Rio rumours gather weight

THESE days, you have to get in fast if you want to laugh at your rivals’ misfortune, lest your chuckles turn to ashes in your mouth.

No sooner had we started yelling at Eduardo’s diving, for example, than we were having to defend our own supposedly unsporting behaviour vis à vis Messrs Rooney and Fletcher. Then, barely hours after the sensational news broke about Chelsea’s FIFA transfer ban, we had our own case to contend with, as Le Havre disinterred their own complaints about us from last month.

Various Italians are also making threatening noises against us on this front too, and it is beginning to have a troublesome smell about it.