Poll-uted Wisdom

I used to do a kind of "laugh at Graham Poll" thing, where every Monday his column would feature something absolutely laughable and I'd, well, laugh at it.  It seems like it's been a while, I must have been ignoring him.  Anyway, today it's back, he's got two humorous pieces this morning.  The first is this, where he talks us through Wayne Rooney's injury from a ref's perspective.  It's the deadpan way he describes the mundane, and frankly meaningless, details that makes him a comedy genius:

The moment I saw Wayne Rooney’s injury, I thought: ‘I wonder if Hugo Rodallega was wearing blades and not traditional studs?’

As it turned out, the Fulham striker was not wearing blades. He was wearing Nike Mercurial Vapor boots, which feature screw-in studs.

Before every match the officials are responsible for checking the player’s equipment. The stud check for the players starting the game takes place in the tunnel.

Rodallega was not subject to this inspection as he was one of the subs and so he will have been checked by the fourth official, Phil Gibbs.

It's brilliant, from his first thought being that, rather than, "God! look at the size of that gash!" to just thinking that there's some point in telling us who checked the studs - were there people out there worried he'd smuggled razor blades in on his feet?

The second is his opinion on the new ball and keepers:

I have detected the ball moving in the air more over the opening weekends of this season compared with last term.

Yes, it's Graham Poll and his famous ball movement detector, he also detects:

As a result I saw more keepers punching balls away this weekend, Wigan’s Ali Al-Habsi probably the best example, rather than trying to catch it. I’m all for more goals in football but someone should look at the ball as we’ve got to play fair with goalkeepers.

Because no one has ever punched a ball before this season, and they'll get used to it, it's not like a World Cup where the limited games don't give the time for adjustment, and if every keeper has the same ball it's all fair to me.  Perhaps De Gea could blame the ball for Fulham's second, and at least we know Suarez is still shit - his free kick was all about the new ball.