murderous enough for him.

We're a bit late to the dance with this one, as it's already been pounded on here, here, and here, to name but three examples. Anyway, here's what Mr. Coren vomited forth in his Sun column last Saturday, about the death due to enemy action in Afghanistan of Trooper Karine Blais, 12e Régiment Blindé du Canada (Coren's words are in italics, with my comments in normal script):

So Canada sacrifices another victim on the altar of equality.

Last week a young girl dressed up as a soldier died in the increasingly futile and pointless war in Afghanistan. She was 21 years old, had been in the country for two weeks on her first tour of duty and probably weighed a little over 100 pounds.

"Dressed up as a soldier," hmmm? Methinks, after that crack, that Mr. Coren should keep his head up the next time he's in Valcartier.

Please know that I mean no disrespect to Karine Blais or to her family and I grieve for her and them. But what on earth was she doing in such a place and in such a job?

What she was doing was serving her country. And the notion that Coren "mean[s] no disrespect" is, as we say, stercus equinum. The entire thesis and purpose of this column is explicit disrespect for Trooper Blais, and every other female Canadian soldier.

Look at the photograph of this beautiful girl. Look at the innocence, the gentleness, the grace. All of them precious aspects to the human character. So when I say that she was "dressed up as a soldier" I mean it as a compliment. I've known soldiers all of my life and I have an invincible respect for them. I've seen their courage, integrity and sheer decency.

And with that we pass through some sort of event horizon of assholery. Having sneered about "a young girl dressed up as a soldier," Coren now tries to cover his rear end by claiming that he meant it in a good way.

I've also seen their capacity for controlled and righteous violence, which is absolutely essential for any fighting man. Yes, man. Because there are few if any women who have the skills required to serve as a front-line combat trooper.

This is true, but only because there are very few people of any gender who have the skills required for combat.

Yes, yes, yes, I know it's fundamentally anti-Canadian to say this but I'd prefer to articulate the views of the silent majority than hide behind some modernist fetish that places more importance on the myth of absolute equality than the safety of a girl who should be laughing with college friends rather than fighting theocratic madmen.

For those of us familiar with Coren' oeuvre, the thought of him calling anybody a "theocratic madman" is more than just a little bit ironic. Oh, and if you believe for one second that Michael Coren thinks women should have the right to attend college, then I've got a stretch of North Sea coast in Alberta that I'd like to sell you.

Can we really imagine for a moment that if a group of Taliban tribesmen rushed a trench or an encampment this poor young woman could fight them off, could deal with the thrusts of their long knives and heavy clubs? Do we seriously think that the men in the unit would not risk their own lives to protect a pretty young girl who was inevitably being beaten to the ground by salivating killers?

This is the stupidest paragraph in the entire column, and that's saying something. First of all, yes, the men, and women, of the unit would certainly come to the aid of one of their own, male or female, who was in difficulty. They would do this thing because they are soldiers. Secondly, I do rather think that Trooper Blais could have dealt with knife- and/or club-wielding attackers (salivating or otherwise), probably by using one of these:



That is a C7A1 Assault Rifle. It is capable of emptying a 30-round magazine in a little over two seconds, and is going to represent a serious obstacle for anyone who attacks the wielder with medieval weaponry, whether or not said wielder is female. What killed Trooper Blais (and has, I believe, accounted for the majority of the Canadian casualties in Afghanistan) was a roadside bomb, and those don't generally discriminate on the basis of gender.

The very reason we have various weight categories for all forms of organized fighting is that whatever the training, a pugilist's weight and muscle bulk give an advantage to the heavier combatant.

Once again, NATO forces in Afghanistan have guns. So do the Taliban. If you're strong enough to pick a gun up and point it somebody, then it doesn't matter if you're Charles Atlas. And why is Coren so obsessed with the idea that the fighting in Afghanistan is mostly hand-to-hand? Does he think this is a repeat of the Third Crusade? On second thought, don't answer that...

More than this, even contrived cultural denial should not prevent us from admitting that the death of a daughter or a wife is different from that of a son or a husband. Women nurture, give birth, care in a way that is unique. Quite simply, they are different from men.

And here we have the ago-old little paternalistic argument against women taking part in such strenuous pursuits as soldiering, policing, fire-fighting, sports, and voting. It's an argument that is still sadly trotted out by people like Michael Coren and, well, the Taliban.

If captured, of course, such a woman would be repeatedly raped. And tortured. Again, I'm not meant to say this. Not Canadian, not CBC, not Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Not the sort of thing we're supposed to feel, so we pretend that men and women in the army, police and fire service are given the same tests and have to fulfil the same requirements. Yet truth still breaks through.

Yes. And the truth that has broken out of this situation is this: Trooper Karine Blais, a competent, brave, qualified, and capable soldier, died in the service of her country. Period. I'm not going to get into debate about the worthiness or lack thereof of the Afghanistan mission here, as I think it's a moot point for the purpose of dissecting Coren's column. And, by the way, it wouldn't be a Michael Coren column without some gratuitous sniping at the CBC.

We rightly condemn Islamic extremists in Afghanistan because they treat women so badly. Then we allow one of our own to give her life so that we can congratulate ourselves on how liberal and egalitarian we are, lie about how gender difference don't [sic] matter and then encourage our generals and politicians to obscure the truth on television about soldiers and causes.

What hypocrites we have become. Poor, poor Karine -- this is not the way it should have been.

You and your country deserved better.

And, in closing, Coren turns the "Sanctimony" knob up to 11. He really is a world-class twerp.

Our deepest sincere condolences to the family and friends of Trooper Blais, and of the other 116 Canadians who have died in Afghanistan to date.

Speaking of Italian Snails...

...Here's an interesting story from the BBC:

Snail hides from march of history
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

A colony of Mediterranean snails has been found at the UK's Cliveden House, where they have lived in marble-wrapped secrecy for a century.

The snails, never found before in the UK, apparently came from Italy in a balustrade bought by a Lord Astor, a former owner of the mansion.

A fitting way to end Bug Week here at De Koboldorum Rebus!