Sometimes you just know...

Ali Carter licks his lips with just the black to pot for his 147 to match Ronnnie O'Sullivan's feat yesterday and grab a share of the £150,000 prize for cleaning the table

The real reason Barca lost at Old Trafford

The sublime Lionel Messi admires Paul Scholes technique and behind him another Barca player is also a spectator...the idea, mios compadres, is to close him down and tackle him...otherwise he scores like this...and you are not going to Moscow

How Galatasary fans celebrate

This is how the crowd celebrated after Galatasary's title victory over Fenerbache!

TYWB1: The blind Bangladesh cricket team

Look, no pads! (TYWB=Things You Won't Believe)

Yokozuma Deliberation Council

Up and under Sumo style

The big Sumo summit

Grand champion Yokozuna Asashoryu from Mongolia grapples with Tochinoshin from Georgia at the Yokozuma Deliberation Council final in Tokyo

'Oshi boshi

Easy with the handshake...Satoshi Ishii grimaces as he gets a congratulatory handshake after winning the All Japan Judo Championships in Tokyo yesterday

The Rocket

That's 147 in less than 10 minutes...a bit of a slow one from Ronnie O'Sullivan. He has cleared the table in just over five minutes before now! Hurry up Ronnie.

Top 10 soccer books

Perhaps unsurprisingly Provided You Don't Kiss Me: 20 Years with Brian Clough by Duncan Hamilton has not strayed across the Atlantic as yet. But this top 10 soccer books from Amazon.com makes an interesting read. You can bet on which ones Mcain, Clinton and Obama might be reading...:

1. Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer by David Winner
2. How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer
3. Soccer in Sun and Shadow, New Edition by Eduardo Galeano
4. Among the Thugs by Bill Buford
5. The Miracle of Castel di Sangro: A Tale of Passion and Folly in the Heart of Italy by Joe Mcginniss
6. The Glory Game by Hunter Davies - Account of Tottenham's 1971-72 season.
7. Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby - Overrated crap, editor
8. A Season with Verona: Travels Around Italy in Search of Illusion, National Character, and...Goals! by Tim Parks
9. Barmy Army: The Changing Face of Football Violence by Dougie Brimson
10. Soccer's Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of Clumsy Keepers, Clever Crosses, and Outlandish Oddities (Most Wanted) by John Snyder

Is this the man to save Liverpool FC?

Pictured last night at Anfield was long standing fan Sameer al-Answar chairman of Dubai International Capital which has bought in the last three years Madame Tussauds for £800m, engineering group Doncasters for £700m, Travelodge hotels for £600m and German packaging company Mauser for €8550. Sounds like he talks the kind of numbers Rafa might like in the transfer market. He was outbid last year but then he only offered a platry £175m for the club.

Oh, Ashley how on earth could you????

Proof positive that Ashley Cole is not the brighte3st spark in the Premier League. This is the Mrs. The gorgeous Cheryl. FHM has just rated her in the top 10 sexiest girls on the planet. Hard to argue with that one

Chelsea statistically to beat Manchester United

0-1, Chelsea do it again at Everton, the pass masters of the statistical lexicon that says that over a season 19% of all premier league football games end up...you guessed it - 1-0 and another six oper cent end up 0-1, so that is 25% of all games are stetled by one goal. Depressing isn't it. In researching 100 games up to 3-3, it transpires that in fact there is a 14% chance that the outcome won't be any of those, ie four goals were scored.

Of course it is another story in the champions league, if either of them get through to Moscow

Best Chelsea goals 2006 - 2007

With the upcoming clash with Manchester United, a reminder of Chelsea's pomp under Mourinho

Bayern wags (part two)

Spot the trophy. Luca Toni, reputedly on €5.5m a year holds up the Bundesliga trophy. His girlfriend Marta Ceccheto is the one on the left

Bayern Wags are out in force (part1)

Notice how French ace Frank Ribery's wife Wahiba has the same nose as him. You know what they say about dogs...The bowl between them is the Bundesliga trophy Bayern wrapped up last weekend

There's great sports journalism and there's...

Every now and then Betclicker comes across great articles on sport...like this one which is almost as heroic as Joe Calzaghe's fight about which it preambled. A little warning before you start, mind. It is 5,000 words long! That is what is called going the distance! It is from http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=14882&more=1

Brilliant Francisco Lobo, brilliant.

The most luxurious of tennis settings

Monte Carlo hosts the first of four big men's tournaments before the French Open at Roland Garros...You have to say the setting is pretty cute. What could be finer than an afternoon at the clay, dinner with Ducasse and a few spins at roulette at the casino

Confucious he say greens run splodgy in rain

A man needs a decent umbrella at last week's China open...torrential rain nearly swamped out the contest

Just a normal Lazio v Roma game

Riot police try to calm the exc ited fans watching Roma v Lazio It was 3-2 to Lazio so by Italian standards pretty exciting....Not as good as watching Villa though.

Little Joe's 45th victim

Even a hardman like bernard Hopkins could not in the end stand the wiles of Joe Calzaghe

Barca hosts another big circus as FI hits town for what the drivers say is the toughest of all tracks

All the big cars arrive at the Catalyuna racecourse for the Spanish Grand Prix with improvements in testing. This could be the one that sets the tone for the rest of the season.. Ferrari arrive with a new nose cone with a hole in the centre. But championship leader Kimi Raikkonen rates this the toughest of tracks: "Barcelona is one of the most difficult circuits for cars, then after here it's Turkey and Monaco, and it can be a different story again," he said.BMW technical director Willy Rampf has said this will be the race that reveals the true running order in F1. But his driver Robert Kubica was especially optimistic about his chances.

Lewis Hamilton expects his McLaren package to be strong . "It's always difficult to predict these things as all the teams are continuously progressing. Winter testing there was positive and this week we have covered a good amount of laps. I feel we have a competitive package at the track; the car seems to work quite well. We have a range of new components coming on board for this race which we tested this week and had some positive results, but we are not alone in doing this! The Circuit de Catalunya is a great track; we can't ever lose it from the calendar. It always sees competitive racing and there are so many enthusiastic fans there all the time which makes for a great atmosphere."

Last week’s trails ended in a torrential downpour. Red Bull’s Mark Webber took advantage of these rare moments to try out some new aero parts on the RB4, setting a best time of 1m21.953s which was over a second and a half faster than McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen.

The science of sports betting

0-1, Chelsea do it again, the pass masters of the statistical lexicon that says that over a season 19% of all premier league football games end up...you guessed it - 1-0 and another six oper cent end up 0-1, so that is 25% of all games are stetled by one goal. Depressing isn't it. In researching 100 games up to 3-3, it transpires that in fact there is a 14% chance that the outcome won't be any of those, ie four goals were scored.

These figures may change from league to league. I will do them for the whole of last season when I get the chance, or have got so nurdled or greedy that I need to know