A Bowl Of Cold Custard

Fothergill looks forward to the new year

Pundit: Hot thighs

Fothers: Crushing sense of inevitability

Allardyce: Transparent

Funny old thing, Football. For instance, 2009.

A pint of wallop

Pundit's off for the festive season — caravanning in Weston-super-Mare, I gather - so it's Fothergill here, attempting to fill the pipesmoke-scented space vacated by Pundit. When I asked him what I should write — sharing a pint of wallop in The Mixed Metaphor, the pundits' watering hole in London's fashionable Soho — Pundit simply said: 'Oh, just do what I do — knock off some old tosh, no beggar ever reads it apart from the Editor, and he's half-cut on brandy and Tizer most of the time.'

Crushing

Eschewing such cynical advice, I elected to produce instead 'Fothergill's predictions for 2009.' All of the following come served with a crushing sense of inevitability:

1. Sam Allardyce to turn round Blackburn Rovers, and then be linked with a number of bigger clubs, despite transparently being a capable manager of medium-sized teams only

2. Newcastle United to be taken over, sold, taken over again, and sold again, with Kevin Keegan musing aloud that he might consider coming back with each and every sale and purchase

3. Players and managers to keep moaning at referees about their decisions even though the number of referees who have changed their minds as a result of such direct appeals, in over 120 years of the game, is exactly nil

4. Liverpool to miss out (again)

5. Pundit to wibble on about all the above, with all the insight and wit of a bowl of cold custard — along with every other lame hack, rent-a-mouth and retired former player who didn't have the wit to save for their retirement, but are willing to trade their woeful ignorance for the media's hard cash.

Meat Paste

Don't know about you, but I can't wait. Still, it could be worse — you could be Pundit, cradling a hot thermos between your thighs in the Hillman Imp, peering through the windscreen at the seafront as the wind whips up, and Mrs P belches furiously after too many meat paste sandwiches.

Happy New Year,

Fothergill, heartily relieved never to confused with…

Johnny Pundit