Flog - Snowman Pavlyuchensnow!

SNOW! Look! White, fluffy snow! Wow! There’s Fernando Torres throwing a snowball! Guffaw! Gareth Bale is chucking a lump of snow at David Bentley! Zoinks! Scott Carson has just found the huge snowman his team mates have hid in his car! Ha ha ha! Ha ha bloody ha!
I hate snow. Well actually I don’t. I love it. It’s just the leftovers I hate. The inch deep rink that I have to negotiate while getting to the station each morning is becoming ever more tiresome and I think the fear of slipping down one of the two (two!) hills and into a main road on the way will send me to an early stress induced grave.
So quite what all these footballers are enjoying about it, I don’t know. They’re forced out into the abyss, go to training where any form of mild slide tackle will result in shards of ice becoming part of their anatomy, then their game gets called off and they go home. To eat chocolate and stuff.
I’m not sure if we’re supposed to feel more endeared towards the modern footballer after being exposed to these ‘behind the scenes’ pictures of them or not. It certainly depicts them in a more human and overall normal light, something that Joey Barton tried to do recently, but instead of using snow he simply called them all ‘knobs’. Erm, did you not see how hilarious it was when Scott Carson’s car got ruined by 10kg of solid, filthy snow? A-ha, a-ha, a-ha.
Carson’s reaction, however, was truly something to behold. Before realising the cameras were on I swear I saw his top lip quiver in anger. ‘I should be England’s number 1, but instead I’m being mocked. Mocked by Scottish defenders.’ Then he saw the camera. ‘Oh… erm… ha ha ha’.
And I’m sure Torres loved the snow too, for all of about seven seconds, while the cameras were there. I’m sure they failed to capture the moment when a huge lump of the white stuff found it’s way under his collar and down his training top, at which point he attacks the perpetrator, Ryan Babel, and bludgeons him into a pulp on the field out of utter freezing shock.
It would be interesting to see what Nemanja Vidic makes of it all as well, seeing as he and his family already claim to be struggling to fully adapt to the English weather, and that was when it was just grey. That’s a good 85% of the time, mate. Still, you could always move to London and make your way to the match on a Saturday by train like the United fans, Nemanja. You could lead them; for many it‘s their first and only visit.
I felt for the Bolton supporters on Wednesday too, who were effectively in their seats at the Emirates before the game was called off. Typically, they couldn’t just accept that they wouldn’t be seeing the game, they had to have a pop at the Southerners as well. ‘They think the ice is bad here, they should see me’ mam’s house in Bolton’, declared the 6th Peter Kay look-a-like to step off the bus. Still, to cancel a game so late with an away set of supporters already on route to the stadium is completely unacceptable on Arsenal’s part. If there’s a good chance of it being off, call it early and stop the coach before it hits the M1, not when they’re outside the ground you tits.

In other news Portsmouth continue to excite on every level except a footballing one, with the club now facing a winding up order from the Inland Revenue, along with unpaid debts to other Premier League and Championship clubs for past transfers and of course relegation. Reports today suggest that their entire squad is up for sale, but let’s be brutal here, even if every single player goes it wouldn’t settle their debt. It wouldn’t settle my overdraft. Later in the day Portsmouth claimed that they have ‘no need’ to offload any players. Really? But they’re so shit, aren’t they?
Hindsight is a wonderfully horrible thing in football, and if Portsmouth fans excercise it then they’ll soon be throwing themselves under a bus. Let’s face it, only 2 good things would come from the club going into administration, or even closing up altogether, and that is 1) that bloody bell will stop ringing, and 2) (and seriously) perhaps the Premiership’s ‘fit and proper persons’ test will actually fucking mean something. Club loyalties aside, I don’t think any of us want to see Portsmouth FC go under, but maybe it will make people think twice before hailing a new exotic owner as any sort of messiah at their own club.

Hang in there, Pompey.

PUNS!: To finish off this edition of Flog, here are some weather related football puns: Alessandro Frostacurta, Sam Allard-ice, Sled Evans, Snow Hansen, Snowman Pavlyuchensnow, Ian Slush, Evander Sno-w, Mark Snowball (personal favourite) and Sleeter Schmeichel. Thanks to Tom Page for Ben Froster and Jen Slayman, and Joey Page for Pedsnow Mendes. Joey also had Les Fur-dinand, but by this point we realised we had things to do.