Ahmadinejad doesn't help the cause

It is a badly kept secret that I vociferously support the plight of the Palestinian people in their rightful claim to their own country. In order for this to succeed in the long-term we have to fight effectively a PR war which at the moment Israel is winning hands down. This is not surprising as the power of the Israel lobby in the US is unbelievable and is arguably more sympathetic to the Israeli cause than Israel itself. Nevertheless, since the turn of the century the supporters of Palestine have certainly become more vocal and finally the public is beginning to see the injustice. In the past any criticism of Israel was seen as anti-Semitic but now this pathetic argument has all but dissipated and it is Israeli politicians who are being criticised for labelling Ahmadinejad to "Hitler the Nazi" (Shimon Peres).

The Arabic states are often seen as the advocates of the Palestinian cause and despite being previously hostile to Israel this has now cooled to some degree. They though are also part of this PR war and the hard work of campaigners for Palestine both here and in the West is put to nothing when Ahmadinejad uses a 'racism conference' to attack Israel. There is in my opinion some credence in what he said but a UN conference was not the place to air these views. Now the world has more of a reason to hate the Iranian nation but also to give support to Israel which can play the 'victim' card.

QPR

The question of Paolo Sousa's sacking was not 'if', but rather 'when'. Unsurprisingly, F1 magnate Flavio Briatore could not even wait until the end of the Championship season to get rid of the Portuguese manager and I feel obliged to speak out as a long time advocate of giving managers a fair chance in their jobs. Admittedly I didn't ever believe Sousa would do a good job at QPR as the Championship is a tough league to play in and needs someone who is au fait with the style of play. The job at Loftus Road is by no means impossible but is harder than Briatore would like to think. We know from the current economic crisis that throwing money at a problem doesn't make it go away and the same is true to an extent here. It is ridiculous to expect instant success from a Championship club even if the manager does have millions to spend. Firstly there is the problem of attracting big names to play at that level and secondly all teams need time to bond.

Who should take over this accursed position then? In my opinion Dennis Wise would be a good person for this job. He's already shown he can do wonders for lower league teams who are infamous for playing rough football such as Leeds and Milwall. It does have to be conceded that the style of football would not necessarily be pretty and one columnist has already pointed out that Wise's teams used to get booed when winning! Nevertheless I believe Wise would get results and would be the ideal person to appoint at the start of the summer. The one issue surrounding this though would be that Wise would not tolerate any boardroom interference and this could ultimately cost him his job. The existence of such influences at the club have been made clear when Sousa went to the press saying he knew nothing of the loaning of Dexter Blackstock. Thus Wise is the obvious candidate for a job at QPR but far from the obvious candidate for a Briatore employee-of-the-month award.

I like QPR as a club but just hope they haven't sold their soul for a bit of spending money and a managerial revolving door.

Newport 4-0 Fisher

Long trip to Wales waking up at 6am and still missing a train at 7.45. I mean the tubes at the weekend are so useless I could have walked to Paddington quicker! As a result I ended up on the 8.45 with Leyton Orient (not Milwall) fans on their way to Cheltenham. The smell of cheap alcohol at that time of the morning is sickening but was compensated late on in the journey by getting to see old people complain to the staff after they had got off :D

Newport's a lovely city and everything but nothing special and tbh I'm half glad I didn't have to wait around for ages. I found the ground and it's a good couple of miles from the city centre but a really nice sports complex. Whilst I waited there were other people playing sports in the vicinity. I picked the woman's hockey for reasons which are too obvious to mention.

There were 4 Fisher fans in all including me, the mascot, the mascot's dad and some other random guy. I didn't see them during the first half as I was going to do the traditional non-league thing of waiting behind the goal we were shooting at. This was pointless for 2 reasons. (1) there's an athletics track surrounding the pitch meaning 'behind the goal' is like 100 yds back (2) we didn't exactly threaten the county goal. I therefore positioned my self 3/4 of the way up the pitch and had a good view (see pics). I encouraged the team personally by name but my I gave up on 'COME ON FISHER!' after the first effort was derided by about 50 taffs.

We were never going to win but weren't helped when Chris Saunders got sent off after 10 mins. So final score 4 zip but a good day out.

England

Right new blog for the first time in a couple of weeks but it's not going to be very long. In fact it's more of a test to see if this automatically gets posted on my twitter like I told it to.

Anyway the footballs just finished and I'm pleased to report a win for all the home nations (Wales doesn't count). Obviously being half Irish I like to see them do well also and I would certainly take 1-1 with the Italians. It's also good to see Robbie Keane slapping one home and keeping in form for the back end of Spurs season.

Despite this I'm a little disappointed by England. Of course the result is good and the press will be happy tomorrow but it would be a completely different story if it ended 1-1. The only player who showed any class was (dare I say it) Rooney and some of the tactical decisions by Capello were at best mystifying. Anyway best be off, apologies for the excessive tweeting during the football. I'll shush my mouth a bit more tomorrow