FA calls for "absolute bedlam" amongst calls for calm

How everyone wants it to go off, tomorrow

A spokesman from the FA would have emailed me today if I knew one to clarify that while they are all officially calling for calm ahead of Saturday's FA cup confrontation between Liverpool and Manchester United, between themselves they are hoping for something akin to world war III.

"We hope it goes off good style," he would have explained. "While officially we couldn't obviously say so, everyone in the office, like everyone in the country, is hoping it all goes off like a fucking firework."

"What we'd ideally like," the man called Tony would have said, "is for something like a chest high challenge to come in from Steven Gerrard on Patrice Evra. Not something fierce enough to kill him, but enough to break three of four ribs, and that be it..the benches clear, the fans plough towards each other and then suddenly everyone in Liverpool and everyone in Manchester steals each other's cars and heads to a meeting point somewhere in a service station car park on the M62 and the fucking apocalypse begins."

"We don't want this to be racial though," he would have been at pains to point out. "There's no place for prejudice in this day and age. Some of my best mates have got coloureds as friends. It's sad really that people are still so bigoted in this day and age."

What we're all hoping for tomorrow. yesterday.