ClaRK! Kent

He is indeed. Plus it's a fucking dross of an album. It's a shame, because DeLonge can actually write a good song, but he's so wrapped up in himself that it all reads like the suicide note of a 14 year-old, lovestruck dyslexic. Not to mention that the lead guitarist's creative process on I-Empire seems to have involved simply nicking The Eagles' effects pedal and running off with it. Not as bad as their first album, but I think that's only because it didn't have anything like the hype/anticipation behind it, so it wasn't as much of an anticlimax. Ahem. Meanwhile, I've been listening to Saliva of late, they're generally pretty good. Right now I'm getting to grips with Robyn's self-titled effort from 2006. Not to sound like a mini-Hamster here, but it's a fucking awesome effort - great pop from start to finish, Robyn's done very well to move with the times and there are flavours of electro and dance running through the album like the syrup in a tub of Raspberry Ripple ice cream. I'd definitely recommend it to anybody who likes electro-pop, and actually I'd urge most people to give it a try. Although I'm a bit worried that on 'Konichiwa Bitches,' she threatens to come in my mouth.

Look at Matterazzi, Baggio, and Filippo Inzaghi, maybe. Age is only a real issue if you play at the Premiership's breakneck tempo, when it's all about pace and off-the-ball penetration, where avoiding the offside trap is the key weapon of many strikers and springing it is the big saving of many a back four. If Capello wants to play a different game, which is perhaps an interesting way to play on the international stage - a slower, more methodical and technical game - then it might be worth at least examining some of those older players, who are technically still very gifted indeed. And as for Camoranesi, Ringy - I think a lot of his on-field antics are highly over-exaggerated, but that's personal opinion and a lot of the diving and such can be attributed to the fact that he joined Juve under Lippi, who is quite renowned for that style of play and did his best to drum it into a lot of the younger/newer plays at Juve during his reign. Not that subsequent managers (Capello included, TBF) did much to disencourage that kind of behaviour, but Camoranesi was never as bad as a lot of his team-mates in that respect. As for the tyre-slashing... he's probably got no defence there, but if you look at what'd just happened to the team... yeah, I would've been quite pissed off. [/apologist]

Derek Jacobi and Christopher Lee in The Golden Compass. Two of the best British actors of the 20th century, condemned to mugging and hamming it up with awful dialogue and, thanks to the film's castration of the books' core religious overtones, no real clue as to what their characters are meant to be doing. I saw the movie the other day and, although I didn't hate it, seeing those two in it was pretty fucking painful.

Nah, they mentioned it in Smith and Jones I believe, just a throwaway line about how she had some cousin who one day never came home, when the Doc's talking to her about aliens and such. Rose coming back is quite meh indeed, and I'm really hoping that we don't have her coming on semi-recurring or full-time again. Urgh. And I'm hoping beyond hope that they don't bring the fucking Rani back, she was really dreadful. Grr. Thankfully, they seem to be sticking to this 'one monster returns per year' thing, and this season we've already had our old-school monster confirmed. Spoiler: Click here to view SONTARANS!

Regardless of whether or not the players like him, he's an injury-prone thug with a big head and absolutely no sense of decorum. Scoff all you like, but decorum and knowing how to conduct yourself should be a large part of an England captain's job. Sure, the Italians won the World Cup with a team of players who's sportsmanship was perhaps questionable (and really, only a few of them - Toni and Camoranesi are very professional guys) but I doubt Fabio Cannavaro would be first in line to host an alcohol-fuelled, Page 3 Girl-laden romp ending with players getting sucked off in club corridors, in the week of a game no less. Terry's a good player, sure, but he's a disgraceful footballer. Pick him for the team, sure, he's worth his place if he's fit - but he's a poor choice for the captain.

As somebody who has actually followed Italian football religiously for my entire life, as opposed to just watching Football Italia and going "yeah, they're good, them" when somebody plays Milan in the Champion's League, I think it's not a bad move at all. Capello's technically very gifted, and he's got a very strong personality, which is where Erikkson and McClaren (and to a lesser extent, every England manager since Alf Ramsay) have gone wrong. He's already shown he can take a team of overpaid, underperforming prima donnas with an opinion of themselves that far outweighs their actual talent - winning La Liga with Real Madrid's Galactico-lite team last term - and if the supporters are willing to forego this self-destructive obsession with 'sexy football' for results then I think he'll do well. His tournament record is a little iffy, but he's a harsh taskmaster and right now that's what English football really needs. McClaren was a social climbing joke, Erikkson was clever but a bit shy, whereas Capello has proven he has the force of will to buck people's ideas up. And hey - if he can drop Francesco Totti, Ruud Gullit, Alessandro del Piero and Vincent Candela at the height of their respective careers, then perennial underachievers like Rio Ferdinand and Steven Gerrard might be convinced to actually start playing for their places. I'd be interested, at this point, to see if he sticks with John Terry as captain. Aside from the fact that he's a bit of a sicknote, he's also a spoilt fucking idiot who seems to think nobody is allowed to tackle the England captain, snatches red cards, and is generally a bit of a dick as the tabloids are so fond of pointing out, then forgetting when there's a game on. Having seen the kinds of people Capello generally entrusts responsibility to, I wouldn't be so sure if he lost faith in Terry and went for somebody who's a bit more of a role model. Hargreaves, perhaps. Or Gerrard, if the boy can start playing.

