Life after deadline

IF YOU thought the Kop looked shell-shocked when John Arne Riise headed into his own net with virtually the last touch of the game on Tuesday, then you should have seen the reaction in the press box.

All around me grown men and the odd woman either burst into fits of spontaneous weeping or exploded in paroxysms of foul-mouthed panic — or even, as in my own case, did both, with repeated banging of laptop with forehead for added effect.

Not that we were being anything other than professionally, even scrupulously neutral, you understand. It’s just that, for the hack with a deadline hanging over his head like a guillotine, a fit of the Riise headstaggers is, almost literally, the very last thing he needs.