And the people asked for questions and answers about the West Brom-Liverpool game, and they were appeased. This was not just a conversation I had with myself, though, I discussed - in a roundabout way - the Liverpool game with Noel, from the Liverpool Offside.

Describe Roy Hodgson in three words.
England's premier absurdist.

Describe how he made Liverpool play in three words.
Purgatorial. And boring.

Describe your perfect evening with (the physical embodiment of) West Bromwich Albion FC in as many words as you like.
Well, you know. We'd probably meet at a party. Or something. We'd hit it off, share a few laughs, a few drinks, discuss the legacy of French colonialism in West Africa while only using lines from Monty Python. I'm not sure quite how that would work, but I'm also not sure exactly how I'd end up talking to the physical embodiment of a football club, and it likely says something deeply Freudian--or Jungian, perhaps; one or the other in any case--about my mental state that I seem to be assuming such speculative physical embodiment would take female form.

But anyhow, we might get a bit into the inevitable march towards the desertification of Siberia as thousands of square kilometers of forest are razed every year to get around Russian logging regulations and feed the insatiable Chinese industrial machine. Then we'd compare iPhone skins we bought on eBay direct from Guangzhou for 37¢, and we'd laugh because the world's probably going to shit no matter what you do so you might as well buy 37¢ iPhone skins direct from China and just hope they don't have too much lead in them, and then she would say that maybe if she was the embodiment of Barcelona or something she'd be able to draw enough attention to issues to make a difference but she isn't, she's just plain old West Bromwich Albion Football Club.

So I'd try to assure her that she really is the most beautiful embodiment of a football club I've ever seen. That if I hadn't done a quick check on Wikipedia using my iPhone with the 37¢ direct from China skin I wouldn't have guessed she was a day over a hundred and twenty. But she's already pretty far gone and crying about how her new boyfriend who she thought was the steady and respectable "grown up" sort hits her when nobody's watching and all she really wants is her dashing Italian ex back, even if her mother always said their relationship didn't have a future.

Then I'd probably throw up on our shoes, because if I was good at dealing with people I'd be out talking to them instead of writing on the internet about perfect evenings with embodiments of football clubs, and because perfection is a surprisingly relative concept heavily influenced by initial expectations.

Predict the result of Saturday's game without using numbers (words are acceptable, but frowned upon.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLJ1lgaViaA - N.B. It's a video of Roy Hodgson looking upset.

My answers to some questions on West Brom can be found at the Liverpool Offside.

And a piece of mine on Fantasy football can be found here: http://gaffers-corner.com/2011/03/31/fantasy-football-my-friend-and-yours-but-only-because-we-have-no-friends/