Book: Own Goal - How Corruption, Egotism and Greed is Destroying Football - Simon Freeman (1999)

This is a fascinating book, a sort of non-fiction Fever Pitch which contains one journalist's views on how football is bouyant in the year 2000 but may well land up bankrupt in another few years.

Freeman is an ex-journalist on several serious newspapers - including the Sunday Times Insight team in the 1980s - who has some interesting things to say. Basically, the greed of £30,000 A week players (£100,000 by 2005) will destroy the game. Clubs like Freeman's boyhood Brighton & Hove Albion will become extinct.

It all makes sense, until you look at the game in 2006 which has been salvaged by multi-billionaires like Abrmovich and the new takeovers at West Ham, Liverpool (both by private billionaires) and Man Utd (thankfully by a relatively poor American who has put the scum £500m into debt - may they sink quickly!).

Freeman is right, though. I'm getting fed up with watching over-rated players on £100,000 a week. That includes the whole lot, even including Chelsea players (my club): Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney, Drogba, Henry; they are all vastly over-rated. You hear all the type - "England the best team in the world" before the 2006 World Cup, then turn out to be total rubbish - and watch these prima donnas on tv, live every week and they are always rubbish.

An excellent book by an author who also wrote a book about Rinkagate, the 1976 scandal that saw the downfall of North Devon MP Jeremy Thorpe.

Well worth reading.

Sidwell Cycles

The Claud Butler San Remo racing bike - cost £320 - has been parked in the flat for bloody four months now, despite my five efforts to fix the puncture.

I've bought and ruined about five new inner tubes, all at about £4.49 from Halfords. Cheaper than they used to be but annoying when you keep buying one after another. Unfortunately, the bike has narrow, 700x25 tyres which are virtually impossible to fix using a puncture repair kit. The patch simply will not adhere to the tube.

Similarly, the narrowness of the tyre seems to make it very difficult to fit to the wheel, meaning it's impossible to do so without levering (with a spoon or fork) very hard thereby ruining the new inner tube.

So, now it's along to Sidwell Cycles (140 Sidwell Street, Exeter) to get them to fix it. Then I'll be back on the road (hopefully).

Indeed, this is where I actually bought the bike, back in July, five months ago. The bloke in the shop - the proprietor? - welcomes me (not by name, unlike old Turley in Rusthall), and gets an assistant/mechanic from out the back to see to me.

They do a new type of puncture-resistant inner tube called "Slime", but Sidwell Cycles don't appear to have any. I settle for a normal, simple new inner tube which I know will puncture in no time.

Collect the bike on Thursday.