Growing frustration at Nou Camp as Barcelona again fail to attract commercial sponsor

European champions Barcelona started the 2009-10 La Liga season with a comfortable 3-0 win over Sporting Gijon, but president Joan Laporta admitted any joy was overshadowed by failing to find a lucrative sponsorship deal in pre-season.

Member-owned Catalan giants Barcelona have been wearing the Unicef logo since 2006 and offer the charity free advertising space on their shirts.

"We'd love a proper sponsor," Laporta lamented. "I just can't understand why we can't seem to get one, it's embarrassing.

"We thought we had a deal with Staybrite Windows but that fell through and then we were sat by the phone all summer - nothing else came up, so it's bloody Unicef again. "

Barcelona aren't the only giants of the football world without a sponsorship deal, even West Brom are currently without a deal.

Pleat's record tumbles as ESPN delivers devastating deluge of mispronunciation

It's been an exciting opening to the Serie A season but a tough one for fans of names being said correctly after ESPN's commentators delivered a terrifying statement of intent with a dizzying display of mispronunciation.

Feeding on the rotting carcass of kamikaze channel Setanta, ESPN has scrounged the rights to a significant number of European Leagues, including Serie A.

While UK-based calcio lovers were delighted by the news, the enthusiasm has faded somewhat after ESPN's far from convincing start to the campaign.

Italians across the country winced during Roma-Juventus when the hapless commentary team butchered the names of 20 of the 22 starting players, running up a fearsome total of 128 mispronunciations - shattering the previous record of 115 set by verbose ITV boob David Pleat.

ESPN will be red-faced at their lack of research, but their representatives will surely claim that Pleat's total was more embarrassing as he chalked it up during an all-English Champions League clash between Chelsea and Liverpool.

Pleat, who famously once took 75 minutes to pronounce Bixente Lizarazu's name, was fortunately unavailable for comment.

Squirming Moyes 'pretty certain he remembers Bilyaletdinov at Euro 2008'

While most of the blue half of Merseyside has given Diniyar Bilyaletdinov a muted reception, Everton boss David Moyes is over the moon at signing a man he is "pretty sure" was part of Russia's Euro 2008 limited success story.

Everton have suffered a less than ideal start to the season and are rueing the loss of money-loving, best-of-a-bad-bunch defender Jolean Lescott.

The Toffees have invested a chunk of the £22.5m Manchester City paid for Lescott in Russian midfielder Bilyaletdinov, who arrived in Liverpool with very little fanfare, possibly due to his unpronouncable name, unremarkable career to date and indistinct face.

But while the supporters may take some convincing, Moyes was full of praise for the new boy, who played a small part for a Russia side that made an impact on the international stage for the first time since the Cold War.

"I think I saw him playing for Russia in Euro 2008," the Scottish boss stammered.

"Yes, I'm pretty sure it was him. They did all look alike mind, they were all in red with young, boyish, slightly flushed faces and floppy, ungroomed hair. But I'm confident he's one of them, yeah..."

Speaking through a translator, Bilyaletdinov declared that he was 'honoured' to have signed for Everton.

However, the mood changed when Diniyar was asked whether he feared people would have trouble with his name, as the new recruit would only mutter: "I have a lot of people who will take care of me here. They will see that my enemies will disappear into the shadows."

List of players who will never play under Keane grows to almost all players ever

Terrifying psychopath and Ipswich Town manager Roy Keane is facing a selection crisis for this weekend's fixture against Preston after adding still more names to the list of players he will never consider for selection.

Keane, whose playing career was punctuated by acts of savage brutality, has fairly unsurprisingly taken a pugnacious approach to management.

Reduced to a growling wreck by a miserable start to the season at Ipswich, the ferocious Irishman opted wield the axe (thankfully, figuratively rather than literally, as he frequently did during his time at Sunderland) after a Carling Cup exit at the hands of Peterborough.

