Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!

In keeping with pretty much everything else you’ve read, seen or heard about the Scottish League Cup final, you’d be forgiven for presuming today’s Football Daily will almost entirely be devoted to the fact Celtic is run by an incompetent bunch of cheapskates who appear to consider their paying customers an entitled rabble of insubordinate plebs, with only a cursory mention of plucky little St Mirren’s actual triumph at the end. Except that’s not how this daily football email rolls and by sneering at everyone else’s coverage of the Buddies’ not-entirely-surprising Hampden Park triumph, we’ve now mentioned their win twice already, which means we can exclusively devote what remains of this section to going in two-footed with our views on the Scottish champions.

So Nottingham Forest beat Spurs 3-0 (lol) after Spurs beat West Ham 3-0, in turn, following West Ham beating Nottingham Forest 3-0, which is the Premier League equivalent of an Escher drawing. As Danny Baker used to say, ‘football is chaos’...” – Noble Francis.

Is anybody else looking back with fondness to a time when Sepp Blatter was Fifa’s chief suit?” – Gary McGuinness.

As a compatriot of Tyler T (Friday’s Football Daily letters), may I add a preemptive global apology for anything Alexi Lalas says? There’s really no excuse. As a people, we should have long ago endeavoured to make sure he never actually speaks into a live microphone. And I’m sorry to Tyler as well for bandwagoning his letter” – Daniel Stauss.

Re: rival fans being nice (Football Daily letters passim) – my friend, a lifelong Coventry fan, asked me to join him at the Spurs v Coventry FA Cup final in 1987. Unfortunately he could only get tickets in the middle of a Tottenham section. Notwithstanding this he wore his Coventry scarf and we both were on our feet cheering when Coventry equalised, without any adverse reaction from the Spurs fans. Not only that, after Coventry won the match – and the Cup – the Spurs fans remained in their seats and clapped the Coventry team when they came round celebrating their win. Those were the days” – Danny Sullivan.

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

German striker was given a sarcastic ovation by the Sunderland fans after his inadvertent match winner

On numerous occasions during the 75 minutes he spent on the pitch during the Wear-Tyne derby, Nick Woltemade cut an extremely isolated, peripheral and forlorn figure in the opposition box. A bad afternoon for Newcastle’s German striker got significantly worse shortly after half-time when he cut an even more isolated, peripheral and forlorn figure in his own team’s box after inadvertently heading a Nordi Mukiele cross past Aaron Ramsdale from six yards out.

Woltemade’s embarrassing own goal proved to be the unwitting match-winner in a contest that had until that point been high on full-blooded aggression but low on moments of real quality. As he made way for Yoane Wissa, it was no surprise the Sunderland fans granted the visibly deflated 23-year-old a sarcastic ovation. A fan favourite on Tyneside until the 46th minute of this match, Woltemade has now pulled off the unlikely feat of winning a permanent, bitterly ironic place in mackem hearts.

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!

Going into Wednesday night’s match against Manchester City, Xabi Alonso’s future as head coach of Real Madrid seemed as up in the air as a Spanish omelette being flipped by celebrity chef Keith Floyd in his pomp. Just 14 games into his reign, the only unsightly blot on the 44-year-old’s copybook had been an unacceptable 5-2 hammering at the hands of Atlético. But, since the start of November, Madrid have only won three in nine, with arguably their most unpalatable results coming in the form of draws with supposed La Liga cannon fodder, including Elche and Girona, culminating in Sunday’s embarrassing home defeat at the hands of Celta Vigo. In Bigger Cup, they still look set fair to secure an all-important top eight spot despite their reverse at the hands of City, a defeat which was greeted by shrill whistles of disapproval from hard-to-please fans who had actually just seen their knack-ravaged team play reasonably well.