So, at the end of my stompingly brilliant season with Aston Villa, we finish the league in 3rd and win the FA Cup, also losing the League Cup Final on penalties to the cruel, evil Newcastle. I'm preparing for a pre-season building on the successes of the last year, which included finally securing the signature of Eduardo (mad bidding wars the previous year had stretched the deal beyond the transfer window and it went kablooey) and overhauling my ageing defensive line with Nicky Shorey and the bad-ass Kirk Broadfoot, who had spent a year in the Man City reserves turning into a stone-cold killer before being transfer listed. Go figure. Anyway, it's at this point that Chelsea lose the Champion's Shield to Man Utd 3-0, which - coupled with a trophy-less season - causes Mr. Abramovich to knee-jerk and get rid of Jose Mourinho. Who does he offer the job to? Me, that's bloody right. I take the job, because it was eerily similar to the current situation, and I have about 2 weeks to buy in players before the window closes. Jose's done something right, already purchasing the badass right wing-back Rafinha and (albeit in a delayed move from last year) Rodrigo Palacio, so I spent the rest of my whopping transfer budget on a double salvo of Germans - Christophe Metzelder and, for a cool £28million, Miroslav Klose. Yep. Currently sitting pretty, 9 points clear at the top of the league, in mid-December with a 100% record from the first stage of the Champion's League, and not even an injured Shevchenko can bring me down with Klose and Palacio having clicked in about 3 minutes to form an unstoppable strike partnership that regularly sees me winning games by 3 or more goals. The 5-1 drubbing of Man Utd was my personal favourite, especially as we scored 3 in 8 minutes after they went ahead before half time. Klose's been named Player of the Year, yippee. And where are my old team, the erstwhile Aston Villa? Their new manager Steve Bruce (at least he didn't have to move house) currently has them sitting in 11th, which is staggering for a team consisting of Eduardo, Elano and Ashley Young, who I trained to perfection in under a year. I plan to sign Young in the next close season, and I'll probably take Eduardo and Broadfoot too if I can get them (despite his immense talents, Broadfoot's only valued at £3million, barely a drop in the pond for Roman's bank balance). Our game against Villa, which was fittingly away, saw a strikeforce of Luke Moore and Juan Pablo Angel roundly fail to do anything effective while Elano laboured away in a central midfield role, Young fizzled out on the left wing, and Eduardo watched from the bench, probably wondering what had happened to the promises of European football. Chelsea 3, Villa 0, thanks to a brace from Klose and a 35 yard screamer from Michael Ballack, who has been in awesome form (probably with all of that Germanic blood in the team). Life's good.

Hmm... On bass and backing vox, Melissa Auf der Maur, Who played, albeit briefly, with Radio Sloan (backing guitars) in The Chelsea, Who played on Peaches' album The Teaches of Peaches, which also featured vocalist Leslie Feist, Who is in Broken Social Scene with Brendan Canning (second bass), Who has worked on BSS songs with Murray Lightburn (guitars), Who is in The Dears with our drummer, George Donoso. That's, I believe, an entirely Canadian group. Kewl. Now to try another one, with some slightly less tenuous links, using the exact same starting point 'cos AdM is the perfect supergroup musician... Playing bass guitar and rocking the vocal chords, Melissa Auf der Maur, Who collaborated with producer and multi-instrumentalist Chris Goss (he'll play keyboards here) on her solo album, Who worked with QoTSA legend Josh Homme (lead guitar, vox) on basically everything said band every did, Who was of course in Eagles of Death Metal with the drummer Samantha Maloney (fun fact - she was also in Hole with AdM), Who played in Motley Crue with Mick Mars (guitars), Who contributed guitar parts to the Swedish sleaze-rock outfit CRASHDIET, which includes our second bassist Peter London. That'd be a seriously badass band. EDIT: I can't believe I forgot that AdM did vox with Ryan Adams at one point. Eugh, that'd have been an entire other avenue of weird.

