Coming Home to Roost: Round 31 in the BPL

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o Lord, but that Theo Walcott is hot right now. Correspondent Ed can malign the Arsenal man all he wants, but Walcott's stats for the season are beginning to pile up, and he seems to be playing the game with a little more patience and confidence than earlier in the season. Could his decision making also be improving...?  There's never been any doubt about the fleet-footed Englishman's skills, but the rap was that he never made the right decision. Well, now he's beginning to, and look out RVP:  your one man team is in danger of becoming a two man show.

o For the record, Ed, Walcott is on 10 goals and 10 assists for the season to date, while The Best Player in the World TM (Gareth Bale) has almost identical stats: 10 goals and 11 assists.  I'd call that pretty equal.

o It looks as if Mark Hughes is sparking QPR to life at just the right time of the season. Their run in looked daunting as can be, but with two straight home wins over Liverpool and Arsenal, who knows what's going to happen?  Here's hoping Rangers revert to form for their Easter Sunday trip to Old Trafford.

o Apparently Referee Lee Mason thought it was perfectly acceptable to stop play to allow Gary Cahill to tie his shoe.  What's next?  Officials stopping play so David Luiz can pull up his tights?

o Who knew American Eric Lichaj was cut from the same long throw mould as Stoke's Rory DeLap and Ryan Shotton?  I wonder of Jurgen Klinsman is going to turn the USMNT into the international version of Stoke City...? With a goal and an assist on Saturday, Lichaj just might be making Klinsi sit up and take notice.

o Meanwhile, an indication of how poorly Aston Villa's season has gone came when their fans lit a flare after the team briefly tied Chelsea on Saturday.  And I thought fans of second rate teams only did that kind of stuff in Italy....

o Quick question for Shay Given: how lowly do you feel after being beaten by Fernando Torres?  There's not too many goalies this season that can claim that accomplishment.

o I won't say much about City vs. Sunderland except the following: All the chicks in Manchester City came home to roost on Saturday.  Players arguing, fingers pointing, fans booing, and a manager with his head in his hands on the bench. Does this look like a title winning team?  Or more likely, a team that's going to need to replace its manager....?

Football's Just Not a Radio Sport

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I've had occasion to listen to a number of Premier League games recently on the radio, courtesy of Siriux XM satellite radio (Channel 92) here in the States. Due to travel or schedule, and sometimes both, I've been away from my television during some part of the weekend's football happenings -- as happened again on Saturday for the early Arsenal vs Blackburn contest, kicking off at 8:00AM on the East Coast.  Not content to miss part of the action, and unable to watch all of it on my trusty digital video recorder due to other commitments, I resorted to the second best option: listening to some of the live action on satellite radio.

But I've found over time that it's a less than satisfying option, somewhat akin to labeling Ketchup a vegetable: it may meet the bare minimum requirements, but it's hugely unfulfilling at the same time, leaving you longing for something more substantive.   The lack of a coherent understanding of the action on the pitch isn't the fault of the announcers, but is due instead to the inherent limitations of the medium itself.  Football's just not a radio sport: the free-flowing form of the game lends itself well to the visuals of television, but radio broadcasts leave me feeling a bit sterile and uninformed.

This is not to say radio doesn't work for all sport. In fact, there are several sports in which radio is almost as powerful as television at capturing the feeling of the game and the action taking place.  Take baseball, for example. Baseball generally unfolds at a fairly leisurely pace, and the rhythms and flow of the sport serve the verbal medium extremely well. All of the action initially takes place between two players -- pitcher and batter -- and it's only when the ball is put into play that the announcer needs to give any additional context.  With its steady mix of action and inaction, pitch and then wait, pitch and wait, with the backdrop of strategy and suspense building up inning by inning, radio has served baseball well since the very beginning of broadcast sports.