Remember. You heard it here first.

One of the few England players who can hold his head up high after this World Cup. He silenced the doubters (myself included) with two immense performances in midfield. Oh and he converted a kick from 12 yards with just a goalkeeper to beat. Very unusual and very un-English behaviour. It must be the Canadian blood and the fact he plays his domestic football in Germany.

From yesterday’s Press conference [ Would Defoe have been a better selection than Walcot ? ] ‘I don’t think so. If I thought that I would have picked him and I have seen him 15 or 20 times this season.’ And later, Eriksson just can’t help himself and, once again, shows his true colours ‘The reason (for Eriksson leaving the job after the World Cup) was a newspaper coming out with lies…that is why I have sued the newspaper. It has cost me a lot of money but I am sure I will get the money back’. ...

Golly. It is very hot today. Thankfully, the UK Government has told me the solution: Stay out of the sun. Keep your home as cool as possible. Shutting windows during the day may help. Open them when it is cooler at night. Keep drinking fluids. Now I would never have dreamt of thought of doing any of those things. Superb advice. May I suggest a couple of additional top tips. ...

Did my eyes deceive me or did Jamie Carragher come on as an England substitute specifically to take a penalty in the shoot-out ? Beckham’s ‘retirement’ as England captain is interesting. I suspect he will play on until he has 100 caps (currently has 94) and will then ‘retire’ completely from international football. John Terry will be awarded the captaincy for two reasons. Firstly, no-one would be able to understand Steven Gerrard in press conferences. Secondly, Terry reacts in the precisely right way (openly weeping) to defeat in penalty shoot-outs. ...

Sshh. Please don’t tell my therapist but BlogPulse matches the tone, content and links of this blog with ' Laura’s Playground' which is dedicated to ‘Transsexual and Transgendered News’. I think I need to put my favourite pink panties on and sit down with a cold drink.

You were good but not that good otherwise you wouldn’t have needed extra time against Mexico and would have beaten the Germans in two hours of football. Still, at least this will finally end to the (UK) media love-in about your fantastic football and the two best goals scored ever. You know; the one with 24 passes in the buildup and that superb, dipping volley. Refreshing to see Gabriel Heinze attacking FIFA officials instead of lying on the turf and sobbing uncontrollably which is the proper way to face defeat in a penalty shootout. ...

Maybe I am obsessed with dead pop stars but I agree with the sentiment of this blog (skip the comments).

A long day tuning SQL queries using Siebel 7.8 and Oracle 10gR2… We used the Siebel recommended settings (TechNote 582). We used the Oracle recommended settings. We gathered table statistics. We gathered index statistics. We gathered column histograms. We dropped statistics on empty tables (Alert 1162). We set some miscellaneous (magic) underscore parameters to encourage CBO to use the correct index. We poured over 10053 trace files. We used a 15 year old, deprecated, desupported optimizer technology to reduce a complex 27 table (outer) join query with a subquery to subsecond from an hourglass. ...

So farewell then, Graham Poll. Your lifelong dream of officiating in the World Cup final is dead. However, you only have yourself to blame. Counting the number of yellow cards awarded and to whom is a fundamental part of your job and you failed.