Once a day from me when possible, main source: The Fiver.

The Fiver's Scottish cousin, Shortbread McFiver, hasn't been this excited since the time he was lurching down Glasgow's Buchanan Street and spotted 5p at the bottom of a puddle of vomit. Because, fresh from two straight wins, Scotland wobble atop their Euro 2008 qualifying group and the hype surrounding Walter Smith's rabble has reached Ben Nevis heights. Indeed, many Scots are heading into Saturday's clash with France in Hampden Park convinced that they're on the verge of the country's greatest victory since the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297, when William Wallace and a puny band of tartan-clad savages whupped 10,000 crack English troops who, ingeniously, had decided to attack via a bridge that they could only cross in twos. Unfortunately for Scotland, even Raymond "Scorpios can't pass" Domenech isn't that bonkers.

One Scot who hasn't let wins over Lithuania and the mighty Faroe Islands go to his head is assistant gaffer Tommy Burns, who today represented that rarest of sounds - a sober voice from the Highlands. "The nation expects us to beat the French and that's why the fans have been knocking each other over to buy tickets - there's no sense of reality attached to the national team," doused Burns before scoffing: "People have to realise we can sometimes be underdogs, even at home , but in the eyes of the fans we should beat everybody we play."

If those words, combined with the absence through suspension of goal-crazy Kenny "four in 13 games" Miller, haven't scotched the Tartan Army's hopes, then today's news that key midfielder Nigel Quashie has been ruled out through ankle-knack might. Then again, the very fact that Quashie is a key midfielder should have prevented any hopes forming in the first place, which is possibly what master motivator Burns was driving at when he bluntly added: "We have to be aware that they're a better team than us and have better players than us." Ah yes, the famous Scottish fighting spirit

I can bet my life that france will skin them alive, quashie or tianshie, miller or weah, abeg make we talk something else

There's a bumper dose of managerial incompetence coming Benfica's way if Carlos Alberto Quaresma wins the club's presidential elections - he plans to appoint Sven-Groan Eriksson.

@chxta

nice picture there cheta, nice one,

@ chxta

** grins** wow wat a pic!!

kitaun:

I can bet my life that france will skin them alive, quashie or tianshie, miller or weah, abeg make we talk something else

i was willing to bet you like £200 hmm, i think i'll start playing lottery nowadays im getting really lucky

so how do u wish to surrender the life you bet with

france 0 scotland 1

combined with the absence through suspension of goal-crazy Kenny "four in 13 games" Miller,

goal shy more like

@Loverbwoy

I felt so sad that France lost that game, but come to think of it why did we not bet or you were afraid to place your bet, you now come dey make mouth say you be the latest Nicodemus on Nairaland ol'boy i for chop ur money o cos anytime wey i bet with money i dey win but if na mouth i take bet, na 50-50 e dey turn out to be.lol

How do you see the pounding of the Spaniards?

ive not seen the match you know, europsortdey mess up sometimes

Spain are like nigeria really nothing special just like spanish league, i bet al;l of them are still living with their mummy like reyes , the madrid goalkeeper should be playing for Leyton orient really

Next time we go bet no worry, i go text you my account number

Quite how anyone's supposed to detail the shortcomings of both the England and Republic of Ireland football teams in just three short paragraphs while sitting in an office where unattended mobiles and phones ring constantly, televisions blare and a trolley-pushing refreshment peddler hawks his wares while wearing an admittedly impressive Cyberman mask is a mystery to the Fiver. Not least because the longwinded whinge at the beginning of this paragraph means we're only left with a mere two in which to write about the myriad inadequacies of both outfits.

Ireland first. The portrayal of Stan "Steve" Staunton as Kermit the Frog on the front page of the Irish Sun this morning was a mite unfair. The Muppet Show often descended into farce, but the world's most amphibious compere never presided over a shambles as embarrassing as that overseen by the Republic of Ireland manager in Cyprus. Staunton began his regime by declaring "I'm the boss, I'm the gaffer, the buck stops with me", but just 10 months later has been reduced to pointing fingers at his back four for making "individual errors" and announcing he's in it for the long haul. "I'm not walking away," he announced, surprising nobody. After all, a dignified exit would mean missing out on the £1m pay-off he'll get from the buffoonish blazers who decided to give this totally inexperienced manager a four-year contract in the first place.

