Tuesday Night Football

OK sports fans, let’s take a look at tonight’s menu and see what football delicacies we have on the menu.

I’ll start with the most important stuff, Division 3.

There is a scenario where Bristol City can take the lead in the division, but it looks like a long shot. City would need to win by at least four clear goals at Bournemouth, Nottingham Forest would have to lose at Port Vale and Tranmere would have to lose at home to Huddersfield.

It doesn’t look very likely. City haven’t won down there since March 2002, Forest won both their meetings with Port Vale last season (and let’s not forget that City beat Vale 2-0 on Saturday) and Tranmere won their last four home games against Huddersfield. If you chuck Bradford (away at Donny Rovers) and Carlisle (at home to Blackpool tonight) into the mix things, if City get at least a point tonight they can probably maintain third spot. The bookies seem to like Carlisle and Tranmere to win tonight, so we might have to be content with keeping pace with the leaders rather than an audacious leap to the top of the division.

Still, you never know. Who'd have thought Take That would get back together?

At almost the other end of the footballing scale, there are a couple of ties in the European Cup* that merit some attention tonight. The Arse take on FC Porto at The (Insert Sponsor) Stadium while Manyoo travel to Lisbon to play Benfica at The Original Stadium Of Light, which I flew over once - in a plane. I don't have any superhero powers I'm aware of. Not surprisingly, it’s a big red football stadium (or at least it was) so it shouldn’t be too hard to find; it won’t take the Benfica fans too long to find Cristiano Ronaldo either.

After the nonsense in the World Cup between England and Portugal I’d be quite pleased if Arse and Manyoo both won, but although the bookies favour a Woolwich Arsenal victory, the odds on Newton Heath show indecision on the part of the punters and it may be a better match because of it.

Tomorrow night Chelsea play Levski Sofia in Bulgaria, Liverpool play Galatasary (I don't need no damn spellchecker!) at Anfield but I shall attempt to watch Barcelona at Werder Bremen. Barcelona will come up again at some point but you’ll have to wait for that.

On to Transatlantic nonsense and I have the pleasure to report that the Ashton Gators won their first fantasy game of the NFL season this weekend. Individually most of my points came from Clinton Portis (27) but I’d like to thank Nate Burleson and Darrell Jackson of the Seattle Seahawks for combining for the 29 points they scored during the Seahawks’ 42-30 win over the New York Giants on Sunday. The Giants were rubbish; the callers to WFAN-NY yesterday were unequivocal about that even if most of them sounded like Sil and Paulie from The Sopranos**.

Join me tomorrow for the next episode - who knows, I might not even mention football.

* Now known as The Champions League, although you don't have to be the champions to be in it. Which is stupid.

** Not that there is anything wrong with sounding like Sil and Paulie.