Ground 102: Estadio Manuel Martínez Valero

A two-tiered roofless bowl, green-and-white striped, empty at the top and less than half full below. Elche were big and determinedly ponderous, Eibar had more skill but nowhere near enough ambition to make for an entertaining game. Their winner was the classic sucker punch: a cut-back from the touchline scuffed into the far corner past the goalkeeper's outstretched finger nails. The net barely rippled; there was more movement on the bench than in the stands. Thirty seconds later the full-time whistle blew.

Sleeping in Airports

The flight was so early it was hardly worth the bother of going to bed. Instead I took the last metro to the airport and sat up through the night on a hardbacked chair with a dog-eared Dracula and jazz from the 24-hour Starbucks.

Things started moving around four. There were flights to Spain and Amsterdam, Faro and a many-syllabled Greek resort. People had dressed for holidays not for home: tight-fitting shirts over beer-bellies and tattoos, baggy shorts and rubber sandals, football tops with nicknames on the back. The air outside was as cold and grey as old tarmac. I fell asleep as soon as we hit the sky.

The Second Going

After the shock of Keegan leaving comes depression at the mess that's left behind. One more act of self-destruction, another season with nothing but the end to look forward to. This is what happens when you run a football club like a discount sports shop.

En España

I´m at my parents´house in Spain, a dozen or so kilometres south of Alicante, a little bit north of Santa Pola, a few hundred metres inland from the sea. The weather, of course, is hot. Very hot.

Tentative Tokyo

This week I received my Tentative Assignment (I won't find anything out for sure until two days before I leave). Ten weeks' teaching at Hosei University Tama Campus and a flat in Fuchu City, twenty-two minutes by Keio Line to Shinjuku (think Lost In Translation or Tokyo as people who've never been there imagine it all to be) and, by dint of its links to Suntory Beer and Toshiba, home of a brewery museum and two whole rugby teams. There's a kind of symmetry to it - I've lived north and east of Tokyo (south is out for reasons of the Pacific Ocean) and I've already worked three months at Hosei's Ichigaya campus. All in all, it's about as good as I could have hoped for.

At The Crossroads

Without a doubt the most important week of Newcastle United's season will be the remainder of this one. Before the transfer window closes it's absolutely imperative we add a defender, another striker and a creative midfielder able to pick passes through the kind of deep-lying defences we're likely to come up against when playing teams at home. Make the right signings now and, with the already impressive additions of Gutierrez, Guthrie and Coloccini (a real snip at just one and a fifth Anton Ferdinands), we could easily finish in the top six or eight. Do nothing and a few key injuries could see a repeat of last season's shambles.

Ashley's talked a lot about his ambitions for the club in recent weeks but, as the weekend's attendance proved, talk alone doesn't fill a stadium. It's time to act. And fast.

On The Wall

I spent the entire Bank Holiday weekend in the verdant Northumberland countryside, rattling back and forth on the Hadrian's Wall bus, getting sunburnt (Sunburnt! In England! In August!) on a 13-mile walk between Chesters Fort and Once Brewed, trespassing on the grounds of haunted castles, legging it from bulls, eating Brown Ale flavoured ice cream and drinking copious amounts of wine in a tent while gazing at the stars and listening to the North Tyne burbling by.

Glorious.

Nothing To Hide?

It's an ironic example perhaps, but the loss of a memory stick containing the personal details of criminals proves once again the inanity of believing that innocent people have nothing to hide. From CDs lost in the post to documents left on trains, the government has shown itself to be completely incompetent when it comes to protecting the personal data it currently holds. Increasing that information (by way of a National ID Card Database, for example) only magnifies the risk.

The issue is not whether normal people have things worth hiding (anyone with a bank account automatically passes that test). The more pressing questions are why the government needs our data and how they guarantee to protect it. It's up to them, not us, to justify erosions of our personal liberties. So far, they've failed on both counts.

The Mackem Wiki

Entertainingly illiterate.

Ground 101: South Shields 5 Hebburn Town 1

Believe it or not, the Premier League wasn't the only competition to begin today. The FA Cup (Extra-Preliminary Round) got underway at that quaint old time of 3pm at a muddy Filtrona Park. Dominating the clarts and divots in midfield, Shields won at a canter against a Hebburn team who didn't start playing until they were three-nil down. And by then it was much too late.