Weekly review 24/5/24.

6 Responses to Weekly review 24/5/24.

1. Dai Woosnam says:

   May 24, 2024 at 12:38 pm

   Paul, compadre,
   You might be surprised that I am in general agreement with you over Vincent’s shocking procrastination over Bulut. My remedy though is different.
   Sack him now, dear Vincent: it will concentrate your mind most wonderfully.

   As for your comments Paul re Dave Jones: I again agree entirely re your view of the thrilling attacking football his teams served up. And I was cheered Paul by you relating his 2009 failure to get two points out of the final twelve points available for us to make the playoffs… and that included a fatal, shameful 6-0 capitulation at Deepdale, which enabled Preston to gain the final playoff place on goal average, by just a solitary goal.

   But if that was a stain on Jones’s management CV, what followed that ‘close season’ was much more damaging.

   In an interview with the English media, Jones astonishingly said that he was disappointed with some City fans in that they were knocking him for missing out on the playoffs, and added words to the effect that they did not know they were born, as we only missed out because our goal average was one goal the poorer.

   No mention of getting only one point from the final twelve… and a six goal disaster!! Mind blowing effrontery: even that Master of Chutzpah, the egregious Mick McCarthy, might have blushed were he to deliver such prevarication that is surely straight out of the Black Arts Playbook.

   TTFN,
   Dai.
2. Dai Woosnam says:

   May 27, 2024 at 5:15 am

   Paul, compadre,
   Some further thoughts…
   1. Congrats on spelling ‘just deserts’ correctly…!! I so often see folk spelling it ‘desserts’… they presumably thinking it’s etymology has something to do with Black Forest Gateau/Peach Melba and the like, rather than realising its root lies in the word ‘deserted’.

   2. A Romanian reader of my mailings just sent me a link to Saturday night’s charity match in Romania reuniting most of the team we saw in 1993 at that fatal game at the old National Stadium… (my adjective unfortunately being the absolute right one with its deliberate choice of ‘fatal’ over ‘fateful’ making the desired double entendre). It was the first game my dear wife ever went to, and she swore it would be her last, when that ‘distress flare’ rocket was fired from 20 yards to our left, just missing the heads of the celebrating huddle of yellow shirted players, and rising to kill that gentleman from Merthyr in the opposite stand. She has never been to another game in 30 years since.

   In this clip below, the Romanians (again in their same yellow) featured the great Gheorghe Hagi who may be somewhat chubby these days, but is still able to strut his stuff as in his pomp. The Rest of the World team included the almost equally great Bulgarian attacking inside forwards, Hristo Stoichkov. What is it about the Balkans and their production of players in this position? I think back to my boyhood heroes like Hungary’s Ferenc Puskás, and perhaps the greatest of the lot, Yugoslavia’s Dragoslav Šekularac.

   https://youtu.be/8xVJ_kv-0FM?si=BaVugnFPzFK9Tf8u

   3. And now some thoughts on the FA Cup Final… and one guy nowhere near getting selected…
   Jack Grealish is not a City failure like Kalvin Phillips, but has never been the player he was at Villa. Pep’s pass-pass-yawn-yawn might win the EPL four years in succession, but it sends lots of neutrals to sleep. As a confirmed ABMU man* I surprised myself by wanting United to win last Saturday, because I loved their long passes exposing City’s absurd high defensive line… while City, as so often this season, failed to utilise the strengths of Haaland by depriving him of service.

   Were I Haaland, I would negotiate a move to the Santiago Bernabéu, ASAP.

   And Pep’s decision to let City booze themselves silly just days before the Cup Final was a fatal mistake… and pictures of Grealish in his Gucci pyjamas leaving the party at dawn, make me fear for the guy. I see echoes of Paul Gascoigne’s off-field behaviour in Jack. And now, with beer in hand, he has nearly fallen from the top of the open-top double decker bus on yesterday’s celebratory tour of Manchester.

