Why Dave Whelan should stop talking testicles and how the death of football has been much exaggerated

By Brian Reade

Published 05:00 28/11/09

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Over the years I've heard some utter testicles spoken by people in football. And funnily enough, most of it has fallen from the mouth of Wigan chairman Dave Whelan.

Usually when he's on the phone from his hammock in Barbados. Which is where he was again this week, pinning the blame for his side's 9-1 thrashing at Spurs. On Steve Bruce.

"Steve had a few dodgy signings before he left and Roberto has inherited them so I can't blame him one iota."

Let's have a butchers at those dodgy signings then. The likes of Wilson Palacios, Antonio Valencia and Lee Cattermole, who, when re-sold, made the best part of £25 million for Whelan. They probably put a conservatory on his Barbados villa, in fact.

If you've left your hammock Davey boy, enjoy the Brucey backlash today.

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UEFA have vowed to come down hard on any club found guilty of match-fixing after naming five suspects involved in dodgy fixtures.

"UEFA will not refrain from taking severe action within their responsibility" vowed a tough-talking spokesman.

Meaning the owners of KF Tirana, KS Vllaznia, FC Dinaburg, NK IB Ljubljana and Budapest Honved should start raiding their childrens' piggy banks now to come up with the £2.65 they will be fined if their wrong-doing is ever proven.

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During the week of the World Cup play-offs I was in an inhospitable regime well away from football news.

On getting home I asked Google to tell me how many references there were to "death of the beautiful game" in the past week. Answer: 1,440,000.

If the first page was anything to go by, all referred, as expected, to Thierry Henry's hand-ball. As inexcusable as it was, and as much as it denies one of the game's gentlemen from ever commenting on moral issues again, I had to laugh at the inevitable overuse of this awful, lazy phrase.

Two things to remember for anyone who still uses it.

To all real fans, football has never been a game, and is only ever beautiful when your side are winning, your rivals are losing, or it's Brazil.