Matthew Engel Quotations

It is damnably hard to know for certain which horse will win ... but a trainer, jockey or groom can often be very sure indeed that a horse will lose.

It was a triumph for the real thing. Five five-day Test matches between two gifted, well-matched teams playing fantastic cricket at high velocity and high pressure with the perfect mix of chivalry and venom. Here was the best game in the world, at its best.

It is customary for columnists to complain about the excesses of Premiership footballers, whenever - as happens regularly - there is an incident involving some combination of sex, drugs, drink, violence and the constabulary. But modern footballers have a lot of both money and disposable time, a combination that has proved a recipe for personal disaster throughout history. And these incidents take place generally round night clubs rather than football clubs. The average Premiership player who turned up for work drunk would have a career-expectancy measurable in minutes.

Is this good for English football? In the short run, Chelsea's rise has broken up what was turning into an irritating Arsenal-Manchester United duopoly. But football leagues (look at Scotland, look at Spain) can get along OK with duopolies. A monopoly, however, is a disaster. Everyone else in the Premiership has to operate on some kind of business footing, and the terror stalking Highbury and Old Trafford is that Chelsea will be immune from financial discipline forever.

Derek Randall bats like an octopus with piles

Verbosity was an established Victorian trait.

There are those who condemn five in midfield as a negative tactic, but when a side's centre-backs are as hapless as Chris Perry and Hermann Hreidarsson were on Sunday, it is not nearly negative enough.

The Five have never been the world's top five.