It's not often you find yourself writing about a game that you haven't seen one kick of. But it's not often that the favourites lose 5-0 in one of their most important matches of the season. But all things considered - the difference between expectations of success and margin of victory, the fact of Strachan's debut, the injury to Chris Sutton, the joy it will bring Rangers fans, and the potential financial loss of going out of Europe completely in the first week in August - it is hard to remember the last defeat this bad for any team.
Football makes nonsense of class. It may make nonsense of colour in some circumstances.
There have always been card schools at football clubs and always will be.
I mean no disrespect to Scottish football, but the Premier League is the biggest stage and highest profile league of all.
I keep to a minimum dialect, in-jokes about football (soccer) teams and soap opera characters, so as not to lose North American readers.
I know virtually no one of my age who can remember a hug, or a smile from their father, or a 'Let's go play football.'
I don't get what's happening to Jose Mourinho of late. He's lapsing into the kind of Portuguese moroseness you get from staring at the Atlantic horizon and imagining you're the last place in the world, while listening to endless renditions of the fado. His latest line about 'everyone hates us and we don't care' sounds like vintage Joe Kinnear in the great days of the Wimbledon Crazy Gang.
For those fed up with the lack of mystery at the top of the Premiership, could I refer you to the commanding heights of the Conference. The wide points gap between first and second says we are about to witness the return to the football league of Accrington Stanley. So legendary have they become that everyone across the generations knows them, yet even those of the certain age required (you'd be pushing 60) can scarcely believe they were ever there. What proof do we have that this most Garcia Marquez of football teams was, is and yet may truly be?
Thirteen years after Basic Instinct, Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) is now in London, and is going out with a footballer played by Stan Collymore, of all people. On the rebound from John Motson, perhaps. It is difficult to convey just how uproariously awful this movie is, all of the time.
I'm not claiming that football is the nation's salvation in this area, but it's one of them, one little thing that apparently has captured the imagination of a large sector of our society. But when football can't be a relatively pure outlet, a fun thing, then it hurts itself.
You can play and try to get focused for that time, but still the reality of that whole situation is once that game is over you still have to be confronted with what's going on. I think that's where the senior leadership on your football team has to come. They have to understand that we have a responsibility to reach our goals and that's to win the championship.
We were defined by what we did. What we had to do. I think this is why guys like football, and why they join the army, because as long as you are playing the game or following orders you do not have to figure out who you really are.
You ever watch a football game and get totally into it? Why? It's not a real battle. It's just a game somebody made up. So how can you take it seriously? Or, you ever see a movie that made your heart about jump out of your chest? Or one that made you cry? Why? It wasn't real. You ever look at a photo of food that made your mouth water? Why? You can't eat the picture. . . . . . Same thing with water towers and God. I don't have to be a believer to be serious about my religion.
In a manner akin to the influence of Tiger Woods on the other side of the Atlantic, Thierry Henry has helped kick down a few of the remaining bigoted stereotypes. Through his undisputable class and dignity, Henry has made a deep-seated difference to race relations in this country. Racism will flounder whenever white children grow up with a black man as their hero. That so few comment on Henry's colour is a silent tribute to his impact.
Arsenal's never-improving injury list increasingly attracts curiosity rather than sympathy.
On Saturday morning, one of the two teams still unbeaten in the Premiership occupied a modest seventh place. It is an illustration of the relentless pace being set at the top of the league in which every stumble is a serious fall and draws usually constitute two dropped points.
It is a certainty that Keegan would not have agreed to return unless Mike Ashley had committed to sanctioning a mammoth spending spree. The downside, which Keegan will soon discover, is the law of diminishing returns in a league that is now the richest in the world. The type of multi-million-pound investment that bankrolled the first Newcastle revival under Keegan is now two-a-penny. Buying success just isn't as easy as it used to be. The Premiership's paradox is that the more money there is, the more the art of management gains in value.
Titus Bramble: The only explanation for his existence in the Premiership is that he is already here.
It is an indication of Chelski's warped finances that even successive titles can be regarded as failure. Spend unprecedented sums and only unprecedented success can be commensurate. Chelski won't get the credit they think they deserve because of the money they've spent. There's £300m worth of difference between a victory and an achievement.
In comparison to the emotionally-charged axing of a striker, Ruud van Nistelrooy, who averaged 30 goals a season, even the sale of David Beckham for, in Real Madrid's opinion, "peanuts", and the never-explained departure of Jaap Stam appear to be the rational acts of a sage and far-sighted manger. To offload a player because he could not be reconciled with a role within the squad is a failing of management.
But before Derby go, would they mind telling the rest of the Premier League - the league which it has debased with its pathetically-inadequate presence for the past 12 months - where the money has gone? You know, the £30m or so in prize money that every team, even the one at the bottom of the table from August to May, automatically receives by being in the Premier League... So what happened to that money? Or put another way, why was such a meaningless fraction of it spent on recruiting new players? It's one thing not to compete; it's quite another not to even attempt to do so.
A distinctly ordinary player of extraordinary dirtiness.
Once you're a football player, you're a football player for life. You always think of yourself in terms of that. We all do. It's hard to get rid of when you can't play anymore.
The open side Defensive End has to be one of your best football players. Size does not matter as much. We want an athletic player who can move around.
Brazil is crazy about football. People, they wait for this moment, but this doesn't mean we are going to win the championship. That is the problem.
