When Michael Owen signed for Newcastle a couple of weeks back the club's supporters seriously struggled to find the words to sum up their delight. The closest any of them came was probably when they opted for "New Messiah", which - and we could be wrong - is where one caller to BBC Radio 5 might have got confused.

Owen, he said, was viewed by the Toon Army "as some kind of Masonic personality". We watched him celebrating his goal against Blackburn yesterday but we can't say we noticed him giving Alan Shearer a funny handshake.

Short back and (off) sides

Benni McCarthy has been in a monster huff with Porto since they refused to allow him join West Ham a few weeks back and, by the sounds of it, relations between the South African striker and his club aren't improving much. We'd even go so far as to guess Benni's heart really isn't in it.

In fairness to McCarthy he was probably entitled to feel a touch aggrieved when Co Adriaanse, the Porto manager, punished him for turning up late for training recently by making him do 7am running sessions for a week - this despite McCarthy having a reasonably solid excuse for being late: he was in a car crash.

Anyway, enough appeared to be enough for Adriaanse when he learnt the player had been found in his hotel room, on the eve of Porto's last league game, with not one woman but two. He promptly dropped McCarthy for the Champions League game against Rangers, rejecting what sounded to us like another reasonable excuse: McCarthy said the two women were hairdressers.

"The team has to be more important than any player," said Adriaanse. "A team also need rules, and anyone who tries to avoid those rules can't be in the team", he added, not actually clarifying whether McCarthy would have been okay if just one hairdresser had been found in his room. The Daily Record's headline for the story? "Benni's Boot In The Short And Curlers".

Sweden not on Sven's side

Sven Goran Eriksson, you might have noticed, has been under a bit of pressure of late, with England's 1-0 defeat in Belfast not going down hugely well across the water - "An Irish Joke," as one tabloid headline described it. Sven, then, needs all the support he can get these days and you'd expect he might receive some from his homeland of Sweden. Err, over to you Peter Wennman (a football writer with Swedish paper Aftonbladet): "I agree with the whole of England - fire him, fire him now. He has not only turned himself into a clown, he has created complete confusion in one of the most talented football teams in the world. I have never accepted his idiotic bonking on the side, but this is something else. Everyone except David Beckham realises he has got to go." Now, with friends and compatriots like that who needs . . . ?

Quotes of the week

"In this day and age you don't see too many footballers with two feet."

- Peter Allen, as heard by a Private Eye reader on BBC Radio 5 Live.

"I don't understand a lot of what Carra is saying."

- Liverpool goalkeeper Jose Reina still hasn't quite worked out what language Jamie Carragher speaks. Give Jose a couple of months and, thanks to Carra, Stevie G and Co, he'll develop one of those Jan Molby-type accents, Scouse mixed with Danish/Spanish, etc.

"We don't set ourselves sights, but we know what we've got to aim for."

- Spurs keeper Paul Robinson.

"I didn't really realise what had happened until I saw my shorts covered in blood. I didn't go out to celebrate after the match. I didn't sleep very well at all."

- Hannover 96 midfielder Chavdar Yankov after suffering a particularly unpleasant injury in a game against Eintracht Frankfurt when an opponent's studs left a four-centimetre gash down his . . . no, sorry, we can't go on.

"He's 19. He's a fiery character, he's competitive and when he sees an injustice against him, he reacts like that . . . I think in the context of a game like that the referee picked his prey with the booking . . . but we've had disappointments with Kim Nielsen before."

- Alex Ferguson, in no way at all, at all making excuses for Wayne Rooney.

"If he scores 15 times he will have had a good season."

- Jose Mourinho, kind of doubting that Charlton striker Darren Bent will win this season's European Golden Boot award.

Refs accused of taking sides

To our knowledge President Mary McAleese has yet to receive a letter from an Eircom League club complaining about refereeing bias but if Terek Grozny's note to Russian president Vladimir Putin pays off we could have ourselves a trend.

The club, bottom of the Russian Premier League, believes it has been the victim of a string of dodgy refereeing decisions purely because it is from Chechnya.

"We don't deserve to be bottom," read the letter, "we want honest football and objective refereeing! These referees aren't human - they're beasts!"

Every allegedly dodgy incident - including disallowed goals and free-kicks and penalties awarded against them - is detailed in the letter, which the club's president - who also happens to be the Chechen vice-president, says is his country's way of saying 'enough's enough'.

"For the last 12 years the Chechen people have been abused, we won't let this happen any more," he said. "That's why we've written to the president. He's the fairest man in Russia - he'll find out why there's a campaign against the club."

While the club awaits Putin's response its rivals in the league have been busy chuckling at their attempts to avoid the drop.

"Sending this letter is a very impulsive step, it's their southern temperament showing through," sniffed football journalist Kirill Kiknadze when asked for a comment by the BBC. Terek Grozny, though, might just have the last laugh if Putin decides to award them the league title, in a little attempt to improve relations between Russia and Chechnya. We'll see.

Chelsea touts go trackside

With a bit of an attendance crisis happening in the English Premiership it's sad to see clubs having to resort to handing out fliers at London tube stations, pleading with commuters to come and support their local team. Well, actually, only one club resorted to this last week - little old Chelsea, ahead of their Champions League game against Anderlecht. Judging by the number of empty seats at the match it didn't appear to work.