   He thinks insulting his brain with alcohol overload is macho. It ain’t.
   *=”Anyone But Man U”

   DW.
3. The other Bob Wilson says:

   May 27, 2024 at 7:43 am

   Unfortunately Dai, it’s looking increasingly like Erol Bulut will be signing a new, probably longer, contract with City. If and when he does, I suppose I should give him time to transform the way we play with a few new signings rather than just keep criticising him. However, I’m afraid that all I can see happening is that he’ll put together a squad that, hopefully, is an improvement on this season’s, but it’ll still be the same boring, defence obsessed football on offer that we saw for the huge majority of 23/24.
   I think there was always an element of feeling he had come to a small provincial club in Cardiff with Dave Jones – his comments on the rivalry with Swansea betrayed that. You would have thought that he would have remembered playing here in the FA Cup in 1977 with Everton when they were given a real fright by a City team which played very well in front of a passionate crowd of 35,000.
   Regarding just deserts, I spelt it with a double s when I first typed it and only thought to query it when I read it back – English must be a terrible language to master for foreigners because this sixty eight year old with a fairly good vocabulary still hasn’t done so completely!
   I watched more of the Scottish FA Cup Final than I did the English one. It was a poor spectacle and even I felt a little sympathy for Rangers at the end because they’d been the better of two ordinary sides, but I still got more into it than I did the Manchester derby. I really have become quite disillusioned with Premier League football and the teams that play it this season. One reason I can definitely identify for my disillusionment is that while the Everton and Forest cases were heard pretty quickly and appropriate punishments meted out, the team that has won the league in the last four seasons have over a hundred charges outstanding against them relating to financial irregularities which I’m pretty certain were raised during the season before last.
   Even in 22/23 when he was a regular in what Guardiola would have probably rated as his strongest side, I would look at Jack Grealish and think he was no longer doing the things he used to do with Villa which must have first brought him to Man City’s attention – he’d become much more of a “safe” player under Pep’s management. To put it into a Cardiff context, Ollie Tanner’s performances in pre season where he was, essentially, a goal scoring winger, got him into first team contention from way down the pecking order at the end of 22/23, yet, as soon as Erol Bulut promoted him into the senior squad, he wanted to turn him into a different player from the one that had first got his attention. To be fair to the manager, Tanner made a decent fist of playing at left back in the last few games of the season, but the success he enjoyed as an attacker in that position only re emphasised how much he’d gone back as a winger from October onwards.
   Finally, I think I’ve mentioned before to you that no matter how much the media and supporters try to make that Romania game about Paul Bodin’s penalty miss, the truth is that they were much better than us on the night and they really should have been out of sight before the penalty miss. The game in Bucharest earlier in the qualifying group saw them take apart what was a pretty good Welsh team to the extent that we were 5-0 down at half time to the Hagi inspired home team – thankfully, Romania eased off in the second half because I think they might have been capable of sticking ten on us if they’d kept up the intensity of the first forty five minutes.
4. Dai Woosnam says:

   May 27, 2024 at 11:04 am

   Paul,
   You are so right about the Scottish Cup Final and feeling some degree of sympathy for Rangers. I too watched it, and the irony was it was a late howler from Rangers’ Player of the Season, Jack Butland, which handed the trophy to the Bhoys.

   Talking of howlers… apols for the 4th line of my last contribution… viz… ‘they presumably thinking it’s etymology’…
   Ouch! (Well, it was about 4.20am when I slipped up on ‘its’.)

   As for your comments on the complexities of the English language: I so agree. What a nightmare it is for a non-native English speaker to learn. But not just because in the full Oxford English Dictionary there are 171,476 words, but when it comes to learning words, committing them to memory is only half the job… knowing how to negotiate the minefield of English pronunciation is a darn site harder.

   My dear wife was born speaking another language, and had to study English as a young woman. I sent her this famous old masterpiece of a 1922 poem to study, when she was still living behind the Iron Curtain. On our honeymoon a year later in Bath, she amazed me by reading it aloud without a single error. ‘Chapeau!’ to her. I ask all MAYAns to try this brilliant poem on for size…

   Gerard Nolst Trenité – The Chaos (1922)

   Dearest creature in creation
   Studying English pronunciation,
   I will teach you in my verse
   Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

   I will keep you, Susy, busy,
   Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
   Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear;
   Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.

   Pray, console your loving poet,
   Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
   Just compare heart, hear and heard,
   Dies and diet, lord and word.

   Sword and sward, retain and Britain
   (Mind the latter how it’s written).
   Made has not the sound of bade,
   Say-said, pay-paid, laid but plaid.

   Now I surely will not plague you
   With such words as vague and ague,
   But be careful how you speak,
   Say: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak ,

   Previous, precious, fuchsia, via
   Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir;
   Woven, oven, how and low,
   Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.

   Say, expecting fraud and trickery:
   Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
   Branch, ranch, measles, topsails, aisles,
   Missiles, similes, reviles.

