Donde esta la fiesta? Aqui!

Greetings, gentle readers.
First, the news from the 'Pool. St. Michael is gone, off to sample the wonders of La Liga with Réal Madrid. Coming to Liverpool are a quartet of Spaniards in what looks like some sort of strange exchange program. With Beckham, Owen, Woodgate and Harte now plying their trade in sunny Spain, Xabi Alonso, Antonio Nuňez, Luis Garcia and Josemi have come to Liverpool in manager Rafael Benitez' attempt to replicate his astonishing triumphs at Valencia in the past two years. Odd that the Madrileňos would go for Owen and Woodgate, who have never won a title between them, while Liverpool grabbed the manager of the team that beat Madrid in La Liga last year. Danny Murphy also made his departure amidst sneering remarks and hostile contempt. Spud viciously denounced the Rafa Revolution as "cosmopolitan", his attitude connoting that he would spell it "t-o-o-m-a-n-y-w-o-g-s". And El-Hadji Diouf is out in the cold, without even a squad number. In short, the team is in a major state of flux, and it may be some time before the comfortable victories begin to pile up. Captain Stevie G has been inspirational as always, and hopes are high that he and Alonso will command the centre of midfield while Didi tidies up in front of the back four, where Jamie Carragher has apparently supplanted Stephane Henchoz as Sami Hyypiä's partner in central defence. With Kewell practicing his precociousness on the left, and John Arne Riise rampaging up the right, there should be no shortage of supply for Milan Baros and Djibril Cissé up front. The present looks a bit dour, but the future seems to hold the potential for much jubilation. Despite the fact that Réal Madrid have declared that they will buy Gerrard next season if Liverpool don't do something extraordinary, like win the Premiership for the first time or win the Champions' League for the first time ever. Liverpool has 18 top flight trophies, but none since the old Division One Became The Premiership. We've also won the old Champions' Cup four times, but that was before they shuffled the format into the Champions' League. In any event, history must be made this season, or Stevie G may just vanish into the annals of Liverpudlian history. And that would be catastrophic.
In other parts of the footie world, Canada was robbed of a victory in their World Cup Qualifying match at home against Honduras when the Mexican ref blatantly cheated the hard-grafting Canadians. After awarding a farcical penalty to a Honduran striker who fell over his own feet in the 18 yard-box with no-one around him, the ref turned about two minutes later to disallow a perfectly good Canadian goal because a Honduran had apparently gone down in a phantom collision with no one in particular. The normally polite and sedate Canadian supporters were filled with an unquenchable boiling rage built of righteous indignancy and appalled disbelief. Frank Yallop, the stunned Canadian manager said that while he won't use the word "cheat", he is thinking it. So I'll use it. The ref cheated. And for justice to be done, he should be put to the sword.
Meanwhile, now that I've got my new web-mailbox, I'll need to post the URL so that I can use this page as a springboard to get there, rather than having to sift through several pages about Welsh geography. So here it is:
http://city-of-liverpool.mail.everyone.net/email/scripts/loginuser.pl?EV1=10945921277169344
And since I'm just winding down my shift here at work, I'll draw this missal to a close early so I can start closing down some of my tools and expedite my escape. And if anyone named Emond is reading this - send me a frickin' e-mail, man! The rest of you can carry on as usual. Cheers,

Justice for the 96
-mARKUS