The British Midland Team is ................Up in the Air

Peter Gilbert 11.12.00.

This has to be the most unusual football for me ever. I watched the whole game in a TV Studio after a plane journey.

I had in fact been invited by Sky Sports to provide a live match commentary/chat along with a Cov. fan on their fanzone channel.

So there we were, me and Tom my son at Manchester Airport waiting for our British Midland flight down to Heathrow. Once there we we were driven to Sky Sports studios in Isleworth in the very car (according to the driver) that had conveyed Peter Taylor not two weeks earlier.
We were shown round the Sky Empire, we chatted with Ray Wilkins and Nigel Spackman then we met our opposite number Chris Jones a Cov fan and it has to be said a good bloke and good company too.

We watched the game and talked about it live on TV, it was great fun.....the chat that is......not the game.

If you felt bad watching it, imagine if you will how I felt, having to talk it up whilst watching the most desultory Leicester City performance so far this season........just my luck.

The playing surface immediately brought us down to 'their' level and PT's passing game was right out the window, it was like a ploughed field out there.

This game followed a week when Neil Lennon had decided to jump ship exactly 20 years to the day after John Lennon had been taken from us by a 'mad man'. What goes around comes around. We've lost far too many players recently and have not replaced them in actual fact.

Muzzy didn't last the full 90 mins. since he had had to contend with the birth of his first child midweek, and quite understandably he was exhausted. Ask any bloke who's been through this to play his heart out a couple of days afterwards....it can't be done. It's OK for women, they only have to lie on a comfy bed inhaling gas and air whilst beating the air and chanting ten green bottles whilst the bloke stands at the end of the bed being abused and afforded a very worrying view.

Which just about sums the game up really:

We made Paul Williams look like a classy centre back - he isn't.

We made Lee Carsley look like a midfield general - he isn't.

We made Bellamy look talented - he isn't.

We never worried Hedman in goal.

As if that wasn't enough Cov had the run of the ball once, and scored past the otherwise nimble Royce who played well despite his lack of interest at corners.

Stef Oakes was a disappointment, which is sad for him, but he'll have to be replaced. We need this midfield player who is going to organise the troops into purposeful activity.

Hopefully Muzzy will come to terms with his fatherhood.

Robbie will calm down.

Gerry will return.

Tim will heal up.

PT will spend some money...........and then we'll all have a cracking Christmas.........after all we're still 4th in the league with some rather tasty games coming our way in the near future.

And so as we taxied along the runway after the game at Heathrow, we agreed we'd had a great experience but the football had been a huge disappointment to us.........which is what led us to do what we did in the first place

Copyright