The 36th Sky Sports Football Yearbook (formerly Rothmans) is officially released tomorrow, which doesn't explain why WH Smith had shelves full of them by Friday. The first thing to note is the diary is written in this new very abrupt style it's adopted in recent years of abbreviating competition titles and giving only the bare minimum of words to incidents. BPL? What is "pizza peace in doubt" meant to mean to people in ten years' time? This is now the second feature in the book after the awkwardly set out records, not counting Richard Keys' foreword ("now there's a red, white and blue flash on the book and it seems the perfect partnership") and a Jack Rollin editorial seemingly written while in a deep depressed state about progress, marking his territory with a lengthy rant about penalty shoot-out which everyone has long got over and seeming to think everybody hates Delia Smith. Comparing the modern Champions League to the early European Cup layout is one gripe, if again one everybody else has learnt to cope with, doing so with the words "what a hoot given the present clutter" is quite another. "We haven't forgotten Trafalgar" are his questionable final words, in relation to the World Cup taking place in Germany. Er, yes.

The big layout changes from a few seasons back are still taking some getting used to. There was really no reason at all to move the player details away from the club and result details, especially when those were losing the team photos, and it's not as if a few more pages are going to make all the difference, as the book is already comprehensively bigger than those published as recently as the start of the decade. Why not stick them all in alphabetical order if it's ease of use they're after? This is not at all to decry the thoroughness, which makes the book as essential for the small details as ever, although the club records still can't figure out a way of making the divisional name changes clearer.

And yes, there's still a page for club chaplains.
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When Fever Pitch came out Nick Hornby read extracts from it as part of Radio 4's Book Of The Week slot, introducing us to a voice which made us even more surprised when we first found out what he looked like. BBC7 is repeating those readings every weekday this week at 11.45am with a repeat at 6.45pm, or you could Listen Again to them via the website.
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You'd think the last thing the Internet needs is another 'crazy' videos site, but all hail the one that thought up the misses compilation. Which may well allow us to clear up a long standing query based on something we think we saw on Trans World Sport many years ago - in its first few seasons, when drawn J League games in Japan were settled on penalty shoot-outs was there really one that was decided on a near-waterlogged pitch when the taker sent the keeper the wrong way but the ball stuck in a puddle? Confirmation welcome, video may well involve will rewriting.
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Here's an intriguing piece of newspaper brio - the Star printed a story in May about cocaine, using what angle we don't know, and printed a large picture of Andy Johnson next to it. The paper claimed that these were in no way related, despite being bracketed into the same story. The libel courts didn't buy it, and the Star has apologised.
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The most point blank ridiculous quote of the season award has already surely been scooped by Theo Paphitis of Millwall, claiming that had Steve Claridge not been sacked for his results in no first class games as manager "there was a very big chance we could get relegated." It's July! Chelsea could technically get relegated from this distance! Let us not overlook Paphitis' claim that what they need is "stabilisation in the club", which obviously you do by starting the close season with one manager, appointing another a month later and then replacing him without warning before the following season starts. Colin Lee, meanwhile, is talking about how "if I get the players I want, we will finish between mid-table and the play-offs". Such ambition.
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While we're about pre-season highlights, these highlights of Chicago Fire v AC Milan have been enlivened, if that's the right word, by one Ray Hudson, who seems to be trading in his co-commentaries on the fact nobody in America has heard of Sid Waddell. Listen for his analysis of Andy Herron's defending at 4:09.
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Passed onto us by Mathew via email and as far as we can tell not widely doing the rounds yet, Thierry Henry's ridiculously good goal against Weiz of Austria last week
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A word for Geoff Thomas, who completed his leukaemia charity Tour De France ride last week and has so far picked up £122,000 in sponsorship.
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There are some cultures which we'll all just have to accept football will never fully catch on in. One indicator of such is booking the league's All-Star Game against Fulham. China, chased by many a shirt sponsorship dollar, may well fall down the same pavement cracks judging by people being dissuaded from a game againat Real Madrid because it was 'boring'. In a probably connected fact many walked out on learning David Beckham was out injured, which does make you wonder just how strongly Madrid are selling themselves to wider markets these days.
