Went to the counter-demo in Brighton, because I live there, at the "South Eastern Patriots" march. As tends to happen, it was a doomed effort by the racists. If you zoom in, you can see them huddled sheepishly by the Bystander caff behind a load of polis

Class

Behold, the worst wine on the planet (after Yellow Tail; although Jam Shed might actually be even more revolting) (Took me 2 days to get halfway down and I've now given up)

A week is a long time in polotics

Since Zack is trying to hypnotise us into forgetting he was a Lib Dem, let’s remind him that he was: ✂️ Proud of austerity 🎓 Proud of tuition fees 🛏️ Proud of the Bedroom Tax

Do we still celebrate Ed Balls Day?

Boomer here. (Cusp Gen X.) There's only one really bad thing here and I can assure you people have been shitting in the streets since they invented streets

This aged well

Excuse poor quality photo of a brilliant photo, but here is the lovely payment I received in lieu of cash for contributing to @KCMANC's brilliant book, Juvenes, about Joy Division, who are now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I don't use the word "iconic" lightly, but this is.

This is the third thing the @guardian says has taken over the world this week, and it's only Thursday

I've known and loved quite a few diagnosed bipolar people pretty well in my time, and the most unhinged thing I've known any of them ever do isn't praise Hitler etc., it's sleep with me. Which is admittedly pretty eccentric

I did rather well on this but not *quite* as well as he did. Anyway, respect to the man

Arsenal fans will like this one. How did you think Arsenal found Wenger? Through a cigarette lighter. I promise- I wish I was kidding. Arsenal were not allowed to let women into their boardroom in 1989, and that sexist rule accidentally led to the greatest appointment in the club's entire history, because the women were kept in a separate cocktail lounge at half time. And that was where Barbara Dein spotted a tall, suave continental man in a beige trenchcoat and rimless glasses standing quietly in the corner. She and her friend Penny Grade had gone over simply to ask him for a cigarette lighter, but Barbara was so struck by this elegant, intellectual Frenchman that she immediately sent her husband David a message telling him there was someone in the lounge he needed to meet, the manager of Monaco. David Dein came out of the boardroom, met Arsene Wenger, and invited him to dinner that same evening where they played charades, and Wenger's intellect impressed Dein so deeply that he wrote his name in his diary that night with a quiet conviction that this was someone Arsenal needed. From that evening, Dein stayed in regular contact with Wenger, sending him VHS tapes of Arsenal matches every week for years, which is how Wenger came to know so much about the club long before he ever managed them. That was 1989, and it took seven more years of Dein fighting the Arsenal board, who rejected his suggestion to appoint Wenger as early as 1995, before they finally agreed after Bruce Rioch's dismissal in 1996, and the British press responded to the appointment by asking "Arsene Who?" which remains one of the most embarrassing headlines in football journalism history. Wenger spent the next 22 years making that question look very foolish, winning 3 Premier League titles including the completely unbeaten Invincibles season of 2003/04 where Arsenal went the entire league campaign without losing once, a record that still stands today, along with seven FA Cups which made him the most successful manager in the history of that competition, and two league and cup doubles, and a Champions League final appearance in 2006, all across 1,235 games in charge. What most people outside Arsenal do not fully appreciate though is what Wenger did for the club financially, because his ability to find players like Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira, Robert Pires, Kolo Toure and Cesc Fabregas for fractions of their actual market value completely transformed how Arsenal operated. A survey in 2007 found that Wenger was the only Premier League manager to have made a profit on transfers, averaging £4.4 million profit per season between 2004 and 2009, and that financial discipline directly contributed to the club's ability to finance the construction of the Emirates Stadium, a £390 million project that Arsenal funded largely through their own resources without the billionaire backing that most clubs depend on today. He left in 2018 after 22 years and joined FIFA as Chief of Global Football Development in 2019, responsible for developing the game across 211 countries, and David Dein, who was dismissed by Arsenal on 18 April 2007 following a boardroom dispute over outside investment, went on to become an Ambassador for both the Premier League and the FA. He also founded The Twinning Project, a charity connecting football clubs with local prisons to help rehabilitate offenders, which he described as the work that animates him most. Dein has since said that Wenger's treatment on leaving Arsenal made him "so angry" and that the club should have made him chairman, which tells you everything about the bond that began with a cigarette lighter in a cocktail lounge in 1989. One small moment started all of it. Hope you learned something today. My name is Ajoje. I am a FIFA Licensed Agent and International Sports Lawyer. I write on the Law and Business of Football, a lot. Repost and Follow if you want to read more posts like this.

This man gets paid

It's that time of year again

I am sure the IRGC, always sensitive to gender equality, will approve of the @Guardian's choice of the non-binary word "spokesperson"

What's the Spanish for Schadenfreude? #ManCity

My contribution to #InternationalWomensDay is this somewhat geeky post, but I love it

I know A LOT about Evelyn Waugh. And this series of 15-minute observations by Russell Kane is brilliant, and all the more so because he and his interviewees are (mostly) miles away from Waugh's social class. Couldn't stop listening. bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002s3…