Yep. Basically, those of you who know more than you probably need to about me might know that I do stand-up comedy. Basically, starting in a couple of weeks, I have a lot of gigs coming up (some of them headliners, yeehaw) and I need, for want of a better term, entrance music. I've been using 'The Riverboat Song' by Ocean Colour Scene up to this point, but seeing as I'm going to be going in with almost 100% new material and an entirely new direction (I've spent the past few months rediscovering my card-carrying opinionated, cynical and close-to-the-bone nature, if you will) I want to get a new song. My style's quite talkative, the odd bit of audience-y stuff, and it's very confrontational and take-no-prisoners, if you will. The people I did a test run to last weekend referred to it as 'rock'n'roll comedy', which I quite like. What I want for an entrance tune is something rock'n'roll, with an arrogant and self-assured sort of feel to it, and preferably with a long-ish (30 seconds minimum) intro so I can milk the entrance for all it's worth. I've been toying with Kid Rock's 'Cocky', and Oasis' 'Morning Glory' myself, but I thought I'd open it up to you guys to offer some suggestions, because EWB's fucking good for musical knowledge. So yeah... there we go. Many thanks.

Villa! That's just reminded me, I kinda forgot about my new-ish Villa game, what with returning to the England game and doing Euro 2008, what with international games being at the fore for the last few days. Speaking of Euro 2008, I got the 'group of death' so to speak - Czech Republic, Holland, and Portugal. Every other group was dead easy, especially considering the French, Italians and Germans all failed to qualify for the tournament proper. Went with a 4-1-2-2-1 for the Portugal game, Hargreaves playing just behind a midfield of Lampard and Barton (Gareth Barry, sadly, crocked himself in the FA Cup Final and missed the tournament ), with Downing and Gerrard playing wide and cutting in to support our lone striker, Wayne Rooney. Beat 'em 2-0, continued with that formation for the Czech game (replacing Rooney with Crouch for aerial superiority and playing SWP on the right, with Barton shuffled out for Gerrard in the middle) and beat them 2-0 as well. For the Holland game, back to my usual 4-1-3-2, resting some of the big guns as we'd already qualified, still able to beat the Dutch 4-2 despite having gone a goal down twice, Crouch (HAT-TRICK HERO!) and Lampard were my heroes there. Got Romania in the quarter-finals, managed to go 2 down in about 20 minutes, got one back before half-time from Crouch. One spirited half-time team talk later, we go out and tear them apart in the second half, with two more from Crouch and a 35-yard screamer from Hargreaves putting us into the semi-final. Awesome. At this point, Micah Richards gets food poisoning, so Carragher the all-purpose utility man comes in and plays a blinder against Sweden in the semi-final, entirely shutting Kim Kallstrom and (later) Tobias Hysen out of the game, allowing Nicky Shorey to come forward and contribute to the attack. Which he did, setting up 2 of Stewart Downing's 3 goals, with Crouch adding a fourth. They scored two quite late on, just so it was exciting for the last 15 minutes, and we go through 4-2. So... the final. SPAIN. Who have gone through both the quarter and semi-finals on penalty kicks, and certainly played as if they wanted penalties in the final, too. Okay then, we said - tackling hard and closing down hard, we force them to take off Fernando Torres, Raul AND Iniesta off injured in normal time, whilst at the other end we tested Iker Casillas no less than 38 times over the 120 minutes, but credit to him he was equal to 'em all. Penalties, then - they went 2-0 up, before Crouch and Gerrard got us 2 back, and Robinson saved 1 of theirs. All fell to Nicky Shorey, who netted his with ease, while Puyol managed to miss his sudden-death kick and up steps Wayne Rooney, who has found himself shut out in favour of 7-scoring Crouch - Rooney scores, we win! Crouch got player of the tournament, with Lampard and Hargreaves coming 2nd and 3rd. Hargreaves also won himself a new nickname from me, The Butcher of Geneva, for his performance in the final that saw Torres and Raul crying to their mothers and limping off within 45 minutes.

You're a swine.

The Wings back catalogue.

Seeing as MPH seemed to be suggesting this was a poll based on their solo work - George Harrison. He had far and away the best, if not necessarily the most successful, solo/post-Beatles career. Hell, if I'd made All Things Must Pass, I'd probably have rested on my laurels forever. But no, George continues on and makes Dark Horse, probably the most catchy tune of the entire 1980s (I've Got My Mind Set On You) and then contributes to making Bob Dylan bearable for the first time since about 1978 with the Travelling Wilburies. The man was easily the best of the solo Beatles, however cool Ringo's band were for kitsch value, and however fun his Thomas the Tank Engine voiceovers were. I don't hate Lennon's solo work, I actually adore it, but sadly he didn't have enough time after the band split up to really get into the groove, what with being a house-husband and retreating from music for much of the decade. That said, his last album before his death was awesome and it's a shame we won't get to hear 'elder statesman' Lennon, as 'young Lennon' and 'middle-aged Lennon' were both awesome in their own ways. As for McCartney... meh. People love to bash on about Mull of Kintyre and the Frog Chorus, which is fair enough 'cos they're bloody awful, but they forget that Macca and Wings had consistently some awesome albums and awesome songs - Band on the Run, Live and Let Die, even Pipes of Peace had its moments. He definitely went more twee/pop than the others once the Beatles broke up, but he did that very well. Mind you, if we're talking who was the best Beatle DURING the Beatles run, Lennon wins hands-down, if nothing else for his performance in A Hard Day's Night.