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Compare and contrast: Inter Milan use tube incidents to justify not playing Leicester, roughly 60 miles from London, on Monday; Iran play QPR, virtually next to Shepherd's Bush station, yesterday.
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Via BBC Backstage, something for those of you who have hard drive space to waste on the Internet Sudoku that is Google Earth - a combined Premiership ground stadium plan set and RSS news feed
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We've had to wait a while this close season but finally, a really big scoreline by a Premiership team in a Scandinavian friendly!
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It's time for that great annual event, the pointless debate about Rangers and Celtic joining the Premiership. Alex McLeish has started it this time, not that he appears to be putting much faith into it aside from denigrating the clubs who took quite a few points off his club last season, instead speculating that the Old Firm will simply have to move to attract top players, if not proving the need with anything. The most worrying thing about this, of course, is that McLeish seems so blinded by the Setanta millions (ed. check this amount) that he seriously thinks only television, as opposed to the UEFA regulations that have scuppered at least one debate at birth (but money will change all that, haw haw haw! Shut up) and the actual SFA and FAPL, holds the key to the move. Can you see anyone withholding a major rights contract on the basis only two clubs can really win the title? No, the rights would be sold on the basis that there are two fierce rival clubs neck and neck every season, as proved by how most of the income that's allowing Setanta to remain operational comes from the two clubs' specialist channels.
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We know strikers have to have a touch of arrogance, but what sort of cojones must a man own if he decides to claim goals scored five years earlier by sending a video to the organising committee?
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In the wake of both Chelsea paying £21m for the new Scott Parker and Man Utd paying the full seven figures for a keeper with no league starts - shouldn't a 22 year old have made some sort of breakthrough by now? - it may be instructive at this stage to nick the Telegraph's list of the top ten domestic transfers:

1 Rio Ferdinand (Leeds to Man Utd) £29.1m
2 Wayne Rooney (Everton to Man Utd) £27m
3 Shaun Wright-Phillips (Man City to Chelsea) £21m
4 Rio Ferdinand (West Ham to Leeds) £18m
5 Damien Duff (Blackburn to Chelsea) £17m
6= Alan Shearer (Blackburn to Newcastle) £15m
6= Juan Sebastian Veron (Man Utd to Chelsea) £15m
8 Louis Saha (Fulham to Man Utd) £12.8m
9= Robbie Fowler (Liverpool to Leeds) £11m
9= Emile Heskey (Leicester to Liverpool) £11m
9= Frank Lampard (West Ham to Chelsea) £11m

So what do we learn? Well, Rio Ferdinand's agent is far happier than most fans of clubs he's played for - certainly a player accused of taking the celebrity lifestyle ahead of caring about the fans or his club could have made wiser moves than appearing on the cover of GQ - Alan Shearer's transfer really can be put in context as a high stakes gamble even more so than it was in 1996, had Ferguson retired in the summer Louis Saha would currently be feeling very unsettled, and some £11m transfers work out better than others. Lampard's, although nearly four years ago now, is the latest of those three!
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Sky and ITV look set to be told by UEFA to simulcast the games they show live on TV on the internet, which they'd be thinking twice about if they ever saw ITV's interactive options. All about extra revenue streams, of course, but broadcasting games legally live over broadband is something that hasn't really been tapped before by broadcasters, although most people can barely watch highlight streams properly so this is bound to be, um, fun.
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Here's something that appears to have got lost in Chelsea's Wright-Phillips slipstream - Enrique De Lucas, who was with the club in 2002-03, has started a High Court action apparently claiming they breached his contract when sending him on loan to Spain before giving him a free at the end of that season. What that will mean, apart from a substantially bigger outlay than for the Ashley Cole affair should De Lucas win, doesn't bear thinking about.
