City clash the biggest derby of most of our lives
Respected and feared in equal portion, this old Seventies School bruiser punches like a dream in both fanzinese and online quippery — but he also has good football bones in him. Like a barometer, he senses storms ahead.
At midday on Saturday, after he’d polished off his Fray Bentos Special Reserve and Real Ale lunch, he declared to all us colleagues that defeat awaited at Molineux, once he’d perused the weather forecast, the state of the pitch, and a record book that stated we were just 90 minutes from a new benchmark. It was doomlordery in excelsis and he was, of course, as correct as he usually is in such matters. (He once confidently told me during the hairiest second-half bit of Moscow ‘08 that the game would finish 1-1 and we’d win on penalties, when any sane man would have predicted a minimum 3-1 Chelsea victory. I really ought to let him do the Euromillions for me.)