   Wholly, holly, signal, signing,
   Same, examining, but mining,
   Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
   Solar, mica, war and far.

   From “desire”: desirable-admirable from “admire”,
   Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier,
   Topsham, brougham, renown, but known,
   Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone,

   One, anemone, Balmoral,
   Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel.
   Gertrude, German, wind and wind,
   Beau, kind, kindred, queue, mankind,

   Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
   Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.
   This phonetic labyrinth
   Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.

   Have you ever yet endeavoured
   To pronounce revered and severed,
   Demon, lemon, ghoul, foul, soul,
   Peter, petrol and patrol?

   Billet does not end like ballet;
   Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
   Blood and flood are not like food,
   Nor is mould like should and would.

   Banquet is not nearly parquet,
   Which exactly rhymes with khaki.
   Discount, viscount, load and broad,
   Toward, to forward, to reward,

   Ricocheted and crocheting, croquet?
   Right! Your pronunciation’s OK.
   Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
   Friend and fiend, alive and live.

   Is your r correct in higher?
   Keats asserts it rhymes Thalia.
   Hugh, but hug, and hood, but hoot,
   Buoyant, minute, but minute.

   Say abscission with precision,
   Now: position and transition;
   Would it tally with my rhyme
   If I mentioned paradigm?

   Twopence, threepence, tease are easy,
   But cease, crease, grease and greasy?
   Cornice, nice, valise, revise,
   Rabies, but lullabies.

   Of such puzzling words as nauseous,
   Rhyming well with cautious, tortious,
   You’ll envelop lists, I hope,
   In a linen envelope.

   Would you like some more? You’ll have it!
   Affidavit, David, davit.
   To abjure, to perjure. Sheik
   Does not sound like Czech but ache.

   Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
   Rachel, loch, moustache, eleven.
   We say hallowed, but allowed,
   People, leopard, towed but vowed.

   Mark the difference, moreover,
   Between mover, plover, Dover.
   Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
   Chalice, but police and lice,

   Camel, constable, unstable,
   Principle, disciple, label.
   Petal, penal, and canal,
   Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal,

   Suit, suite, ruin. Circuit, conduit
   Rhyme with “shirk it” and “beyond it”,
   But it is not hard to tell
   Why it’s pall, mall, but Pall Mall.

   Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron,
   Timber, climber, bullion, lion,
   Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
   Senator, spectator, mayor,

   Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
   Has the a of drachm and hammer.
   Pussy, hussy and possess,
   Desert, but desert, address.

   Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants
   Hoist in lieu of flags left pennants.
   Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb,
   Cow, but Cowper, some and home.

   “Solder, soldier! Blood is thicker”,
   Quoth he, “than liqueur or liquor”,
   Making, it is sad but true,
   In bravado, much ado.

   Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
   Neither does devour with clangour.
   Pilot, pivot, gaunt, but aunt,
   Font, front, wont, want, grand and grant.

   Arsenic, specific, scenic,
   Relic, rhetoric, hygienic.
   Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close,
   Paradise, rise, rose, and dose.

   Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle,
   Make the latter rhyme with eagle.
   Mind! Meandering but mean,
   Valentine and magazine.

   And I bet you, dear, a penny,
   You say mani-(fold) like many,
   Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier,
   Tier (one who ties), but tier.

   Arch, archangel; pray, does erring
   Rhyme with herring or with stirring?
   Prison, bison, treasure trove,
   Treason, hover, cover, cove,

   Perseverance, severance. Ribald
   Rhymes (but piebald doesn’t) with nibbled.
   Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw,
   Lien, psychic, shone, bone, pshaw.

   Don’t be down, my own, but rough it,
   And distinguish buffet, buffet;
   Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon,
   Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn.

   Say in sounds correct and sterling
   Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling.
   Evil, devil, mezzotint,
   Mind the z! (A gentle hint.)

   Now you need not pay attention
   To such sounds as I don’t mention,
   Sounds like pores, pause, pours and paws,
   Rhyming with the pronoun yours;

   Nor are proper names included,
   Though I often heard, as you did,
   Funny rhymes to unicorn,
   Yes, you know them, Vaughan and Strachan.

   No, my maiden, coy and comely,
   I don’t want to speak of Cholmondeley.
   No. Yet Froude compared with proud
   Is no better than McLeod.

   But mind trivial and vial,
   Tripod, menial, denial,
   Troll and trolley, realm and ream,
   Schedule, mischief, schism, and scheme.