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What is the primary role of a striker? Scoring goals, yes, especially if he's up front on his own? So when Didier Drogba says he spent most of last season defending does that suggest perhaps he's not quite got the idea of a counter attacking side?
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With two clubs being thrown out on monetary grounds and a third accused of fixing the game that sent them up mixed in with appeals all round, might Serie A actually start at all this coming season?
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It's been three years since the franchising was rubber stamped, but there must still be a lot of suspicion around MK Dons employees if their last manager Stuart Murdoch can only find work as Bournemouth's goalkeeping coach
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We should know about small scale obsessions, so we can only praise the denizens of the unofficial Sky Sports News forum. Yeah, there's your fair share of SHE IS SO SEXY AND THE BEST!!!! threads that would make Vic Wakeling happy, but any forum that encourages discourse about the presenter rota (note Simon Thomas has joined the network, as exclusively copied over by us a couple of months ago) is fine by us.
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We should know about small scale obsessions, so we can only praise the denizens of the unofficial Sky Sports News forum. Yeah, there's your fair share of SHE IS SO SEXY AND THE BEST!!!! threads that would make Vic Wakeling happy, but any forum that encourages discourse about the presenter rota (note Simon Thomas has joined the network, as exclusively copied over by us a couple of months ago) is fine by us.
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Call for Andy Townsend! There's a new interpretation of offside newly launched, wherein a player can only be deemed off should he touch the ball or interfere with an opponent in the move, a wording guaranteed to bring Mike Ingham out in hives regarding late flags. Harry Redknapp's had a go already, you'll be shocked to learn.
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Thanks to Chris Hughes for passing on proof that while it's fine for people to have an interest in the national team some have more of a minute interest than others, hence a full breakdown of anomolies in the England late 70s/early 80s kits
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Disturbing news in from PR specialists First Artist Corporation : Andy Townsend's doing a DVD, Martin Tyler (who seems to be working with Andy Gray on a football game too, thus dulling those rumours) putting his image to a board game like it's 1988, Ron Atkinson is making a comeback with an as yet unannounced BBC2 series and... "First Artist are currently working in conjunction with Sanctuary music and have signed a number of Top Premiership clubs to make their own personalized club albums which will be released in time for Christmas." Club what? What form will that take, and is it any wonder that Sanctuary are going bust?
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Stories you could see coming a mile off: El Hadj Diof accused of assault
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Something pointed out to us yesterday regarding the full list of live Sky games - will the September 10th Manchester derby really kick off at 3pm on a Saturday?
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One of the side effects of the London 2012 bid coming to a head - and we do hope it's successful when the winner is announced at lunchtime today, as otherwise the torrent of smugness from the likes of John Rawling will be too much to bear - is the thorny issue of a British Olympic football team has raised its quadennial head. Despite even Sepp Blatter's reassurance, for all reassurance from Sepp Blatter is worth, it's never happened mostly because the four home FAs fear their sovereignty will be compromised and the old chestnut of But Who Would Get Into A UK International Side Anyway? would be heard from here to kingdom come, and also now of course because They're Taking Players Away In Summer For A Meaningless Event. So meaningless, of course, that it's now rated in many areas as the world's second biggest pan-continental football tournament. Surely entering a team would above all essentially given Olympic watchers yet another dimension, one of blind loyalty to an entire sport rather than a single class/event.
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Perhaps Jose Mourinho hasn't needed to look further into the attitude of the British press given it hasn't quite got past the fawning stage yet, but if he thinks in three summers' time he'll be able to get away with not buying a single player without anyone caring he might well have another thing coming. "I think we are the best team in history" Mourinho says after a season in which another English club won the biggest prize available.
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We're all aware that Chelsea can pay for whatever takes their fancy, but legal fees probably didn't come into it until an Irish TV company claimed their already extant SoccaStars has been ripped off by Sky One and them for the currently advertised Football Icon. In case you're wondering, the idea of it being a Football Pop Idol appears in the second paragraph.
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