Becausemake no mistake, bungling incompetence is the stock-in-trade of John Delaney and his FAI cohorts, who regularly pull off the impressive feat of making their English equivalents look like administrative geniuses by comparison. Nevertheless, the Soho Square blazers must also be swallowing nervously in the wake of a dismal performance against Macedonia by Second-Choice Steve and his Hapless England Autobiography-Writing All-Stars. But with the prospect of his side getting a good shoeing from Croatia on Wednesday looking very real, Steve isn't too concerned. "We have to take the criticism but the key thing is how you bounce back," he chirruped, before bouncing back in style by slicking back his quiff, striking up his house band and bursting into song: "It's time to put on make up, it's time to dress up right. It's time to raise the curtain , "

If the Fiver was as fickle as the average England supporter, we'd disagree with everything we said as soon as we wrote it. Actually no, we wouldn't. But for proof of the capricious nature of this great nation's football fans, one need look no further than the treatment meted out to Peter Crouch and Owen Hargreaves by England fans. Booed in the build-up to the World Cup for being tall and Canadian respectively, both players were lauded as heroes by the same mob during Germany 2006. And last night the whimsical halfwits were at it again - baying for the return of David Beckham, despite having been wholeheartedly in agreement with Second-Choice Steve when he made it clear the former skipper would never be part of his plans.

Of course it doesn't help that many of England's fans are incapable of independent thought and are forced to rely on tabloids to form their opinions for them. Which means Paul Robinson can now expect to become a target of abuse after conceding a freak own-goal, despite his heroic efforts against Croatia. This morning's red-tops ganged up on the keeper and made him England's latest scapegoat: several opted for in-no-way predictable "Misses Robinson" headlines, while the Mail branded him "a chump". (Needless to say, our own Big Paper took a more sympathetic view, tracing the goal's origins back to Robinson's upbringing in the mungbean-free patriarchal environment of northern England.)

Alan Hansen, however, chose not to point the finger at England's No1. "Michael Carrick was non-existent," och-ayed the BBC pundit who's been lobbying to have Carrick in the England team for longer than the Fiver cares to remember. But while blaming individuals for an abysmal team performance helps to paper over the cracks, the one thing that can't be held accountable for England's defeat is their use of a 5-3-2 formation that none of the players were able to cope with. "No one had a problem," fibbed left-back John Terry. "I don't regret what I did," added manager Second-Choice Steve. So that's all right, then - England are great and victory at Euro 2008 is now assured. Now excuse us while we go and attach small plastic cross of St George flags to each corner of our Luton Transit Fivermobile.

In today's Fiver:

Britain's colonial invaders didn't always slaughter or enslave natives. Sometimes the people they came across were so ignorant they'd hand over vast tracts of mineral-rich land in return for a bag of shiny trinkets and a bottle of rum. Which, centuries later, is pretty much what West Ham did in 2004 when they let Jermain Defoe go to Spurs for a puny wad of notes and Bobby Zamora. Defoe had scored 15 goals in 22 appearances for the Hammers that season, and went on to notch 22 in 35 games for his new owners the following campaign. Then, like Steve Coogan, he suddenly became rubbish.

All sorts of theories have been put forward for Defoe's woes, ranging from Spurs' rotation system to his strange propensity to shoot as soon as he gets the ball regardless of where he is or how many defenders are in front of him. One hypothesis we can definitively dispel, in the light of yesterday's munch on Javier Mascherano, is that Defoe has lost his hunger.

"It was just a comical nibble," said Spurs boss Tony Soprano of the incident that served as the hors d'oeuvre to a laughable 20-man jostle. "It has been blown way out of proportion," added Defoe shortly after auditioning for the lead role in the next Jaws movie. "When the West Ham player fouled me, I reacted in a bit of a mischievous way," he insisted, adding with a helpless shrug: "my character is a little like that at times."

As busy-bodies such as sports minister Richard Caborn called for the FA to get its teeth stuck into the matter, Defoe hoped the authorities would swallow his defence, which is based on refereeing competence - a notion almost as outmoded as cannibalism. "The referee was standing right over me and if he felt I had done anything bad, he would have sent me off," he Lectere, , sorry lectured. None of which explains, of course, why he still can't score.