While there were mercifully few casualties, Keane has told almost good striker John Stead and midfielders Owen Garvan and Alan Quinn that they won't be considered for selection from now on.

Including the latest outcasts, 23 of Keane's 25 players have now been frozen out, leaving the fiery tactician with a numbers problem. Cowering goalkeeper Richard Wright is expected to take to the field with just Alex Bruce for company at Portman Road on Saturday but Keane himself has promised to bring some boots.

Reports suggest that Keane is planning to enter the market for new recruits, but this could be a tough process given his well-documented grudges against over 2,000 Premier League and Football League players, most other managers, agents and mascots.

Ipswich chairman Marcus Evans has stressed his complete support for Keane, but was heard mumbling: "Who would have thought a borderline maniac with a notoriously short fuse would fall out with so many players?"

Brain-dead scum attack brain-dead scum after expected victory in pointless Cup

For the first time in memory, the Carling Cup captured the nation's attention last night as London's human vermin used the tie between West Ham and Millwall as a chance to trash large parts of East London.

The news that the two sides had been paired together in the second round draw brought about a mass exodus of the area surrounding Upton Park earlier in the month as thousands of homeowners sold up, bringing property prices crashing to a record low.

And the pessimists were proved right as hundreds of dickheads, who could barely name a player in either side, fought running battles around the stadium.

On the pitch, Premier League outfit West Ham made hard work of seeing off an industrious Millwall side but won the game in extra-time, sentencing chimpish tactician Gianfranco Zola and Co. to another mid-week fixture with the possibility of several more draining mid-week dates and the outside chance of losing to Chelsea or Manchester United's reserves at Wembley in February.

Last night's events have cast yet another shadow on a grim, old tournament, but sponsors Carling were determined to take a positive view.

"It's nice to see that people really care about the Carling Cup," a spokesman insisted. "Of course tempers will flare when you have this much at stake.

"But in many ways what we saw was the perfect advert for the Carling Cup. A huge number of repugnant examples of humanity drinking Carling, watching mediocre football and behaving like animals."

Birmingham-Stoke victims to receive commemorative plaque

Birmingham City Council have given the green light to plans to honour the 21,000 fans who witnessed last weekend's Birmingham City-Stoke City encounter at St Andrew's with a statue and plaque.

Experts had warned spectators to expect a drab battle between no-thrills yo-yo club Birmingham and long-throw dependent dirge peddlers Stoke, but Saturday's insipid contest exceeded all expectations.

As both sides demonstrated their terrifying lack of midfield creativity, fans at both ends began to find entertainment elsewhere. Some supporters fashioned a Monopoly board, one wrote an impressive series of gritty short stories and a few desperate souls even read Alex McLeish's programme notes.

It has now been confirmed that Birmingham will pay tribute to the fans, who endured the most miserable of Saturday afternoons, with a statute of two bored Brummies [pictured above] and a plaque containing the names of everyone present.

The FA have assured the football world that they have "no intention of making the clubs meet again" at the Britannia Stadium on December 28.

Redknapp tells Spurs players: Let's get carried away

Tottenham Hotspur boss Harry Redknapp has taken an unusual approach to Spurs' baffling 100 percent start to the season, urging his players to "go out and let their hair down."

Perennial mid-table outfit Tottenham have opted for an unorthodox route to their standard 50 points this term with nine already clocked up in the first three outings.

While a number of senior players in N17 have stressed the need to keep their feet on the ground, seasoned campaigner and unlicensed Hackey Wick Market trader Redknapp seems to have adopted a different strategy.

The former Portsmouth, Southampton and Portsmouth manager was carried into training this morning on a sedan chair wearing shoes made of 24-carat gold accompanied by a gospel choir singing Queen classic "We Are The Champions."

After a 4-hour session that mostly consisted of drinking games using a magnum of 1990 Cristal Brut champagne, Redknapp left Spurs Lodge after instructing his troops to "go fucking mental, we got this in the bag."