From Benth Castberg : Mike Riley
“Rio on Freddie, Gary Neville on Reyes, Nastelrooy on Cole, Sol on Rooney, Ashley on Ronaldo – 5 big decisions in the game. Mike Riley gets all 5 wrong.”
Not in a million years. He got them all right.
Ian Fleming wrote: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action”. This was five. Or even more.
How naïve it is to believe this was just a coincidence.
EPL is about more money than any of us will see in a lifetime.
There is an elephant in the room.
Myles says:
When Sky Sports started, Murdoch owned 10% of Manchester United’s shares.
Was that ever pointed out in The Sunday Times?
Ian Fleming was a smart upper class guy, born in Mayfair in 1908.
He didn’t make it at Sandhurst but worked for Reuters in Moscow in 1933 and became the personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence in 1939.
He published Casino Royale in 1952.
The day after Fleming died in 1964 at the age of 56, the ghastly Malcolm Muggeridge slaughtered a thriller writer who had entertained millions and created a spy who is still a cinema superstar 60 years later.
Muggeridge called him an Etonian Micky Spillane and said that 007 was”utterly despicable, obsequious to his superiors, pretentious in his tastes, callous and brutal in his ways, with strong undertones of sadism, and an unspeakable cad in his relations with women, towards whom sexual appetite represents the only approach.”
(From page 447 of Andrew Lycett’s superb biography Ian Fleming The Man Behind James Bond)
My view?
Well, James was a snob and a brand-slave in 1957, as millions of wealthy consumers are in this 21st century.
In that, he was well ahead of his time.
On the first page of From Russia with Love, we learn that he has a gold Dunhill lighter and a Faberge gold cigarette lighter.
From James Amar : Mike Riley
Hi Myles,
The Riley performance on that day is brilliantly collated in this video – still infuriates me to this day!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM747L9Wf8M
A shame your back-to-back titles prediction didn’t come true…
Myles says:
Staggering at the time & still beyond belief now.
Astounding!!!
Only Tony Blair got away with more and I hope he never refs an Arsenal game.