These are definitely not the "Glory Days"

Liverpoop, England - A sad-faced Roy Hodgson came out of his house to face the music, then promptly chased away a group of carollers on his porch. The probably-soon-to-be-ex-manager of Liverpool has been widely criticised by the media, the Queen, Queen, the Pope, supporters and Ijaz Butt for his team's poor performance. Liverpool hired Hodgson after they had sacked their previous manager after the 2009/10 season after being caught placing a home made paper mache trophy with "Best Effort" written on in crayon inside the club's trophy cabinet.

"Hodgson was hired because of his impeccable credentials", said the club's owner whose name I don't know. "He has many accomplishments under his belt leading up to his employment here. Before joining Liverpool, he won the Premiership 8 times with Manchester United between 1998 and 2010. He has also won the Champions League twice and the FA Cup 4 times. He is by far the most experienced manager that money can buy. During this time, he has also taken York Town from the Conference League to the First Division in three years - an achievement no other manager from any club, English or non-English, can boast about".

The unknown owner who I will now refer to as "Mr Who", went on to boast about Hodgson turning young players such as Ryan Millwall and Jason Underwood into international stars in a few years. But when asked to comment on the fact that all Hodgson's achievements were only fictional as he built his CV around his achievements in the Sierra computer game "Ultimate Soccer Manager 98/99", Mr Who refused to comment.

"However", Mr Who added, "he is rather crap at his job at the moment. So far in the Premier League, Liverpool has only five points from five games, which, as I was told by my lovely personal assistant Tiffany, isn't very good at all. The last time Manchester United started a season with less than six points, was in 1921 when they were on only 3 points after their first game, but comparing Manchester United to Liverpool is like comparing apples and oranges or footballers to waitresses pretending to be footballers".

Mr Who didn't make it clear if it was Manchester United or Liverpool who were the apples, oranges, footballers or waitresses pretending to be footballers.

After being kicked out of the tournament formerly known as the League Cup last night, where the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince sang the FA's theme song from Abba's 1976 album "Arrival", "Money, Money, Money", Hodgson met the press for his views. "It's a major setback for the club. This will now make it more difficult for us to win the [Carling] cup from here, but we will go back to the drawing board and improve on every aspect of our game. We gave it our best, but it wasn't good enough. Obviously it's disappointing, catches win matches but you also need to put runs on the board". After reading from the Ravi Shastri Book of Interview Responses, he signalled the end of the interview by throwing his glass of ice water on a journalist and swatting at a photographer.

Supporters weren't too impressed with Rafa Benitez's lack of trophies over the years, but it is only a matter of time before Liverpool's current manager Roy Hodgson finds himself walking alone one the boulevard of broken dreams.

And upon hearing Mr Who say "...the best...that money can buy", Manchester City's owners quickly bought the island of Manhattan, the QE2 and the toothbrush fence in New Zealand.

Ijaz Butt, Conspiracy Theorist

In another shocking twist of preschool tit-for-tat, Ijaz Butt has accused the entire English Cricket Board - including its cricketers - of accepting bribes to throw the final One Day International against Pakistan.

"I saw them all accepting bribes. They were all in Karanichas having an aloo paratha, soya prawn breyani and a green tea for the ridiculously low price of £3.99! That's cheaper than a no ball!", said Butt. Quoting some of Ricky Ponting's words, Butt added, "Besides, the only way anyone can lose against our team of 'mismatched bunch of hobknobs' is if it was fixed from the start, or before. I have no knowledge of when a game is fixed."

The scandal broke Sunday night when Ijaz finally got through to a junior reporter after turning off the number sending on his cellphone and pretending to be Angelina Jolie.

When asked if the allegation was legitimate, a hoax or simply a shallow sellout to get publicity for his cousin's company, he merely replied "so's your face". When questioned further, Butt explained in detail how delicious Karanichas' secret sause is and how amazing it is that they haven't gone out of business with prices that low.

The ECB arranged for their spokesman to release a statement to the press in the early hours of yesterday morning in the hideous press box at Lords. However, on arival we were met with locked gates. The meeting was promptly moved to a nearby Tescos because of their hot coffee. The ECB spokesman released the statement, but was missed by the press as the new shipment of October FHMs were delivered at the same time as the press statement and featured "The Inbetweeners Girls" and an article about Megan Fox.

Somebody did catch a bit of the press release on tape and in the recording it was made quite clear that the ECB would not be taking these allegations lightly. "As you might have noticed, the entire board is filled with pensioners and there is no way that any of them can stomach a curry of any strength. They prefer langoustines to prawns anyway". The rest of the recording was drowned out by repeated cries of "look at the knockers on that bird!", so no mention of the cricketers was heard.

Currently suspended cricketers Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer were unable to be reached as they were busy filming a commercial for bet365.com at the time of going to press.

Australia vs Pakistan vs The Spirit of the Game

Sydney - In a bizarre twist, Cricket Australia has accused Pakistan of undermining the spirit of the game. Acting as Cricket Australia's spokesman and sometimes the president, John Howard released a statement on behalf of Cricket Australia. According to him, Pakistan acted against the spirit of the game in the last Test match the two teams played against each other (Headingley, 21 - 24 July, 2010).

"As self-proclaimed unofficial president of the ICC and Cricket Australia, I, John Howard, would like to point out that Muru... Murril... Marrili... whatever his name is, he is a chucker. I have also received information through Twitter from our most celebrated son Ricky Ponting about the Headingley Test match between our mighty Australians and Pakistan's mismatched bunch of hobknobs.

"The Legend Ponting himself stated that Pakistan had acted against the spirit of the game and hoped that action would be taken against them for this. He stated that an example was made of that one chap from Ceylon who bowled that wide against that other chap from India and that Pakistan should be punished next. However, now that I think about it, that message does seem to be a fair bit longer than Twitter does allow, so I might have read it on Facebook, I don't know."

Howard, who believes that Sri Lanka is still called Ceylon and also that Australia is still a Brittish colony, asked for his fellow ICC board members to act apon the information he has provided them. After waffling on for 15 minutes about how Twitter is more restrictive than Facebook - during this time, the press took it apon themselves to break for lunch - he came to the point the whole press room was waiting for.

Howard claimed that Pakistan's actions were against the "rules and laws of the spirit of the game of cricket" (which is a publication only available in Howard's personal library we suspect) and should be addressed by the ICC. He claimed "Pakistan acted against the rules and laws of the spirit of the game of cricket in the last test. By having a negative attitude towards Australia, they decided that it would be suitable to rather beat us than let us win. It was quite apparent that at least two or maybe even three or four or perhaps even five, but not more than seven or six, were in on this. The whole team shouldn't be punished, but an example should be made of the captain and those involved. I can't tell you who they are, because I battle with foreign names."

When asked to comment on the statements, the ICC's spokesman replied, "We have recently installed Norton Anti-Spam, so we are unable to receive any emails at all except from PharmaMaster. However, should John Howard send us any emails, we trust that Norton's Anti-Spam filter will reject it as it did with his nomination for ICC president.

"We would also like to point out that we are in no way linked to John Howard and any such claims from him will be dealt with by our lawyers. We would also like Mr Howard to return our casserole dish. No if you'll excuse me, I am late for the weekly ICC Board Members' Laser Tag event."

The Pakistan Cricket Board could not be reached for comment as all politicians were requested to be in Parliament for an emergency meeting at the time of going to print.