Still a market for shooting boots

Rolling north through the pleasant greenery of Tipperary, Laois and er, the other counties you pass getting to Dublin gave me a chance to catch up on my reading.

Before I got to The Most of Nora Ephron, however, I had a good look at the papers.

Something between the “reasonable” £300 Chelsea boots in the Times and the aubergine trifle recipe in the Guardian caught my eye — Oliver Kay, the Times soccer writer, was discussing Manchester United’s travails, and he made the point about their transfer policy that they had perhaps mistakenly focused on forwards, but added: “There is a shortage of high calibre central defenders in world football,” having suggested earlier in the piece that “tactical discipline is not what it was”.