Well, that was a nasty piece of fun, wasn’t it? I don’t have room to list all the feral little moments I enjoyed during the Chelsea-Man Utd match: there was Rooney snarling at Nani; the weird bust-up between Drogba and Ballack, which led to the gorgeous comedy of Ballack turning his back on Drogba and [...]

It’s a day of nostalgia here at The Run of Play. We’re reminiscing on a simpler time of the internet, back when it was all Winona Ryder mailing lists and intricate debates about whether David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were married in real life. “IRL,” we called it back then, in our smug, efficient [...]

Avram Grant’s eccentric press conference after Chelsea’s 1-0 win against Everton this week prompted many observers to compare Grant’s curt, uncommunicative responses to the beloved monologues of his predecessor, José Mourinho. Wondering how Mourinho would have handled the questions the media put to Grant? Wonder no more.

Q: A deserved win José?
Mourinho: Yes. No. No, it [...]

Q. Was Avram Grant’s bizarre monosyllabic press conference yesterday a devastating piece of conceptual criticism designed to expose the vapidity of the football media by giving reporters’ banal questions the answers they would actually deserve in intelligent conversation?
A. I don’t know.

Look, I feel bad, okay? I should have realized I was going too far. I should have realized that spamming pictures of freshly killed animals with crude anti-hunting captions wasn’t the best way to introduce myself. I see that now. I mean, it’s only natural. After a hard day of thinking seriously about the Darfur [...]

…damned if it doesn’t close up shop right when it starts to get interesting.
Here’s how this works: I’m going to walk you through all four Champions League quarter-final matches this week. I’m not going to make predictions, because fuck my predictions. That’s what Alan Hansen’s for. If you want a prediction, Alan Hansen can [...]

Who likes Chelsea? Help me figure this out. The club sociology that I am able to collect from the internet basically tells a story of how the cast of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” accidentally kissed the Beatles one magical night under a rainbow of Richard Avedon portraits, until caring too much about who Julie [...]

Seen today on…the Internet.

Always nice to catch up with my favorite bit of persistent unsubstantiated transfer gossip. Especially because I actually hope this move happens. There’s something affirming in the thought of a Lampard-Ronaldinho midfield. It seems, I don’t know, jolly.

The endgame phase has arrived for the Barclays Premier League season. Dormant hierarchies are reasserting themselves, and short-term hopes are dashed. With seven games left, Everton are now the only club with a chance of breaking into the traditional top four, and the big-club intramurals last weekend saw Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal and [...]