Harper, seriously? Bwahahaha. I'm sure Chris Weale and Kasper Schmeichel might have something to say about that.

Crazy Train by Ozzy/Black Sabbath. It spooks me out to the Nth degree.

Getting Gordon must always be done ASAP or he has a good year at Hearts and fucks off. Booted up my England game after the friendly yesterday, had a bit of a play of that. Fuck me, FM can be fairytale sometimes - friendly against South Korea, just a few days before the qualifiers with Israel/Russia (up-to-date, bitches!), I decide to give Michael Owen a game 'cos he's been injured forever (he even spent 2 months of the 3 month gap between the June and September games out with a thigh strain) and doesn't he just bloody score 2 goals to give us a 3-1 win, when we'd been having some difficulty penetrating their defence second half? Awesome. Of course, now I have to decide between Owen, a fit Rooney, an in-form Crouch, and my super-striker Darren Bent for the next games. Oh noes!

The Jam do a good version of the Batman theme. Oh, and there's always No More Heroes, by The Stranglers.

If you don't want both midfielders going forward, and you don't want to start with Hargreaves due to positional problems, why not go with Carrick? When he gets a good run of games under his belt and is on form, he's electric and he's the reason that Spurs haven't been up to much in midfield this last season. I'd probably go with... GK - Paul Robinson (still the best, no matter what anybody says - Foster is on the up-and-up though) DR - Micah Richards DL - Ashley Cole DC - John Terry DC - Rio Ferdinand DMC - Owen Hargreaves/Joey Barton MC - Steven Gerrard ML - Stewart Downing MR - Shawn Wright-Phillips/Joe Cole (he's naturally a right-sider) FC - Peter Crouch FC - Wayne Rooney

Boxzy is sadly correct - I've always rated Barry, he's quietly brilliant and can play in that deeper role which allows the other central midfielder to run off and create chances, and it's criminal that nobody has taken notice and recommended him to Sven/McClaren before really. He's definitely deserved at least a friendly here and there to see how he goes. But, as soon as Hargreaves is eligible again, he'll be back out. SWP did damn well, but once Hargreaves is back in and Lampard is fit, he'll be quietly eased out to shove Gerrard over onto the right, which is ultimately stupid. There's no point sticking with Beckham, who is going to be too old to do much at the tournament proper, so let's move him out quietly and give the players who will be able to do so in Switzerland/Austria (Lennon, SWP) a chance. As for Gerrard on the right... meh. I don't see why we're persisting with Lampard, who isn't as good as Gerrard, in a position that forces the better player out of position.

As much as I love The Lucksmiths, they shouldn't go anywhere near The Smiths. And Billy Bragg's version of 'Never Had No-One Ever' is possibly the worst Smiths cover of all time.

Eugh, bands should have to sign a contract before being allowed to cover The Smiths. One that stipulates that if it's shit, they'll get their heads cut off. The practical upshot of this is that nobody would cover The Smiths unless they were 100% sure it'd be awesome - every Smiths cover I've ever heard has been the drizzling shits, no matter how good the band is with their own work. Shed 7's version of Jean Genie > Shed 7's original material > Shed 7's 21st-century reincarnation (The Killers) Seeing somebody to a hard rock version of maybe Abduction from the Seraglio or the Marriage of Figaro would be beyond awesome. The ouvertures alone would be worth the price of the album - and the end-of-Act-2 march from Figaro would be seriously badass with drums and dirty bass.

WANT~! If I can't decide on a top 10, can I ask somebody at work for theirs and use them?

Does it have Zach Braff in it?

David Bowie. His work is amongst the best that a British artist has ever produced, yet he's never quite entered into the 'untouchable' pantheon. Hearing modern artists having a crack at Jean Genie, Rebel Rebel, John I'm Only Dancing, Changes et al would be quite the experience.

Yeah, selling players is a fucking nightmare unless you want to lose half the value of the player - why the fuck should I pay £12 million for Elano, when I can barely get people to pay £2 million for John Carew? GRRR!