   Argil, gill, Argyll, gill. Surely
   May be made to rhyme with Raleigh,
   But you’re not supposed to say
   Piquet rhymes with sobriquet.

   Had this invalid invalid
   Worthless documents? How pallid,
   How uncouth he, couchant, looked,
   When for Portsmouth I had booked!

   Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite,
   Paramour, enamoured, flighty,
   Episodes, antipodes,
   Acquiesce, and obsequies.

   Please don’t monkey with the geyser,
   Don’t peel ‘taters with my razor,
   Rather say in accents pure:
   Nature, stature and mature.

   Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly,
   Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly,
   Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan,
   Wan, sedan and artisan.

   The th will surely trouble you
   More than r, ch or w.
   Say then these phonetic gems:
   Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.

   Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,
   There are more but I forget ’em-
   Wait! I’ve got it: Anthony,
   Lighten your anxiety.

   The archaic word albeit
   Does not rhyme with eight-you see it;
   With and forthwith, one has voice,
   One has not, you make your choice.

   Shoes, goes, does *. Now first say: finger;
   Then say: singer, ginger, linger.
   Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,
   Marriage, foliage, mirage, age,

   Hero, heron, query, very,
   Parry, tarry fury, bury,
   Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth,
   Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.

   Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners,
   Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners
   Holm you know, but noes, canoes,
   Puisne, truism, use, to use?

   Though the difference seems little,
   We say actual, but victual,
   Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height,
   Put, nut, granite, and unite.

   Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,
   Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
   Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,
   Hint, pint, senate, but sedate.

   Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,
   Science, conscience, scientific;
   Tour, but our, dour, succour, four,
   Gas, alas, and Arkansas.

   Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit,
   Next omit, which differs from it
   Bona fide, alibi
   Gyrate, dowry and awry.

   Sea, idea, guinea, area,
   Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
   Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,
   Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

   Compare alien with Italian,
   Dandelion with battalion,
   Rally with ally; yea, ye,
   Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!

   Say aver, but ever, fever,
   Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.
   Never guess-it is not safe,
   We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf.

   Starry, granary, canary,
   Crevice, but device, and eyrie,
   Face, but preface, then grimace,
   Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

   Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging,
   Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging;
   Ear, but earn; and ere and tear
   Do not rhyme with here but heir.

   Mind the o of off and often
   Which may be pronounced as orphan,
   With the sound of saw and sauce;
   Also soft, lost, cloth and cross.

   Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting?
   Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting.
   Respite, spite, consent, resent.
   Liable, but Parliament.

   Seven is right, but so is even,
   Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,
   Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk,
   Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work.

   A of valour, vapid vapour,
   S of news (compare newspaper),
   G of gibbet, gibbon, gist,
   I of antichrist and grist,

   Differ like diverse and divers,
   Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers.
   Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll,
   Polish, Polish, poll and poll.

   Pronunciation-think of Psyche!-
   Is a paling, stout and spiky.
   Won’t it make you lose your wits
   Writing groats and saying “grits”?

   It’s a dark abyss or tunnel
   Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale,
   Islington, and Isle of Wight,
   Housewife, verdict and indict.

   Don’t you think so, reader, rather,
   Saying lather, bather, father?
   Finally, which rhymes with enough,
   Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough??

   Hiccough has the sound of sup…
   My advice is: GIVE IT UP!
   [End]

   Gee… what a work of art that is…
   TTFN,
   Dai.
5. The other Bob Wilson says:

   May 28, 2024 at 8:33 am

   That’s a very clever poem Dai and I would defy anyone who grew up with English as their native language to come to it blind so to speak and get all of the different pronunciations right – you married an exceptional lady there!

   Paul
6. Dai Woosnam says:

   May 29, 2024 at 9:55 am

   Thanks for that Paul.
   She is much brighter than me, that is for sure… but then that would not be difficult.
   And I should, in the interest of historical accuracy, make it clear that she did not sail through this test like she was some sort of linguistic savant, delivering the poem at machine-gun speed.
   Far from it: she took it at a slow measured pace, whilst still trying to respect the rhythm of the stanzas. And even though she had spent many hours studying it, still found one or two instances where she hesitated momentarily – not unlike a showjumping horse coming up to a big fence – as if to collect her thoughts, before sailing over the obstacle without even clipping the fence.
   I knew from that day, that she had married beneath herself intellectually.
   DW

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